Via un message envoyé par Philippe Schnobb aux membres de son , j’ai appris que l’émission de Marie-France Bazzo, , présenterait ce vendredi un . Philippe nous demandant notre avis sur la question de l’utilité de FB, j’en profitai alors pour lui faire part de mon opinion sur le sujet…

Bonjour Philippe,

voici mon opinion en réponse à la question que tu nous poses, à savoir: quelle est l’utilité de Facebook.
À mon avis, la plus grande utilité de FB (ou ce que le réseau apportera à la collectivité) ne doit pas être évalué d’un point de vue utilitariste. De fait, FB n’apporte rien d’autres qui n’existait pas auparavant. Avant FB, les internautes échangeaient photos sur Flickr, planifiaient leurs rencontres sur meetup.com et faisaient du réseautage grâce à LinkedIn.

Facebook, en créant une plate-forme générale, facile d’accès et conviviale, se trouve à avoir propulser une réalité qui demeurait jadis l’apanage d’une sous-culture branchée à un phénomène de masse. Ainsi, en rendant le phénomène des réseaux sociaux grand-public, FB devient par conséquent porte-étandard de tous les enjeux qui sont reliés au web 2.0. Facebook devient alors utile car il agit comme catalyseur d’interrogation auprès des décideurs qui devront éventuellement léfigérer et se questionner sur de nombreuses problématiques qu’amène l’avènement de la culture web 2.0 :

• qui est ou sera propriétaire du contenu généré par les utilisateurs

• qui doit légiférer ce même contenu

• qui devient responsable de notre identité virtuel

• quel contenu devra demeurer privé ou public

Finalement, c’est grâce à Facebook que les gens au pouvoir pourront prendre des décisions plus éclairées sur ces problématiques, car ils auront auparavant été sensibilisé (dans le meilleur des cas, ils auront déjà utilisé) la plate-forme qu’est FB.
Note sur la question du débat: Pour ou contre Facebook ? FB est une réalité, tel que le froid en décembre, évidemment nous ne pouvons nier son existence ni est contre le phénomène… c’était mon avis

au plaisir de te regarder à la télévision

Nicolas

‘‘To rise a brand it takes a community, not a campaign’’

was the morning keynote speaker at . Sean started the presentation asking us if we think that brands are more valuable today than it was in the past. I find it funny that even if the crowd was mainly marketers, about half of the audience answered that it wasn’t… For spending most of my career into a corporate environment, one thing I know for sure is that the brand is probably the most valuable asset that a company has (it became obvious after the majors scandals in early 2000 : Nortel, Enron, Anderson,…). Anyway here ’s what i’d like to share from the presentation

• / /
• brand engagement :
• ”people under 25 get the stuff ”
  
• /
• ”to rise a brand it takes a community, not a campaign”
• from

I feel that I should write something about my day at webcamp (the unconference) but I don’t know what… The discussions were pretty intense and everything but structured. It was more than just brainstorming on what the web industry could be, it was a never-ending exchange of data, feelings, impressions, ideas and concepts. , describes it as a ‘‘ salon de thé de la culture internet, philosophie moderne du réseau ou pragmatisme des communautés… tout ça ! ’’. Considering that we’ve touch a lot of different topics, here’s my thought on one of them:

On the use of wikis

Is the use of appropriate for business? How could we find a way to make sure that the wiki will work? According to me, the difficulty to implement a successful wiki into a specific environment is due to the fact that we are not educated (think about elementary school and high school) to be directly involved into projects (we are taught to listen carefully and to raise our hand if any questions). The lack of participation from the people in editing articles, restructuring texts (what we call collaboration) is responsible of the failure of what I think could be one of the greatest tool that any organization could have. Candid question: anyway that we could reverse the 90% / ?

for the future of webcamp

Webcamp Montreal is a group of webheads, passionate individual working in the web industry. Thanks to Sylvain Carle and the Webcom organisation for making this first meeting successful. We plan to make webcamp a recurring event, next one should be around February, in the meantime, there is a created, still empty, but there. So feel free to join the event ! Thanks also to everyone who showed up for the day or for a moment, it was appreciated (randomly : Seb Paquet, Patrick Desmarais, Sylvain Carle, Jean-Marc Langevin, Mitch Joel, Nicolas Cossette, Bruno Boutot, Patrick Tanguay, Martin Lessard, Marc Laporte, and many others that I haven’t taken their names).

Into their called , IBM is ‘‘forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50’’.

Starting with an image taken from the report,

here’s what this reality means for…

Advertisers

• They will have to rethink how advertising is sold, created, consumed and tracked.
  
• Mass geographic targeting will change to demographic or psychographic targeting (micro-segmentation).
  
• They will benefit of the payment switch from commissions (or cost per quantity) to types of payment based on results, but they will have to find new partners to manage their budgets

Traditional agencies

• Shifting from traditional media to internet marketing and digital marketing won’t be an option anymore. They will have to change or disappear. ()
• Changing their revenue model: the way that they charge for a traditional campaign won’t be applicable to the new form of marketing.
• Be open and accept the fact that they will probably need help to understand master all that digital terminology geeky stuff.

Consumers

• They will gain more power in taking a active part into the communication process which used to rarely consider the consumer’s feedback.
  
• They will become involve into the creativity process of the advertising.
• By writting reviews, appreciations and comments, they will become the first reliable ressource of referrals.

Now who’s the winner ?

1. for the event: for anyone into internet marketing, web design industry or communication agencies, it is going to be the place to be! The event should also get a .

