Thought Labs Blog

One of the first questions we usually are asked by potential clients of Thought Labs involves ROI (return on investment.) It is a valid  and critical question, no matter the size of  the company or its marketing budget. It's the yardstick used when evaluating the success of a traditional media campaign, so why not expect the same rules to hold true for social media? How can one be sure in the changing world of the web and online marketing that their dollar will have an impact on their bottom line? Will their investment increase brand recognition, generate leads, or increase their market penetration? Unfortunately there is currently no 'silver bullet' of measurement that can demonstrably prove ROI for a social media investment. There are startups working feverishly on the problem, to be sure, but the state of affairs today requires a different approach and restatement of the problem.

This approach is based on setting and meeting a set of clearly defined objectives rather than using measurements in the traditional sense, though some of them may still be valid. Companies have to ask themselves a very simple question: "Why are we investing in social media, and what would we consider a successful result?" It seems trite, in a way, but it is critical to understanding the new meaning of ROI. It's not about return on investment anymore. It's all about gaining influence or leverage for your investment and measuring the return on that influence. Influence is the key concept at the core of social media. Peer/friend opinions and reviews hold more sway than any other. Brands can be created in an instant and just as quickly destroyed when you are dealing with the economies of scale and the numbers of users involved on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. But social media encompasses so much more. Myriad online communities exist and all are potentially valid social media outlets. Companies need to understand that by focusing only on the immediate effect on their bottom lines they may be missing the point.

One other area that companies need to understand is the new concept of 'engagement' as it applies to their social and new media strategies. What is 'engagement?' That's the million- or perhaps billion-dollar question. There is no metric for it that means the same thing to everyone. One interesting equation of sorts has been proposed by socialmedia:

E = mc^2

...which means:

Engagement = media buy * (creative ^ 2)

I agree in a sense. Creativity is STILL KING. You can spend millions on your media buy to get your social media prodcut noticed. But, if it's not creative (or for you math geeks as creativity approaches 0) your engagement tanks. It's simple, but critical to understand this. True, this all depends upon your objectives. You have to put your social media assets in context: if you are looking for tons of repeat users (i.e. page views, visits, etc.) and engagement is near zero, FAIL.There are enough single-use social media apps and widgets out there that support this hypothesis that it's not worth expanding upon. If you want your clients to come back, you need to interact with them. You have to engage them to make them come back.This is critical for both growing brands and generating leads. The traditional marketing funnel is still relevant - but the rules that govern the journey from one end of it (eyeballs on your content) to the other (the buy) have changed.

Another thing companies need to Think of it as an extension of the 80/20 rule. In the past when content was put on the web you could expect about 80% of your audience to see that content within a short period of time. If your spend was X at some specific or measured CPM you could expect some specific results based on traditional measurements. This is no longer the case with social media. Now, you can expect about 20% of your media to be viewed (if you're lucky) and over time, if you're influence and engagement are high enough, you can expect that 80% to come trickling - or ideally virally pouring - in after it's available for some time. It's not a linear graph anymore. You hope it's exponential. But it's not guaranteed.

It's about creating a social media campaign that is relevant to YOUR business and your needs. No one can do it for you if you don't understand why your business is playing in the social media space in the first place.

So:

• Develop a social media plan: 'Why are we doing this? What would we consider a social success?'
• Make sure that plan is realistic: viral spread of apps and widgets is much harder on ALL the networks these days. Do NOT assume that it will spread just because it's there!
• Define your own ROI: it's about meeting your objectives. Seriously. Tell your CEO/CFO. Make them understand this.
• Make someone OWN your problem on YOUR end: you cannot expect someone to do everything for you and guarantee excellent results; you need to understand and manage your end of the social media strategy. It's not easy (anymore) - you are going to need to work at it and understand that you are going to need to work at it.
• Develop metrics that matter to YOU: since there are no global ones in the current sense you need your own based on what your plan deems a successful result
• ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATE: set a timed goal for reviewing your strategy; if it's not on target at the end of that time then review why, refactor, retest, and relaunch until you get it right. It's NOT ABOUT being the best, smartest, or brightest anymore. It's all about being the fastest and getting the most relevant results based on your plan and the metrics that matter to you. And do it fast. Very, very fast.
• Understand the social media lifecycle: how long do you expect your strategy to live in the wild? Lifetimes are shorter these days. You cannot expect a drop-in solultion to be relevant in a year from now. See the last point. See the fact that the top 25 Facebook applications have changed drastically in the last year. And will again.
• Cast a net that matters to you: there are a ton of social media outlets out there now. Find out where your demographic lives. If they are 50-year-old financial executives then MySpace is probably not worth investing in.

It's all about the conversation now. Be a part of it. Don't fight it or you will lose.

