Last week Forrester released a report advising most marketers wait to use location-based social networks (LBSN) as only 4% of the US population is currently using platforms such as Foursquare (the current market leader), and that the networks skew heavily male. They advise that brands that target young males experiment with the services and other brands adopt a “wait and see” approach.

I couldn’t disagree more. Here are my 5 reasons why it’s smart to start experimenting now.

1. First Movers.

There’s something to be said for getting a head start on your competition in the digital space. Brands like Starbucks, Dell, Pepsi, and Nike have all taken advantage of the emerging channels and reaped the rewards of building a strong early foundation with consumers.

While you should not rush into a new tool without understanding your strategic goals and how it integrates with your business objectives, experimenting with emerging technologies that are opt-in and potentially have a direct customer impact is smart.

When Facebook opened their gates to the general population in 2006 they had a small user base of university students. Four years later they are a behemoth. Twitter adoption rates have been increasing exponentially year over year since their launch in 2007 and the tool is now considered a “must use” for social business. Considering Foursquare launched about a year ago, can we expect to see the same type of growth curve as the early adopters begin to influence the early majority? (see “Crossing the Chasm” adoption curve)

2. Google. Facebook. Oh My.

Location-based services are not limited to the current apps we have been hearing about. Facebook has expressed they will add a location-based offering soon, Twitter has added “Tweet with your location” to their service, and the biggest news is that Google is adding a Places API to their eco-system, as well as adding LB data extensions to their mobile advertising product.

LBSN will become mainstream sooner rather than later, and it will be the big players, not the niche networks that will drive the adoption. Testing and learning now, before it becomes ubiquitous should be something on every marketers radar.

3. Data and utility.

There is an enormous amount of insightful and actionable data that can be gleaned about your customers and prospects from mobile & LBSNs. Eventually this data could be used to inform inventory control, staffing levels, consumer tastes and trends, etc. The data can also be used in loyalty programs, to identify influencers, test new products, and as real-time service focus groups.

Companies already testing the waters include:

Nike with True City; Starbucks with their Foursquare offers; The Pepsi mobile branded app; and the City of Chicago with their Tourism campaign.

4. Sales, Coupons, Offers, and more.

Part of the Forrester analysis identified that mobile couponing is widely successful with the users currently using the services, which is interesting as the base is primarily young males, not the average coupon-consuming demographic. Gone are the days of clipping coupons in the Sunday paper, now you can serve relevant offers and drive foot traffic and purchase directly to a mobile device. These offers are opt-in, and contextually relevant, not SMS spam. Testing offers, tips, and messaging via mobile should be on every retailers plan for the next year.

Of course one size doesn’t fit all and ensuring that your product or service fits within the make-up of the demographic, depending on service (existing or branded), is a must.

5. Mobile usage.

Of course mobile, and specifically smartphone, usage is soaring year over year. Ignoring mobile at this point is like ignoring the Internet in 2002 because broadband wasn’t prevalent yet.

Bottom line for marketers:

Experiment. See what fits, what your customers are looking for, and where you can add value. Don’t wait until it becomes mainstream, because that will be sooner than you think and you’ll be playing catch-up.

[photo credit: john weiss via Flickr]

A lot of ink has already been written about why Old Spice owned the Internet last week, and I don’t want to rehash the various aspects that RWW has covered, and Dave Stubbs has mentioned, among others, but what I feel is missing from the conversation is how it all started. My friend Leigh Himel deconstructed what the brief could have looked like, and I think it’s worth expanding on to describe how the campaign set the foundation for success.

It all started with the insight and a deep understanding of the market and the consumer.

The objective, as Leigh rightly points out, was to re-position and re-invigorate the brand.  To do this the team needed to understand the competitive landscape, the perspective consumers had of the brand, and the territory they had to play in. The market was saturated with female unfriendly AXE advertising, and as women are the primary consumers for male scent gifts, turning that into an advantage would have been mandatory for Old Spice.

With that as the starting point the Old Spice team (with a receptive client) decided to do the obvious: appeal to women without alienating men.

Old Spice cast the perfect actor for the new positioning. A former NFL player, a nice guy, and someone who wasn’t so perfect that men would feel threatened. Genius casting. Based on, I imagine, a perfect casting brief.

