By Caleb Browning

UNIT 35 – SOCIAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

P1 CONTENTS •  Facebook Analysis

•  Instagram Analysis

•  Twitter Analysis

FACEBOOK: PURPOSE Facebook’s purpose is to connect the integrated audience of Facebook together. What this means is that friends (or hot audience) that are both on Facebook are given the opportunity to communicate in a more efficient, and easier way in comparison to other methods such as written letter.

The cold audience side of the integration also can communicate with individuals; whether it be meeting online and being able to talk on topics posted by Facebook pages. The purpose of connecting cold audiences together is that it allows efficient advertising and it allows for untapped contacts to be connected together.

FACEBOOK: CONTENT The content of Facebook is very broad in terms of topic:

•  Personal profiles of the individuals that use Facebook; these profiles may include personal photos, videos and links to games that the individual may play on Facebook.

•  Facebook pages are also very broad down to the fact that they can be used in a casual or professional manner. An example of a casual page may be a fan page of an athlete or a game. An example of a professional page would be the official page for Obama that is taken care by his Social Media team.

•  Games are also very popular on Facebook. One influential game that formed a huge amount of today’s type of Facebook game was Farmville.

FACEBOOK: TARGET USER/MEMBERSHIP Facebook is such a large network that they actually do not have a specific target audience; so many people use Facebook with 1.31 BILLION monthly active users. (Link here)

However, in the space of Facebook, audience can be targeted by certain adverts and certain pieces of news depending on the ‘likes’ of the personal profiles. For example, someone that has ‘liked’ the BBC page will get updates relating to the BBC and the news.

Advertising can also be directed towards certain genders or ages by sponsored advertising. For example, an advertisement for breast cancer would be more beneficial if it was directed towards females than males because it effects females.

FACEBOOK: SOURCE OF REVENUE Facebook’s main source of revenue is from Advertising.

“For the first nine months of 2013 and 2012, advertising accounted for 88% and 84%, respectively, of its revenue. Facebook reported advertising revenue of $1.8 billion in 3Q 2013.” (Link Here)

Advertising is done on Facebook using a system called ‘Facebook Exchange’ where businesses and companies bid on advertising space in real-time. This is done by tracking cookies from the profiles to determine if the advertisement will be effective and targeted at the right untapped audience.

FACEBOOK: LEGAL/ETHICAL ISSUES Facebook is very thorough when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. They allow content creators to report copyright infringement easily on their website (Link)

Misrepresentation results in termination of the Facebook account or group that is impersonating the individual if a report is filed in on the specific account.

Since Facebook’s data policy collects your messages sent, as well as your registration date and archives your posts, bullying and stalking can be reported easily and reviewed/acted on.

INSTAGRAM: PURPOSE The purpose of Instagram is to create a platform where photography is the main focus of what is posted. Instagram allows a user to upload photographs, add ‘filters’ which alter the look of the image if they wish, and share the photo with their ‘followers’ or ‘#’.

The use of Instagram can be professional or casual depending on the type of account you want. For example, a casual Instagram account can be used to share photos with friends and keep memories online, while a professional Instagram account can be used as a form of portfolio.

INSTAGRAM: CONTENT The content of Instagram is entirely based on photographs. There is no posting with text (exception to this is photographs with text on and the captions) However, what is used that in Instagram and Twitter has revolutionized (firstly by Twitter) the way social media and Word of Mouth is used is hashtags.

Hashtags (#) groups tweets or photographs together and these are then viewable by the public to scroll through to see if anything interests them. This changed the way that W.O.M, marketing via social media and also social interaction between individuals completely.

The reason for this is because it makes the interaction between people who have things in common much easier.

INSTAGRAM: TARGET USER/MEMBERSHIP Instagram has a target audience of 18-35 year olds – a younger audience with an astonishing 90% of all users being within this age range. (Link)

This is why Instagram is such a valuable tool for advertisers. Instagram directly taps into a younger audience with strong success in comparison to other methods like television or radio.

INSTAGRAM: SOURCES OF REVENUE Instagram has always been a free service, without any use of add-ons or ‘pro-service’. However, the source of revenue that was acquired at one time by the creators of Instagram itself from selling Instagram was $1 BILLION in 2012. (Link)

The actual application does not have any type of advertising or direct revenue from it’s service.

INSTAGRAM: LEGAL/ETHICAL ISSUES Legal and Ethical issues are addressed in the Terms & Service of Instagram. An example of one of the terms and services is the addressing of stalking/bullying: “You must not defame, stalk, bully, abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate people or entities and you must not post private or confidential information via the Service, including, without limitation, your or any other person's credit card information, social security or alternate national identity numbers, non-public phone numbers or non-public email addresses.”

