Digital Minds Forum

I have a theory.

Or rather, the beginning of a marketing theory … a segmentation theory for Facebook users. Perhaps I’ll be teaching it in years to come. It’ll be the new ACORN classification for social media! It’s taken hours of research on Facebook to produce and the Twitter one is in the pipeline.

Just think about the targeting possibilities if you start to understand social media segmentation and user types and interaction. The power of advertising, understanding your audience and profiling will be huge!

PHOTO CREDIT: balakov on FLICKR

So let’s take a look at the start… Facebook (FB) user types. Test it out. Look at just who is in your friend list and what sort of user you are.

First we start with the prolific user – AKA the Bejewelled, Supernatural Farmville Gangster

They’re the ones in your friends group which seem to on FB all the time. Whether it’s what they ate for breakfast, what help they need in Farmville or just letting you know they’ve joined the latest FB page announcing their undying love for the latest reality show celebrity.

“I’ve just drank my second latte of the morning LOL.”

Posted 4.10pm

You know everything about them (as if you are really that interested, except when you are bored on a rainy day). You know their religious views, their kid’s names and even their entire family tree from Aunt to second removed cousin. Their profile is complete with realms of photos and embarrassing tags all waiting to be picked up by some potential employer or local nutcase.

The Bejewelled, Supernatural Farmville Gangster seems to be completely immune to the notion of protecting their identity online or setting up their own FB privacy settings.

“OMG Just at airport off on holiday for 3 weeks. Don’t know what I’m going to do as I’ve left the backdoor wide open, everything is unlocked and my brand new 3D TV is still in box in living room. LOL”
Posted @ 4.10am, place: Gatwick airport via my iphone

The nosey neighbour

The nosey neighbour is the shark in your friends list. They lie silent, you forget they are there until they suddenly comment on a random photo you have just this second uploaded, or bring up something from your profile outside of the social media environment……… in the real world. Shock Horror!
After a few drinks one night, this user thought it would be a great idea to join FB and woke up the next day wondering whether they’d done the right thing. So they take it carefully, slowly, watching, monitoring the live feed. They make a few friends – those lost mates from old school days, hunt down a few old flames and take a quick look at the mystery person who lives next door with the flash car.

Their profile may remain empty or at least unfilled except for a carefully selected photo, carefully selected privacy settings, considered status announcements and just a selection of comments on other people’s statuses; just to stay on the safe side. The nosey neighbour is just monitoring, listening, learning and gleaning further information.

The boaster

The boaster is the friend you love to hate but just have to review. You just can’t resist taking a regular peep at their profile. They have every photo up from their latest fantastic holiday, their wonderful wedding day and make daily announcements about their children, pets, wonderful partner or simply themselves;

‘I’m so proud of Freddie gaining his A** results in 5 A Levels at the age of 10 whilst playing cricket for the county squad U15 every weekend and being offered a place for 2018 at Cambridge University ’
Posted @ 5pm Tuesday evening

‘I just don’t know how I’ve lost a whole stone in weight in just one week from eating chocolate, crisps and burgers’
Posted @ 8am Saturday morning

Ahh poor me

These are the friends that open up and reveal all on a channel which is broadcast across often hundreds of persons with no control. They are looking for the reassurance, a boost in confidence and attention from their audience.

“My partner left me yesterday, then the car broke down and I had to walk 10 miles to the petrol station in a flash hail storm. I’m just so bad at EVERYTHING. The minute I woke up this morning, my hair was like a bush, the mirror cracked when I looked in it and my tooth fell out as I was eating breakfast”

Posted @ 9.25am followed by:

Comment: “We love you, whatever the mirror thinks. XXXX””

Posted @ 9.29am

The ‘ahh poor me user’ is at one extreme of the friend quantity list. Either, they have hundreds or very few.

The laggard

And finally the ‘I don’t know how people get time for that sort of thing’ . The laggard who remains sat on their backside playing patience on their iphone whilst watching  Big Brother.

This type of person, is the one that is going to be left behind… they are the ones that are going to miss the evolution of social media and have it firmly bite them on their ****.

Conclusion

So there it is. The seedlings of my FB segmentation; great potential for future marketing opportunities.

Just think using my theory you could be marketing game apps to the Bejewelled, Supernatural Farmville Gangster, life coaching to the ‘Ahh poor me’ user and ‘I hate social media’ T shirts to the laggards.

I’m sure to make millions.

Claire Savage, is a freelance Marketing Consultant (www.my-marketingmanager.co.uk), part- time Head of Marketing at Webcredible (www.webcredible,co.uk) and Marketing Trainer.

A few weeks ago whilst on holiday, I went to investigate a disturbance outside my tent in the middle of the night, some drunken louts shouting, swearing and getting rather physical with each other. Having phoned 999 I decided to venture outside and try to resolve the matter once and for all.

So, dressed in my silky nightdress, hunters wellies and London Marathon raincoat …. I was almost ready… just the final weapon…my iphone.

Once, outside, armed with my handy iphone confronted by this group of drunken non-English speaking men, I desperately hunted through my apps. I guess I was looking for a ‘light saber app’ or ‘pretend your surrounded police app’ I actually don’t know. Instead, I found my ‘flashtorch’ app which is fact a pointless colour screen and flashed that around thinking they would soon see I had come equipped with my iphone and disappear.

