For example, there are a plethora of privacy regulations governing what can and can’t be exposed about a specific patient. When you’re on social media, you’re about as public as you can be.

In a related challenge, there is also a government regulated, complex approval system for any communication from the insurance industry to the public. Each piece of communication, including social media messages, has to complete the approval process, which can take weeks. Not the typical turnaround time for a status update!

Also, if you are attempting to answer specific questions with a medical professional, you’re taking a qualified nurse or doctor away from their traditional duties, and with many medical facilities understaffed, it may just not seem important enough.

However, there are some good arguments to be made for including social media in a health insurance marketing and information plan.

• Access — many people who are daunted by forms, lines and technical language are completely comfortable logging into Twitter or Facebook. South Carolina is looking at using social media to reach Medicaid and Medicare customers.
• Also, many people will know exactly how to find a company on Facebook, but have trouble remembering your web address. They can get questions answered more quickly through social media.
• Some Companies are Already There – with the popularity of social media, even an industry with obstacles like the health insurance industry’s will find some early adopters. They are out there, with blogs, Q & A columns, and customer service.
• The Customers are using Social Media – Customers comparison shop, seek information, and communicate with others via social media. Health insurance companies seeking to be relevant may need to join in.
• A “Friendlier” Feel. Health insurance companies have the image of being distant and inaccessible, not to mention unresponsive, in many cases. A presence in social media could soften that image.

If recent and continuing developments with the Apple App Store for iPhone and the iPod TYouch are any indication, then Apple is taking on the protectionist policies more commonly associated with those big, clunky, running-scared companies that Apple has traditionally loved to hate (Think Microsoft  and IBM).

The recent desertion of Joe Hewitt from the Facebook App for iPhone is a great example of how those who value open, creative and unrestricted access are being increasingly put off by Apple’s corporate policies.

Hewitt is not just “one of the developers” on the Facebook for iPhone app, he is the application. And he bolted from the project – not because he doesn’t like what he was doing, but entirely because of Apple’s review policies. (See http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/ for more).

The repressive and protectionist policies of Apple (and let’s don’t forget – AT&T behind the scenes) is disturbing not only because it is so contrary to the supposed ethos of Apple and all that it stands for, but also because Apple is the standard for smart phones and application development for smartphones.

If Apple is able to continue their policies that value profit over innovation, then other platforms will feel free to adopt similar models – the standard has been set. It only takes a look at how quickly airlines jumped on the bandwagon to charge customers to check a bag to see that oppressive reviews of new applications could be in the works for every smartphone platform.

Don’t think it can’t happen – three years ago, did it even cross you mind that you might one day have to pay an extra $25 just to take a suitcase along when you flew to grandma’s for a week?

And the other frightening thought in all of this – where does Apple’s innovation go from here? Can we expect more trendsetting and ground breaking products from a company that has joined the ranks of the “profit at all costs” behemoths? Not likely.

“I’ll add you on Facebook!”

“Hey, we are Orkut friends!”

“I’ll subscribe to your RSS feed right away!”

You will agree, these are some of the most touted phrases that we use when we “network”. However, this is not the way the journey had begun. The transformation from toys to tools was a revolution that brought out a whole new “Social Economy” in “Social Networks”.

Emotions have been replaced by emoticons, expressions have given way to smileys and the English Language has seen drastic reforms in the present era. Yes, we are using a super condensed and more “expressive” way of communication, thanks to social networking.

Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and many others took birth in the World Wide Web and primarily made their presence felt as networking toys. Little did we realize then, about the enormous networking capabilities they had. Soon, along with inviting our near ones to hang out at a party, we were “inviting” them to our online profiles on these websites. There were friends, friends of friends; can I say an online “big bang”?

Yes, the concept might be surreal, but the sheer fascination and excitement to be a part of this revolution paved way for the dynamics of theses toys to mutate into tools. It would be quite difficult to point out the exact period when this transformation took place, but you knew it was there when you were networking more online rather than calling up or e-mailing the same people. Your business cards and identities changed during this era and now included information of your online profiles or networks.

“Human networks” is the word of the hour. We have been consistent in synthesizing our conversations through these digitally woven, close environments, with a wide array of inbound and outbound hyperlinks dominating our online presence. We are scheduling meetings, hanging out, having conversations, sharing interests, making a social statement in a world of our own. All these worlds come together in the digital universe. The good news is, we are getting addicted to it every day and striving to reach its epitome.

“To err is human…” What is human? Is it an online Avatar or the one who sits behind it and controls its actions? Are our online counterparts facing an identity crisis?

The principles associated with this new social economy have brought about the tools in toys and I am now a part of it. The trick of the trade is to propel your identity towards the proper direction and your intended audience.

Welcome to the world of social networking once again…have you noticed the change?

