Friendfeed: Enabling Drip Marketing 2.0?
I have always appreciated the concept of drip marketing. Unlike carpet bombing where you run ad campaigns in high volume forums with the hopes just 1% might be in the mood for buying your ’stuff’ … drip marketing is all about trying to stay top of mind with a CONFIRMED buyer in a long sales cycle. So instead of the lottery approach to top of funnel sales you are just a determined fisherman … casting your bait at the spot you know that bass is hiding … over and over again … every day … if not more. Presenting your lure in 10,000 different ways hoping one cast will get all the variables right (e.g. depth, speed, color, temperature, etc)
Friendfeed, more importantly, and Scoble’s plan to redesign his web presence around FriendFeed is really (in my view) an example of the next generation of marketing. A model where the drips occur so frequently, are so small, are so innocent you don’t even notice their interruption or what they are building to. You look for them. You want them.
You can read the running thoughts below but here are my initial thoughts around this “Drip Marketing 2.0″ angle.
| Webcast Details | Notable Points |
Title/Link:
This is Scoble’s interview. There is a second link to close out the last 5 minutes of the interview but I didn’t hear much in that. A second interview by another blogger. Shorter. Duration:
Speaker:
Recommend to Watch? Yes.
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1. Why not just stick with email or blogs? Ask Burma-Shave.
2. Burma-Shave & FriendFeed. Come on Bauer. Thats a stretch.
3. You have to be unbiased to play this game.
4. It almost makes the product evangelist role viable
5. So what’s the role of FriendFeed? Aggregation of your tidbits.
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Overall, I agree with Scoble’s strategy. If you are a full time analyst (like him) or a full time evangelist for a B2C distribution, tools and techniques like the above will add notable value to your role. Definitely something to consider if you are in that position as an individual or a head of marketing considering such an investment.
** START OF RAW SCRIBBLE TAKEN WHILE SITTING **
……………○ Brett Taylor
……………○ Paul G
……………○ Polyvor (fashion site) sits with them
……………○ Team of 5 it looks like
……………○ Started 10/1/07
……………○ All prog (4) + anna (non prog)
……………○ Emacs
……………○ Friendfeed links to all sites you use … stream of things from people you like
…………………………§ Information discovery
…………………………§ BAUER COMMENT - isn’t this just like Facebook beacon in a way
…………………………§ BAUER COMMENT - Its like an RSS feed but micro bursts on favoriting of something or actions that are feed enabled (like comments, favoriting, shared, rated) that typically people wouldn’t put on their specific blog
…………………………§ Fragment conversations to social groups .. So you know people in the friend feed segment .. Discussions are more like a dinner party
…………………………§ Blog is a radio show … take callers who like hearing their voice … not listening
…………………………§ RS - blog trolls show up to get attention from attendance
…………………………§ Can have a private feed … huge % of usage
………………………………………□ BAUER - IM?
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:13 AM
……………○ How make $
…………………………§ User base focus now
…………………………§ Monetization is early (ads maybe)
…………………………§ Netflix recommendation …
………………………………………□ BAUER COMMENT - Again beacon difference is it can be private (will channels be broad enough ? Perhaps in aggregate)
……………○ Why not at google?
…………………………§ Google is good for large investment initiatives (ie android)
…………………………§ Small gigs work well alone
…………………………§ Google forces users too quickly … can focus the company on growth / infra too early
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:16 AM
……………○ Whats next
…………………………§ Information engineering (info overload) … UX
…………………………§ Honing that is hard
……………○ Filtering example … watch for XYZ term
…………………………§ They can filter out types of feed threads
…………………………§ Filters by word is good … done … filter make into rss feed
…………………………§ Give me what people I know (BAUER COMMENT — TRUST FACTOR)
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:19 AM
……………○ Not trying to be facebook (profiles / linkages)
…………………………§ Most requested (profile) but they are resisting it
…………………………§ Looking at it as an information discovery problem NOT a socialization problem or TECH problem
…………………………§ Facebook is about listing friends … vs … tracking friends and what they share
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:22 AM
……………○ Comments = Posts = Readers = Social Gestures of Value
…………………………§ Family dynamic is the model … interaction w/ people you know about content
…………………………§ Picture conference interaction … dynamic of pondering a shared item out ‘there’
……………○ Multi site aggregation
…………………………§ 19 services on friendfeed (rs) … flickr, upcoming.org, videos on youtube, etc
…………………………§ Needs glue
…………………………§ Original vision - entre’s in residence at VC benchmark capital
…………………………§ Example of how his sharing of songs on last.fm spread to his family
…………………………§ Ie smugmug … see the photos … might switch over
…………………………§ All rides on RSS and ATOM
…………………………§ Photos are good problem … they make it human readable (not spammed by 30 photos, or 58 comments)
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:33 AM
……………○ How choose services glue in
…………………………§ Goal is to enable service to add themselves to friend feed
…………………………§ Today its request and popularity
…………………………§ yCombinator … easy to scale a webservice
…………………………§ Facebook but … provide for any website
……………○ Titles
…………………………§ No titles. Make decisions as a team
…………………………§ They all saw @ Google that went well and didn’t go well re: org growth … build company where everyone has opp to make big opp … not by first joiner
…………………………§ BAUER COMMENT - look for
……………○ Google can’t ship stuff
…………………………§ Right people get things done
…………………………§ But if not … could be slow
…………………………§ So how do you create a non-title fighting … contributions and achievements