Tags: social media, facebook, myspace, opensocial, marketing, ROI

After having looked at MySpace's OpenSocial implementation I wanted to provide a comparison between it and the Facebook development platform. They are based upon completely different models and moving from one to the other is not as easy as one would hope.

Here's what's different in MySpace's Open Social Development Platform from what I've seen using the Facebook/Bebo platform. Where the items are known issues I have indicated as such. Some of these items have been derived from research and some from the MySpace forums. I have given links where available.

1. Your MySpace application code is hosted on MySpace servers, NOT YOURS. There is no callback URL that you can provide that MySpace can use to call back to your server.
2. It appears that the only way to communicate with your own server from your MySpace app is to use the makeRequest() API call.
   • Currently this is ONLY supported for endpoints running on port 80! Out of luck if your development server runs on a different port.
   • Supposedly MySpace is going to open some ports in a higher range to alleviate this issue. This is really, really frustrating.
   • "MakeRequest gets around the XHR cross-domain restriction by utilizing a custom http proxy hosted by MySpace. This proxy relays incoming requests to other sites and pipes the results back to the browser. It also optionally signs the requests using the OAuth methodology…It is important to note that this is not a standard open proxy--it does its best to verify that the request came from a valid OpenSocial application hosted on MySpace." from MySpace Developer Docs
   • Maybe only able to send as GET params - unknown how to send as POST variables
   • Currently only working on some URLs (does not work for http://www.google.com for example – known issue)
   • Currently only returns responses in uncompressed format (known issue – they are working on this one)
   • MySpace will be providing an 'App Data' 'something' to store application data but this is currently unavailable.
3. Currently the only way to actually get code into your MySpace app is to paste it in a ridiculously small textarea control on the app profile page. Seriously. And doing so results in:
4. Currently every time you update the code in your app it puts a NEW copy of the app on the respective page. Known Bug.
5. During the 'sandbox phase' (length unknown) of the MySpace Development Platform only friends can add apps
   • Only 3 installs of any given app allowed
   • If not a friend, cannot see app
   • There is no directory of apps yet
   • Have to log in as the app (because you have to use a unique email address for each) and friend people as that user in order for them to see and add it
   • More details here.
6. There are no callbacks for any application events (post-add, pre-remove, etc.)
7. You cannot encrypt or obfuscate your JavaScript code per the MySpace TOS…
8. There is no datastore support
   • The only way to persist data is to pass it to your server using the aforementioned makeRequest call
   • Must use oAuth to ensure that the data is correct
   • Saw that it could be possible to use Google's Base API (http://code.google.com/apis/base/starting-out.html#insupdel) to do this…
9. There are 3 different places the app can be installed into a user's profile, height is modifiable (to some degree?), but NOT width
   • Home page
   • Profile page
   • NOTE: any portion of your MySpace Applications and MySpace Application Content that will appear on a MySpace Profile must not:
     • contain or create an <iframe>
     • cause their containing <iframe> to be navigated to new location, for example, by using JavaScript code, form posts, or containing links;
     • contain or create <script> tags pointing to external sources except those that are explicitly allowed; and
     • contain or create links to external CSS style sheets.
   • Canvas page
10. Your app code always runs in an iframe (provided by their container I guess).
11. There is no formatting language (like FBML) or controls available other than straight (D)HTML. Kind of strange, this one. Facebook uses FBML that it converts to HTML (on its side) which it then pumps to the user's browser. Profile data can be cached on their servers. Very speedy. Could be me but it looks like MySpace is going to require all of your JavaScript to be executed on every refresh of the page – add to that a few calls back and forth to the container/ your server… What is going to happen to MySpace when there are 20 apps installed on each person's profile? Ewwww.
12. All your JavaScript runs under/is subject to manipulation by Google's Caja; this may limit what your JavaScript can do but makes it safer for MySpace to run 3rd-party scripts. This could slow your JavaScript down as Caja may modify or restrict it.
13. No/very limited support for 3rd-party JavaScript libraries so far; unknown when more will be available. Appears that jQuery is available based on this post. But if you have existing Facebook code that heavily uses Prototype/Scriptaculous/mootools/EXT/YUI/et.al. you are going to have a lot of reimplementation to do!
14. Perhaps I am confused but there currently appears to be no obvious/legal way to go from one page of your application to another (from profile->canvas for example). There is an API for this (requestNavigateTo()) but it's not implemented yet. TOS explicitly forbids redirection of the browser window.
15. No popups are allowed – not sure if this would include Facebook-style AJAX dialogs and their ilk or if this just means browser popup windows. Facebook also disallows popups but does have the FBJS Dialog object available.
16. oAuth is required to ensure that the user making the request from your MySpace application is valid/trusted. See this post. I am not sure if this API's behavior is fully baked yet, though.