Another example of one of the legal and ethical issues addressed is the impersonation of another person on their account: “You agree that you will not solicit, collect or use the login credentials of other Instagram users.”

TWITTER: PURPOSE The purpose of Twitter is to create a platform where an account is less personal and more accessible to the public. This allows users to have a personal touch to their comments without disclosing much about them.

The use of a friends list is not used in Twitter or Instagram - instead you are ‘followed’ and ‘follow’ people you are interested in seeing. This gives anyone the opportunity to be able to see what you post as well as give you the opportunity to see what others post with the exception of a profile being private, where the user has to accept the follow request.

TWITTER: CONTENT The content of Twitter is mainly text based as well as picture based. The use of Twitter is that it almost acts as an update wall of what the user is doing in comparison to a personal profile of the user or a photo reel/portfolio that Instagram is.

Twitter was the first social media website to use hashtags and to revolutionize the way that W.O.M. was used. With hashtags, came the use of grouping ‘tweets’ to each other to create a topic of discussion. This introduced being able to integrate audiences together under one banner.

TWITTER: TARGET USER/MEMBERSHIP A study was undertook in which 29% of 3,600 of ‘Generation Y’ or the 15-35 year old demographic showed that they used Twitter along with at least 8/10 of them using at least one social network.

While any age can join Twitter, a large majority of Twitter’s demographic are ‘Generation Y’.

TWITTER: SOURCES OF REVENUE Revenue for Twitter comes from promotion from companies/businesses. For example: “Almost all of Twitter's revenue - about 85% of it - comes from advertising on its site. There are three main ways for a company or an individual to advertise on Twitter: by promoting a tweet that will appear in people's timelines, promoting a whole account, or promoting a trend.

Twitter tends to charge its advertisers according to the amount of interaction their content generates. A budget is usually set at the start of the campaign and then the advertiser pays per click or per retweet.” (Link)

TWITTER: LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES Twitter has a Terms of Service that addresses many legal and ethical issues. Copyright is addressed, for example:

“Twitter respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of the Services to do the same. We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us.”

(Twitter TOS)

P2 CONTENTS: Positive and Negative social effects of social media websites such as:

•  Facebook

•  Twitter

•  Instagram

•  Vine

•  Tinder

•  Pinterest

•  Linkedin

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA •  Information is much easier to find online than in books. For example, if you

wanted to learn how to build a computer, you would have to look for a specific book that explains how to build a specific type of computer. Now you can find it online with ease.

•  Contacting with family and friends as well as professional acquaintances is much easier than before due to being able to contact them at any time.

•  Being more anonymous means that feelings can be expressed easier with less feeling of embarrassment. Socially isolated and shy people reported that soial networking made them feel less shy in a study

•  Jobs have risen because of the new jobs relating to social media – for example, Facebook posted $1.26billion for their third quarter of their revenue in 2012, along with Twitter creating an estimated $350m in 2012. (Link)

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA •  Social media has made unbiased and truthful information harder to find due to

how easy it is to post information that looks authentic.

•  13 million users said they had not set or did not know about Facebook's privacy settings and 28% shared all or nearly all of their posts publicly in a study by Consumer Reports (Link)

•  Students who are heavy social media users tend to have lower grades in education. For example, students who used social media had an average of a GPA of 3.06 while non-users had an average GPA of 3.82. (Link, Ctrl+F 3.02) This shows that the distraction of social media affects the grades of the average student.

•  Job stability is more of a problem because the use of social media can reveal many things about your personal life that may look unattractive to an employer. For example, Anthony Weiner, former US Representative, was forced to resign after a Twitter sexting scandal in 2011.

CONTENTS: P3 Give an example for each of the following ways in which companies and brands use social media for commercial purposes:

a)  Advertising

b)  Viral marketing

c)  Product/service reviews

P3: ADVERTISING An example of advertising that has been adopted is one by Twitter. Twitter uses a service called ‘sponsored tweets’ where advertisers can pay to have specific tweets broadcasted to an extended audience. (Link)

These tweets are scheduled using a bidding process in which a budget is set to how many people are going to see the advert. For example, you could have a budget of £500 and schedule the tweets to be sent over 5 weekdays at £100 a day.

Twitter uses cookies to determine what sort of advertisements interest the user and plan who will receive the sponsored tweets accordingly. Money is paid out of the budget for each click or follow. (Link)

P3: VIRAL MARKETING An example of viral marketing is the use of the video platform ‘YouTube’ by Old Spice.

