The Social “Ask”

by Ron on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Remember Ask.com? Back before Google became almost synonymous with internet search (sorry, Yahoo!), Ask had users enter natural language questions rather than strings of keywords. Ask is about to relaunch with an interesting new structure. First, the search engine now returns natural language answers instead of links. Second, and even more interesting, users will be able to open their query to the user community for a crowd-sourced answer.

via Horia Varlan (Creative Commons 2.0)

Ask is hardly alone in making Q&A part of social search. A startup called Aardvark enables social Q&A by finding a person in the user’s network to answer a question. Aardvark may have been onto something, as it was recently acquired by Google. Other social search sites that have enabled social Q&A are Quora and Formspring. Quora considers itself a “continually improving collection” of user-generated questions and answers. Formspring is oriented toward “conversational Q&A [that] helps you express yourself”. Among the major social networks, Facebook is developing a Q&A application, which is currently in private beta. LinkedIn long has supported the ability to ask questions and hold threaded discussions within user groups, while Twitter can support Q&A but doesn’t have a specific application.

We think that Q&A is a natural extension of social search and will become a permanent part of the social media landscape. We think Q&A is particularly relevant to social shopping. The process that now begins with a shopper’s review or recommendation can just as easily begin with another shopper’s request for information. Like writing reviews, answering questions is a way for shoppers to provide value, demonstrate expertise and gain influence. Of course, we at Zavee are continuing to develop and refine our own social search capabilities, so you can look forward to exciting new features over the next several months.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Social Q&A is suddenly hot, but that doesn’t make it a fad.
  • Q&A is a natural extension of the social shopping feature set.
  • Look for exciting new social search features coming soon from Zavee.

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ADT Saved My House

by Ron on Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Those of you who follow Zavee Thinking may have noticed that this week’s post is a few days late. I was a little tied up this week and when I explain why I hope you will understand that the delay couldn’t be helped.

I was planning to blog about the new Old Spice campaign, in which Wieden + Kennedy’s creative team first seeded Social Media influentials with the idea of tweeting Old Spice pitch-hunk Isaiah Mustafa to ask for a personalized video – and then produced the video “responses” almost in real time. You can read about this amazing campaign here.

But I’m not going to blog about Old Spice. I’m going to blog about my fire, and about how ADT (and others) saved my house.

At 10:06 on Monday morning, ADT, which provides central station monitoring services, detected a fire alarm on the second floor of my home in New Jersey. They called the local fire department, which responded within minutes. Soon, firefighters from no less than 10 different companies – mostly volunteers – were working to put out the fire, which began when wires shorted inside a wall between a bathroom and a closet. No one was home when the fire broke out and none of the firefighters or police was injured.

Because ADT called in the alarm so quickly, the fire damage was confined to a relatively small space. The fire chief told my wife, however, that if we hadn’t had central station monitoring the house would likely have burned to the ground. Since my neighbors were either at work or on vacation it isn’t likely that anyone would have called 911 before it was too late.

As soon as the firefighters finished, we called our insurance company, Chubb. They dispatched a demolition and restoration crew immediately and by that afternoon a dozen people were working to clean and dry out the house. The amount of smoke and water damage is surprising for such a small fire, but while heat goes up, water goes down and smoke and soot go everywhere – especially on a hot day when the air conditioning is blowing. In fact, much of the damage isn’t even close to the site of the fire.

I’m blogging about my fire first, because I want to thank the firefighters and police who burst into a smoke-filled house on a hot July day not knowing what they would find and who used sensitivity as well as skill in fighting the blaze. They could have torn my house apart while trying to save it. Instead they put tarps over the furniture so it wouldn’t be damaged by water and falling debris. Our local firefighters are volunteers and they are at the top of the list of local causes my family and I support.

Second, I want to emphasize the value of central station monitoring. We use ADT and we credit them with saving our house, but any good central station company will do. We were pretty cavalier about our service because we looked at it mainly as a burglar alarm and the house is rarely vacant. And house fires happen to other people. At least we had fresh batteries in the heat detectors. We had changed ours recently and if the fire had happened only a couple of months ago it could have been much worse.

