Evan Williams of Twitter but up a post yesterday entitled “The evolving ecosystem”. Based on the title, one might expect readers to come away with new insights and stats into how vibrant the ecosystem is. However, as I read it only one thought kept coming to mind – how much does the Twitter ecosystem really matter?

I’ll highlight two key points on this front. The first comes from the chart provided. 78% of people that log into Twitter do so through the main site (www.twitter.com). They next layer down are mobile applications – m.twitter.com, SMS, Twitter for iPhone, and Twitter for Blackberry. Each is in the 7 – 14% range (the percentages sum to greater than 100% as some people use multiple apps). Each of these, I believe, are controlled by Twitter itself. So you don’t really see any “ecosystem partners” pop on the list until the next tier down – TwitPic, Tweet Deck, and Echofon, at 3-4% each.

That’s important, particularly for social media marketers that are trying to understand the real experience customers might be having. Since many of them are power users that might naturally adopt some of these more advanced tools (like TweetDeck), and that might be their main Twitter experience – but it’s not representative of what the vast, vast majority of users experience. In turn, most would be better served spending more time on www.twitter.com, and optimizing content for that experience.

The second is paragraph two, which really brings the whole ecosystem thing into question:

One major area of difficulty I highlighted was getting Twitter on your phone. We did iPhone user tests and confirmed that even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called “Twitter.” This kept them from using Twitter at all. For this reason, we acquired Tweetie and turned it into Twitter for iPhone, complete with a new user sign-up experience. (emphasis added).

Think about that for a second. One of the key features of an ecosystem approach is to foster a wide variety of innovations, to suite a wide variety of customer needs. But what Twitter is saying is that even though there were a lot of options (and though they don’t say it, many of them were and are quite good), having these options actually prevented people from selecting any of them.

Now such findings shouldn’t be entirely surprising – numerous marketing studies in the past have shown that while a little choice is good, many customers become overwhelmed once there’s a lot of choice and end up not buying anything. This is roughly the equivalent.

So I ask – in a world where the vast majority of people access Twitter through the main site (and/or mobile extensions controlled by the main company), and Twitter found they had to make a single, easy option in order to get people to sign up for the mobile application on the iPhone (as they were overwhelmed by the options available), how much does the ecosystem really matter?

Or put another way, will simplicity continue to trump functionality?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post questioning the idea that “the customer is now in control” – a commonly heard refrain in the world of social media. The underlying premise was that if you take a deep look at what new technologies enable – particularly in terms of tracking individual behaviors – an argument can be made that companies can now be in far more control than they’ve ever been before.

I had this on my mind when I saw the recent post on how Virgin America partnered with Loopt – essentially giving away 2-for-1 flights to Cancun if you checked in at a taco truck during a certain time period. It was apparently quite successful. The number that is most jarring is that Loopt claims over 80% of the 1,300 people that checked in at a San Francisco taco truck have already bought tickets based on this promotion.

On the face of it, an 80% “conversion rate” seems absurd – marketers never get that. But there’s a slight twist here worth noting. It’s not 80% of people that heard about the offer – it’s 80% of the people that chose to check-in and take them up on the offer. In turn, it can’t really be compared to a normal conversion rate. “Checking-in”, in this case, is only done by the people that want the deal (i.e. if you don’t want it, you don’t bother, unless you REALLY wanted the two-for-one taco deal). In other words, they don’t sign in then happen to choose a deal; they sign in to get the deal. Big difference.

Why I think this is important ties directly back to the “customer is now in control” argument. In this case, a company (Virgin) chose to make a particular offer, given customers met certain conditions (go here, check in to loopt, etc.). It would appear that this offer galvanized over 1,000 people near the San Francisco taco truck alone (where any number of other things could be promoted) to go to it, check in (revealing who they are, at what time, etc.), and get it.

That indicates the company has a bit of control over the situation, and new data with which to potentially exert more control in the future, doesn’t it?

To spin it the other way, for the “customer to be in control” on these emerging location based, social networks, you’d expect that where people go would be determined primarily by where other people they know go (i.e. where your friends are, what they’re doing, etc.). But as more and more of these marketing campaigns roll out, and the reason for checking in becomes more and more driven by receiving rewards from companies, more and more “what people are doing” will be determined by “what companies want them to do” – using whatever interesting carrots they can come up with.

