As I continue my month (well, it is really two months) of travel across the country (and soon world) I am amazed at the rate of change in the communications industry. Luckily for me, I have a wonderful set of "go to" bloggers to help sum up all these changes for me.
Jeremiah Owyang
Yesterday, after Facebook's major announcement, I had very little time to really think about it's ramifications. Luckily for me I am a follower of Jeremiah Owyang and the work that he is doing. His post about what MySpace and Facebook are doing was nothing short of brilliant. You can also get more from Jeremiah and Robert Scoble in a great interview that took place yesterday.
It is in this interview that the two seem to coin the phrase, "Fansumer". For all you naysayers, adverse to fancy buzz phrases, I recommend pay attention to this one (especially if you are a marketer) as this concept will be very important in the way we market in years to come. Even if you despise the phrase, make sure you pay attention to the concept.
Search Engine Land
The next stop along the travels through my sphere of trust was Search Engine Land, where they did a pretty good job of covering the Facebook announcement , although not quite as insightful as Jeremiah, they certainly verified the facts and provided me with an image of the Coca Cola Facebook profile (I later sent a request to befriend Coke and they still have not accepted. Coke, you don't want to be friends?)
Search Engine Land's post (like Jeremiah) tied in MySpace's Self-Serve Hyper Target Advertising Network which led me over to TechCrunch for more.
Okay, This Post Was Meant To Be Exemplary Of The Social Graph
Notice how I traversed from blogger to blogger in search of the truth and good insight. I did not search for information once in this process. I moved along the axis of what Facebook is now referring to as the Social Graph (notice how even that mention landed me a post by Alex Iskold).
From Search To Discovery
As a search engine marketer (amongst other things) at Morpheus Media I spend a lot of time thinking about keywords, as keywords, up until this point have been the greatest signifier of intent to take action in marketing history (I guess that is my opinion, but I am right 97% of the time :) ).
But what do you do when you run out of opportunities to reach consumers while they are searching?
A better question is, will search engine marketing remain the greatest signifier of consumer intent?
A searcher is raising their hand for more information about a given product, but that does not mean they want that particular product, it simply means that they are interested in more information. It is up to you, the marketer to convert that searcher into a buyer.
Well, what if that same consumer comes to your product by way of discovery?
What if that discovery process occurred when that consumer read that a friend had just purchased, and explicitly endorsed a product? How important could it be for you, the marketer, to be there with a relevant, enticing message? What would you pay for that?
Is discovery the new search?
I Get Carried Away
Maybe discovery is not the new search, Facebook is not the new Google and Pink is not the new Blog.
What I can tell you is that November 6th marked a significant change in the history of the Internet (and, not to be overly grandiose, but communications at large).
If you did not pay attention, you may want to practice the phrase, "would you like fries with that?"
Tags: Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, Facebook, Social Graph, Hyper Targeting, Search, Discovery