…………………………§ Litmus test … engineer .. Choose to work here (friendfeed)
…………………………§ Leverage collective intelligence … but if you add layers … strategy comes top down not from the collective
…………………………§ Paul was #20 at google
…………………………§ BAUER COMMENT - needs idea model like that one site … that did voting and I mailed to mark johnson
…………………………§ Anti roles … interested in everything .. Google was role based to some degree it sounds like
………………………………………□ BAUER COMMENT - but isnt that size related
…………………………§ Challenge is how to scale small teams … org different … not hierarchy structure
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:39 AM
……………○ They are building an offline app (AIR based)
…………………………§ You can post to twitter and pounce is a competitor
……………○ They are working things like
…………………………§ Experiments to make homepage of FF the perfect place
…………………………§ BAUER COMMENT - So they aspire to be a starting place over the web … vs Googlesearch or Facebook
…………………………§ Key is user driven filters of feeds by user (person A you want blogs, person X you want all, person Y you want photos, etc)
……………○ Ability to match people based on sharing of common items or types
…………………………§ Yes will consider it
…………………………§ Look at tracking geo location …
…………………………§ Pull off Doppler where you are
…………………………§ Friend feed could track people …
…………………………§ Key is api … do interesting but esoteric things w/ FF … so people can make friendfeed what they want
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:45 AM
……………○ API
…………………………§ Publish to friend feed
…………………………§ Read from friend feed
…………………………§ Mobile devices (doesn’t work as well as it should) … API could help mobile developers
…………………………§ Desktop apps … AIR app coming (like an IM client)
…………………………§ Upload images via API
…………………………§ Take a photo on your photo and send it to someone
……………○ MP3 files … can display
…………………………§ Fred Wilson … wants to play inline from tumbler accounts
…………………………§ Blogtalk radio … call # w/ cell phone … auto record … to RSS feed
……………○ Whats the plan on mobile
…………………………§ Info on FF works well on mobile
…………………………§ Trouble is a lot of phone factors / platforms
…………………………§ Do their iPhone app
…………………………§ Twitter … full blown … hard to type to it … readable
…………………………§ Likes reading FF format
…………………………§ Try to be fast in response … performance
………………………………………□ Drives UI clean? Socialspark … ? … competitor
………………………………………□ Google guys is not flashy
……………○ Usability w/o Atheistics
…………………………§ Fast, usable w/o sizzle
……………○ They are ramping better than twitter
…………………………§ Experience of large user platforms
…………………………§ Paul/Sanjey … Gmail designers
…………………………§ Jim … Googlemaps
…………………………§ Acquiring hardware is hardware
……………○ AWS?
…………………………§ Occasionally … but moved to their stuff for more control … arch is python 100% … standard open source … mysql … linux …
…………………………§ Hard scaling is the architecture … use db … right chunking on db … what capacity … cache what … reduce load …
…………………………§ Great page on slide share … shows how they scale … opensource … live journal … memcast … shows how he scaled … 1st they read .. More open on how to scale sites … more information sharing … harder in past because load wasn’t the issue
……………○ OpenID
…………………………§ Supporting OpenID
…………………………§ Take it as login an provide
……………○ 4/2/2008, 6:58 AM
…………………………§ Close out
…………………………§ BAUER COMMENT - 2nd half was no notable stuff
WEBWARE NOTES
……….problem … getting people to setup on FF …
……….discussions is growth … limited to group on item …
……….people known … people subscribe
……….people known …
……….blog … take in callers … hear themselves talk
……….private discussion on friend feed of article
……….competitors do … add twitter account … can’t interact
……….shared you tube ….
……….make it people that use friend feed easier to use
** END RAW SCRIBBLE TAKEN WHILE SITTING **
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Got this comment on my about page … figured I would move it over here
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Author : Doug Little
E-mail : dlittle@cox.net
Comment:
You appear to be an advocate of Drip Marketing.
If you or any of you clients are looking for a software tool that automates Drip Marketing campaigns, we have developed a fantastic product called Touch Points Unlimited.
If you want more information e-mail me, at the above address, or call 402-981-7575.
While the concept is about marketing I think it starts with product development. Shape a product/service with market influence and you are more likley to succeed. To your point, you need to remain receptive to going where the feedback takes you. It won’t work if you simply seek to validate where you want to go. Too often service solutions and product offerings are developed to meet an organization’s need to sell what they have, rather than focusing on the market need.
Hey Jan, welcome to the blog.
Good point on moving the impact of Friendfeed like solutions into the product development phase. As a companies evangelist / social lead leaves breadcrumbs of their interactions they can engage with their consumers around those products. Probably not so good w/ true R&D (competitors will watch as well) but for companies doing just classical aggregation (retailers for example) the use of evangelists in the style above can really refine what products are offered and how.
Tim
Drip marketing is a very descriptive term. I think of web 2.0 as attraction marketing.
FriendFeed is nice and I think will grow a lot.
Hi Warner, I dug around a bit on “Attraction Marketing”. It seemed to jive at first blush as I have heard others talk about it in synonyms to that. You know of any good conference presentations on Web 2.0 cast as attraction marketing? Maybe I’ll dig further …
Side comment, it really isn’t ‘drip’ … it is more like a stream. Todays tools can enable a customer to inject themselves into a stream of activity around a buy topic as much as they want.
[...] for marketing and promotion, it’s a great tool. Tim Bauer gives an example: FriendFeed is interesting in this conversation as it enables the evangelist to [...]