Patricia Nakache, a general partner at the venture capital firm, Trinity, is backing start-ups that figure people would be willing to pay for higher-quality, screened listings.

Because Craigslist does not much care about making money, it can be hard for a profit-driven business to compete. Just ask newspapers, which have seen their classified ads virtually disappear. But Ms. Nakache argues that “people are willing to pay for a better experience.”

One of the companies in which she has invested is Care.com, a listing site for caregivers of all types, including nannies, senior care providers, tutors, housekeepers and pet sitters. Caregivers can post their information on the site for free. People searching for caregivers can view limited profiles for free but are charged $25 a month (with discounts for signing up for multiples months) to search full listings.

People are willing to pay, Ms. Nakache said, because they find Craigslist, which does not vet listings, too risky for something as important as child or elder care. Care.com screens all the profiles and provides free background checks and audio references.

The challenge, she said, is how to add on to these services so users keep paying for subscriptions. Care.com includes articles on related topics, like how to deal with an elderly parent’s Alzheimer’s disease, what to pay baby sitters and how nannies should respond when their clients friend them on Facebook. Even after users find a caregiver and end their subscription, they often return to Care.com in the future, Ms. Nakache said, because their need for care changes over their lifetimes.

LoopNet, a commercial real estate listing site that is now a publicly traded company, is another Trinity investment that Ms. Nakache led. It lists $535 billion worth of commercial properties for sale, from offices to agricultural land and hotels. Its customers are individuals and commercial real estate firms and they pay to view and list properties. Subscriptions average $30 a month. LoopNet used to be free and make money from advertising, Ms. Nakache said, but switched to a subscription model after the tech bubble burst. The site had revenue of $71 million and net income of $21 million in 2007 and is now up to 3 million paying members.

Ms. Nakache has also invested in MyNewPlace, a home rental listing site that charges landlords a flat subscription fee or an $18 fee every time a potential renter contacts them, and Jobster, a job listing site that charges employers $99 for a 30-day listing or $10 for every applicant.

Start-ups and big companies have been trying to take on Craigslist for years. EBay, an investor in Craigslist, has Kijiji, a free classifieds site much like Craigslist. There are many other free and subscription apartment listing services and Web sites to help you find concert tickets, plumbers, nannies or whatever else you need. And there are always old-fashioned newspaper classified ads, which reigned before Craigslist arrived on the scene.

Ms. Nakache is betting that niche sites can prosper by charging for ads. Would you be willing to pay?

Certainly, most of the venture capitalists I’ve talked to at the Web 2.0 Summit have said they are shying away from companies that are based on the idea of growing an audience now and figuring out how to make money later. However, after listening to the presentations here over the past three days, it is clear that some of the key concepts of the Web 2.0 movement are, in fact, taking root in deep ways.

One of the most significant trends is how the big companies that make very complicated systems are reworking them using the principles of Web 2.0 companies, particularly the notion of programs that talk to other programs. They are breaking up their technologies into discrete modules that can work alongside data and applications from others.

Facebook can be credited with taking the first step to open up large parts of its service to third parties. Last year, it let their applications on its site. Now, through its upcoming Facebook Connect service, it will let other companies build applications that use its list of people and who their friends are to deliver new services.

Yahoo, a vastly more complex site, is restructuring to allow others to use many parts of its service: the content, the search engine, the social relationships embedded in e-mail, and such. That means that Yahoo information can be used on other sites, and developers can create applications to run on Yahoo. “If and when we can get our 500 million users on our platform, the power is huge,” Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive, told the conference. This, of course, involves reworking much of the software behind the site in order to connect politely and consistently with other companies.

Not to be outdone, Dave Girouard, who manages Google’s efforts to sell services to big enterprises, said that Google, too, developing a platform. “We want to you to have the same access to Google that our internal developers do,” Mr. Girouard said. He offered no details.

In a completely different market, Salesforce.com is transforming itself from service dedicated to tracking sales leads to a platform that allows many more options. Marc Benioff, its chief executive, told the conference about the company’s new platform, Force.com. Now customers can run their own applications on Salesforce’s computers, mixing its systems with those from other developers. The point is to help companies develop internal systems, Web sites for the public and even applications to run on social networks like Facebook.

By far the most ambitious effort along these lines is Microsoft’s new operating system called Azure, which is being developed under the direction of Ray Ozzie.

In the broadest sense, Azure is a system that enables a program to run on personal computers, on mobile devices and on Microsoft’s own data centers without losing track of important data. But as I talked to Azure’s developers here, it was clear that Microsoft is trying to incorporate both strands of Web 2.0 thinking into the new operating system.

First, it is designed to interact with many other systems. It can pull in data from other places and formats and create widgets that add features to Web sites. Microsoft insists that Azure will be more respectful of the various standards used on the Internet than the company’s other products have been.

