I first spoke with Erik Ober, CEO of Booshaka, in 2010 because his startup, which started as a search engine for Facebook, had caught my interest. I expressed that while it was great to find out about what people were publicly saying about Samsung on Facebook, it would be great to also know specifics about the engagement in our Samsung USA Facebook page. I really wanted to discover who Samsung USA’s “top fans” were.

Today, Booshaka ranks Facebook pages based on engagement and, as I had hoped, Booshaka identifies your “top fans” and ranks them in a nice leaderboard. You can see Samsung USA’s “Top Fans” on a tab on our Facebook page, and find more details on the Booshaka page for Samsung USA.
Read my interview with Erik below to learn more about the startup, how “Top Fans” works, and where his team is headed.

1. Who is behind Booshaka and what does your “Do the Impossible” tagline mean?

Booshaka is backed by a proven leadership and advisory team with 100+ collective years in social applications, data analysis, algorithms and advertising. Our mission is to help brands and businesses drive engagement and advocacy on Facebook.

From the start, we wanted to create big, meaningful company.  ”Do the impossible” is more of a motto than a tagline and its derived from the Urban dictionary meaning of “Booshaka.” Since naming the company, we’ve been told that all the biggest internet domains have two “O”s in them — Facebook, Google, and Yahoo :)

2. While the site initially started as a way to search on Facebook pages, it is now focused on Facebook Leaderboards based on engagement. Tell me more about this evolution.

The first few iterations of the product were experimental and designed to test how the market would respond to innovations built on Facebook’s Graph APIs.  In August 2010, we launched a version of the site which showed what was trending in different topical categories (ie Sports, Movies, Politics, etc) on Facebook.  We received some great organic press for the app and hundreds of developers and companies reached out to see how they might be able to leverage our technology.

After several months of customer development, we learned two things:

a. Marketers were overwhelmed with the amount of social data and interactions on Facebook and didn’t know how to take advantage of it.

b. Everyone was measuring the success of their Facebook Page(s) in terms of total number of fans / likes.

From our perspective, social media is all about how active your community is, how engaged your customers are, and how much they talk about your brand or business. At that point, we set out to develop technology solutions for the next frontier of social marketing — customer engagement and advocacy.

Google+ is off to a good start: A clean interface that works, interesting and useful  features, a great Android app, and a curious community of early adopters. The screenshots at the bottom of this post will give you a taste of what Google+ is but they will also likely show you what it is not, at least not yet.

Google needs to go above and beyond itself to make this worth our time and theirs. Right now Google+ (or Google Plus) feels like Google Buzz +1 but also like Facebook -1. It’s exciting, but not that exciting.

Below are 10 things that Google can do to change their reputation in the “social” space and become a dominant player instead of an awkward one.

1) Don’t Focus on the Technology

Google Wave was the future… and then it died. Google Buzz might as well be. Google must truly learn from those mistakes and focus on use cases that make sense to people outside the Googleplex. Why do people go online (beyond search and YouTube) and why/how/when do people interact with each other?

2) Compete with Facebook

Google needs to stop saying that this is not about Facebook. It is. It’s time to compete and compete well. Twitter might not be trying to create a Facebook but its definitely competing by enhancing its own network and doing things that are either very much in line with what Facebook is doing, or completely different. A competition is a competition regardless of whether you can coexist or not.

3) Google Ads

A Google social network without ads? Really? For how long? Google must be brave and put some ads up there. If it doesn’t, I simply cannot take this seriously. It’s not that I love ads, but without ads Google is pretending to be something it is not.

4) Make Changes and Soon

Google Buzz looks the same today as it did a year ago. That’s embarrasing and quite useless in a web that evolves on an on-going basis. There must be a long-term strategy and that must involve changes, updates, and major enhancements and announcements. It also includes making mistakes and doing a thing or two that people don’t like. Just do something beyond launching and don’t wait too long to do it. If there are no changes in the next month or two, I’m not staying around.

5) Integrate ASAP (more…)

According to recent eMarketer research, Facebook is the number one seller of display ads in the US. eMarketer expects Facebook to generate $2.19 billion in display advertising revenue this year.

How much is expected for Yahoo? $1.62 billion.

