Social By Design!

The new power with people is 'to share.' Sharing is another form of word of mouth. It has a personal nature of communication between individuals with an added layer of credibility. The fundamental of social web is the strength of sharing. The social technology is focusing on giving people a reason to share. It is about connections. The web is being rebuilt around people. The internet was only about browsing in the 90's, about search in 00's and is about discovering in 10's. This era is to speak with people and not to people.  It has made the world more open and connected.

We will discuss major online social media products here. Lets begin with talking about the social media giant. Facebook has 850 million people on it. 500 million users log in everyday. 250 million photos are daily updated on it. One has to create a profile to connect and add their friends. The latest feature of 'subscribe', lets the users subscribe to people whom they want to hear about irrespective of the fact, if they know them or not e.g. celebrities. 

Micro-sites or brand pages are a great way to communicate online. This system is so well integrated that when a person becomes a fan or likes a page, it reflects on the pages of their friends. This small gesture gives brands great coverage. 100 million 'likes' happen everyday on Facebook. Fan base gives companies a good opportunity to engage with customers. This connection based system helps in reaching people who are interested in a particular brand.There are paid forms of marketing like sponsored stories and ads on Facebook. The whole system is based on recommendations and connecting with friends and friends of friends and so on. Facebook is about to launch Timeline feature which will make each one's profile look like the story of their life. 

Google has started social search to personalize its users experience. Whenever users search on Google, it gives the most relevant results, along with the updates posted on YouTube, Flickr, blog and other websites related to their search by people in their social circle. Let's take an example. You are planning a trip to Paris and you do a Google search on it. Google will pull out results from your friend's blog who wrote about his trip to Paris and show in your search results.

Google is able to define the social circle through Google+, Gmail contacts, Gmail chat and other linked accounts like Twitter. Google + is a social networking site whose major tool is +1. Every time someone likes a link they just need to +1. The more the number of +1's, the better will be the quality score of the web page. This will define their position in the Google search results. Google has rolled out this system for ads also. 

Twitter is a micro-blogging website where people send and receive text based posts called a 'tweet' with a character limit of 140. One has to get registered on Twitter and start 'following' people of their choice. One can subscribe to newspapers like TOI etc., celebrities e.g. Shahrukh Khan and much more interesting stuff . Twitter has this unique technology of understanding the preferences of the users and sending promoted tweets, suggesting promoted accounts in the 'who to follow' section and showing promoted trends which fit their location. They also show political ads in the US. 

Twitter messages or tweets have also been incorporated with Google search. Users can connect their Facebook and Google accounts with Twitter. The shared public links on Twitter show in the relevant search results on Google. To take an example, if you search for a video on Formula 1 race on Google and one of your contacts had sent this video link as a tweet, it will show in your search results.

YouTube is a video-sharing website where users can sign up and upload any videos. Users and viewers can share these videos with their friends. 800 million people are registered on YouTube. 3 billion videos are viewed daily with increase of 5% over 2010. YouTube provides a unique feature to its users where they can start their own channel free of cost. Its amazing how this media can turn an ordinary person in a broadcaster. You can engage with your subscribers and measure results via YouTube insights. There are paid services for brands where they can start their brand channels for promotion. Advertisers can use True View  in which the users can opt to see their ad along with other advertising methods. Users can also promote their videos which are highlighted when a user searches on similar subject.

Apart from these products, there are many other websites using social technology to catch up with this new online stage. LinkedIn, Yelp, Four Square  are a few more examples of online social media. Apart from these, other websites are including or making changes to make their products and services more social. Every company or advertiser should create their marketing and creative strategy by keeping in mind, if the user would share their idea. It has to be 'social by design.'