Finally, I think everyone should take a hard look at their fire and casualty insurance policies and make sure that (a) they are adequately covered and (b) their insurance company is willing and able to handle the kind of losses that a house fire can cause. One thing we learned from our fire is that different insurance companies have different perspectives on losses like ours. The Chubb adjuster and everyone else on the team assures us that they have seen far worse than ours. Their overriding message is one that we needed to hear: Don’t worry. Knowing that we aren’t going to have to fight over every penny provides enormous relief at a time of great stress. If you don’t get the same feeling from your insurance company, you need a new one. And if it costs a little more to be confident that you won’t have a battle on your hands if you make a claim, it’s probably worth it.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Central station monitoring can save your house – and perhaps your life.
  • Fire insurance isn’t a commodity – get the coverage and service you need and deserve.
  • Firefighters are amazing – they deserve everyone’s respect and support. They certainly have mine.

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Facebook vs. Twitter: Do You Have to Choose? (Pt.2)

by Ron on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Last week we blogged about how valuable Facebook can be for local businesses and suggested that it wouldn’t take much additional time to add Twitter to the marketing mix. We are strong believers in Twitter as a complement to Facebook, but we realize that many local merchants are able to devote only limited time to Social Media.

HootSuite logo

The key to making Twitter easier and more efficient is to use one of the free third party Twitter management tools instead of Twitter’s own site. HootSuite and TweetDeck let you do two things that can save a lot of time: manage multiple searches and cross-post into multiple Social Media streams.

In a previous post we blogged about four ways that local businesses can use Twitter. Some involve more time and attention than others. First, we suggested using Twitter as a listening post, gathering information from other users. The net you cast can be as wide or narrow as you want. Use your Twitter manager to set up searches for your industry, competitors, community, etc. If you can’t do all of these, establish some priorities and set up fewer searches. Checking them should only take a few minutes a day.

Second, we discussed using Twitter to build your brand. This is the most time-consuming aspect of making Twitter work, and while we think it’s worth the time not everyone will agree. This is where cross-posting can come in handy. You can use your Twitter manager to publish your Facebook posts as tweets – same content, two streams. You can do the same with blog posts (every Zavee Thinking post is automatically tweeted as soon as it’s published). Cross-posting isn’t a substitute for frequent tweeting, but it’s a reasonable compromise between committing to a major brand-building campaign on Twitter and ignoring your brand altogether.

Third, we pointed out how Twitter can generate leads. There is a passive and an active component to using Twitter this way. The passive part involves setting up searches for keywords that potential customers are likely to use when tweeting. The active part involves tweeting with those same keywords. Not enough time to do both? Just set up and monitor the searches and see how that works. You may need to adjust the search terms but that still should take less time than actively tweeting to gain leads. As you get better at finding potential customers on Twitter, however, don’t be surprised if you find yourself spending more time building those relationships online.

Finally, we recommended using Twitter as a customer service channel. At a minimum, you should use your Twitter manager to display mentions of your business on Twitter. Whether and how you respond to tweets that mention your business is up to you, but there is no reason not to see what people tweet about you.

We think that this minimalist approach to Twitter is a good way to start, especially if you don’t think you have a lot of time for Twitter. We also think it’s likely that you will ramp up your Twitter strategy as you gain experience with the medium. Take an hour or two on a weekend afternoon to get familiar with one of the Twitter management applications and play around with both searches and cross-posting. Let the technology do some of the work and you can get value out of Twitter without putting in more time than you want.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Use a third party Twitter manager for multiple searches and to publish Facebook posts on Twitter (and vice versa).
  • An active tweeting strategy takes more time than reading relevant tweets, so if time is an issue focus on using Twitter passively – at least for now.
  • Don’t be surprised if you find yourself spending more time on Twitter than you expected – not because it wastes your time but because it builds your business.

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The Supreme Court Punts on Business Method Patents

by Ron on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

You may not know it, but the co-founders of Zavee have a background as practicing lawyers. That fact is usually enough to keep us from blogging about legal topics on Zavee Thinking, but one of the end-of-term Supreme Court decisions issued yesterday is both interesting and important to small businesses: a patent case called Bilski v. Kappos.

via Cliff1066 Creative Commons

Thomas Jefferson

The Court doesn’t handle patent cases very often, both because the legal issues rarely become Supreme-worthy and because the underlying facts are often very technical. Bilski is an exception on both counts, as the issue is extremely important and the facts aren’t very difficult.