And what about Google? Only $1.15 billion.

We all know that if we want to place text ads on a website or blog, AdSense is the first place to go for revenue. AdSense is great because it delivers ads based on the website hosting the ad. But AdSense doesn’t seem to really know much, if at all, about the audience viewing the ads.

So what about display ads? And what about targeted, relevant display ads?

Everyone talks about targeted and relevant advertising, but no one has been able to deliver this in the way that Facebook can within Facebook.com.

It must be only a matter of time before Facebook decides to add advertisements to the Open Graph.

We already see “Like” buttons everywhere and companies like Amazon, CNN, Levi’s and Huffington Post have done some interesting personalization-like implementations on their sites.

Anyone can add a Facebook plugin in a matter of minutes.

So why not Facebook ads all over the web? Why not a FacebookSense of sorts that would allow both large and small sites to deliver targeted and relevant ads to Facebook users?

Think about. You’re connected to Facebook and happen to stroll away from Facebook for 5 minutes and end up on a sports blog. And let’s say you’re a young woman who recently got engaged. Facebook knows you’re engaged and you’re a young woman who likes to run so maybe it would show you a wedding dress ad and a Nike Women Sponsored Story. It might not be perfect because Facebook wouldn’t know whether you’ve bought that wedding dress yet but it would be a better experience than seeing an ad about muscle gain next to an ad for a questionable dating site, right?

And what about visitors who are not on Facebook or don’t feel like connecting to Facebook at that time? Well, Facebook could deliver ads based on the content of the site itself just as Google AdSense does.

My guess is that a Facebook AdSense coming and it’s coming before 2012. Why before 2012? Well, because 2012 is the alleged IPO year. Oh, and also because 2012 might be the end of the world. And Facebook doesn’t have time to wait until the end of the world.

Privacy and safety have always been key issues in social networking, especially when it comes to children. While Facebook’s terms and conditions say that kids under 13 aren’t allowed on the site, no one is going to stop a 12 year old from claiming that she was born a year earlier. To make things easier for parents and provide a place for 8-13 year olds to connect, Everloop is a site that “creates a privacy loop around kids’ connections.” Below is my interview with Hilary DeCesare, co-founder and CEO of this social network for tweens.

1. What benefits does Everloop provide to tweens that may be too young for Facebook and too old for Club Penguin?

Online, tweens want fun while parents want safety, and Everloop delivers both. With more than 600 million Facebook users across the world, social networking site has changed the way people communicate and share information. Everloop has created a unique age-appropriate social media experience by interconnecting customized micro-social networkscalled “loops”. Loops featured on Everloop include community loops of common interest (art, science, culture, reading, sports, fashion, etc.). Social “looping” was specifically designed to allow tweens to share, communicate, and collaborate discretely with their friends while online.

The site also features creative applications, music, games, videos, photos, animation, user generated content and other integrated online experiences. No other social platform on the market today offers as many real-time communications, content-sharing, and collaboration features designed specifically for tweens.

2. What are some of the things that these kids are most interested in doing in social networks?

We’ve found that kids love sharing content with each other, chatting, playing games, creating groups and using technologies that are similar to those being used by their older siblings and parents.

3. Today’s tweens are growing up surrounded by technology and social media. It’s all very normal to them. What kinds of things do you think they will expect from the websites of the future?

I think kids expect and deserve a lot of the same tools adults use and that’s why we offer many similar features provided by major social networks. (more…)

I just watched The Social Network, a fictional movie about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires.” Below are some of the things I liked, some of the things I disliked, and a few final thoughts.

Liked:

10. I laughed every time the Winklevoss Twins were referred to as “The Winkelvii.”
9. The entire cast did a great job of creating believable and likeable characters.
8. About 30% of the movie is accurate, making some of the basic facts of the movie.. well, facts.
7. The scene in which Mark goes up to Case Capital (Sequoia): showing up late and wearing pajamas.
6. The movie can be enjoyed by anyone.
5. The music is great. Nice job Trent Reznor.
4. Many of the geeky computer moments, including the FaceMash hacks, were pretty realistic. I’m glad there were no ridiculous computer scenes a la “Hackers” and “The Net.”
3. The movie is based on a fantastic book you really need to read: “The Accidental Billionaires.”
2. The dialogue (aka conversations, ha!) is awesome. Just like the book, you get hooked from the very beginning.
1. This amazingly well shot, directed, and written movie is about Facebook, and that shows just how culturally relevant Facebook has become.