Moreover, Microsoft has built what it claims are industrial-strength versions of some of the social features common to Web 2.0 applications, such as a combined list of updates modeled after the Facebook newsfeed but designed to keep track of relationships among hundreds of millions of people.

It’s too early to say which, if any, of these big-company efforts to build platforms will succeed. Some may well collapse of their own complexity. Others may be attempts by their creators to chase buzzwords. In 2001, you wouldn’t have been able to predict the Web sites that would prevail.

But I do think that we can count on moving into a world where very complicated computer systems are designed to talk to people and to each other, using the ideas developed in the Web 2.0 era, with or without vowels.

At midnight Thursday, the company is launching election.twitter.com, the first specialized section of its site. Like Twitter’s main service, it is dominated by a big white box. But instead of typing an answer to What are you doing? the election site asks, What do you think?

Below that box is a constantly scrolling display of the thoughts (called tweets in Twitterspeak) of other Twitter users. These include all the tweets entered on the election page as well as those entered in any other part of the service with obvious election-related phrases, such as Palin.

Twitter was started as a way for people to communicate with friends and acquaintances, but it is increasingly serving as a window on public opinion, too. You can now use Twitter’s search engine to see what people think about anything from the Wall Street bailout to beer.

We have all these people who use Twitter every day to react to what is going on, said Biz Stone, the company’s co-founder and creative director. Major events, such as concerts, TV shows and natural disasters, tend to prompt people to tweet.

We saw off-the-charts messages per second during the acceptance speeches of the political conventions, Mr. Stone said.

By creating the election site, Twitter is giving people an easy window into all of those political tweets and encouraging more of them. While the page may be of particular interest during the debates, it will be up for political junkies at all times.

Twitter is following MySpace and Facebook, which have created ways for their users to connect with each other over the election.

The election page also has links to the Twitter feeds of the McCain and Obama campaigns, although neither have been very active on the service of late.

There are also links to see tweets about the major presidential and vice presidential candidates and a list of phrases culled from recent tweets that represent hot topics.

And if the Friday night debate is canceled, there will probably be a lot of tweets about that, too.

Start Small

Many times when people think about getting publicity for their business, their wishlist goes something like this:

• I want to be featured in Forbes
• I want an interview in Inc Magazine
• I want to sit down with Donny Deutsch on the “Big Idea”

Having lofty goals is great, but it’s not always possible. Many times, it’s much more realistic (and effective) to start smaller. Think about all of the blogs that are out there. Find out which ones your potential customers read on a daily basis? Determine the ones that reporters for those bigger publications use (Who are they quoting? Who are they linking to online?). Start there. Most times, it will be easier to get featured on a smaller blog than a major publication. You can then use this coverage later on when you pitch bigger publications.

Hang Out In All The Right Places

Social media has made it so much easier to build relationships with people and get noticed. A great place to start for this is right on Twitter. Use one of the Twitter search engines or directories (I really like Twellow) to find reporters who are in your space. Simple searches — like this one for “reporter” — can be really helpful. Connect with them. See what types of things they are looking for. Become an invaluable resource to them.

When you have somewhat of a relationship built up, connect further through places like Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s all about building those relationships. Once you have a relationship with someone, they are much more likely to want to write about you or your company. But don’t forget, just like everyone always preaches good content, the same is true here. If your products or services aren’t really that good, you’re not going to get too far.

Traffic Is Noticed

Let’s say you’ve now built some relationships and received some initial press coverage. Promote that content just like you would promote something from your own site. Do you have strong accounts in social networks? Get it out in StumbleUpon. Get it on Digg. Share it with everyone. This will have a two-fold effect.

First, it will get more coverage for you. The more people who see it, the better.

Second, newspapers, magazines, TV stations and other media outlets are all thirsty for traffic. Many of them look very carefully at what articles are most viewed for the day (more views = more ad revenues). And many times this trickles down to the reporter. Do you think he or she would probably want to write about you again, if they got a big pat on the back from their boss? Of course they would….

LiveWorld is a publicly traded company that’s been around since 1996 and is best known for its white labeled social networks. These are online communities that LiveWorld helps clients build up around their existing brands, and they often take a good deal more time and effort to set up than communities created on top of self-service platforms like Ning or KickApps.

However, LiveWorld is making a significant foray into “out-of-the-box” communities with the release of LiveBar, a widget-like site addition that brings community features to any website using only one line of JavaScript.

The LiveBar consists of a thin strip that sticks to the bottom of the browser window and displays social content related to the page. It’s reminiscent of Facebook Chat or the upcoming community instant messaging offering from Meebo. But instead of facilitating instant messages, the LiveBar shows three types of user contributions: Conversations, Soapboxes, and Shouts.