For marketers, that’s a pretty awesome development. For years we’ve heard about the potential challenges social media platforms like Facebook will have monetizing themselves. Most of these arguments have boiled down to people don’t want advertising, or commerce, built into their social activity. I’ve always thought these arguments were way overblown (if not totally misguided). But as platforms like Loopt and FourSquare evolve, I believe we’re going to find many customers prefer having marketing and commerce not only integrated, but driving what they do on them. They can always, say, text their friend to find out what they’re doing, after they grab the discount at the local restaurant.

Couple that with how much we can know about each person, and the “holy grail” of mobile payments being integrated into these social spheres, and it really is a very new world – and one where companies, in my opinion, can exert more control than ever before.

As I scan articles about the impact of social media on marketing, I commonly come some variant of the statement “the customer is now in control.” But the more I research and think about this statement, the less I believe it – and the underlying message being sent to marketers – is. So today I thought I’d explain why.

My first issue is with the word now. From my perspective, the customer has always been in control – the fate of companies providing products and services in a capitalist economy is ultimately determined by what customers choose to buy. In turn, the analysis shifts towards social media somehow giving customers slightly more control than they had before – a small, but important, distinction.

The typical argument is that as customers have connected with each other through platforms like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, the opinions they share amongst themselves have increased in importance, while the typical “broadcast marketing” approaches have decreased in effectiveness. While I do believe there is some truth to this, there is another way to look at what’s happening.

For starters, if customers only wanted to hear each other’s opinions, they could do so without engaging companies at all – either in somewhat self-organizing fashion through Facebook and Twitter, or “neutral” services like Yelp. But many, many customers are also opting to directly connect with companies – liking, following, lurking in communities, etc. – through these very same platforms. In doing so, many are effectively asking companies to engage with them.

Second, being “in control” takes time and effort. I would argue that many customers may want to “take control” in relation to certain product and service decisions, for many others they are happy to be passive recipients of messages (and offers) from their preferred brands. For example, the #2 reason given for becoming a Facebook fan (based on a survey earlier this year) was to receive coupons. And while I don’t have time to go into it here, one of the consistent findings from my research is that customers like being “broadcast” to on social media more than many people think.

On a related point, I believe that many customers are being overwhelmed by all the brand-related conversations taking place. For example, many brands on Twitter now commonly send 30+ messages a day, responding to specific people. Many consider this to be engaging. But if you follow (say) 30 such brands, that’s over 900 messages a day – most of which will be of absolutely no interest to you. Perhaps the method will persist for many more years, but perhaps not.

Finally (at least for today), as “word of mouth” marketing has moved online, and more and more data is generated, it’s becoming ever easier for brands to monitor exactly what people are saying, thinking and feeling about various things. I personally believe that all this information points towards a world where many brands can be far more “in control” than they’ve ever been before.

Tying it all together, I’ve taken to asking what someone like Don Draper – the lead character on Mad Men – would think about the rise of social media if he was ported into 2010. Would he look at all the new tools and behaviors and say “wow, I can’t control anything here!” Or would he say “wow, I can influence, monitor and control things more than ever before!”

My sense is that it would be the latter – and many companies would be well served by taking a similar line of thinking. After all, to be in control implies having power; it is commonly said that knowledge is power; and all this information is giving companies more knowledge than ever before.

That “customers are now in control” has become an increasingly common refrain in the marketing world. To be honest, I think I’ve used it a time or two myself. But the more that I think about, particularly in relation to social media, the less convinced I am that it’s actually true. In turn, I’ve been researching a very different hypothesis – that social media allows brands to have more control than ever before.

This hypothesis is at the centre of a webinar I’m doing in a few weeks – contact me if you’d like to check it out. It builds on one of the key research projects I’ve been working on – The incredibly shrinking marcom expense line – which looks at ways that marketers can use social media to reduce marcom expense, while at least maintaining current levels of impact. And what led me to the counter-hypothesis, in terms of control, were some fairly simple thoughts and questions.

In my mind, that customers are in control is not new – they always have been. What they choose to buy, or not buy, has been and always will be the ultimate determinant of success. What they say to each other has been of known importance for some time. So that leads to the question of which way the needle moves because of social media… which led me to jump into my time machine.

Go back in time ten years, and pretend you are a marketer. Somebody tells you that, in 2010, tools will be available that let you directly connect with a large, and growing, percentage of your customers, for free (or at a very low cost). Not only will the tools let you do that, but many customers will opt to allow you to do just that (often enthusiastically). Those that aren’t passionate enough about your brand to evangelize for you can opt to simply “like” you – in full visibility of their friends. At the same time, you can “eavesdrop” on many other conversations being had about your brand, and inject yourself when and where you see fit. Some customers will even co-create with you – sharing ideas for new products and services, or collaborating on new ones all together. And all of this will be happening on a variety of platforms where you can get a pretty accurate picture, increasingly in real-time, of what exactly is going on.