What planet are we all living on? I had ventured in to some warped reality of iphone, wii and sci fi. A real testimony to digital marketing living and breathing the virtual world. I hadn’t even had a drink!

Luckily, in this instance the police appeared and everything was dissolved peacefully. For me it was a lesson that perhaps I’m getting just a little to reliant on my gadgets….and perhaps taking my digital marketing world a little too seriously.

“The Law is an Ass” says Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Yes, even here in Good Old Blighty, the oldest democracy in the world (err…sorry Iceland, Greece, Isle of Man, America, NZ +++), we sometimes get it badly wrong: the upshot being that we end up with laws that are ridiculous, unenforceable, dangerous or all of these. One such is the new UK Digital Economy Act (DEA). The Act was rushed through by the last UK Government without proper scrutiny or discussion, in the pre-election ‘wash-up’ period.

I recently took part in a debate at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park in London about the Act, organised by Digital Lounge and Digital Marketing London LinkedIn Groups (I always suspected these guys were real). I met some very interesting digital people and heard some great arguments (against) the Act but unfortunately(?) none of us is currently a Member of Parliament.

The DEA was voted through on its third reading in the House of Commons on April 7 this year by just 189 votes for, to 47 against. (there were 646 constituencies, meaning that approximately 37% of MPs bothered to turn up to vote and only some of these even attended the debate: democracy in action?).

Despite a massive ‘(Twitter) storm ‘of opposition and over 20,000 people writing to their MPs in opposition to the bill, all that ultimately matters in these cases is what the MPs actually do on the day and the Digital Economy Bill duly went through; it received the Royal Assent on April 8 and became law on June 12 2010.

The Bill was largely the work of former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson (aka ‘The Prince of Darkness‘ -his words, not mine). What was its inspiration? It was apparently intended to protect the intellectual property of creative people, specifically movie-makers, musicians, authors and their publishers, the thinking presumably being: “Without ownership there is no incentive to innovate”…

But maybe this view of copyright and its enforcement has been overtaken by technology. Perhaps it is outmoded and might actually stifle creativity. A friend of mine drew my attention to this excellent TEDTalks video about the lack of copyright in the Fashion Industry.

At Speakers’ Corner, I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Killock, Executive Director of The Open Rights Group who is a passionate and articulate opponent of the Act and defender of civil liberties, both online and offline. He is currently locked in talks with Ofcom (the UK regulator) about the Act. Now that it’s the law, the inertia inherent in the system means the legislation tends to trundle inexorably into our lives…Jim deserves our support.

As we know, the music industry is in turmoil. At the same time, newspapers are fighting a desperate battle against ‘the desire of their online content to be free’ (and the unwillingness of readers to pay for it). The movie industry is focused on protecting its intellectual property and revenue streams. This Act, in a significant content market, where people spend a lot of money on the arts and are also relatively digitally savvy, will be seen by the big studios as an important pillar in their global defensive edifice against illegal file downloaders and they may even seek test cases ‘pour encourager les autres’.

Another friend of mine is a photographer who has shot many classic music album covers; however he regularly sees his work in places where he wasn’t paid for usage. He doesn’t think the new Act will help him recover a penny in unpaid royalties (Copyright Lawyers For You anyone?). Rather, he believes the DEA is by the big content owners for the big content owners and that it does nothing to protect the little guy who has created something using his/her imagination and skill. So another Fail.

The penalties for suspected infringement of the DEA would appear to be draconian and the monitoring necessary for enforcement would potentially go against EU privacy law. Moreover the scope under the Act for miscarriages of justice is massive. What happens if your wireless router gets hacked? What about ‘Pirate Bay teenagers’ or indeed ‘LimeWire grannies’? Will poor old ‘Bill Payer’ be clobbered for the sins of others? How will guilt be established? Innocent parties might have their internet connections restricted (aka ‘throttled’) or even suspended. Legitimate websites may be blocked. Owners of internet cafes, university libraries and other public spaces will be too scared to provide Wi-Fi zones, for fear of prosecution under the Act. And in the Digital Age, is it fundamentally reasonable to deprive individuals and businesses of internet connectivity? So much for ‘Digital Britain’!

Moreover, who is going to enforce this Act? Are we to have an even keener surveillance society? Will the Police be sent round with wirecutters? Unlikely. Instead the ISPs will be required to be the bad guys. But TalkTalk and BT have already challenged the Act, the former stating that it is not prepared to comply with any instruction to disconnect their customers. So the Act is looking unworkable even as it hits the statute book…

However: as Edmund Burke apparently didn’t say(!?), “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”. Already, the big content owners and various Government spokespeople are talking about “making the Act work” and “getting on with implementation”. So we can’t rely on this Act to implode and reform itself.

This is the most important piece of legislation about the internet EVER in the UK. It’s too important to be left to politicians. Web access is a basic human right. Like food, water, shelter and political and religious freedom. (OK, we’re still working on some of these too). We didn’t get the right Law. So sign the petition against sections 11-18 of the Digital Economy Act 2010. And if you’re not a UK citizen, please pray that the ‘Mother Of All Parliaments’ gets it right next time.

Mike Berry is a Digital Marketing Consultant, Trainer and Blogger.

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mikeberrylinkedin