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What Does Facebook Connect Mean for Agencies?
February 3rd, 2009
| By Guest Post | 21 Comments » |
This is a guest post by Jesse Pickard, Social Media Specialist at Razorfish. You can find Jesse on his blog or Twitter.
After spending the last few months digging into the intricacies of Facebook Connect, I’m here to go on the record: Facebook Connect is much more than the latest bright and shiny object. It has the potential to transform the way we interact with the web and the way agencies like Razorfish for which I work to build online experiences.
At Razorfish, I’m tasked with helping our clients integrate community into their web experiences, to make their sites more “social” for lack of a better term and also to deploy marketing programs across the web that foster two way conversations between brands and their customers. In order to be successful, it’s imperative that I constantly question a brand experience’s ability to make people care enough to do things like write comments or build profiles.
When you’re in the thick of a project, there’s a temptation to overestimate how much people actually care about your site. And that’s what’s so exciting to me about Facebook Connect: because users are able to bypass building profiles and a social graph all over again with just one click, building sophisticated social features is now possible for many more brands. Let’s dive into the reasons why.
Higher value user generated content
With a one-click login to Facebook Connect, websites have access to an unprecedented amount of user data. Using this data, sites now have the ability to redefine the way they display user generated content. Gone are the days where all you will see is content from random avatars. Now sites can surface UGC from actual friends. If your friends haven’t made any actions on the site, then we can surface UGC from people like you – maybe fellow alumni or co-workers. Say I’m shopping for a TV on Amazon, the 400+ reviews from people I don’t know have limited value to me compared to a review from my friend or even someone I don’t know who is similar to me.
Get brand content in Facebook without advertising
The strategy of fishing where the fish are is timeless. When time spent online was dominated by the big portals, our media dollars went to buying up ads and unique sponsorships on Yahoo and the like. Although Facebook Connect isn’t an advertising buy, it can accomplish the same goals as one (and in an unintrusive manner). Brands can get their content into Facebook’s viral channels by letting visitors post news feed stories, status messages, photos, events, and more without leaving the website.
Smart brands and agencies will learn that the key to getting content into Facebook is about providing a meaningful value exchange for each Facebook Connect interaction, not prompting their user to post to Facebook at every turn. If a site is successful at giving users a good reason to post content to Facebook, it can make a world of difference to reach and visibility. The strong impact is only partly due to Facebook’s traffic. When brands appear in Facebook via Connect, the impressions interpreted as an individual’s endorsement of a particular product and are not subject to ad tune-out, making the impression far more valuable.
Faster logins, instant profiles, and individually relevant services
Facebook Connect and the like are going to make “social network fatigue” a very short-lived buzzword. With Connect, the social network fatigue-inducing process of registering for site, creating a profile and connecting with friends can be completely bypassed with one click. The value of this cannot be understated. While other Facebook Connect benefits can be slightly unclear, skipping registration is something any mainstream web user can appreciate.
Upon logging in, the Facebook-powered profile can inform a much more relevant, targeted experience. A retailer can feature merchandise based on profile details like location, age, relationship status or even brands that the user has “fanned.” Another option is for a company to offer special promotions to influencers, or those who have a high amount of friends, tagged photos and wall posts. It’s not exact science, but I’m willing to guess that these people are more influential and vocal than their counterparts and would be a good type of person to convert into a brand advocate.
Enhanced competitions and ranking
Whether it’s through a contest or reputation system, incentives like earning rewards, raising levels, and winning prizes can help create much-needed energy around websites and marketing programs. Facebook Connect can enhance all forms of competition by creating an experience that’s far more relevant and localized to each individual user. By surfacing where a user ranks among their friends and networks, rather than among unknown peers, a user stronger drive to compete is generated. This is one of the key reasons why social games dominate Facebook’s application platform.
So what’s holding us up? Where are the Facebook Connect implementations for big brands?
Reason #1: There’s a valid concern out there that Facebook will change the rules of Connect just as they have with their application platform.
Reason #2: Implementing Facebook Connect into existing sites is not a walk in the park (depending on your platform). This is one of the reasons many of the big launch partners (Digg, Hulu, etc.) are yet to go live.
Reason #3: The Beacon privacy fiasco has spooked some brands into being very cautious with Facebook. It’s one of the main reasons for the “wait and see” attitude out there.
Looking ahead
Facebook Connect will likely get much more powerful as Facebook does two things in 2009. First, they will likely make more profile data available through Facebook Connect as the year progresses. Second, and more important, Facebook is expected to allow users to more easily segment their friends into groups and apply granular privacy settings to each group. Facebook Connect sites will respect these settings and users will feel more confident with logging into Facebook Connect.
Major brands should become familiar with the capabilities of all portable social graph technologies, including Google Friend Connect and the unreleased MySpaceID, along with Facebook Connect. It’s also a helpful exercise to imagine what your online destinations would look like on Facebook Connect as we did in our presentation, Portable Social Graphs – Imagining Their Potential.