2. for the speakers: impressive list of people truly connected to the social media hype. The speakers should talk about very different and specific topics such as corporate blogging for (), social networking for (), social bookmarking and tagging for (), interactive marketing for () and digital marketing for ().

3. because we’ll be presenting: For those of you who will be following the interactive marketing track (other tracks are interactive communication and interactive solutions) you will see (our CEO) on the panel called : how to increase your traffic and visibility with search engine marketing.

4. because $$$ : considering that the ticket is 395.00$ CDN (not talking about $US), it should be a good reason to attend.

5. to optimize my : In the past, we have manage to get a lot of good deals when we go to these kinds of events. When Guillaume talked about social media marketing at the , a lot of people came to us to get further info (and later projects). Even when we are not presenting we have a lot of good leads. As for example, when () at the , only the fact the he pointed at us giving our work as an example of social media optimization, brought us a lot of visibility (and even more…)

Hopin’ to see you @webcom ! /

1. for the format: It is going to be an . I have to quote on this ‘’pour tous ceux qui trouvent que les conférences dans les grandes salles sont “trop conceptuelles et pas assez appliquées”.’’

2. for the discussions: . (1)Social medias: “white hat social hacking” ou “social media optimization”. (2) L’identité numérique : les standards émergents et la pratique actuelle (3) Le web Mobile : “application web” et “ergonomie + use cases” (4) du contenu : ou pourquoi nous sommes à l’ère de “l’anti-portail”.

3. for the opportunities: we did this informal and although the main objective was to educate students about the possibilities of Internet marketing, we exited the conference with a lot of people interested in our work and (few days after) another player(someone from the audience) was joining us on our marketing team. So it’s always good to exchange and network with as many as possible, we never what will happen.

4. for the learning and the knowledge: it is more about discussions and proactive debates. Chances to talk to people into the industry: often people ahead in what they are doing in comparison of people in the other room…

5. to optimize my ROI: 40$ the day, includes a lunch

/

Here’s a recap of yesterday’s Montreal Facebook Camp first session hosted by Thane Calder (). According to (), the fact is that Facebook exists and that the network reaches thousands of people, so marketers should go where there is an audience and that’s it. () added that Facebook is interesting because it does replicate the social interaction that we have offline. A fascinating point of view came from ( who is impressed by the impact of Facebook but doesn’t seems convinced for the moment on what Facebook could really bring in terms of an interesting way to advertise. ‘’Facebook a encore des devoirs à faire’’ de dire Stréliski, ‘’je ne suis pas encore séduit par la sirène, fasciné, mais pas encore convaincu, j’aime la sincérité, je ne le sais pas…, on a la conviction qu’il se passe quelquechose, je veux vivre l’histoire, pas la manquer, y se passe quelquechose, mais on ne sait pas quoi ?’’

Next question was about what are you doing as marketers for the moment on Facebook ? Most of the four panellists agreed that for the moment, marketers are watching it, looking at Facebook as a way to experiment. Vlad came with the idea that we should think about Facebook more like a media, ‘’we should come with an application, with a different mindset, then it will force us to respect people’’. Olivier Soussy for Radio-Canada, sees it on two points of view: first, ‘’on constate une migration de notre audience vers des sites ou le contenu est générer par les utilisateurs’’, secondly ‘’d’un point de vue commercial, on constate une pression à la baisse sur , il y a tellement d’inventaires de qualité sur le net, on est dans un marché de vendeurs de pub maintenant. Facebook devient un appel d’air au niveau publicitaire, il ne faut pas se tromper, il faut attendre, les taux de clics sont désastreux, le branding n’est pas possible, les gens sont intéressés par eux-mêmes sur FB (photos, amis, applications). ‘’ According to Olivier Soussy, there is an urgency to wait.

Next question was about targeting marketing. Vlad tells us that it is going to take a lot of tools and that is going to be hard to manage targeting for mass marketing. Again, everyone agrees on the fact that the quality and the quantity of the data is incredible but we don’t know how to use it, for the moment. So comes the difficulty to sell Facebook as advertising to our customers. Olivier Soussy adding that whatever the place, it just takes a good ad, it’s not about creation or design, it’s all about the right message sent to the right people.

As for the applications, Andrea Stairs (e-bay) educated us about , one is to show our friends what we have brought through e-bay. Someone from the audience asked if Radio-Canada, as the New York Times did, will come up with an application in the future. Answer is probably not, considering that SRC is a ‘’grosse machine’’ and that is hard to change things into large corporations. Jean-Jacques Stréliski also thinks that it is difficult with FB for the agencys because their revenue models are not made to advertise on Facebook. It is more the customers who want to be on Facebook.

In the end, the panel left us with many questions (more than answers) but since everything on Facebook is new and considering that , the future will probably give us much more answers.

Last week, I had the opportunity to join ten other people in order to plan, organise, let’s say brainstorm about bringing Canada’s monthly Social Media Meetup in Montreal. The purpose of what is called ‘‘Third Tuesday ’’ is to meet other communications professionals while exploring everything regarding the social media perspective. The concept inspired itself from the Third Thursday groups in San Francisco Bay and is now operating in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. Thanks to Joseph Thornley, CEO of the , who came from Ottawa to educate us about how it was going so far in Ontario. He explained us also that each meeting is oriented on a main presentation (last speakers in Ottawa were in October and ) and that the targeted audience is PR and marketing people interested in learning more about the applications of the new media in business.

… la suite est à venir (meaning… we will wait to see who will be interested in organizing the meetings but here is the list of the people who were at our brainstorming meeting -based on the business cards that i kept: , , , , , , , ,…