This article is part of a series inspired by GroupM What’s Next , an annual event for marketing and media executives taking a forward look at media and advertising, and what brands should be preparing for in order to succeed.
Jesse Wolfersberger is Director, Consumer Insights, GroupM Next.
According to Experian, 16 minutes of every hour online in the U.S. is spent on social media – the most of any activity. That is an incredible data point, especially considering social media did not even exist 10 years ago. In one decade, social media has grown from a novelty to a major part of most people’s lives.
Today, those 16 minutes per hour are mostly hollow. Social media is primarily a time-waster. That is not an insult; people need “me time” and there is plenty of value in wasting time from both a consumer and an advertiser perspective. Still, having that much consumer time and attention and only using it to scroll through timelines seems like unrealized potential. The next evolution of social media will be about networks providing actual utility to users.A social network provides utility when it not only lets someone connect with friends, but also lets them shop, discover restaurants or be productive, or it just saves them time.
This is a new frontier in social media, and whichever network gets it right and is able to deliver it at scale will earn a bigger share of consumer attention, and therefore, brand dollars. Thus far, there seem to be three types of user utility trends emerging within social: television integration, passive discovery and convenience.
Television Integration
Twitter’s wheelhouse has always been television, and it is continuing to embrace this by allowing users to watch, record and change channels from within a tweet. Earlier this year, Twitter announced a one-of-a-kind partnership with Comcast and NBCU called “See It,” which turns tweets into mini-remote controls.
An interesting start-up, Chirpify, is building on the Twitter-television relationship. Through Chirpify, hashtags can be used to actually buy products, interact with live events or donate to charities after a disaster. Between “See It” and Chirpify, it is not hard to imagine a world where social media and real-time television interaction become indistinguishable.
Passive Discovery
Passive discovery happens when a brand is able to harness the data available on a mobile device and make an accurate suggestion of a product the consumer might like to buy or a store or restaurant they might like to visit. The recent update to Foursquare’s app was focused on notifications which alert the user when they are near something of interest or recommends something once they are at a location.
The first time a consumer discovers a new restaurant they love in this fashion, one which they likely would have simply walked past, it will be a transcendent experience. All of a sudden, a social network has become a personalized guide, which not only knows what you like, but also knows the right time to tell you about it. That is a valuable companion.
Convenience
Another major way social networks can provide utility to consumers is through convenience. If a network can remove friction in consumers’ lives, and not just within the ecosystem of that network, it will gain dedicated fans. Facebook has been able to do this by lending its login credentials to other sites and apps. Instead of creating a new account for every new game or site, a user can login using their Facebook credentials in the click of a button. The company says people use the Facebook login on new apps more than 850 million times monthly. Sure, it may only save a minute or two, but we are in the era of hyper convenience – every second of friction means thousands of potential users will turn away. In this way, Facebook provides value to consumers by becoming an all-in-one username and password for the Internet.
Google+ is trying to reduce the friction of uploading and editing photos. It has rolled out a number of tools, one which acts as an automatic Photoshop to improve the quality of photos, and another which turns a series of photos into a short movie. Users can take photos, Google+ then uploads and enhances them automatically, and the next time the user logs in, they see their uploaded, enhanced photos ready to be shared.
The first generation of social networking was connecting with friends and family. That box has been checked. The next generation will be the expansion of what a social network can be, and what utility it can provide a consumer.
Jesse Wolfersberger is Director, Consumer Insights for GroupM Next, the innovation division of GroupM that offers thought leadership, industry perspective, operational support and scalable business solutions to GroupM agencies (Maxus, MEC, Mediacom and Mindshare).
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