Social networking sites: friends or foes?

In an article in a Dutch newspaper of July of this year (Nederlands Dagblad, July 22, 2010), several large companies spoke out against free use of social networking websites among their personnel. Big names such as IBM and Imtech were named, among others, as attempting to construct a social networking policy for anyone working for them. Not just in regards to using social networking websites while at work, but also to explore the possibility of policing the profiles employees create on such websites. In essence, certain companies are openly wondering: "what kind of profile fits our company and can we make an employee adjust their personal profile on website X when it doesn't meet our standards?"

Apparently they are not the only ones trying to figure this out. A simple Google search for "social networking policy" renders over ninty-one thousand results. Some are more relevant than others, but all together they show that this is definitely becoming somewhat of a hot topic.

Bavaria: letting social media do the work for you.

So, who outside of the Netherlands HAD actually heard of Bavaria beer before the world cup?

The orange dresses the beer brewery introduced for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, caused quite the hype. Prior to an incident involving the eviction of a group of women in the Bavaria dresses, from a stadium where they were wanting to watch a Netherlands - Denmark game, the dresses were mostly of interest to Dutch women wanting to support their national team, and some women whose men liked the low cut of the dress on their girlfriends. However, when three women were arrested for coordinating the event where thirty-six women showed up at the stadium in the Bavaria Dutch Dresses, the press caught on fire.

This wasn't the first time for Bavaria to battle with FIFA over whether their World Cup gadgets went against advertisement regulations. At the 2006 World Cup in Germany, prior to the Dutch game against the Ivory Coast, people were asked by stadium staff to remove their so called 'Leeuwenhosen', to be replaced by orange shorts without a brand printed on it. The Leeuwenhosen were donned an act of ambush marketing, with Bavaria getting called on it by the FIFA for not having paid to be a corporate sponsor or official event partner, to be allowed to market their own brand.

Why is it that we barely remember this incident in 2006, which is after all only four years ago?

One possible answer is: social media. The 2010 incident with the Dutch Dresses might not have been much more than an incident, if it hadn't immediately set social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and the popular version of the Dutch MySpace, Hyves, on fire. News has never traveled faster as it does nowadays, with just about anyone being able to launch a tidbit of information onto the world wide web, only to have it spread like wildfire. With so many tweets, Facebook posts and Hyves comments and updates on Bavaria's Dutch Dresses, Bavaria got more marketing done in a few days than it could have paid for during the whole World Cup month in total.

In the end, FIFA did Bavaria a favor by telling them they couldn't market their brand in the stadiums by having large groups of people wear their dresses. Whether Bavaria intended for that to happen or not, didn't matter much to the FIFA organization. Bavaria settled the case of the arrested women out of court and they were released moments later. Another Bavaria marketing scandal put to rest... everywhere, except on the internet. A search on Twitter shows people are still tweeting about the dresses, showing off the Bavaria logos in photos, manipulated photos and other such popular internet mediums to get a message across.

You have to wonder if Nike isn't hoping someone will notice people wear their shoes to matches in the South African stadiums, while they're not an official sponsor of the event this year, either. Someone launch a tweet debate about whether or not this is breaking FIFA marketing rules, and watch social media work some more unpaid marketing magic.

Twitter: advertisement tweets. Spam your way to profit?

Twitter: one of the most explosively growing social media applications on the world wide web. The website, which allows people to create an account and post 'microblogs' containing up to 140 characters, reportedly had over 100 million users earlier this year. The people behind Twitter, while previously naming the improvement of the user experience their main goal, are now suggesting the primary goal should be to figure out ways to make money with the microblogging service.

This of course begs the question if the amount of money to be made through Twitter, by Twitter, is directly proportional to the amount of annoyance the website's users will experience. Already companies are trying to advertise themselves on Twitter, searching 'tweets' either manually or with computer software, for certain keywords. Once these keywords are found any user unfortunate enough to have unwittingly used them, gets added by the company's/website's/attention seeker's account and/or gets tweeted information on products or services they never asked for. Often both.

More often than not, these search-and-add techniques are done by computer software, resulting in people getting spammed with messages full of products and services only marginally related to their own interests or conversations. A conversation with a friend as skinny as I am, about the fact American clothing sizes are bigger than most European ones, by default, and us wanting some smaller sizes from certain sellers, resulted in both of us getting added and spammed by a twitter account set up for a clothing store dealing in big sizes only. A tweet about a tattoo got me added by the account of a tattoo parlor situated in Florida, while my Twitter profile clearly lists my location as being the Netherlands.

Imagine Twitter taking it upon themselves to spam you with their money schemes. They could allow companies to buy in any amount of commercialized tweets. Maybe they could show up on people's tweet feeds in funky colors like purple with yellow text or something else headache inducing. If the company pays premium, tweets will show up on protected accounts' feeds too, because Twitter can search all tweets for keywords, even protected ones.

No one will be safe. The only way left to combat the unwanted tweet spam is by coding your messages in such a way that even your closest friends will need a special decoder ring to decipher what you are trying to say. "TBAFATW" will stand for 'the birds are flying against the wind' which will be code for dinner plans being ruined by unexpected overtime at work. Twitter users already fluent in 'chat-andtext-speak' where whole sentences are abbreviated into incomprehensible gibberish, will find the switch quite easy, while everyone else will struggle worse than their grandmother figuring out e-mail.

The worst thing about Twitter advertisements is that there is no real way to block them. One has to manually go over the list of followers and block and/or report them for spam, and even then, the promoter's goal has already been reached. You have already seen their product, the link to their website, their tweet, their profile, their brand, or anything else they might have thrown at you in a tweet or even just their suggestive account name. Users can lock down their account so that their tweets are shared only with those they allow to see them, which effectively stops most software from searching your tweets for keywords. Of course, someone retweeting your tweets, or even just responding to you in an unlocked reply, can cause sneakier programs to pick up on you after all. Basically, just locking your own tweets is not enough, you'll have to get all your friends and other followers to do the same.

For a communication service based on sharing with the world, it sure is sad to see the only way to combat unwanted commercialized spam is to stop sharing so freely. I'd like some numbers on how much profit random companies make by spamming their products and services on Twitter, to people who never asked for their information. It would be good to know if annoying people in this way actually pays off for them or not.