Twitter, Facebook and
Social Data Portability
Amit Klein
June ’09
www.amitklein.com
twitter.com/amitklein

Intro – Evolution of Dance Party

Intro – Evolution of Dance Party
What can we learn from crazy, dancing guy?
• Authentic - He’s not trying to start a dance party,
dude is just having fun
• Transparent – Putting himself out there / not afraid
of looking ridiculous / standing out
• Viral - Attracts one follower, then another, tipping
point…

Agenda
• Twitter
• Why is Twitter important for businesses
• Case Studies (Zappos, Iranian Elections, Additional Examples)
• The Twitterverse
• Facebook
• Fan pages (Coke, Victoria Secret, Vitamin Water)
• Social Data Portability
• Facebook Connect
• Google FriendConnect / OpenSocial
• Twitter Single Sign (Spymaster)

“Twitter is about approach, transparency,
and immediacy”
- Jack Dorsey, Twitter Co-Founder

Reasons for Businesses to use Twitter
• Increase transparency / authenticity
• Give your company a human face, voice and personality
• Brand Management
• Create awareness about your products (buzz)
• Find out what people are saying about your company/products
• Deeper Engagement
• Identify your biggest evangelists
• Respond to criticism / help
• Increase reputation and authority
• Identify Sales Opportunities
• Share deals
• Identify potential customers
• Track Trends

“It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just
joining the network purely to take –not to
give. Be a part of the conversation before
you need anything from anyone… share
knowledge, help others, and become a
trusted node and connector, not just an
outlier…”
- Jeremiah Owyang

Case Study - Zappos

“Everyone knows why GMblogs and TheHomeDepot have
Twitter accounts: To make more money... We'll care
about you if you buy our stuff. That's the corporate
quid pro quo.
Tony Hsieh uses Twitter because he likes Twitter. He
writes, ... if you can talk your friends into joining it and
you all use it for 2 weeks, it will change your life. You
will wonder how you ever lived without it."
- Sage Lewis, Search Engine Watch

Zappos – Building Relationships
Transparent, effective use of Twitter
http://twitter.zappos.com includes:
• Intro to Twitter
• Employee Tweets & Pics (430+ employees)
• CEO most active user
• Zappos Public Mentions
• Highlight SuperFans
• 3000+ links pointing at twitter.zappos.com

Zappos – Building Relationships

Case Study - #iranelections

“News media can’t keep pace with the new
world of media consumption and the
insatiable appetite for information”
- Ann Curry, NBC

“News doesn’t break it tweets”
- Paul Saffo

#iranelection – Breaking News
Frustration with lack of mainstream coverage of Iranian elections
• Mainstream news is not covering the world fast enough
• TV news is episodic (played a retaped show on Sat night of Larry King
while Iranians protested in the streets)
• Iranian government shut off text messaging and access to most social
networks – multiple ways to access Twitter
• #iranelection trending topic for the last 2 weeks
• Risks: fact checking, causing panic, losing credibility

#iranelection – Breaking News

Additional Examples
Comcast – Customer Support
• Outreach
• Acknowledge concern / tries to help
• Real person / real voice
SquareSpace – Twitter Contest
• Gave away 1phone a day to random user who uses #squarespace
• Reached trending topics in second day
• Danger: No idea what they do

Additional Examples

The Twitterverse

Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook Fan Pages
• Builds off Facebooks 200m users
• Actions are published directly to activity stream
• Get a fan once, push content forever
• Is a corporate website necessary anymore?

Biggest Facebook Fan Pages
Rank Facebook Fan Page Name Number of Facebook Fans
1 Barack Obama 6,403,120
2 Vin Diesel 4,896,507
3 I Love Sleep 4,513,144
4 Pizza 4,438,396
5 I need a vacation!!! 4,411,673
6 Dr. House 4,272,060
7 Facebook 3,656,863
8 Will Smith 3,482,480
9 Coca-Cola 3,469,069
10 Adam Sandler 3,267,567
11 Nutella 3,209,214
12 The Beach 3,202,312
13 Lady Gaga 3,186,934
14 Pizza 3,174,780
15 Starbucks Coffee Company 3,121,797
16 South Park 2,822,345
17 The Beach 2,786,970
18 Pringles 2,768,967
19 sleeping 2,729,107
20 Pizza 2,700,071
* http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/06/largest-facebook-fan-pages-by-number-of.html

Facebook Fan Pages – Coke
• Coke Fan page was started by two regular users
• In seven months grew to 3.3 million fans
• Facebook changed rules and didn’t allow users to
create branded pages
• Coke teamed up with the creators of the page, flew
them to HQ, gave them a tour, brought them into
meetings, brainstormed ideas, made them part of
the company, let them be real evangelists

Facebook Fan Pages – Coke

Facebook Fan Pages – Vitamin Water
• Is a corporate website necessary anymore?
• Major advertisements go directly to Facebook Fan page
• Polls, photos, videos, music, events, etc…
• Tap into passionate user base, questions like who is better Kobe or Lebron,
lots of discussion

Facebook Fan Pages – Victoria Secret
Blending content and advertising

Social Data Portability

Facebook Connect
• Allows you to create a Facebook Application outside of
Facebook
• Single sign on (no need to register for the site – bad, can
connect ids a la digg)
• Use your photo
• Publish content to your activity stream
• Invite people from Facebook to participate in activity
• Send email from Facebook on your behalf

Facebook Connect - CNN
During Obama Inauguration CNN allowed users to chat using
Facebook Connect
• 600,000 status updates posted during event
• 4,000 status updates per minute
• Millions of logins

Facebook Connect - Digg

Open Social / Google Friend Connect
• OpenSocial
• Similar to Facebook Connect but for orkut, MySpace, Friendster, Ning,
Yahoo! and third party sites
• Uses HTML/JS/CSS
• Google Friend Connect
• Set of plug and play widgets based on Open Social
• Approx 10 widgets: sign-in, comments, polls, reviews, events, and
recommendations
• No coding required

OpenSocial – Virgin Global Row

Sign-in with Twitter
• Same Concept as Facebook Connect / OpenSocial
• Publish actions directly to your Twitter Stream
• Example - Spymaster: