Facebook is Not a Social Network

Facebook is Not a Social Network, it’s an Operating System: Gerd Leonhard on the Social Consumer

Quick 10 point summary and embed of a useful presentation by The Futures Agency‘s Gerd Leonhard on the rise of the social consumer.  It’s big picture, thought provoking stuff:

1. Technology takes power from brands and retailers and puts it in the hand(sets) of consumers.  Connected everywhere, empowered everywhere, and distracted everywhere – the new consumers are ‘people of the screen’ – a mobile video-generation and a real-time people-media network
2. ‘It’s the framework which changes with new technology and not just the picture within the frame.’ (Quote to remember from Marshall McLuhan): Technology has converged online and offline worlds – we now live in one hyper-connected networked and cloud-powered world
3. This means marketing and media are no longer about reach and distribution – they are about attention – increasingly measured in “Likes” (how much would you pay for someone’s attention stream?)
4. Doing business with the new consumer is not a technology play, it is a culture play – marketers must build on emerging cultural practices, not emerging technology. Key to these emerging practises are social consumption, social transparency (the tyranny of transparency), social trust and the use of social currency (FB Credits)
5. Doing business with the new consumer is not a technology play, it’s a people play; technology will never replace people; people who use technology will replace people who don’t.  The thing about people is that they are social – and they share; sharing should be hardwired into your value proposition – building share-ability into what you say and do (‘social brand actions’). And from this humanistic perspective, communicating why you do what you do is as important as explaining what you do and how you do it
6. Doing business with the new consumer is not a technology play, it’s a content play – businesses must become publishers as well as producers – connecting consumers to ‘likeable’ (filtered/curated) content as well as producing likeable products
7. In the new framework, Facebook is not a network, it’s a social OS enabling and empowering social action
8. To help businesses profit from the social OS, agencies must become proficient in the 5Cs –contextualising, connecting, curating, culling and collating
9. As a social OS, Facebook is the premier platform for social commerce – social commerce is the “new normal” – adding a social layer to retail will become a hygiene factor for successful commerce
10. The simple success formula for operating on the Social OS – create more value than you capture (Tim O’Reilly)

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