Mike MacLeod

Leaders Discuss Future of Social Media

// February 22nd, 2009 // Journal

During Social Media Week 2009, Abrams Research surveyed over 200 social media leaders from across North America. Here are some interesting – but not terribly surprising – results.

• A whopping 40% of respondents picked Twitter as the number one social media service for businesses. LinkedIn came in a distant second (21.3%), followed by YouTube (18.8%), with Facebook an even more distant fourth at 15.3%.
• When asked which social media service they’d be most likely to pay for, 32.2% chose Facebook – followed by 29.7% choosing business networking site LinkedIn. The contrast of Facebook’s bells-and-whistles features (photos, status updates, newsfeed, tagging) with the bare-bones networking functionality of LinkedIn suggests that many people find social networking most valuable for making professional connections. Twitter – the top pick for business use – came in third, with 21.8%.
• A paltry 1.5% said they would pay for MySpace – in a category where Facebook was the runaway winner – and only 2% said they’d recommend it for business. It came dead last in both categories – where it used to be the runaway leader.

You can see the full results of the survey here.  In the meantime, here are my personal responses to the questions:

1. Which social media service would you be most likely to pay for?

LinkedIn. Facebook would be a close second but I believe that a very large percentage of Facebook users would move elswhere if it became a pay service.  LinkedIn would maintain a much higher percentage of users.

2. What social media service would you advise a business pay for?

Twitter. The intmacy that can be gainedwith users (customers) is unmatched.

3. Which social media service will be the first to die?

Bebo.com.  Actually, it’s impassible to pick the death of any such sites.  I can’t believe anyone still uses MySpace, yet they still have millions of active users.  Bebo however just seems to want to be a little bit of everyone (facebook, YouTube) but they aren’t as good and don’t have any differentiators. But they will likely still be around several years from now.

4. Which corporation has done the best job of using social media?

Burger King.  Even though facebook quashed it, their plan to give away free Whoppers in exchange for the sacrifice of  friends was pure genious.

5. What’s the best way to monetize social media?

“Freemium” use, i.e. a free basic model followed by a fee for advanced options (i.e. storage, analytics).  The “free level” maximizes the size of the universe and also gets the die-hards hooked, wanting more that they are willing to pay for.

6. What’s the biggest challenge facing social networking services?

Developing something that is new (niche, application, technology) and keep things fresher than the eventual copycats.

7. What social networking feature is the most critical for everyday users?

Tie – Status / Newsfeed.  I guess technically, status updates are part of the newsfeed.