The next step was to create a seriously funny commercial that turned all the cliche’s of advertising and film on their heads. “Look at your man, now back at me”. “It’s now diamonds”. “I’m on a horse”. They made a commercial that was frankly better than 90% of the TV shows it appeared alongside. I first heard of it because my partner was watching TV and told me I had to see it. So what did I do? I went to YouTube and there it was. Word of mouth at it’s finest, but it would have been dead in the water if the team hadn’t thought to seed it online first.

They let that roll and roll it did. Everyone who saw the commercial started sharing it, and a character was born.

Now what to do with the follow up? The character was a success both online and offline and while they could continue to let it ride as a TV spot, the proof was there that they could take advantage of how much the spot resonated with the folks online.

The plan was to create a new TV spot, let that simmer for a bit and then pounce. The social media marketers did their homework and decided what the right outlets were to start spreading the character. The fact they took on 4Chan and won speaks volumes about how integrated and on the ball they were. While everyone talks about how they took over Twitter in a day, they really started seeding the campaign before that. They laid the groundwork. And it paid off. Big time.

It came on my radar with @jakrose tweeting that he’d received a video reply early Tuesday morning. “Fry it up and eat it down JakRose. Fry it up and eat it down.” The network effect took over and for the next two days it was all I cared about that was happening online. The social team did a brilliant job monitoring responses and working with the creatives to write compelling copy. They didn’t just target celebrities and “influencers” but responded to comments, Diggs, tweets and blog posts that they felt fit with the character as a whole. They were obviously fully immersed in the language and cadence of the social web because their video responses contained references only a geek would love (or get). They respected all the unwritten rules of the culture and tailored their responses to match the brand, and the mediums they were using.

They embraced the mash-ups and promoted them. They let the community roll with it. They poked fun at themselves (Old Spice responding to @isiahmustafa) And they set a time limit. Any longer than 2 days and it would have become tired. Any shorter and it would have been disappointing. The mash-ups continue to roll in, with the most recent being Mel Gibson calling the Old Spice Guy.

It was brilliance that came from the initial insights and work they did a couple of years ago. And deep understanding of how the social web works.

The challenge will be what they do next and if it moves the needle at the top of the purchase funnel (awareness & consideration). But I have faith, and am looking forward to every moment of it!

[Update August 13, 2010] W+K just released their case-study of the campaign: Old Spice is now the #1 brand of body wash for men, with sales increasing 107% in the last month alone.

As the social space matures and companies recognize that they can no longer afford to ignore the “fad” that is social media, a common theme we keep hearing is: who and where are people who want to communicate with us, and whom we should be listening to and focusing our content development on?

As part of the process we’ve developed for formulating a solid and sustainable social strategy for brands, we typically start with developing a Digital/Social Persona to help guide the engagement and communications strategy. While Personas are common in advertising and UX circles, they are relatively unique within social media as most practitioners will just tell you to “start listening”. While this is absolutely key to understanding and getting involved, it doesn’t provide a roadmap for long-term planning and engagement.

A persona doesn’t replace interacting directly with your customers, however it does give brands an understanding of how their customers are using digital media in all its forms, how they are interacting and engaging with complementary brands, the types of content that resonate with them, and a sense of where the brand “fits” (or could fit) within their online life. It also clearly demonstrates where it falls down, or neglects an important aspect.

In our experience, having this information, backed by thorough data and research, immediately illustrates where traditional communications fall short and why they should invest in 1-to-1 interaction and content development to remain relevant. It also begins to start the process of thinking about what true integration and touchpoints mean on a larger level.

We have a system we use to develop these personas with both qualitative and quantitative research, and with each iteration or new project find new ways to get to know the “persona” of the composite individual we’re modeling. I have a firm belief that with the amount of data we are collectively collecting in the digital realm helping companies make sense of it all and truly understand who their customers and prospects are will become both easier and more difficult. :)

For my social media friends out there – what types of practices do you use to help your clients get to know their customer?

[photo credit: Cesar R. via Flickr]

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel discussion at the IAB Canada MIXX event held in Toronto. The theme for the conference was emerging platforms and the opportunity we have to create truly innovative marketing in Canada. It was a call to action and speakers illustrated three key points:

• How Canadian media usage patterns have dramatically changed
• Why advertising within VideoGame, Mobile and Digital Out-Of-Home channels are poised to reach critical mass, and
• Where Social Media is being harnessed to drive sales.

