I recently set myself up with an account on Facebook, having previously restricted my activities to work-orientated sites, such as LinkedIn.  I had followed social networking from the sidelines until this point.  However, I have been very aware of how social networking has profoundly changed the way that we interact on the web.  I decided it was time to try it out for myself.

I have watched Facebook’s meteoric rise over recent years. During that time it has seen off competitors such as Bebo, MySpace and FriendsReunited and managed to find its own distinct niche alongside Twitter.  The speed at which Facebook  has achieved market dominance in social networking is even faster than Google managed to dominate internet search.

Having joined the social networking movement quite late, I decided on a “total immersion” approach and visited several other social websites to experience the breadth of options available.  I was also keen to get a sense of what might be coming next.

New social websites are constantly springing up based upon interesting ideas.  I have seen specialists, such as the location-based, FourSquare, the questionnaire-based Hunch and even open-source rivals such as Diaspora.  It will be interesting to see if any of these can these seriously challenge Facebook.  However, perhaps the biggest enemy of Facebook – is itself.

Facebook could begin suffer as it travels through the adoption curve, moving from being a new idea to part of the Establishment.  In time-honoured fashion, the young people tend to leave when their parents (and grandparents) are joining the same website.  There is evidence that young people are leaving Facebook and their fastest growing demographic is now the over 55s.  There is a serious problem that Facebook could become ‘un-cool’ for the new generation over the next few years.

Even if this does not happen, we are likely to see a gradual splintering of social networking.  This happens in many new markets as they mature and develop new business models.  It is difficult for Facebook to remain “all things, to all people” under such pressure.  We could see the generalists rivals take back market share, while other members defect to niche players with specific communities.  Perhaps the biggest indicator that Facebook is on the wane is that ‘late-adopters’ like myself are now joining.

My wife was speaking with our daughter’s 4th grade teacher and she told my wife that she wanted to have the class read The Westing Game before school was released for the summer.  Unfortunately, the school library only had a few copies so my wife and I decided to purchase the needed books and donate them to the school.  We spent the following weekend visiting a few book stores and bought all of the copies they had, but we were still short about 10 copies. 

My wife logged on to BN.com and added the 10 copies to her cart and Barnes and Noble reported that they had them in stock.  She selected expedited delivery which is 3 days or less.   Upon BN’s receipt of the order,  they promptly sent out an email telling her that the books would ship the following day.  This was great and my wife was pleased knowing that the product would arrive before the end of the week so the class could begin working on the book soon there after.

Two days later BN followed up with an email saying that due to “an unexpected delay” they were unable to ship the merchandise for 1-5 business days.

Due to an unexpected delay, we are unable to ship the merchandise listed below in the time frame indicated in our previous email.  We anticipate that your merchandise will be shipped within the next 1-5 business days. (Please note: business days are Monday through Friday, excluding holidays observed by the Post Office.)  As always, you will not be charged until this merchandise ships from our warehouse.

 

We assume that you still want to purchase this merchandise.  However, if you would like to cancel this portion of your order, you may do so online at:

www.bn.com/orderstatus.

 

Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay.

 

– Barnes & Noble

Disappointed at losing 3 days in the process, my wife started working on an order with Amazon.com.  Miraculously,  two hours later we receive another email saying that our order is packed and ready to ship. 

Thank you for shopping with us.Your order is now packed and ready to leave our warehouse. The details of your order appear below. Within one business day of receiving this email, you may track the delivery status of your order at *UPS Tracking Link*.

When a tracking number is provided, please note that we’ve assigned it before giving the package to the carrier. Tracking details for your shipment may not be available immediately. Some carriers do not have weekend pick up service, and will not process tracking information until the next business day following the completion of your order. You may need to check the carrier’s site periodically for updated information.

We appreciate your business and look forward to you visiting us again soon at http://www.bn.com.

– Barnes & Noble

 

So at this point my wife is left with a WTH moment and not sure whether to trust the first or second email.   Fortunately the package arrived a few days later, but she was left with a distrust of BN and their ability to execute on an order.   The next time she goes to place an order, she’s going to have to wonder if BN will be able to ship the product or if she should just go to Amazon.com from the start. 

I’m not sure if this was caused by inaccurate inventory data or a poor order management system/process for tracking the status.  But this is a basic level of capability that consumers have come to expect and not being able to provide this greatly affects the customer experience.

