My name is Paul Dunay and I have just finished co-authoring a book called Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) due out this summer. It was a very eye opening experience to say the least. But the one thing it taught me was a profound respect for the Facebook platform.
What you are about to see is a number of ideas I have about the future of Facebook. These are not pie in the sky ideas or something I dreamed up – I feel these are very doable. In fact I wondered if I could get this eBook out fast enough to share these ideas with you before they actually happened!
So sit back relax and enjoy what I think is a sneak peek into the future of social networking.
2. About this eBook
My name is Paul Dunay and I have just finished co-
authoring a book called Facebook Marketing for
Dummies (Wiley) due out this summer. It was a very eye
opening experience to say the least. But the one thing it
taught me was a profound respect for the Facebook
platform.
What you are about to see is a number of ideas I have
about the future of Facebook. These are not pie in the
sky ideas or something I dreamed up – I feel these are
very doable. In fact I wondered if I could get this eBook
out fast enough to share these ideas with you before
they actually happened!
So sit back relax and enjoy what I think is a sneak peek
into the future of social networking.
3. Life Changer #1
Search and Facebook
Type the keyword VoIP into Google and you get 66 Million responses. 66 Million!!
How archaic is that?
Does Google have any idea how long it would take me to go through 66 Million
responses?
Someone can (and will) connect search to my social profile on Facebook thereby making a
truly intelligent search engine that will know where I work, and who my friends are.
So when I Google a term like VoIP – it will know I work for Avaya, it will access my work
friends list and can present me with a way to filter the web based on my social profile –
call it Social Search.
Then you will be able to narrow down a search for VoIP in seconds based on the company
I work for, or members of my marketing team, or other friends I have in my network
and get a completely different view of the internet that I can’t get now.
4. Life Changer #2
Amazon and Facebook
I was searching on Amazon to check out the listing for my book Facebook Marketing for
Dummies (Wiley) and there is a section under my book’s listing called “Customers Who
Bought This Item Also Bought”. This grouping of books are not bad recommendations but
they are not exactly “personal” to me. Note: I also tried the same search on my wife’s
computer and got the same results! How personal is that?
So what would it take to make these results truly personal?
Amazon should connect a book search on its site to my social profile on Facebook thereby
making a truly personal search. Then Amazon would know who my friends are and what
books THEY bought in the same “space” as my book. There should just be a different
box on Amazon that says – “Your Friends from Facebook also Bought” … then I would
get a completely different view on their site and one that is truly personal to me.
5. Life Changer #3
Gaming and Facebook
This one is already in the works and leave it to the gaming community to nail this one
first! Facebook Connect has been generally available now for a while and quietly
we are seeing sites begin to take advantage of it. But recently I noted on Inside
Facebook that Microsoft Xbox Games will share Games through Facebook
Connect.
Users will be able to update their Facebook status, post photos, and play games with
friends directly within Xbox Live. In addition, Electronic Arts announced that Tiger
Woods PGA Tour 2010 would integrate Facebook Connect on Xbox when it is
released this fall, marking the first Facebook Connect integration on a gaming
console ever!
But with games like Texas Holdem and Black Jack already growing in popularity on
Facebook – one day we should be able to sit at home and play high stakes poker
with folks around the world and pay through the Facebook platform!
6. Life Changer #4
Magazines and Facebook
I have long cancelled all the subscriptions I
had to any physical magazines in favor of
reading them digitally and only in my feed
reader.
Which poses a problem – because I like to
read and have collected over 300 feeds in
my feed reader – how am I going to know
what to read first?
Worse than that – because the magazines
have all made their content free and
available online via RSS – not only do
they miss out on the physical ad revenues
but also the digital ad revenues by
pushing it out via RSS.
But if they would enable Facebook Connect
on their website - I would be able to see
in a separate column on their website
what’s hot and getting read by all my
favorite marketing friends. Thereby
bringing me back to their website and
increasing their page views so they can
sell more ads.
7. Life Changer #5
Reality TV and Facebook
I know it is sad to admit but I really like
Reality TV shows like The Apprentice,
Top Chef or Project Runway.
These shows do a great job in creating
interaction with their audience by using
cell phones to take polls during the
commercials and pointing fans of the
show to their website when the show is
over for some “never before seen
footage”.
But they are missing the big opportunity.