Prior to the conference I got a chance to discuss these topics with Eyal Zilnik from One Stop Media. He delivered the presentation for the panel I was on, Do It Digital: How The Latest Advances In Digital Out-Of-Home Bring Internet, Mobile and Social Media To Life. Eyal did an excellent job of illustrating how DOOH has changed. And it was exciting to throw ideas around with someone else who gets as excited about Digital Out-Of-Home as I do. We came to several conclusions, namely

1. Marketers still regard DOOH as an animated billboard or a placement to run video loops (often running adapted TV spots without audio)
2. Few people understand that DOOH boards are more like desktop computer screens than they are Out-Of-Home billboards – they are integrated into a network with a unique IP and facilitate the full range of dynamic targeting we now take for granted in traditional online advertising, and
3. Few Canadian marketers have experimented with DOOH despite the low cost of participation, and fewer still have embraced the opportunity to link DOOH with mobile and social media.

These points were reinforced by the comments and questions we heard during our session. Several attendees came up to me after the conference and said they had no idea that the things we discussed were even possible. Maybe it’s because I’m interested in this topic but that came as a surprise.

To me, DOOH is much more than just another media tactic. DOOH will play a key role in the future of marketing. With the rise in smartphone usage and the recent introduction of the iPad (and the announcement of Apples’ iAd platform) consumers are moving away from the desktop. One only need look at consumer adoption of Facebook and the platform changes announced at F8 to understand that for many, social media is the backbone of current communication habits. Could a retail marketer integrate their social presence with DOOH (or their in-store signage network) and enable consumers to engage over mobile? Most definitely. The technology and systems are already in place.

My hope is that marketers will seize the opportunity to innovate and begin to create communication that does more than shout messages, but instead engage with consumers in new and profound ways.

Dave Stubbs is a member of the Emerging Platforms Council, IAB Canada

I’ll be on a panel at SMX Toronto this Friday: Search and Social – Insight and Inspiration. The panel will be moderated by Alexa Clark and feature a cross-section of smart folks – Leona Hobbs from Social Media Group, Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People and Ilya Grigorik from Postrank.

I’ve always been passionate about the intersection of search and social and how the two can intersect to provide a rich, contextual experience for users. With the quality of people on the panel it’s sure to be a lively and informative discussion.

If you plan on attending, make sure to say hello!

Cross-posted from the Applied Arts Wire, Image c/o Steve Rhodes.

Location-based mobile services (such as Gowalla, Foursquare and the recently launched Check In) are all the rage in the social media sphere these days, and I participate in one of them, Foursquare, to keep track of my buddies around town and on occasion get a good tip on a restaurant or bar I haven’t been to or a discount for being the “Mayor” somewhere.

As a marketer, I see a ton of positives for business to embrace these types of services, and the opportunity to provide added content to users, increase awareness and maximize the potential of mobile. The space is growing rapidly. For example, Foursquare has inked partnerships with major media players and fashion designers, Bing is now integrating Foursquare check-ins into real-time search, and mash-ups of check-ins and reviews are popping up. It’s an exciting time full of potential.

That being said, online privacy has always been a passion of mine, especially as I’ve watched the web mature over the last 15 or so years, and yet it seems to be falling by the wayside as new start-ups are launched and people fall prey to “shiny object syndrome”. I see a dark-side to these services, and one that honestly should be more top-of-mind as we continue to push the boundries between “real life” and “virtual life”.

It boils down to one simple point: be aware of what you share.

The data we’re sharing is open to all; the web isn’t a closed garden where only your friends see your data. Criminals pay attention to things like patterns: do you take the same route to work every day? Do you check-in at your physical house? Do you hang out at the same coffee shop every Saturday? We usually aren’t aware of how much our life follows a pattern and that people can use that info for ill gains. Being smart about how you use these services is a must in my book. That doesn’t mean you can’t check-in when you’re out with friends or around the city, it just means be aware of where and why you’re doing so.

It really hit home for me when I saw this tweet from SXSW (where “checking in” became a geek phenomenon – and had a charity element to it with PayPal & Microsoft donating money per check-in registered), coupled with danah boyd’s outstanding keynote on privacy online.

Let’s not make it this easy for people, shall we?

The Internet is a buzz with the news that Facebook has surpassed Google in the number of visits per week. The social sphere is hailing the news as another reason social trumps “traditional”, in all respects, including “traditional” digital.

Well, yes and no. It really comes down to understanding the psychographics of how people use the various platforms.

Google is an intent-based system, not really a discovery-based system. Google isn’t there to maximize your page views; they want you in and out of their platform with the most relevant results. They aren’t doing their job if you spend 30mins browsing to find something useful.

