Resonance

Everyone is on Facebook. And everyone, but especially the youth, are slowly starting to realize what it means.

That´s why we see more and more “perfect” profiles. People are increasingly using their profiles, with carefully selected conversations, photos and check-ins as a concious projection of how they want to be percieved. As Libby Copeland points out in her Slate column:

Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one’s assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data, accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like. Look, we have baked beautiful cookies. We are playing with a new puppy. We are smiling in pictures (or, if we are moody, we are artfully moody.

This, she claims, is making people depressed. This is a whole other topic that I am not going into depth of now – but it is interesting to see stats from Facebook showing that it is a clear correlation on what people say and act and what their network say and act.  See attached chart.

So my 2 cents is that the private chatting is about to move away from Facebook and into private closed networks on especially smartphones where close groups of friends keeps in touch with each other 24/7 without worring about the “rest” of the world – its private.  And although we now have Google + with circles and Facebook now allows posts to be limited to public, your friends and customized lists I still see these places as a more public space. And people want to be part of where other people are, but their most private conversations will be through email, FB messages, IM´s and new group chat technology. Which will thrive on special interests, close friends or people gathered around specific locations/events.  

This is a great opportunity for brands:
1. Create and facilitate this solution. And make sure to add extra value within it. This is what its all about – give people something to do and someone to do it with. Assist people in doing what they are most interested in doing or already are doing – better. And you will also get extremly valuable insights based on their acivities.

2. Also, with 3.000.000.000 new participants in the medialandscape, people are constantly on the look out for social currency – something they can post to both their “public” and “private” networks. Brands can drive culture by creating content and solutions that give people something to do or content to share – and people to do it with. 

I think this gives brands tremendous opportunities but at the same time it´s important to understand that people both want privacy and to be part of the public.  The perfect marketingsolution combines both.

PS. Libby Coplands column is based on: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/37/1/120.abstract