Barring any privacy debacles, or big advancements from Friend Connect, there should be a strong adoption of Facebook Connect coming in 2009 – especially as major implementations from the likes of Digg and Hulu go live and set an example for brands that are on the fence.
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February 3rd, 2009 at 8:53 am
very nice article thanks.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:05 am
“Say I’m shopping for a TV on Amazon, the 400+ reviews from people I don’t know have limited value to me compared to a review from my friend or even someone I don’t know who is similar to me.”
I’d say thats utterly wrong. I care little about the opinions of people who know me and might hold back on something to spare me the details. I care greatly about a random sample of 400 people of all different demographics who have no bias toward me.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:46 am
Pretty interesting stuff. I think Facebook Connect has a lot of potential, but I’m still a tad concerned about privacy and locking into Facebook’s proprietary system.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the comment, but I think both have a lot of value. User-generated content from people you know has additional social context that can enhance the review (more trust, more background on the reviewer, etc). UGC from a friend also allows you to learn new things about that person.
Within the next year, I guarantee that we’ll start seeing our friend’s UGC (reviews, comments on a blog, etc) surfaced ahead of those that we don’t know. It’s an easy way to offer a visitor a sense of familiarity and community.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
Hey, Jesse, good article. Agree with you on the three reasons some companies are staying away from FB Connect, although I think this is the year that will change rapidly. When people see the clear benefits, I think the Beacon debacle will fade into memory.
Just implemented FB Connect on my site and it works like a charm. I think the cross-domain communication will become more modular and packaged in a better way so that wiring one’s site for FB Connect will be a piece of cake.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Solid analysis. The key to this strategy is a seamless experience for the user as well as a clear value exchange.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I’ve been following the Facebook Connect news since it was announced and I think it has enormous potential to change advertising in social networks as well. There is research that supports the idea that a community of social network users interacting with a company together will have stronger ties with the company and their products as a result of their shared experience with it. This is good for users and good for advertisers.
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
[...] the original post: What Does Facebook Connect Mean for Agencies? Add this to : Digg it Save to Del.icio.us Subscribe to My RSS [...]
February 4th, 2009 at 10:35 am
This got me thinking about the book The Tipping Point. Gladwell identifies a couple of types of people based upon their abilities to adopt new trends, create new trends, or spread new trends. While facebook connect gets a step further than the random amazon reviews, I think it has a long way to go before it really harnesses the power of relationships to influence commercial trends.
For instance, Facebook Connect has the power to democratize the role of the maven, but this makes maven-like information less valuable because the information that a true maven is passing on can’t be distinguished from all the other random friends (even if you do actual know them outside of facebook). I suppose that over time the same roles could emerge with online relationships, but it seems like it takes more than some text in a news feed to really establish whether you’re a maven, connector, or salesman.
February 4th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Jesse,
Great article!
I think from a user stand point ability to login without registration is the biggest advantage to using Connect. When interacting with a new site the benefits of bringing in your social network to it are much harder to foresee and grasp while the benefits of getting access to “registered users only” content without actual registration is absolutely clear to even the most novice users.
I’d say this will be the first stage in adoption of Facebook Connect – using it for SSO – and it should be from this angle that it is pitched to users in 2009. The second stage – bringing own social context to various sites – will take time to grasp and get used to.
February 5th, 2009 at 1:30 am
[...] What Does Facebook Connect Mean for Agencies? Razorfish-Kollege Jesse Pickard über die Bedeutung von Facebook Connect für Agenturen (tags: facebook socialmedia facebookconnect via:mento.info) [...]
February 5th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Dave Ashton,
I see where you are coming from. There aren’t always benefits from seeing friend’s UGC empowered over random samplings of people. Random samplings tend to suggest the trends most of us are prone to follow, for how often do we find ourselves joining/buying/liking something after noticing that many before us have regarded it positively?
And what about the friends whose opinion I wouldn’t care for anyway? Would I want them popping up all over my screen telling me what I should like?
Thankfully, because Facebook connect is not about users fabricating their opinions to affect their friends – instead only as a means of connecting already established services – we are all allowed the greater option of having the chance to choose what we feel like being affected by.
And chances are, there are certain people we are bound to listen to.
Most definitely not.
February 5th, 2009 at 5:41 am
[...] Pickard, Social Media Specialist bei Razorfish, hat jetzt einen sehr interessanten Artikel geschrieben, in dem es darum geht, was Facebook Connect für Agenturen bedeutet. Der Artikel gibt [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
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February 15th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
We have the facebook connect link working on careerscatalyst.com – it allows members to connect with other people and leverage their network
February 20th, 2009 at 4:47 am
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July 15th, 2009 at 7:47 am
I need an agence for my art-caricatures
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http://www.natbelin.com
Thanks !
September 20th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I don’t think we’ve seen the real power of Facebook Connect just yet – it will probably take another 6 months till it’s “mainstream”.