It’s time for the social media rock stars

Here we are. Finally there seems to be a real demand for Social Media strategists as more and more companies figure out that it makes sense to have dedicated staff who understand Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the alike. Some companies pay even US$ 120k and more at director level according to this interesting background story published by Businessweek.

It sounds so like a new “New Economy”:

“A swarm of self-proclaimed social media rainmakers has appeared at job interviews, aiming to parlay a high number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers into salaried positions with benefits—all of which is vaguely reminiscent of the frenzied hiring during the first Internet boom in the late 1990s.”

Most likely companies won’t be fooled again this time as there are now clear expectations linked to these jobs:

- Reputation Management and Metrics: A broad range of tools allows tracking of Social Media mentions and puts it in relation to the industry peers. But even more important: Companies want to know how their brands are being treated. How to respond in the case they have been damaged?

- Social Media Marketing: The company is reaching out to the influencers and makes them brand advocates. How to engage and maintain this relationship?

Felix Salmon looks at how the age of Twitter is changing corporate communications: Good for PR, bad for journalists.

“What’s more, Twitter gives companies the ability to speak directly to the public without going via journalists (or even mere bloggers); and it also allows them to keep tab on what the public thinks without using journalists and media commentators as an imperfect proxy. Public relations is, after all, the art of relating with the public: journalists are just a means to an end. And the public has never been as easy to relate with as it is now, in the age of Twitter.”

It will be crucial if the company is able to maintain this constant dialogue with the public and to have an adequate infrastructure in place. Salmon is optimistic as he believes that executives like Twitter, and they want to keep the company’s presence high profile because other executives are looking at it as well - in a similar way they are looking at the Wall Street Journal. Looks like there is a bright future for qualified Social Media experts.

The era of the cloud 2

I'm still typing this blog comment on my laptop, but both blogs as well as laptops are "old school" again. Just read a remarkable article from Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff. According to him we are just transitioning to the "Cloud 2" and the iPad, on sale this weekend, is the most obvious manifestation.
From Pull to Push: "Pulling" information from databases and newspapers is declining, our friends and trusted sources push the news to us instead. Information appears in streams and feeds. The prevailing tools are Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

I'm currently receiving three different information feeds, a "paywall" feed, that I'm getting via Factiva, a blog/web feed on Google Reader and a Twitter feed, where I directly follow thought leaders of the areas I'm interested in. With this I feel prepared for the era of the Cloud 2. Just need to upgrade my hardware...

Update: In the same context, Jeff Jarvis is commenting on one of Benioff's postulates, the move from creation to consumption. It is nothing else than a strategy of the media companies to regain control about the democratised social media space. The iPad "does not include a simple (fucking) USB port, which means that I can’t bring in and take out content easily."

From this angle, apps are also appearing in a negative light:

"This shift to apps is a move in precisely the opposite direction. Apps are more closed, contained, controlling. That, again, is why media companies like them. But they don’t interoperate — they don’t play well — with other apps and with the web itself; they are hostile to links and search."

The iPad is the Trojan Horse that lures us into the paywall castle, with the gates firmly shut down.

Twitter's intrusion into the newswire business

Is Twitter turning into a powerful newsfeed, instead of just being a “social network”? Reuters contributor and blogger luminary Felix Salmon makes an interesting point. Celebrities, thought leaders and experts in no matter what bear the brunt of the Twitter action. Average Joe and Jane limit themselves to following passively in lieu of acting and growing their network.

Professionals, like journalists and analysts are also increasingly making use of the social feed that offers a direct line to the sources.

How does that affect the traditional newswire business? It will be struggling, as intermediaries are apparently no longer needed. I saw that Reuters, one of the endangered species, just released new social media guidelines. Some highlights of what could be a role model for the industry:

- Journalists should not forget to break the news always first on the wire, and not on Twitter.

- Always be aware of the possible reputational risks. As the journalist is employed by Reuters, unfortunate posts can backfire on the brand. Line manager approval is therefore required.

- There is a risk that personal data could be exposed. Sources could be revealed to competitors if they are followed or friended on Facebook.

Reuters also explicitly encourages its journalists to use social media and to capitalise on the advantages. Because at the end it will allow the promotion of own work and it helps shaping the image of a trusted and competent news brand. And that’s what is selling.

US internet giants still struggling in China

I’m back in Asia, Singapore again, taking a breath from recession-plagued Spain where “la crisis” is still dominating conversations and now comfortably beating discussion topics like the wheater and football. With China around the corner, some interesting media news were grabbing my attention in the last week.

First of all there was the lackluster launch of Apple’s iPhone by China Unicom. The company reported having sold only 5,000 devices during the first days in a land that has 720 million mobile phone users. Probably a 6,999 yuan (US$1,025) price tag is a tad too high for Chinese middle-class households? Another possible reason might be that the real iPhone fans already have theirs, either through Hong Kong or from overseas.

Google has also its issues with the Chinese market. Today we hear that its 7 month old Chinese Music Search is still behind target. It’s hardly possible to make money with a legal download service in a country where 99 percent of music files are pirated, states the PaidContent article. Google’s biggest competitor Baidu, still with a two third share in the Chinese search market, owes most of its popularity mainly to this illegal traffic. Yes, it’s difficult to sell quality content in Asia, just ask our Dow Jones Sales team here.

Additionally for Google, some of its search functions had been blocked earlier this year by the Chinese authorities, as it was supposedly giving access to pornographic content. The global leader in search remains still with a marginal share in the largest market, with 338 million active Internet users, according to numbers from the Chinese government.