What about broadcasting TV shows via
Facebook and/or building communities
around them. By doing this advertisers
would really be the winners, as they
would have so much more data on their
viewers... Profiling data, demographic
data, friendship data, etc.
We saw a glimpse of this live with CNN and
the Inauguration which was a great one
time occurrence but there is a much
bigger opportunity for these types of
shows to leverage the same technology.
This would truly enable a Social TV
experience the likes of which we have
never seen before allowing us, the
viewers, to vote people off the show!
8. Life Changer #6
Shopping and Facebook
In order to enable Social Shopping at the mall with your Friends from Facebook a few things
need to be in place. The first is “Presence Identification”, that is the identification of the
exact location of a Facebook friend in a particular store at the mall. GPS and even assisted
GPS (AGPS) which most of the GPS-enabled phones have implemented does not possess
the accuracy to know exactly where a person is within a given store. For that you need an
Active RFID system installed at the mall to conclusively identify where your friends are.
They could plan meet-ups all because of a chip that could be read anywhere. Informing
friends and having them join you at the retail store leverages the power of WOM marketing
and creates a shopping destination.
Then based on a few internal hot-spots in key locations within the mall friends could track their
location and make suggestions from their mobile devices or from home. Upon completing
the sale there would be a Facebook status update along with a photo of the purchase and a
rating of the service delivered by the retail store that day.
We have all read stories of the exceptional customer service but this would take customer
service and shopping to a whole new and much more personal level!
Disclaimer: I act as a Marketing Advisor to Novitaz
9. Life Changer #7
Customer Service and Facebook
Ok, let’s say you are searching the web for a new
fishing rod. You find the right website but you
are having trouble locating the right rod and
reel combination. Frustrated you consider
giving up but give it one last shot and decide to
call the 800 number on the site. And instead of
getting the usual “press 1 for” – you are
prompted for your Facebook id.
What’s going on here you think?
Reluctantly you give them your Facebook id and
behind the scenes there is technology at work
that matches you up with the best Call Center
agent based on your profile information and
your purchasing data and any product reviews
you've posted.
Instantly you are matched up with someone who
now can give you the best customer
experience of your lifetime. They have access
to your shopping data, profiling data, review
data and know exactly what would be best for
you because they can talk about the product in
ways you never heard before coming from a
call center agent. Maybe they have also helped
someone in your social network and can even
broker a chat with them (live through
Facebook) about their recommended rod and
reel combo for you.
10. What does this all mean?
So over the last few pages we have looked at ways in which Facebook will provide
you with a very different experience over the next 24 months. But this is just a
look forward – what about a look backwards? And what does this mean for our
future?
What it means is that your Social Capital will be a very important asset in your life.
Perhaps even as important as your home. (see an Avaya colleague of mine -
Jim Keenan’s blog post called – (Why Your Social Graph Will Be Worth as Much
as Your Home)
What currently looks like islands of Social activity in various Social Networks will
begin to control your life – the jobs you get, the schools you go to. Those that
have weak Social Capital will become the equivalent of Social Outcasts – not
able to get the killer job at the financial institution or accepted into Harvard
because they have very low Social Capital.
Said differently, who would you rather hire – the person with 2 followers on Twitter
and no Facebook or LinkedIn account or the person with 2000 followers on
Twitter and a huge network on Facebook and LinkedIn with 36 glowing
recommendations! I know who I would rather have.
This means all this work you are putting into your Facebook profile, LinkedIn
account and Twitter followers will all pay off for you. I recommend you should
spend at least an hour a day building your profiles, connecting with people,
engaging in more conversations and generally building up your Social Capital.
At first I used to wonder why we were all doing these social activities, I asked
people on my podcast series – so where is this all going? And now its clear to
me we aren’t just messing around and wasting time – we are building one of the
most important assets of our lives.
Build your Social Capital!
11. How to contact me?
Paul Dunay
Global Managing Director of
Services & Social Marketing
Avaya
Office: 908.953.2755
Mobile: 917.306.8440
pdunay@avaya.com
Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley)
Available for Pre-Order on Amazon now!!
Don’t forget to become part of my network!
Blog: www.buzzmarketingfortechnology.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/pauldunay
Facebook: facebook.com/pauldunay
Twitter: twitter.com/pauldunay