Facebook on the other hand is about keeping your attention. The only way they do this is by connecting you with the collective consciousness of your friends. It’s all about discovery. Discovering the best product, the best band, the best dog park. All curated by the people (and brands) you choose to connect with.

This works at the top of the purchase funnel when I’m trying to decide what kind of spring dress to buy, or I want to be inspired. When I actually want to buy something however I’m much more likely to head over to Google and try and find an online retailer.

Nothing is black & white and it’s good to remember that each Internet property serves a purpose depending on our needs at that moment in time.

Facebook has more page views? Great, that means they’ve done their job. Google is dying? Hardly.

[Image inspiration courtesy of: Wikipedia]

I’m fresh off the plane from South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2010 and still reeling from some of the amazing people I connected with and talks I checked out in Austin, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts of some of the top trends and highlights of SXSW this year. This year saw a record number of attendees – I heard as many as 17,000 (a 50% increase over last year’s 11,000) and you could see the difference everywhere.

Panels on user experience and social media were often at capacity, with long lines of people hoping to get in to catch the high-paced hour-long talks. SXSW’s notorious parties hosted by Foursquare, Gowalla, and Mashable and more saw the same surge in people, many even braving the rain on Monday night at the many outdoor venues to get a chance to network and, of course, get in on the open bar.

SXSW panels can be hit or miss. It’s a very loosely organized conference, where you can walk in (or walk out of) any session you’re interested in – no registration required. There’s over 400 sessions to choose from, and I typically had 5-6 really interesting panels to decide between in each time slot.

For me, this year saw a marked increase in the quality of panels I was able to check out. SXSW can be a good barometer for what types of things we can expect in the User Experience and Interactive worlds over the course of the year. It was most famous for the launch of Twitter several years ago, and startups have since capitalized on the massive event to make a major launch event, marketing push or announcement. Our local friends at Freshbooks and Rypple even got in on the action.

This year, at a keynote with Evan Williams, Twitter announced its @anywhere platform that will integrate Twitter into sites in a similar way that Facebook Connect does today, allowing users to more easily register, login and otherwise extend their social presence online.

Apart from this, several trends in the UX and Interactive spaces began to emerge several days into the conference.

Geosocial Apps

Foursquare and Gowalla, the geosocial applications that both used SXSW 2009 to launch, saw a huge surge in adoption at this year’s conference. They were initially met last year with a good deal of confusion, and the web app implementations made them difficult for users to grasp. I remember walking away with a green Gowalla t-shirt last year not really even knowing what it was (but admiring the cute line-drawn kangaroo they use as a logo).

This year, however, both companies launched new iPhone apps just days ahead of the conference with enhanced UI and interactions supported by specially designed badges and achievements for SXSW. Users signed up in droves and not an hour went by where you didn’t hear the words “check in”, “unlock” or “badge”. Attendees were often seen slinking over their iPhones, scrolling through their list of friends to see what sessions they were checking out, or the trending places as hundreds of people made their way from party to party after 5pm.

The rivalry between the two companies was clear even before the conference began. The feature sets of both have been enhanced and each has copied one another to a certain degree, so for me the deciding factor comes down to the user experience. Although Foursquare certainly has gathered a more solid critical mass of users, Gowalla was the standout for me this year, offering attendees a nice welcome banner the moment they touch down at Austin’s Bergstrom International Airport with links and locations to key SXSW events including badge pick-up and upcoming panels & parties (as shown above). Not so shockingly, SXSW awarded the the crown to Austin-born Gowalla over Foursquare at the SXSW Web Awards on Sunday night.

Neither application had been particularly useful for me at home here in Toronto up until SXSW, but that changed in Austin where they were great in tracking down friends and getting a sense for what was worth checking out at the conference and beyond. This worked only because I was a part of a very similar set of users with aligned goals, motivations and contexts for using the apps. I’m not so sure the usefulness of Foursquare/Gowalla will extend beyond SXSW unless you live in an urban area with a wired population; Like all social media, they won’t take off until your friends are on board.

They also have the not-so-simple task of assuaging users concerned with privacy that Danah Boyd so eloquently made a great case for in her keynote early on in in the conference. Provided Foursquare, Gowalla and others can address these issues, the opportunity for these companies to add the ‘where’ to our vocabulary of ‘who/what/when/why’ established by Facebook and Twitter presents an interesting opportunity to make more serendipitous social discoveries.