Disliked:

10. The Winklevii are really only a footnote in the history of Facebook. The movie, and the book, augment their relevance a bit too much.
9. There are too many stereotypes. Geeks are portrayed as loser-jerks without vision. Girls are portrayed as dumb objects. Ivy League students are portrayed as sex-crazed, shallow, and arrogant intellectuals.
8. About 70% of the movie is inaccurate, making most of the conversations in the movie completely false.
7. The scene in which Mark goes up to… Case Capital?? What the? Why make the movie about Mark and Facebook, shoot it in Harvard, and then fictionalize names of companies like Sequoia?
6. The movie can be enjoyed by anyone.
5. I only noticed the music because I wanted to notice it.
4. The most important moment in Facebook history was when it went live for the first time, but it seemed like that moment took less than 5 seconds in the movie. Hmm…
3. Many of the best parts of The Accidental Billionaires, including the ending, didn’t make it into the movie.
2. As great as Mark’s lines in the movie are, the movie turns Mark into something he clearly is not. There should be a big disclaimer at the beginning of the film expressing just how fictional it is.
1. The movie is about Facebook, but Aaron Sorkin is not even on it. Which is enough indication that the movie is only kind of about Facebook, without truly respecting the unstoppable awesomeness and world changing web site/platform that Facebook really is. Not cool that Sorkin can so boldly take advantage of Facebook without actually using it.

Final thoughts:

The Social Network is a great movie that I really enjoyed and highly recommend. However, it seems to have been brought to life by people that just don’t get it. Sure, it’s great entertainment, great filmmaking, and great acting, but without Mark’s name on it and without it being about Facebook, no one would’ve cared about it. The movie will be successful in huge part by osmosis, but it unfortunately does not really comprehend or share the big picture beyond the e-mails, the lawsuits, and the Hollywood fluff: Facebook was (and is) a brilliant idea that was brilliantly executed with a brilliant vision, resulting in one of the most brilliant companies on Earth.

Web analytics are cool. If you agree with that statement, there’s a good change you’ve spent some time reading Occam’s Razor, the fascinating blog about web analytics by Avinash Kaushik (author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day).

If you don’t know who Avinash is then just Google “Web Analytics” and you’ll surely find out who he is. I’ve personally  learnt much from his thought-provoking and action-oriented writings, and I’m sure you will too. Below is an interview about some of the hot topics in web analytics today.

1. Tools like Woopra have introduced us to real-time analytics. Is real-time the future of analytics? Why are we not there yet?

There is more and more real-time data available. Google Analytics is updated, officially, every hour. Then there are cool tools like Chartbeat, etc. My personal perspective on real time analytics is…. if you can’t take real-time action then why do you want real time data?

In 99% of the cases real-time data is not actionable (it is not statistically significant and people jump the gun on the wrong signals), and companies (big or small) can’t actually take any action even if there is an actionable signal (change campaigns, landing pages, stop emails from going out or whatever). Then why do you want the data?

Real-time data becomes an excuse to stare at computer screens or do data puking. It keeps people from doing thoughtful analysis and looking at non-tactical things (and adding value to their employer).

If your organization meets these two rules: a) You have enough traffic / responses on your site to get statistically significant data AND b) You have a capacity to change things (take action), you should seek out real time data and you should make use of it. If you don’t meet the two rules take a long hard look at if you are engaging in any activity that is adding to your company’s bottom-line when you tap into real time data.

2. In 2007, you wrote a post  about “engagement” often being an “excuse,” not a metric. Now that we can measure things like comments, Facebook likes, ReTweets, check-ins, etc., what are your thoughts about the importance of measuring engagement?

My point of view on engagement is simple: What the heck does it actually mean? The answer is? Everything to everyone. Hence my minor displeasure at that metric. I believe in clarity of communication and a razor sharp focus on solving specific problems. Hence precise measurements, and naming metrics for clarity.

Engagement means nothing, hence does not drive action. (more…)