In line with their new "I am" strategy orange have created a specific website that brings the idea to life in the digital space.

I am actaully a fan of Orange's insight that who we are is dictated by who we know. That's why i was shocked to find no aspect of community on the their dedicataed site http://www.i-am-everyone.co.uk/. For such an inspirational message the site lacks any real feel of community or the ability for people to join together to make something bigger.

Maybe this will be a big push in social networks this year? I could see the strategy fitting quite well within the social space. Will be interesting to see....

Orange social networks

Bebo, MySpace and Facebook members on Orange will be able to access their profiles from a single destination later this summer.

The operator, which was the first to tie up deals with all three tier-one social networks in April, is now bidding to increase their usability.
Subscribers to several social network will be able to view updates from each network on one screen.

Orange is preparing to launch a service dubbed My Social Place, which is already live...

Orange really seem to upping their game when it comes to online - will a time come when they overtake O2 as the leader? I think this could be a real possibility....

Facebook - which apps rule?

As we approach the looming Facebook Profile Redesign, Inside Facebook has listed the top 50 Facebook applications by daily active user count.

Some interesting observations from the list are:

Professional network LinkedIn has the 4th biggest app on Facebook. (I wonder if that affected their recent $1 billion valuation? lol)
5 of the top 10 and 21 of the top 50 apps are games.
Social network MyYearbook has the most popular game on Facebook, Owned. It is a copy cat of Serious Business’s Friends For Sale, which is only slightly behind at #2.
3 of the 4 apps with over 1 million daily active users are quite similar (FunWall, Super Wall, Bumper Stickers).
Playfish is a rising star with 3 out of the top 10 games. Their engagement rate as a company is also at 13%, the highest of any large app developer on Facebook.
Zynga has 6 apps on this list, and is the 3rd largest developer overall in terms of DAU, behind Slide and RockYou.
Even though SGN has only 1 app in the top 50, it is the 7th largest developer overall in terms of DAU.

Hmm will be interesting to see what apps top the list over the next few months....

Laterz

Facebook - world useage overtakes Myspace

LONDON - Facebook has overtaken MySpace with its number of unique visitors reaching 123 million people worldwide during May.

During the same period, 114.6 million visitors used MySpace, according to figures from ComScore,The figures show rapid growth during the month for Facebook and is 162% above the figure for May last year. During the same period, traffic to MySpace was up by just 5%.

Facebook - talks more languages

Facebook has introduced Chinese-language versions of its social networking website, marking its first move into the world's largest internet market.

Users in China are now directed through to zh-cn.facebook.com, offering simplified and traditional Chinese language versions, and the social networking site has also added Russian, Suomi, Portuguese, Czech and Catalan offerings.

Launching in China marks a significant step for the site as it aims to compete with MySpace to build a share of the country's internet population, which overtook the US in April to become the world's biggest single internet market.

China has 221 million internet users, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre.

But, unlike the US and Europe, that audience is set to grow rapidly because it represents a tiny proportion of the total Chinese population.

Facebook will need to compete with a swathe of domestic social networking services, such as Xiaonei, as well as the Chinese version of MySpace, which was introduced in April last year.

Facebook - where are brands focusing attention?

1) Brands in Facebook are offering more CONTENT
•2) Brands are giving youth more VOICE
•3) Brands are fostering the audiences CREATIVITY
•4) Brands are appealing to the individuals COMPETITVE streak
•5) Brands are providing ENTERTAINEMNT

•Brands have become a lot more engaging in Facebook and therefore the level of competition has increased
•Leader boards, weekly prizes and games are a good way to bring people back to the page daily and increase interaction
•The emphasis is predominantly on content and entertainment

Understanding behaviours in social networks

Social Networking behaviours:

What behaviours are people exhibiting in social networks and how can we utilise them to produce innovative work…?

Basic level:

Creating an identity- all of the networks allow users to make an identity, whether via aviators, skins, music selection or simply by updating moods. Tools that build on this aspect of social networks are extremely popular as who we appear as on our page is extremely important as it is an online expression of our offline personality.

Making friends/connections – The main reason most people use networks once they are set up are to connect with people. Find old friends, make new friends or simply keep in touch with current friends. Without connecting with other people there would be little use for social networks.

Communicating – Just as we do in real time, we all love to chat to other people, whether for idol gossip, sharing views and opinions or gather information. Social networks have allowed people to communicate on every level possible. The strongest social networking applications allow people to communicate their opinions and connect with each other.

A wide range of leisure activities; music, television, debates and marketing – Content is vital to social networks, both for the individual and the group aspect of networks. People want to be entertained online. The key to content is to keeping it relevant to the network, the audience and the mindset they are in. Content that works well in Bebo will not necessarily work well in Facebook.

Searching – Social networks have become a dumping ground of information and users are using them to find out anything and everything. Health, political, celebrity, product, people, holiday, events, music and much much more information is all stored away in social networking pages and applications and are used like hotcakes.

Procrastination – We all do it and social networks have become a great way to kill time! And any of the above points can be optimised via procrastination. They key is providing enough engagement to be entertainment to people when they are bored.

Higher level behaviours – Potential for a much deeper level of engagement

Creativity –Whether playing with their own identity, playing with applications, voicing their opinions or displaying their own work on their networks, social networks are a great place for people to be creative. This ability to be creative is a very powerful tool as it fosters the user’s imagination and provides a deeper level of engagement.

Playing with one’s identity – Social networks allow users to become who they want to be and express a different, less inhibited side of their personality. Characters like Chris Crocker show how people can explode their personality to a whole new level through social media. All users do this on some level as so is a really emotive way to engage them.

A tool to build confidence – You may not think it but we all get something from using social networks. Such applications as “poke” allow us to flirt, adding new friends allows us to feel more popular and getting and receiving messages shows us that people want to talk to us. All of which build on our self-confidence.

Self-expression/promotion – The most confident social network users use social networks to promote themselves or their services. You only have to look around Myspace to see how many young artists there are shouting about how great they are and making us pay attention to what they have to offer.

Summary: Creating the best work

All of the above points highlight how intricate social networks are and should diminish the idea that all people use social networks for is to communicate with other people. Although communicating is at the heart of every thing we do on social networks there are vast arrays of behaviours that stem from it, each of which are there for us as marketers to tap into.

As marketers we should always create tools/idea that centre around the user’s natural behaviour to communicate but depending on the audience and the brand, tailor our communications to harness the users secondary (deeper) behaviours.

The most successful communications tools are those that think outside of the box! Tapping into higher-level behaviours that ultimately give the users something more than basic engagement.

For example – The O2 Facebook group tapped into 3 of the above points:

1) Communicating – at the heart of the page users had to communicate with each other and the page to express their personal views.
2) Expressing an identity – it allowed users to express who they are and what they stood for. An individual’s university choice says an awful lot about them and so allowing them students to talk about this was a very strong emotive hook.
3) Emotional benefits – The page ultimately, by use of the above two points, created a very strong emotional reason to interact with the page. Not only did the page provide a great way to procrastinate at university but it gave back to the audience. Hence the deeper level of engagement.