Conversations are essentially lightweight forum threads where users can post messages and solicit responses. Soapboxes are akin to blog posts and Shouts are like tweets in that they’re restricted to 140 characters. In the LiveBar’s simplest implementation, these pieces of UGC are associated with individual URLs, so when you move from one page to the next, you see different content.

However, they can also be tied together into so-called bundles so that discussions form across pages that relate to each other. The LiveBar can also be rolled out across multiple sites on different domains, with bundles providing social glue around pages and sites that were formerly fragmented.

The biggest downside to the LiveBar (which could also be seen as its greatest virtue) is its discreetness. Visitors are prone to overlook it entirely because it sits so low and short on the page. To combat this tendency, LiveWorld has developed a suite of widgets that hook the LiveBar into the actual page layout. The widgets can be used, for example, to print the most recent conversations or solicit new ones. I expect that most publishers will deploy these extra widgets to get the most bang for their buck. After all, the LiveBar isn’t free; like other LiveWorld services, it’ll cost you thousands of dollars just to get it up and running.

LiveWorld plans to add more flexibility and functionality to the LiveBar over time, with chat in particular on the way. This will put LiveWorld in direct competition with Meebo, although Meebo’s specialty in online instant messaging should make for a superior product.

Both Tulane University and A&E Biography already plan to use LiveBar on their respective sites.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/livebar-adds-a-little-strip-of-community-to-any-site/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/15-features-your-site-doesnt-need/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/15-features-your-site-doesnt-need/#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:39:21 +0000 admin http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/08/15-features-your-site-doesnt-need.htm The worst mistake in internet marketing? Making things too complicated. It pumps up costs, slows site launches and keeps you offline when you could be online, selling stuff.

Who makes that mistake? You do. When you insist that that one feature is so important you can't live without it, you're killing yourself. If you can get 90% of the function with 10% of the effort, shouldn't you?

So, here's a list of features I think your site can probably do without, at least for now:

1. Integration with your inventory management system. If you're already selling lots online, great! Spend the fifty grand it'll take to synchronize your store with your inventory system. Otherwise, forget it. Put it on hold.
2. A fancy content management system (CMS). A full-featured, enterprise CMS is a great tool when you need it. But do you really need it? If you have a staff of two, you don't. Use Wordpress or Movable Type, instead.
3. Community content. Yah, community content is trendy as heck. But you don't need to build your own bloody city. Before you spend the time and shell out the cash to add community content, ask yourself: Do you need to build the community yourself? Couldn't you use Facebook? Or MySpace? Or something else? Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't need to.
4. A talking, walking spokesperson. I'm sorry, but no one needs a little video person that walks onscreen and starts babbling about how wonderful this product is. I go online to get away from that. So save the cash. Don't add a virtual spokesperson. Plus, they're creepy as hell.
5. Video. I love online video. It's super-valuable to the right business. Is that your business? If you can't get your message across without motion or a 'face to face' human element, use video. Otherwise, save the money and time.
6. Credit card processing. If you're selling online you'll need to process credit cards. But setting up a merchant account with your bank will make you wonder if you're in a Kafka novel. Instead, use a service like PayPal. Later, when you're selling in volumes where a .5% reduction in costs is important, you can set up the merchant account. Or, even better, get a lackey to do it for you.
7. A custom store. Yes, you want your store to look just so. If you can save thousands of dollars and weeks of work, though, why not compromise just a little and use a prebuilt store like Prostores or Volusion? Be smart. Get selling.
8. A custom lead management system. You want a CRM system that lets you manage 3,000 leads a month. Problem is, you don't have any leads yet. Try Salesforce or HighRise. You can hook 'em right up to the contact form on your web site and get 90% of what you want at 5% the cost in dollars and sanity.
9. Web 2.0 features. Whatever the hell those are. If you really need a feature, trust me, you won't need to pigeonhole it with some trendy phrase. You'll know you need one-page checkout, or smart form validation, or a puffy logo that looks like it'll purr when you pet it.
10. Multiple languages. Think about your audience first. Do you have a sizable group of folks who don't speak English in that audience? If yes, spend the money to translate. If not, stop right there.
11. Your own server. Yeah. No. Start off in a shared, 'virtual' hosting environment.
12. A live webcam. Thank heavens, these seem to be going away. I don't really want to see what you're doing at your desk 24/7.
13. A 'wish list'. It's nice to save your favorite products in a little folder all your own. But is that why you buy? I don't think so. Add the wish list later.
14. A 'virtual office'. You don't need to make your web site look like a real office. I'm on the internet because I don't want to go to your office! Give me a site that loads fast and gives me the shortest possible route between my question and your answer.
15. A 'virtual mall'. See the previous item, and don't make me slap you.

When you're deciding on features for your site, analyze the costs and benefits carefully. Consider whether you want a feature because you think it's important, or because it'll really help your audience.