They successfully created a series of interesting and eye-catching adverts that while feature an attractive male model for women is also amusing for men.

BENEFITS OF VIRAL MARKETING VIA SOCIAL MEDIA •  The reach of the marketing can reach a much higher number due to it being so much

more easily accessible. For example The Witch Blair Project

(http://www.blairwitch.com/legacy.html) is one of the best examples of this. They used the internet as a viral marketing tool. The creators of the film used online message boards to spread rumors about the Blair Witch. It was so successful that people still believed in the stories even after the release of the movies. (Source)

•  Marketing can be very easily conducted – only a fee must be paid to keep adverts running.

•  Increased traffic to online areas of the business conducting the viral marketing.

•  If the advert is very successful, it will continue to grow in size and the brand will become more reputed.

P3: VIRAL MARKETTING PART 2 Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ has accumulated over 50 million views while many of the other adverts they have created with the same crazy concept of a stylish yet creative flavour have also accumulated millions and millions of views on a lesser scale.

The reason why this is so successful is because YouTube is a huge branching opportunity for companies to produce something visual/audio that appeals to a much broader audience based on creativity.

As a bonus, the adverts will be remembered a lot easier than a regular product of the aftershave variety just because the adverts stand out so much.

P3: PRODUCT/SERVICE REVIEWS User-generated reviews could be considered the wildcard of how to show off a product depending on how reliable the product actually is.

This can result in two different outcomes:

•  The product gets great, consistent reviews and your product becomes credited for being a great product via Word of Mouth

•  The product does not work as consistently as it should and therefore potential untapped audience will be put off from buying the product.

A good example of a place where reviews are extremely valuable to a companies’ business is Amazon. Verified buyers of a certain product may choose to give their opinion on how the product works, if it delivers as intended etc. A personal recommendation from users that have already tried the product is much more believable for a consumer of a product than the company itself – which is why it can be extremely valuable to be reviewed.

P4 CONTENTS: I have to now generate ideas for a new social media website or application appropriate to the needs of a specific target audience.

a)  Purpose

b)  Format/style

c)  Target user/membership

d)  Mock ups

INSPIRATION #1 - SOUNDCLOUD Soundcloud is a musical platform where tracks can be downloaded and shared between users. It is a free application that can be accessed easily on all types of smartphone and computers. It also allows the users to comment on tracks displaying either criticism or compliments.

INSPIRATION #2: TINDER Tinder is a dating application where it has been made efficient and easy to find ‘matches’. You sign up via the application, and by using Facebook, you sign in and are given a selection of all your pictures to create a profile from. You can create a small description of yourself.

You then can start ‘liking’ or ‘passing’ on people that you may be interested in. If both of you like each other, then you are both ‘matched’ and can start talking.

Tinder also has a ‘moment’ system where photographs can be shared to all of your matches for 24 hours. Your matches have the option to like the moments that you put up.

P4: PURPOSE: ‘MIXXING’ Name Inspiration: A mixture of ‘mixing with people’ and a DJ ‘mix’. A nice play on dating and music entwined.

The application ‘Mixxing’ will be a hybrid of Tinder and Soundcloud – Users would join up and create a list of their favourite artists and songs. The users would then be matched up with people that like the same music and are also of the same sexuality.

Users are then given the option to pass or accept people that they are matched with to start talking. This would be successful because it already gives the users a common interest.

FORMAT/STYLE The format of Mixxing would include having a brief profile about yourself that gives information on what bands you like, what artists you enjoy, and a description about yourself.

It would involve the use of IM (Instant Messaging) as well the use of a photographic uploading system which allows the people they add to be able to see photos that are uploaded by the individual.

TARGET AUDIENCE The target audience for Mixxing would be in the teenage to young 20’s range. This is because the majority of the users of Tinder are in this range, which is therefore what we would be interested in trying to tap into.

(Link to Chart)

The general gender would be more suited towards a male audience from the chart in the last slide; 62% of all of Tinder is compromised by men while 38% is of women.

MINDMAP OF THOUGHT PROCESS

P5: CONTENTS Plan the development of a new social media website/app, including:

•  Purpose

•  Content

•  Design/navigation

•  Target audience

•  Security

•  Production plan with launch date

•  Possible revenue streams

Go more into detail with each one!

P5: IN-DEPTH PURPOSE Name Inspiration: A mixture of ‘mixing with people’ and a DJ ‘mix’. A nice play on dating and music entwined.