Bilski filed for what is called a “business method” patent, in this case a procedure for instructing buyers and sellers how to hedge against the risk of price fluctuations in the energy sector. The patent application was originally denied because the Appeals Court held that a “process” was patent-eligible only if it either was tied to a particular machine or apparatus or physically transformed a particular article into a different state or thing (think of a process for cutting a diamond or desalinating seawater). This is called the “machine or transformation” test and it played a central role in the Bilsky decision.

No one can patent natural phenomena, laws of nature or (and this is critical) abstract ideas. In fact, the Supreme Court held that the Bilski patent was properly denied not because it failed the “machine or transformation” test – the Court rejected that as a litmus test for process patents – but because it was an abstract idea. The problem for business people is that the Court explicitly refused to define what kinds of business methods could both fail the “machine or transformation” test and pass the “abstract ideas” test – and thus be patent-eligible.

Why is this a big deal? The purpose of patent law (which was pioneered by Thomas Jefferson) is to encourage innovation by granting inventors who disclose their invention a monopoly over the subject of the patent. Some inventors don’t like that bargain: the formula for Coca-Cola has never been patented because its owners think disclosure is too risky – they worry that flavor chemists could reverse-engineer the formula and come up with something that tastes like almost like Coke but doesn’t violate the patent.

With business method patents the risk is the opposite: that despite disclosure businesses could inadvertently infringe on a patent just by conducting their business. Although the patent described in this famous Onion article would never be upheld, Congress was nervous enough about business method patents that in 1999 it enacted a specific defense against certain infringement claims relating to business methods. Even with this defense, however, businesses will have to choose between investing in resources to effectively monitor both new patents and their own business to prevent infringement or take the risk of possible litigation. Either choice is risky and potentially very expensive.

The fundamental question about business method patents is whether they help or hinder innovation. Another way to ask the question is whether the absence of patent protection would deter inventors from incurring the cost and risk of invention. In science and technology, the benefits of patents are clear: no one would invest in drug discovery if the results of their efforts immediately had to be shared – for free – with drug companies that hadn’t put any time or money into the research. On the other hand, methods of doing business have been competing in the marketplace for centuries without patent protection.

Using a similar analysis, four of the nine Justices concluded that business methods should not be patent-eligible, but they were outvoted (all nine agreed that the Bilski patent was too abstract to be eligible). The Court’s opinion has received critical reviews, since it was so narrowly decided that it leaves the important questions unanswered. Yet it seems inevitable that the Court will have to grapple with the issue of business method patents before too long. The lines are blurring between technology that is clearly patent-eligible and abstractions that clearly are not – a factor, perhaps, in the Court’s non-decision – and the risk to both businesses and inventors is great.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Whether methods of doing business are patentable is an important question, one the Supreme Court should have answered yesterday.
  • If you are developing a novel way to do business, think twice before investing in a patent. Bilski didn’t kill the business method patent but it didn’t offer a strong endorsement, either.
  • It’s not impossible that someday you will be on the receiving end of an infringement claim. If it happens, find the best patent lawyer you can and don’t give up hope – you may be able to beat the claim or even the patent itself.

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Fun and Games at Zavee

by Ron on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

We came up with a fun idea to attract new Zavee shoppers: a Sweepstakes! Details are available on the Zavee website, but our contest is a random drawing for cash prizes, with a twist. All Zavee shoppers are automatically eligible to win. The twist is that shoppers get an additional chance to win for every new Zavee shopper they refer. The more referrals, the more chances to win. Shoppers can invite their friends right from the Zavee site, which is easy for them and makes tracking referrals easy for us. The contest opened yesterday – the first day of summer – and runs through July 31.

Farmville Badge

via Rusty Boxcars

Adding an element of game play is one of the latest trends in marketing. At first blush, game play might not seem likely to resonate with adult consumers, but we all engage in competition in one form or another from a very early age. The viability of game play can be seen in the popularity of virtual games such as Farmville, which has almost 65 million monthly active users on Facebook. The location-based social network Foursquare also has a significant gaming element, with users earning points and “points” for specific activity.