Content Strategy

As Dave pointed out yesterday, Content Strategy (CS) is seeing a major push as the “next big thing” in User Experience. A relatively new niche in UX, a Content Strategist ideally is brought in early on a project, working in tandem with the client and Information Architect do to audit what type of information a site will contain, and what forms it will take on. This Content Strategist has attributes of both an Information Architect and a Copywriter, and has the ability to weave a brand’s story into the structure of a site through different forms of content, including text, images, video, infographics and more.

How do you plan for the future if you don’t know what you currently have – or need?

It was clear at SXSW that this was a subject that was close to many of our hearts. Content Strategists Margot Booomstein (slides), Rachel Lovinger, Karen McGrane, and Kristina Halvorson (slides) collaborated to present three separate panels on the subject, ranging from why you should invest in a dedicated CS resource to how to implement it in your organization. The need for a Content Strategist became clear in these sessions, as they can offer clients predictability, reduce unnecessary whitespace and prioritize communication goals while reducing costs – words will always be cheaper than design comps, after all.

We’ve always made pretty bold proclamations in this industry that Content is King, but it really hasn’t been. Content is all too often considered as an afterthought after wireframes and design comps have been presented to and approved by the client. Relegated to boxes as placeholders and Lorem Ipsum, too many of us take a “do it later” approach with what is most important to the user. People aren’t visiting your site to look at colours and boxes, they’re there for a purpose, and the content should be at the core of any design.

Wireframes and design concepts are much more believable when populated with real content, both to the team creating them and the client reviewing them. Speaking from experience, the worst thing that can happen to me as an Information Architect is when I’m asked to design an experience without any content provided up front. It’s like building a house without having any clue how many people will be living there and decorating it without any regard for the resident’s taste; Ultimately, you’re going to end up with a pretty dry experience, a lot of filler and too much empty space.

Persuasive Design

Persuasive Design, like Content Strategy, isn’t a new concept, but is seeing increased focus by designers trying to motivate Web users down a path to take a desired action. It’s the use of tried, tested & true psychological techniques to take advantage of our innate subconscious wills and desires as humans. What it comes down to is taking advantage of concepts like sensory integration (providing a highly rich experience for many senses), social proof (when we’re influenced to follow the behaviour of others, like lining up in a queue), and scarcity principles (offering limited access to a beta or limited editions of a product).

There are many, many more biases and concepts that can be used to enhance Web design. In his panel on Persuasive Design (slides), Andy Budd calls them Cognitive Biases. Stephen Anderson called them Seductive Interactions, and handed out a sample set of cards he’s working on that he calls Mental Notes (see photo above) to help inject psychology cues into Web design.

Many of the examples Budd and Anderson used involved introducing concepts of gaming to give the site or service a sense of playfulness. As humans we inherently are drawn to play and challenges. By making tasks (even menial ones) seem more like a game, we’ve seen user uptake and productivity increase significantly. Take Google’s Image Labeler for example, which lets you play with a random partner online to assign matching words to an image. Google builds up its image search keyword descriptors, and it’s surprisingly fun and addictive to play.

Having started in to this industry by way of my love for games, I’m excited that to have started incorporating some more playful elements into projects here at Teehan+Lax that will benefit both our clients’ objectives and be fun for users. Look for more on that in a future blog post.

More to Come

Having sat in almost 20 sessions in about 4 full days, there’s a lot more to share from this year’s South by Southwest. Over the next week or so, I’ll be rounding up some of my favourite video highlights from the conference. Did you attend SXSW? What was your sense of what made waves of the conference, and how was it for you? Let me know in the comments.

Content Strategy has recently emerged as “the next big thing” for digital designers and marketers. More than ever, businesses and brands are seeking to provide utility to customers, prospects and partners in the digital channel. At the same time, the proliferation of the mobile web and social media are redefining how we access, consume and engage with content online. As a result, there’s been a collective awakening to the importance of defining, designing, delivering and maintaining compelling content on the web.

Content strategy often requires a systems approach, emphasizing the structural whole as well as the sum of the parts. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy or standard way to express this organizational structure. We can outline the high-level goals of the content strategy, and we can enumerate the necessary constituent parts (the content itself, people, processes, resources, etc.) But we don’t have a good way to document and describe how these parts relate to each other and the overall goals of the system.

The Content Flow Diagram (CFD) is a modelling technique designed to fill this gap.