Mixxing looks to create an easy way to find possible dates with the same music taste as you as well as a brief description about themselves. The goal of the application is to connect people together more personally through the power of music.

The application ‘Mixxing’ will be a hybrid of Tinder and Soundcloud – Users would join up and create a list of their favourite artists and songs. The users would then be matched up with people that like the same music and are also of the same sexuality.

Users are then given the option to pass or accept people that they are matched with to start talking. This would be successful because it already gives the users a common interest.

The business goal is to get 100,000 users in the first annum to create a reliable database and to also get an idea of the growth of the app and what direction should be taken with it. The objective is for the application to start being used instead of dating sites over time.

P5: CONTENT Users of Mixxing will want to ‘add’ to their list of artists and bands that they like as well as a quick description about themselves and what they enjoy outside of music. As more and more users end up joining, matches will become more and more common and the use of Mixxing will become much more populated.

In terms of copyright and intellectual property rights, we will have a reporting system where a report can be submitted to us on the grounds of intellectual property and copyright and we will then check to see if it is correct. If laws are broken, the account will be suspended. We will also allow users to report users that are abusive, stalking and bullying to which the same treatment will be given.

P5: DESIGN AND NAVIGATION – MOCK UPS

DESIGN AND NAVIGATION: COLOUR SCHEME, FONT, AND GUIDELINES/STANDARDS •  The colour scheme that I would like the application to follow would be a light red/pink

palette such as the one in this slide; this is because the general romantic/flirty colours are love related, which is a lighter red/pink.

•  The font I would like to use for Mixxing is a font called ‘House Gothic 23’. This was my chosen font because it is simple, it looks more attractive than a default, blocky font like Ariel or Impact and doesn’t look too difficult to read.

SECURITY/PRIVACY The terms of service will include the notion that if cyber-bullying, stalking, impersonation or misrepresentation were to be committed, the account of the offender would be suspended immediately. Protection of personal data would also fall under this category. Users would have an option to be able to report a match for stalking personal information. From this chat logs would be able to be read from the site if the report is legitimate.

PRODUCTION PLAN WITH LAUNCH DATE

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE EXTRAS The usual cost for the development of an application is $6453 for a paid application. What is important is that budget is left at a decent amount. Therefore, the budget should be around $7000 to leave room for extras. (Link)

I chose the 5 month timescale because I think it is important that time is spent on making sure that the application is functional. The reasoning towards this is because one of the main ways that the application is going to be spread around is via word of mouth – AKA personal opinion. If it is fully functional, it will get more positive feedback.

I would have to hire content developers, graphical artists and coders to create the application. However, this also plays into the budget – which will end up being the most expensive part of the production process.

POSSIBLE REVENUE STREAMS •  A possible revenue stream could be advertising space on the sides of the application.

Each page could have a small strip of adspace on it to pay for the use of the area.

•  Another possible revenue stream if the services takes off is a ‘pro’ feature where adverts would be taken off as well as extra benefits such as unlimited matching with others.

•  Sponsorship could also be considered if the services takes off more than expected.

P6: CONTENTS Design a competent homepage/members page using for a planned new social media application, including:

•  Page layout

•  Site navigation

•  Navigation buttons to pages

•  Screen display sizes, colour schemes, font styles, multi browser compatibility, W3C Guidelines/accessibility recommendations

•  Advertising space, sponsors etc.

FIRST MOCKUP OF WELCOME SCREEN

WITH ADVERTISING SPACE ADDED

MAIN PAGE

EXTRAS PAGE W/ADVERTISING SPACE

CONTACT LIST

FINAL DESIGNS OF APPLICATION In order:

•  Splash Page

•  Sign-in/Connect to Facebook

•  Front Page/Find Matches

•  Talk to Matches

•  Settings

ADDED FEATURES •  The white ‘m’ in some of the pages can be used to get back to the front page.

•  iPhone template has been used to represent the application better.

•  Colour scheme has been changed slightly – not completely pink and the opacity of the darkness of the colours has been dropped

•  Font style has been changed – ‘Korean Typography’ is now the new font.

•  A splash page has been introduced!

•  Sign in now has a facebook connection which allows you to connect from Facebook for example (could be changed to work with other social media sites

•  Generally just looks a lot nicer than it did before.

POSSIBLE ADVERTISING? •  One thing that could be utilized is the use of popup adverts instead of ‘advertising space’.

This gives more room for the rest of the application to work.

•  The other option is advertising space, however I would be more inclined to add a cheap fee for no adverts (50p,£1) and popup adverts.

Example of advertising space:

by Caleb Browning

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