Why should game play increase marketing effectiveness? The rationale is that encouraging the audience to participate and be rewarded helps a message earn attention in an increasingly noise-filled environment. Game play also is consistent with consumers’ increased expectation of control over the marketing messages they encounter. One result of meeting these expectations is that consumers not only pay more attention to messages presented as games, they have better recall of messages presented in games.

For small businesses, introducing game play into marketing programs can help level the playing field with competitors that have larger budgets. And it doesn’t require a lot of cost or complexity. The key is to figure out how to get the consumer involved in the message. We took a simple contest model and tweaked it by rewarding referrals. Social media platforms make game play even easier to implement. We plan to run a video contest on YouTube later this year, and the cost to us, apart from prizes, should be minimal.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Marketing messages that have an element of game play increase awareness, attention and effectiveness.
  • The key to game play is user involvement, not expensive technology.
  • Small businesses can and should add game play to their marketing.

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Competition and Creativity

by Ron on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Competition can bring out the best in marketers, or the worst. It can make them clever and creative, or literal and banal. When Verizon Wireless wanted to respond to AT&T’s iPhone-fueled growth, it promoted its advantage in network coverage with the “There’s a Map for That” campaign. When DirecTV wanted to respond to price competition from Dish Network and local cable providers, it created a campaign called “To Tell the Truth” that uses a game show format to claim that only DirecTV tells the truth about its pricing. Similar competitive challenges, but very different creative solutions.

There's a Map for That

The standard agency creative development process involves identifying a significant consumer insight, turning that insight into a relevant, credible claim and bringing the claim to life in a compelling and memorable way. Verizon’s insight was that a smartphone is only as capable as the network it runs on, and its claim was that its network has more coverage than AT&T’s. DirecTV’s insight was that consumers in this category are value-driven, and its claim was that it provides more channels for less money.

Both campaigns are from major agencies: McCann Worldgroup for Verizon and Deutsch for DirecTV. But while Verizon’s commercials make their point in a clever and engaging way, DirecTV’s spots are uninvolving and numbingly literal. One creative team was able to make the jump from Apple’s “There’s an app for that” to Verizon’s network coverage map to “There’s a map for that” while the other creative team got only as far as an old game show. In fact, one wonders whether DirecTV even bothered trying to be creative, or whether they thought that being literal was the best way to reach their audience.

Creativity is a particular challenge in online marketing. In Zavee’s Google advertising we have a very limited space in which to induce users to click, and every word is analyzed and evaluated. If we weren’t highly literal our ads might not even appear where we want them. Within the Zavee site and this blog, we try to use keywords that will improve our rankings in searches. Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization are absolutely vital to Zavee’s marketing plan, but they don’t result in much creativity. In fact, it sometimes feels like we are writing for Google, not for our audience.

One online medium where creativity doesn’t have to be sacrificed for effectiveness is YouTube. Many marketers have figured out how to create videos that pull the audience in, expose them to the marketer’s brand and get them talking about it with others. And some of the best YouTube videos are produced by consumers, not the marketer. Look for Zavee to make greater use of this medium in the near future.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Competition should make marketers more creative, not less.
  • SEO and SEM present challenges to creativity, but they aren’t the only online media.
  • YouTube is one online medium that rewards creativity.

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Can Social Media Clean Up BP’s Image?

by Ron on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Imagine that something having to do with your business goes catastrophically wrong, in public, and you don’t look like the blameless victim. That, and worse, is the situation BP finds itself in following its disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And, perhaps even more than the Toyota recall, social media is affecting perceptions of the disaster and those involved in it.

via Noah Scalin

BP itself is providing a real-time video feed from a dozen cameras of the oil spewing out of the wellhead. This feed is becoming the defining imagery of the disaster, the constant flow representing for many the helplessness of the “experts” on the surface a mile above. BP also maintains a YouTube channel. BP has supplied its wellhead video feed to the web site of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which has maintained a steady flow of press releases focusing on BP. In addition to video, BP’s own site contains maps, claims forms (in English, Spanish and Vietnamese) and, of course, press releases.

BP is also trying to participate in the conversation on Social Media, but does not appear to be having much success in overcoming anti-BP sentiment. The “Boycott BP” page on Facebook is liked by more than 450,000 users, although it is unclear whether this movement will be able to affect BP’s business. On Twitter, an anti-BP impostor has amassed almost 140,000 followers while BP’s own Twitter feed is hovering at about 12,000 followers.

