Web Business by Ken Burbary

Quick explanation for those not familiar with Facebook Connect. It is a service developed by Facebook that lets Facebook users login into partner sites using their Facebook account and share information with Facebook friends. Basically, a single sign-on authentication solution that websites can use instead of relying on building it for themselves.

Facebook Connect – Current State of the Union

As of this writing, there are more than 15,000 registered implementations (websites, devices and applications) of Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008. According to Nick O’Neil from Allfacebook.com, the most recent statistics show that Facebook Connect is close to 1 million users. Impressive numbers given this initiative isn’t even a year old yet. Implementing this can be trivial, and offers immediate benefits to companies willing to experiment. Already we’re seeing these benefits on Connect enabled sites:

Increased Registration - Data from Facebook states that sites that use Facebook Conect as an alternate to account registration have seen a 30-300% increase in registration on their sites.

• Citysearch.com – Daily site registrations have tripled in the 4 months since Facebook Connect testing began
• Huffingtonpost.com – Since integrating with Facebook Connect, more than 33% of their new commentor registrations come through Facebook
• Cbsinsider.com – Over 85% of all new user registrations are coming from Facebook Connect

Increased Site Traffic - After implementation, Facebook.com immediately begins sending web site traffic your way. Data from Facebook says that for each story published in Facebook, companies see roughly 3 clicks back to the site.  Nearly half the stories in the News Stream get clicked on. This creates opportunities for the site to encourage more user actions – knowing that each one may result in 3 new visits to their site.

• Lollapalooza.com – Pageviews are up 99 percent, page views per visit are up 34 percent, and the average time on the site is up 20 percent since Facebook Connect implementation
• Surfline.com – July referrals increased 57%, and 38% over the 2009 monthly average (Facebook Connect wasn’t even implemented until July 27th – The means they saw the benefits from just 4 days worth of traffic, not the entire month). August is already off to a great start, with trending at an 83% increase month-over-month, and 148% over the 2009 average

Increased Engagement – Facebook users are used to being social. They are an active group, participating, sharing, and generating more content. Sites with Facebook Connect see a 15-100% increase in reviews. Connected users create 15-60% more content than users who have not connected with Facebook Connect.

• Urbanspoon -  43,000 new users have connected using Facebook Connect. Those users have voted 150,000 times on restaurants , left 22,000 reviews, and uploaded 13,000 photos
• CitySearch - 94% of users who write reviews on the site share those reviews back on Facebook, where 70% of their friends who see the review click on it, and travel back to Citysearch.com

Improved User Experience - Facebook Connect offers users qualitative benefits too. No new site registration is required, simply login using your Facebook credentials. It also makes it easy to share with an existing network of friends or family by publishing activities to the Facebook Newsfeed, with only a couple clicks of the mouse. No typing or emailing required. Given the sheer size of Facebook’s active user base, this type of integration with an individual’s personal network could ultimately become the new “email a friend” feature found on websites worldwide.

Access to 250 million Online Consumers – At the end of the day, companies need to fish where the fish are. And right now, the fish are spending their time on Facebook.com (5 billion minutes a day globally). Opening up a direct pathway from your site to Facebook gives you access, albeit indirectly through your user’s activities, to an entirely new set of people. And for practically no out of pocket cost.

Bonus Round:

Facebook Connect Innovation – Companies that are willing to take on some additional time and effort for more advanced implementations of Facebook Connect are moving beyond the basic benefits above. Sites like the HuffingtonPost are innovating and creating new uses, like HuffPost Social News. This initiative goes beyond allowing users to login using Facebook, and instead mashes up HuffPost news content with the conversation surrounding it, attempting to create a digital water cooler like environment and feel. The intent and prevailing logic is that it will increase engagement and social participation. Based on the results from the other examples above, HuffPost stands a good chance at doing just that.

Increase Revenue – Some e-Retailers have taken notice of Facebook Connect and are beginning to formulate plans for implementing it, while other more progressive companies already have it live (retailers like Jansport and Teavana). According to a report from the WSJ, Jay Allen, Teavana’s vice president of e-commerce, says the conversion rate—a measure of how many shoppers make purchases—for people who use the application is 20% higher than the rate for others, and their average orders are slightly more expensive. Other e-Retailers that have announced plans to integrate with Facebook Connect are Dicks Sporting Goods, Drugstore.com and eMusic.com.

Key Takeaway: Facebook Connect offers immediate benefits to both website visitors and the companies that operate them. Tapping into existing social behavior is the next logical step to brand website & social media integration. Companies should take advantage of the benefits Facebook offers, as they are also immediate (see Surfline example above) and substantial.

Resources: Allfacebook.com has a good directory of some Facebook Connect installations. The most recent and up to date data, news, and examples can be found on the official Facebook Connect News page.

And if you want watch it in action before trying it yourself, check out the Video Overview of Facebook Connect courtesy of Powered Inc.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time over the past several months thinking about social media monitoring, and the benefits that companies, both large and small, can gain from it. I’ve invested a significant amount of time investigating many of the leading monitoring platforms and tools, and learned there are many nuances to conversation monitoring. I thought others might benefit from my research on this topic. So, I decided to put together a list, not comprehensive but a solid start, of the top social media monitoring tools.

I would also appreciate your help in building on this list. So if you know of additional and worthwhile social media monitoring tools, please contribute to the wiki I have started by submitting additional cases.

If you find the wiki useful, please consider a stumble, bookmark, or digg of this page.

A new trend is beginning to emerge among brand websites. Some brands, more established in social media uses, have taken the next step beyond maintaining a social presence on the platforms and begun integrating relevant online conversation into their brand websites, providing consumers with a real-time view into what others are saying about a brand’s products and/or services. This isn’t insignificant, nor the first time it has been done. Earlier this year, Skittles took the first step and threw out the typical brand web site only to replace it with a home base of Skittles content pulled directly from the social web (Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr pages).

However, social media integration within brand sites has evolved since Skittles took the leap. Recent examples by Nissan and Ford offer consumers a hybrid of traditional brand site content mashed up with social media content. Let’s look at a few examples in detail.

Nissan – http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/

Initial observations: Nissan is displaying questions and answers submitted via Twitter. Is it really a raw, unfiltered, feed though? My submission wasn’t displayed instantly, and appeared to get submitted for review. Which means this is more of a moderated approach to social media integration. This is understandble given the risks associated with blindly displaying content from the social web, yet one that has also caused problems for other brands in the past due to censorship concerns, and calls for more transparency. Regardless, I admire Nissan’s spirit in attempting to provide a real world view of what questions other consumers are asking, and the answers given. Is this a step towards car buyers research 2.0?

Ford – http://www.fordvehicles.com/the2010mustang/

Initial observations: Ford is taking a different approach but sticking with the same spirit of social integration. The 2010 Ford Mustang site provides the traditional brand site data but enhances that by pulling in relevant blog posts across the social web. Again, I applaud the brands efforts to be transparent and provide related social content for prospective buyers. The process for determining where to pull from and which social web content gets displayed is unknown, but one can assume some moderation, much like the Nissan example.

Verdict: I like it. Adding more consumer value beyond basic product info. In-market buyers can not only get product specs on the brand site but also other consumers perspectives and answers. We’re seeing the evolution of the corporate and product brand site. The impact social media is having on consumer perception and expectation is staggering. These examples show progressive brands that are rapidly experimenting with the most effective ways to integrate traditional and social content together. This is only the beginning and I look forward to watching the continued evolution because in the end both parties win. Brands and consumers. And that is an ending we don’t typically see enough.

More?

Have you seen other examples like these? Please share in the comments below.