During the turmoil in the Xinjiang province this summer, Google’s video database Youtube has also been taken partially down, along with Twitter and Facebook. It’s expected that those services will be accessible again very soon, now that the celebrations for China’s 60th birthday are finally over.

But the shocking news for Facebook has been a drop of its user base from one million in July to 14,000 at the beginning of October, as Inside Facebook reports. “There are a lot of extremely popular domestic sites with social networking features, after all, such as Tencent”. Now we understand a bit better why those local sites are so popular in Asia.

China and the future of media

I'm back from an incredible trip to Beijing. This city is simply huge and extraordinarily fast-moving. Some surprising aspects for a first-time visitor:
- Primarily you see the middle class - even if there are also many rich and many poor people. But I had the impression that most of the Beijing denizens are driving middle class cars and go shopping to H&M and Nike (or Li Ning, the local version).
- China isn't at all appearing as the authoritarian state one might expect. It's the complete opposite to Singapore. Beijing is just chaos. Everything seems to be allowed here. However, the society is prospering and currently doing significantly better than other countries. What's the secret of success? The confucian value system?

At the Foreign Correspondents Club of China I met some people from the regional Media space. The event was supposed to offer career transition ideas for journalists. Ironically, most of the attendees were quite happy with their current job, even if a very pessimistic view prevailed. Insecurity and a lack of ideas on how to respond to the structural changes in the Media were widely dominating. The PR industry was named as a possible exit for journalists who still prefer to get paid for their writing.
Fortunately, a New Media expert was also attending and lightening up the scene with his fresh ideas. I talked with Benjamin Joffe, a strategy consultant who counts among his clients Microsoft, Orange and China Mobile. Benjamin told me that the Media companies in the US and Europe are still not fully aware about the potential of the Asian markets. When he visited Facebook in Silicon Valley, they didn't know that the Chinese online community Tencent QQ quadrupels the number of registrated Facebook users. Revenue margins of these platforms are impressive too. The data of Benjamin's company +8* reveals China as the number one market for internet and mobile usage, with a still very low penetration rate.
On the other side, John Bishop works as a rather traditional reporter for the China Economic Review. This is a monthly magazine, published in Hong Kong and covering Business, Finance and Economics issues in China. I don't have any data on this but my gut instinct is telling me that demand for good-written stories on China will keep rising and that there will be a market for this type of information. And it will also provide income to journalists and other Media professionals.

Photo: CCTV building in Beijing, middle class cars

Destination Beijing

I will head for Beijing this Wednesday, what will be the start of a two week trip. Many are seeing in China the superpower of the 21st century. Beijing is rapidly gaining an important strategic position in the global space, mainly thanks to its ever-booming economy. The Chinese government recently pledged 40 billion US-$ to refund the the International Monetary Fund. It is at present the main lender for the US of A and just kicked off a discussion if the Dollar is still worth being the world's reserve currency. And these are only a few examples...
In Europe, we are still quite ignorant about the country, its culture and the Chinese people at large. Westerners use to think first in the communist regime and lack of freedom. In a recent article, Oxford professor Timothy Garton Ash is reflecting on the role that our Media are playing here:
"Most western newspaper readers and television viewers with a mild interest in China probably do see a lot of stories about Tibet, the upcoming anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, corruption and popular discontent. They see fewer stories about the extent of popular support for the system, bright students still joining the Communist party, or experiments in economic and political reform, especially at the provincial and local level."
According to Ash foreign journalists' motivations are mainly of an economic nature. Stories on social and political unrest are simply selling better. "They report so much about Tibet not because they are ideological China-bashers but because their consumers are fascinated by and care about Tibet."
One of his conclusions points slightly into another direction and here I fully agree with him:
"The larger problem with regular China coverage in the mainstream western media is not its negativity; it's simply that there's too little of it, given the growing importance of China and the fact that Chinese culture and society is so different from the west's."
I plan to meet some foreign journalists next week and I'm eager to discuss and learn more about these issues. But first and foremost, I'm looking forward to talk with locals and get their point on the changing environment and about what is supposed to be the Chinese century. I'll report in this blog over the coming days.

Is Twitter killing blogs?

Venture capitalist Howard Lindzon was voicing the provocative thesis this week. The convenience of the 140-character microblogging service will result in the demise of “personal diaries” or will at least leave many posts unwritten.
There is a clear tendency to a more concise way to broadcast information, not only in the personal space. Newspaper editors are slashing the length of their articles, for example. Personally, I would rather use the Facebook news feed in order to ping my friends (or followers, if you prefer)… also because most of them are probably not aware of this blog and would never find it.
Twitter is gaining traction, not only in the US. The website received in February 9.8 million unique visitors, up from 6.1 million in January, according to comscore.
Twitter is allegedly now the third most popular Social Media service after Facebook and MySpace, and catching up rapidly.
It is developing an incredible commercial value. Rumours appeared on Friday that Google is pondering an offer, significantly higher than the $255 million price tag that has recently been attributed to the service.
Twitter is talk. If you follow the discussions on Twitter, you know what millions of people are saying. That’s something companies or publicly exposed persons are caring a lot about. If not, they should do it, in order to be able to preserve their brands. Little tools, like Tweeting Trends, Hashtags or Monitter are able to analyse and measure the “talk” and figure out trends. Twitter itself was recently incoporating a search function that makes it easy to monitor specific issues or names.
Its value is probably that Twitter “owns” all this chatter. At present, there is no competitor in sight. After the recent relaunch, Facebook is aspiring a share of the short message revolution and wants to be a tad like Twitter.
I just read by the way that “nanoblogging” is already around the corner…