Much like Toyota several months ago, BP cannot expect to be portrayed other than as the villain. All BP can do is communicate openly and actively, and if its mea culpas come off as somewhat self-serving, at least the company isn’t stonewalling. The difference between the recall and the oil spill is, of course, scale. Toyota fixed the problems with its cars relatively quickly and was able to begin to rebuild its reputation. BP faces a much greater challenge, because the spill has not been contained quickly, the environmental impact may be enormous, and as an oil company BP did not start out with the kind of reputation Toyota had among the public.

So far, BP has demonstrated a certain sophistication in not trying to shut down the parody Twitter feed or the flow of satirical treatments of the company’s logo. In March, the environmental activist group Greenpeace provoked Nestle into overreacting to critical videos and Facebook postings that included modified versions of the Nestle logo. BP hasn’t fallen into that trap. Nor has it attempted to co-opt the fake Twitter account. This is a wise choice, since if trying to shut down the account would be bullying, trying to fold it into the company’s own communication strategy would seem, um, slimy.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • In a bad situation, openness and honesty really are the best policies.
  • The better you do at solving the problem, the easier it will be to rebuild your reputation.
  • Frustrated people need to express their frustration. Don’t try to stop them.

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An Open Letter to Zavee Merchants

by Alan on Friday, June 4th, 2010

My name is Alan Pleskow and I’m the CEO and a co-founder of Zavee. On behalf of everyone here at Zavee I would like to extend my personal thanks to every local business that has joined our company as a merchant. I also want to thank you for your patience in waiting for our shopper base to grow. Below is a brief update of what we are doing now and some of the great things you can expect from us over the rest of this year.

  • Merchants – More than 200 merchants are now members of Zavee, and more are joining every day. We have attracted businesses from a wide variety of categories and from all over our Northern Broward – Southern Palm Beach launch market. Many Zavee merchants are taking advantage of opportunities for increased social media exposure by “liking” Zavee on Facebook and following us on Twitter. Later this year we expect to add new features that will make your marketing even more effective.
  • Shoppers – We have completed development of the shopper portion of the Zavee platform, and have ramped up our consumer marketing accordingly. As every business owner knows, it takes time for consumers to learn about any new business – even one as cool as Zavee. The Zavee site is now fully optimized for search engines and we have an active online advertising program through both Google and Facebook. We will be launching our email marketing program in the beginning of June and already have begun our PR campaign. We expect thousands of shoppers to join in the next few months.
  • You Should Become a Shopper, Too - One way to increase the number of Zavee shoppers is for merchants to activate their shopper accounts at www.zavee.com. That’s right – every Zavee merchant is also a Zavee shopper. So next time you log in, click on the shopping bag icon and set up your shopper account. Your customers are earning cash back rewards, why not you? Another way to add merchants is for you to suggest Zavee to your customers. Almost 80% of consumers trust personal recommendations. Your recommendation of Zavee is almost certain to be effective.
  • Causes and Care Shares – Our team also has completed the portion of our platform that lets causes sign up, communicate with other members and receive Care Share contributions from shoppers. We are beginning our outreach program to causes and have been gratified by the response. If you are a member of an organization that you think would be right for Zavee, please invite them to contact us or let us know and we will take it from there. Since causes earn contributions through shopper transactions, it is in your interest as well as theirs for causes to join Zavee.

In fact, we want you to let us know what you think about the Zavee site and platform. Please do not hesitate to contact me at 561-290-0388 ext. 302, or our COO and co-founder, Ron Stack at 561-290-0388 ext. 301, with any questions, comments or suggestions.

We thank you for joining us, and we thank you for your continued patience and support as we roll out a social shopping platform that will help you grow your business through smarter marketing and a stronger local community. We’re glad you’re part of the Zavee community.

And if you’re a merchant in Broward or Palm Beach Counties and you aren’t a Zavee merchant yet, hit us up online or call Jerry Horowitz at 561-290-0388 ext. 501 and learn how Zavee can get you marketing smarter today.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • We are ramping up marketing to shoppers and causes, so the Zavee community is poised for exceptional growth.
  • You can help the community grow, by becoming a shopper, by recommending Zavee to your customers and by telling Zavee about your favorite cause.
  • Thanks, Zavee merchants – you’re the best!

