Page 325 - Social Media Marketing

The Social Web Bill of Privacy Rights 303

Beginning with the right to make an informed choice, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sug- ■ USE THE SOCIAL GRAPH IN BUSINESS
gested an initial “Bill of Privacy Rights” for people using social networking services and the use
of the information by businesses—including information contained in member’s social graphs.
It’s thought-provoking and likely an eventual reality. Check it out, and see how many of its sug-
gested practices you can build into your social applications now.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/bill-privacy-rights-social-network-
users

Business in Social Networks

Social networks form according to a variety of primary applications—for example, for
personal or cause-related activities (think Facebook, whose core appeal is for personal
social interaction) or business use (as in Element 14’s engineers’ community where elec-
trical designers review and purchase semiconductor components). Personal networks
can attract large numbers of people who then engage in conversations and share pur-
chase experiences, or to discuss and form groups around the interests and causes they
support. Purpose-built business networks, such as Element 14’s or the American Express
Open Forum Small Business community, have clear business applications, built around
the passions and lifestyles of the member professionals who use them.

For marketing purposes, having a business presence on personal and professional
networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter can also make sense, and in fact is now
considered entry stakes for most businesses and organizations, in the same way that
having a website is considered for most as a must-have. Stepping up from the basics,
accessing and putting the respective social graphs to work is the basis for more substan-
tive business applications built on or around these personal and professional networks.

Figure 11.7 shows an application of the LinkedIn social graph API, developed
at 2020 Social in New Delhi. Using the combination of the LinkedIn display ads and
the LinkedIn API, the application looks at the first-degree connections of the person
exposed to the display ad in LinkedIn: If clicked, the landing page then lists the names
of the employees of 2020 Social who are also first-degree connections of the LinkedIn
member who saw and then clicked on the display ad: If you clicked it, you’d see the
employees of 2020 Social that you knew. Taken together, the ability to examine the
LinkedIn social graph and present relevant social data (first-degree connections who
are also employees of 2020 Social) creates a very powerful landing page experience,
and one that taps directly the value of the relationships contained in LinkedIn connec-
tions via the social graphs of its members.