Download CFD Omnigraffle Stencil Here

h2. Basic Elements

CFDs can help us visualize and think about a strategic content system’s macrostructure. There are 5 basic elements:

Entities (box) — the content itself, e.g. articles, media, collections

• Actors (stick figure) – e.g. users, content producers, editors

• Processes (circle) – e.g. publish, approve, rate and review
• Resources (document) – e.g. ontologies, attribute sets, guidelines
• Connectors (solid and dotted line) – directed paths and references

The primary structure of the CFD is the flow, consisting of a subject (usually an actor), a process, and an object (usually an entity), connected by a path. Here is an example of a typical flow:

Notice that in this case the process Create references Guidelines as a resource. This convention is helpful because it shows who will be using a given resource and for what purposes.

When a flow maps one entity onto another (i.e. there isn’t an actor involved), the process encapsulates a functional requirement for the underlying system:

It is often useful to show how resources are generated and maintained. This is achieved by designating a resource as the object of a flow:

h2. Additional Elements

Although the five basic elements outlined above are sufficient to describe a wide range of strategic content systems, there are a few additional elements that can give us even more descriptive power.

• Goals (cloud) help us capture the underlying motivation and intent of the various actors involved. By including goals, we state our assumptions about strategic rationales behind the flows captured in the CFD.

• Portals (trapezoid) indicate what channels, platforms and points of entry actors use to access and manipulate content.
• Systems (cube) are essentially non-human actors. Content strategies often incorporate various proprietary and vendor-based solutions to facilitate community, search, data-flow and processing functions, etc. Incorporating these into the CFD helps us capture functional requirements for these systems and understand how they fit into to a larger operational strategy.
• External links (bracket) indicate where organizational boundaries lie and allow us to embed external resources and entities.
• Areas (rounded rectangle) show contextual groupings of flows. These groupings help readers parse more complex CFDs and understand the contextual domains that exist within the overall strategic content system.

It is also possible to layer on other dimensions of information through visual cues like colour, shading, line weight, etc. For example, one might use colour to indicate update frequency—e.g. evergreen content vs. responses to social media events that occur regularly.

Here is a more comprehensive example showing one possible (and fairly basic) content strategy for enabling online customer support (click to view larger version):

Click to view larger version

h2. Conclusions

Content flow diagrams help us apply systems thinking to our content strategies by standardizing notation and making things visual and concrete. This modelling technique can be used casually—as in sketching ideas out on a whiteboard—or as a formal mode of documentation.

Content strategists should try to make their CFDs as intuitive and simple as possible, in order to promote collaboration. However, the CFD is a network diagram that can very easily grow in complexity. Therefore, it is often wise to break the overall system into logical pieces and model these separately, noting external connections where appropriate. Additionally, we can keep CFDs simple and purposeful by focusing on three primary questions:

• where does the content come from, and how does it lives and flow through the system?

• what are strategic resources necessary for and how will they be used?
• what are the major operational dependencies and responsibilities?

The CFD is one tool among many within the broader practice of content strategy. For example, one might conduct research, define high-level goals, generate resources such as templates, guidelines, policies etc. before or along-side the CFD. That said, the fact that content strategy is so multifaceted and multidisciplinary makes a systems-focused tool like CFDs even more necessary and helpful.

I hope that others find our contribution to this topic helpful and look forward to further improving and refining this technique.

With the news last week that Facebook visits have topped Yahoo! visits (via Compete), it’s seems to be increasingly clear that our social networks are becoming our new “web portals” for finding relevant news and information – the difference being that instead of being corporately-curated, they are peer-curated.

What makes Facebook so successful as our new “portal”?

In my view it’s that it’s not actually a portal at all, it’s a hub.

It’s not a means to capturing the Internet in one place, it’s about capturing your friends in one place. It’s about the connections that make up the threads of our digital life – our events, photos, contact information, birthdays, interests, entertainment, all as a personalized experience that we can expand or limit as we see fit. Facebook will continue to grow as more of our social lives move online, and migrating people away from the system where we have invested years of time and content will prove increasingly difficult for web properties that don’t tie-in with our existing networks.

What’s the missing link (so far) in tying our networks together?

A personal CRM and curation system. The ability to tag, categorize, link, promote/ demote, and import from various social systems to truly personalize the relevance of our contacts and their content together. We’ll need more signal than noise to be able to keep up.

While things will continue to happen in real-time on the web, human evolution does not happen in real-time and being able to manage our ever growing connections and interests without separating or limiting our profiles will be mandatory.

Will Facebook do it, or will a new start-up, or traditional media company, take the reins and migrate people away from the walled garden into a new hub?

(h/t Mitch Joel)