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Do You “Like” Me? Do You Really “Like” Me?

by Ron on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Remember Sally Fields’ famous acceptance speech at the 1985 Oscars? “You like me! You really like me!”  But what if we didn’t mean it?

One of the recent changes to Facebook has been a great expansion of the “Like” concept which, among other things, replaces the “Fan” concept.  Yelp and other social networks have followed suit.  At least for now, Zavee is still inviting shoppers to become “Fans” of merchants they haven’t yet shopped at and not just “Like” them.  Why?  Because we think that, on some perhaps subtle level, being a “Fan” implies a higher degree of emotional engagement than merely “Liking” someone or something.  How substantial is that difference? It’s hard to tell.  If you follow sports you might agree that there is a difference between liking a team and being a fan.  If you follow the New York Mets or the Miami Dolphins you almost certainly do.  At Zavee we are considering changing the “Fan” concept to something completely different – something that retains a high level of engagement but provides greater flexibility.  More news to follow on that new feature.

One thing we didn’t think about when we were debating “Fan” versus “Like” was whether a lower level of engagement might make it easier for users to be less than candid about what they say they “Like”.  Would people really do this?  And why?

Starbucks Barista Badge from Foursquare (via pbende)

No less a social media authority than Robert Scoble says they would, and do.  In fact, he says that he has done that very thing.  Why?  Scoble says that it comes down to a fundamental truth about human nature: we present ourselves as we want others to see us.  Since the pages, users and merchants we “like” become part of our public social persona, we can change that persona by changing what we say we “like”.  If our tastes run to country bands and donut shops, but we’d rather be thought of as someone who prefers singer-songwriters and vegan restaurants, our “likes” can reflect that.


Is this a problem for smaller businesses? It might be. For one thing, advertisers tend to take us at our word.  Check in frequently enough at Starbucks and you can win a discount off your coffee.  Starbucks can’t tell whether you like the coffee, just how often you showed up.  Clicking the Like button on Yelp for a bunch of restaurants gives rise to inferences about your preferences and behavior, and advertisers will target you accordingly. Providing a misleading social persona is just a waste of time for both advertiser and user, unless it’s being done as a form of protest against behavioral targeting.

Like much about social media, behavioral targeting presents legitimate privacy issues, and they need to be worked out. However, if advertisers lose faith in the accuracy of consumers’ self-descriptions the effectiveness of social media for marketers is likely to decrease. For small marketers who are drawn to social media marketing by, among other things, its low cost and high effectiveness, this could be a very unfortunate result.

It’s probably true, as Scoble says, that advertisers have ways to verify, at least in part, the accuracy of the things we claim we like.  But the deeper point is that the value of social media as a communications tool for users in the network depends in large part on the credibility of other users.  A user who creates a false or misleading social persona may only lose personal credibility within the network, but if enough users do the same thing the credibility of the network as a whole may suffer. A recent paper about dating sites reports that deception in profiles is rampant. The paper suggests that one reason is that users understand what makes them desirable to potential mates, and create profiles to reflect those expectations. Dating sites like to advertise their successes, but they may have become just one more system to game.

Whether Zavee stays with “Fan”, changes to “Like” or goes in a different direction altogether, the principal means by which Zavee shoppers communicate the quality of their shopping experience is by writing reviews. It takes more effort (and commitment) to write a review than to click on a button, but that very fact gives proportionately more weight to the reviews and less to a simple “Fan” designation. One safeguard we put in place expressly to improve the accuracy, timeliness and fairness of reviews is for the system to accept a review of a merchant only if the reviewer has made a Zavee purchase at that merchant within 30 days.

We hope that social networks and their users develop means to limit the influence of false social personsas, not to protect advertisers but to protect the networks themselves and to permit them to continue to deliver valuable, relevant experiences to their users.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Once it becomes trivially easy to create a social persona, that persona may itself become trivial. The problem is that those personas are taken seriously, both by advertisers and by other users.
  • It’s natural to present ourselves as we’d like to be seen, but invented personas can make the the network as a whole less valuable to users who rely on other users for timely and accurate information and opinions.
  • Local businesses will suffer disproportionately if social media marketing loses credibility, because it’s a particularly attractive tool for them in an environment where conventional alternatives aren’t nearly as cost-effective.

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