Would you have reacted to this by saying “wow, that’s giving up a lot of control?” Or would you have reacted with something more like “wow, that gives me the opportunity to control far more than I can today?”

I believe there’s elements of truth to both answers – but I personally think I would have fallen in the second camp. Social media offers an extraordinary number of opportunities to marketers, and taking advantage of them, in my mind, isn’t neccesarily synonymous with “giving up control”. And as my research gets into (and future blog posts will cover), I think a lot of brands that have “given up control” might find that many of their customers want them to take it back…

I spend a LOT of time reading about how companies are using social media to build their brands. In most cases, while the language varies widely, it tends to focus on engaging customers in conversations, within a community setting. And more often than not, a lot of attention is centered on getting customers to co-create, and turning them into evangelists (or ambassadors) for the brand.

I’m not opposed to any of this – in fact, I’ve spent a great deal of time studying customer co-creation strategies (what I typically refer to as prosumerism, as defined in Wikinomics), and think that most brands could benefit from adopting them on some level. But at the same time, I have a growing sense that this focus neglects a huge, and important, part of many brands’ customer bases – those that aren’t particularly interested in “engaging” in any meaningful way, but might still like to purchase your products or services.

While this has been a recurring theme on this blog recently, I was reminded of it again when I re-read a report Sean Moffitt wrote for my company (nGenera Insight) last year called “It takes a community – not a campaign – to raise a brand.” It’s a truly excellent piece of work from start to finish. But the chart on page 15 is what got my hamster wheel churning today. It defined nine different types of community members, ranging from “lurkers” – people who merely visit and consume content – to “ambassadors” – people who are immersed to the point they are pseudo employees. Most importantly, he included estimates of what percentage of community members fall in each group that seem about right.

According to the chart, only 40% of community members are at the level he called “socializers” – those that might post a full profile and an occasional message. Only 20% will put in so much effort as to answer a poll. Only 10% will originate content. And less than 0.5% will become true “ambassadors”.

So to me, that says somewhere between 60 and 80% of community members aren’t really “engaged” in any meaningful way – they’re more or less just visiting. That’s a pretty big number. And while I’ve heard many people talk about strategies (using various terminology) to try to increase the “engagement level”, my sense is that most of them will fail. Quite simply, many people just don’t want to connect with brands like that – or at least to all the brands they might use like that.

I think companies need to think deeply about satisfying the needs of this huge group of customers – which is where the title of this post came from. It’s not uncommon to hear story after story about success in building a small network of ambassadors (or co-creators), but it’s rare to hear someone talk about their success in delivering value to, say, lurkers – even though they’re a much larger group. In some cases, doing the first automatically does the second, but in other cases it does not.

Yelp is a classic example of the first case. A small percentage of people  create the vast majority of reviews on the site. By doing so, they collectively create the service that all the other users enjoy. So in that case, Yelp focusing most of their efforts on engaging (and growing) this relatively small group of people makes absolutely perfect sense. Similarly, when Starbucks sources an idea from MyStarbucksIdea.com, the benefits (in terms of new products, services, etc.) should not only accrue to their more passive (from a social media perspective) customers, but also those that might not engage on the web at all.

But other cases are not so clear cut. Whether it’s a company-controlled community, Facebook Fan (or Like) page, Twitter, MySpace, or what and wherever, there’s a very realistic chance that many of the people that come there are not interested in engaging, and not interested in what the other people are saying (or doing) either. But they might want, say, a coupon. Delivering one might not sound as 2.0 as engaging them in a two-way conversation, but it might be more effective (and profitable).

In the traditional media world, this was a very frustrating group of customers – extremely hard to reach, and the cost of doing so often led to a negative ROI if you even bothered to try. But I think those dynamics are changing dramatically, as the cost of connecting with some of them trends towards zero. Not only that, but I believe that some of these customers might turn into the most profitable ones you can have – if you don’t alienate them by focusing all of your efforts on getting them to “engage.”

I spent some time reading through Seth Godin’s blog today – noticing that I particularly appreciated all the thought provoking, but very short, blog posts, and realizing that while I also aim to do the former, I often forget about the latter. So today I’m doing a relatively short post in response to the most interesting quote I read (from “there is no tribe of normal“):

The only vibrant tribes in our communities are the ones closer the edges, or those trying to make change. The center is large, but it’s not connected… Heretical thoughts, delivered in a way that capture the attention of the minority–that’s the path that works.

