powering Australia's discovery of the third place

There is a controversy that has been going on. If you’re on Facebook, it could effect you…perhaps not.  Facebook has been making tech news for months now as people all over the world have been questioning the  Facebook Privacy settings.  Some people are confused. Some are concerned. Others, it doesn’t really worry at all.

In the Nielsen-Community Engine 2010 Social Media Business Benchmarking Study, we found that 77 percent of businesses said they prefer to own the information they capture, which they don’t necessarily own if the information is given over a third party site. However, one in four Australians are participating in third party sites.  So what does all this mean?

Even for those who utilise Facebook’s privacy settings, there are still 26% of its users that do not. Just last month, Mashable reported that Facebook ads would begin to target  you through your web history. While this may be good for some organisations, it brings up the question for others, “Do we really want other companies soliciting our customers when they find out the history of that customer?”

Here’s the thing, at the end of the day, no matter how concerned you may be about information captured, these social communities link.  It is the integration that makes online communities so powerful and efficient. Here is a list of the three types of online social communities from a recent post in Mashable:

“The social web is all about communities, and it’s important to recognize that there are a variety of collaboration solutions available. I typically categorize these into three distinct groups:

• Direct Community: These are communities owned and managed by a company typically running proprietary community and enterprise collaboration software solutions. Examples include the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s community website, Starbucks’ blog, or Dell’s support community. The organization is responsible for running and managing the community and benefits from rich data and user profiles created within that community. These also would include private B2B and internal employee-targeted communities.
• Managed Community: These are communities started and managed by the organization, but run on consumer-facing social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Examples here include the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s Facebook Page, Starbucks’ Flickr group pool, or Dell’s presence on Twitter. The organization is responsible for running and managing the community, but does not necessarily benefit from the rich data and user profiles created within the community. Typically, the facilitator of the community (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) benefits the most from the underlying data.
• Participating Community: These are communities started and managed by individuals or groups of users, typically on consumer-facing social networking sites, but sometimes also with proprietary software. An example here would be a fan site for Microsoft’s Xbox or an independent Porsche enthusiast group. Typically the organization whose products or services are the topic of discussion can participate, but has no authority or access to the data created within the community”

Third party sites like Facebook are and will continue to be a major platform that organisations will fuel globally. They’re not going anywhere. We understand this and incorporate these third party sites into the core of our technology platform. However, integration and linking of the two or more social spaces into your Community Engine Space still lets you own the information you’re collecting in YOUR space which can give you direct advantages over the competition.

We’ve seen the power of all three networks. Intertwined, organisations can create power spaces for the consumers and advocates that support them and want them to succeed.  Go to where your consumers are. Leverage the network of networks effect. That is a win/win situation.

posted by Venessa in the category Media Reserach & Statistics ROI Social Media Social networking
Tags: facebook, mashable, nielsen-community engine social media business benchmarking study, privacy