When determining your priorities for your online strategy, if you can’t provide the basic level of capabilities, then raise the priorities for these improvements and lower the priorities of the latest greatest trends going on in the online world. 

 ”SOCIALLY ISOLATED
These people are generally unhappy with their lives and feel alone. Not surprisingly, they fall at average or below average for e-mailing. But that doesn’t mean they eschew social media. In fact, they’re 12% more likely than the average person to use blogs, message boards or social-networking sites. They also post comments on blogs at least twice a month; personal, music, consumer-product and video-game blogs are most visited. ”

 ”BRAND-LOYAL
This group shies away from buying unknown brands just for a bargain and prefers to buy brand-name goods. They’re very average social-media users, but some subjects of interest drive them to social media more than the average person: They’re 21% more likely to read environmental blogs and 22% more likely to use professional-networking sites to make new contacts. ”

There are 9 profiles in all.

Please check out The Top Ecommerce Sites and let me know what you think. 

Currently I’m tracking on each site:

• Snapshots of the home page
• Google Page Rank
• Backlinks from major search engines
• Traffic via Compete
• Company data from ZoomInfo
• Types of technology used and sizes (i.e. html, images, flash, javascript)
• User submitted comments and reviews
• 1-5 Star ratings submitted by users
• References in the Blogosphere
• Google News

I plan to track in the future:

• Catalog features of each site (i.e. Reviews, social aspects, single page checkout)
• Stock & finance information
• Other traffic sources
• Open jobs
• Competitors
• Snapshots of other pages like product detail for historical reviews

The site, data, and code is still beta, so problems may come up.  If you see any, please send me a note of what you see and I’ll look into fixing it. 

Please contribute to the resource by rating and writing a review for some of the sites.  I’m primarily looking for thoughts on design, SEO, structure and ability of the sites.   If you have a blog or website, the reviews are set to follow, so in exchange for your review, you’ll get get a link back to your site.   Every comment is moderated for spam and foul language prior to it being published. 

If you have any thoughts, ideas on features or api’s that would be useful, or questions you would like to ask, please send me an email (link in the sidebar).

Last, a note of thanks out to Suresh.  I appreciate your help during late nights and weekends helping me put this together.    It’s appreciated.

A few interesting Stats from the session:

There are currently 1.5 billion pages of content built by consumers(Pew Research)
86% of consumers self identify that they create and share content

She also introduced the concept of the iCitizen which is this new evolving consumer that is passionate and contributes content around a brand.   She walked through about a half dozen icitizen’s and showed their impact over the past few years.  Unfortunately she had Macbook problems with her presentation so alot of the visuals didn’t come up.  When the slides are made available, I’ll see about revisiting the topic and sharing some of the case studies.

The other standout presentation was the Search: Advanced Level: Part Art, Part Science presented by Stephen Spencer of Netconcepts, Elaine Wu of Victoria’s Secret, and Steve Spangler of SteveSpanglerScience.com.  It was a fantastic presentation with a ton of tools and tips on optimizing your organic search.  I’ll write a post about that tomorrow along with the top exhibitors I saw today.

1.  Analytics
2. Merchandising for conversions
3. Search & SEO
4. Web 2.0

I’ve got to get back to the show, but later tonight I’ll cover the main points from the keynotes and what I’ve heard and learned.  Looks like it’s going to be a great event.

A study conducted last year by the National Retail Federation shows the average first-year college student spent $1,112.62, mainly on electronics and home furnishings.  Walmart hopes to capitalize on this and it’s new “Site to Store” offering which allows consumers to order on the web and pick up in the store. 

 So far the Facebook app has gained 661 members, although this doesn’t show how many people used the app without joining the group.   It’s also interesting at how many negative posts have been made about Walmart on their “Wall”.  The “Wall” is a built in application in Facebook which allows users to leave graffiti like messages on the user/group’s profile page.  The negative messages range from comments about the quality of Walmart’s merchandising to their workplace practices. 

 I’m not sure if this can be considered a sucess or not.  It would be interesting to see what results someone like Target would have if they made a similar offering. 

 Update:  Up to 1062 users.  More comments and coverage on the story below.

Forrester -Charlene Li
WalMart’s Facebook Strategy Sinking: Analysis and Reccomendations
Facebook Takes Over the Retail World – Retail Design Diva