Here’s what it got me thinking about. The large center may not be connected, but for most large businesses it’s pretty important (i.e. probably a lot of money in there). And I imagine that, in mast cases,  not only are most of them not interested in heretical thoughts, but they’d probably be put off by them. In turn, if you have a big, happy, “center” in your business (i.e. things are going well)… does it mean you shouldn’t build a community? Or is it possible to succeed here without being “vibrant”?

Last week I provided a brief introduction to the difference between loyal customers and prosumers, and evangelists and influencers. The basic idea is that while I might be tempting to look at the latter as “Web 2.0″ versions of the former, the reality is far different. It is not simply a case of using new technology to leverage similar types of relationships. Instead, it’s about new types of important relationships for companies to leverage, thanks to the new technology.

That post then focused on the key difference between loyal customers and prosumers – particularly in terms of profitability and impact on others. Today’s is shorter, focusing on a simple but important distinction between evangelists and influencers.

From a marketing perspective, evangelists are typically seen as those customers that love your brand so much that they’re willing to enthusiastically, and proactively, recommend it to friends and families. So in most cases, they’re not only your most profitable customers – they’re also the ones bringing new customers in. Most importantly for this analysis, they are – by definition – a subset of the “loyal customer” group.

Influencers, on the other hand, are definitely not a subset of prosumers. Moreover, they don’t necessarily have to love your brand in order to advocate in your favor – or even be a customer in some cases. The reason is simple. What makes influencers, well, influential, often hinges on their ability to discover and share interesting new things. If your company can come up with something they find compelling enough – a funny commercial, an interesting connection to a cause, a new and better product, whatever – they might well pick up on it, and help spread the message for you.

I find this subtle difference important. Prior to the Web 2.0, it was generally the case that a customer had to absolutely love you in order to put in the effort to evangelize for you. In the Web 2.0 world, anyone that finds anything you do even a little bit interesting might just be an influencer for you. In turn, it’s clear that strategies for engaging the two groups need to be totally different.

My research on the incredibly shrinking marcom expense line has focused heavily on the power of ambient intimacy – the ability to maintain far more weak tie relationships then ever before. Part of this story is that customers are allowing brands into their “ambient networks”; another aspect is that customers are so well connected together.

Often times, when people talk about taking advantage of these well-connected networks, they focus on leveraging the key influencers  – that small group of people that have a disproportionately high amount of influence on those around them. The case for doing so often makes sense, and thus marketers try to forge relationships with influencers they identify, tweet or message them directly, etc.

However, I believe that what’s often forgotten is that many of these influencers are masters of monitoring what’s going on online—and constantly on the lookout for new and interesting things.  If your brand message is enticing enough, it’s quite plausible that they’ll discover it on their own—either directly, or perhaps by noticing one of the (less popular) nodes in their own network picking up on it. In other words, in some cases you shouldn’t focus on spreading the message about your product – focus on your product, and the message around it, and see if it will spread on its own.

I was reminded of this thought when watching a McKinsey Quarterly video today on “lessons from the Japanese consumer” – who are often viewed as a group of people worth watching.  The first speaker, John Parker, said the following:

Consumers today, they don’t want to be told about a brand or a product – they want to discover it. In fact, there is a certain amount of cache for a consumer that discovers a cool product, or maybe a new or unknown brand, and then shares it with others. And that digital forum allows that to happen in a way that happens so much faster than ever happened in the past.

I like the word “cache” here – and think he’s right. When you combine the cache that ties to discovering something new,with people (like many influencers) focused on discovering new things… perhaps less is more when it comes to trying to leverage them.

Now I’m not saying companies and marketers should never think through a strategy about how to engage key influencers – just that sometimes we place too much focus on this, and in some cases deliberately trying to connect with them might lower the chances they will spread your message through their networks. It takes a certain amount of bravery to test this, because it’s frankly uncomfortable to “make a plan not to plan”, but it just might work. Of course, if you take this approach it helps if you truly have a better mousetrap -or at least a more entertaining one .

A couple of weeks ago Media post published an article called “what’s holding back social network advertising?” In it were what appeared to be some rather jarring statistics – notably that not only do social network ad revenues fall significantly lower than their search and display counterparts, but they are actually forecast to grow much slower as well. Based on this, the article questions whether 2010 is really going to be the year of social media in terms of online advertising – as all the glowing press coverage would indicate.

Why this interested me so much was that it plays directly into one of my main research areas right now – what I’ve been calling the incredibly shrinking marcom expense line. My argument is that when people look at advertising online, they take a spend-centric point of view. Basically if $X is spent on (say) display advertising, $Y is spent on social media, and Y is significantly less than X, than something must be holding it back.

I take a different perspective, based on one two very simple, inter-related observations. One, the value of advertising – from a marketer’s perspective – should be based on the impact it has on customers, not (rather perversely) on how much it costs to reach them. Two, marketers can increasingly connect with their customers for free through the leading social media platforms.

Think about it for a second. If you take the spend-centric view point, placing an ad on Facebook (that costs the company money) is seen as a positive indicator for social network advertising; getting several hundred thousand fans to attend an event (for free) is not. Assuming you can post an ad on Twitter (for a fee) soon, that will be seen as a positive indicator; sending a tweet to hundreds of thousands of fans (for free) is not. And if you extend the same logic out to YouTube, placing a text ad (for a fee) on someone else’s video is seen as positive; having millions of people watch your company’s commercial (for free) is not.

That seems ass backwards to me. Again, looking at it from a marketer’s perspective, the ability to connect directly with customers, for free (or extremely cheaply), is a good thing. Opportunities abound to do just that, each one capitalizing on what I consider to be the most important thing about social media platforms – that they enable ambient intimacy. While I could go into great detail on this, the ability to “friend” and “follow” (among other things) has simply shattered Dunbar’s number.

As noted, one of our key research projects at nGenera Insight – and my personal favorite – is digging deeply into the opportunities surrounding the incredibly shrinking marcom expense line. Some of them stem from using Twitter and Facebook effectively; others link to building effective brand communities – particularly those where prosumers get actively engaged; still others center on emerging new platforms like Yelp. I believe that marketers who successfully take advantage of all the opportunities here will find they can use social media strategies to achieve two, often competing goals – driving long-term growth, and proving short-term ROI.

The details can get complicated, but the underlying story remains deceptively simple. Sometimes, doing for free what you once had to pay for can be priceless. Feel free to contact me – in the comments, @denisbhancock, denisbhancock (at) gmail.com – if you have any thoughts on this (or would like to hear more about it).

Many companies have been pursuing various ways to connect their brands with charitable causes – a subset of what we call “brand as movement.” In some cases, doing so seems easy – say, a bookstore supporting literacy programs. But for many organizations, such obvious connection points do not exist, and it’s a big challenge to wade through all of the options available to them to find something that will positively impact the brand.

But there’s an interesting new trend emerging on this front. Instead of simply selecting a handful of causes to throw their money behind (and connect their brand to), more and more companies are pursuing a “microsponsorship” approach. As AdAge reported yesterday, companies like Pepsi and Bisquick allow customers to pitch their own pet projects, and those chosen receive financing as low as a few hundred dollars – though in the case of Pepsi Refresh, the grants typically range from $5,000 to $25,000.

Why I find this so interesting ties to a recurring theme on this blog – prosumerism (think producer + consumer = prosumer), where customers become actively engaged in the co-creation of value. In some cases (such as through MyStarbucksIdea), prosumers merely give ideas that the company can act on; in others (such as Lego Mindstorm) they directly innovate on top of given products and services; in still others (such as Motley Fool Caps), the prosumer community forms an entirely new value proposition all together.

In this case, prosumers come to the company with an idea for what they can do. And while they may not be doing anything for the company directly, their engagement obviously goes far beyond ideation – if they get the funding, they have to go and do what they say they’re going to do. In turn, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out – and, from a marketing perspective, what the net benefits are for companies connected to such a distributed network of “brand as movement” projects.

On a somewhat similar front, I met with the people developing WellofChange last week. What they’re doing is very interesting – providing a platform where people can volunteer their discretionary time (say, providing a golf lesson), while the recipient of said lesson pays an agreed upon price, that goes to the charity of the volunteers choice. But tied to this, they also have an enterprise version, where WellofChange acts as the platform where a particular companies employees can engage as “volunteers” – with the proceeds earned from their contributions again flowing back to the charity of their choice.

If you put the two together, it’s a very interesting twist on the “brand as movement”. Not only might companies fund prosumers to do a wide variety of charitable projects that might reflect well on the brand, but their own employees might be funding a wide variety of others as well – also reflecting well on the brand. But of course, from a marketing perspective, the long-term implications of this are a little bit hazy. If enough companies start doing one (or both), it’s hard to differentiate from the pack – and it just becomes another “cost of doing business” (though of course, good for society at large). In turn, companies that are interested in the two approaches, and are taking a long-term perspective in terms of brand building, still might want to set some parameters about exactly what types of things their prosumers (and employees) should be supporting – and why.