How Social Media Is Like Sharecropping

In a world where the real social media players count their subscribers in the tens or hundreds of millions, Friendfeed hardly moves the needle. 

Mired at a million or so unique visitors a month and facing the likelihood of being crushed to a fine powder when Google Wave hits the streets, Friendfeed's investors and managers decided to take the first convenient off ramp when Facebook came a-calling.

By now you've probably heard the specifics, since practically anyone with a keyboard has been breathlessly tapping away since the deal was made public late Monday: $50 million, most of which will be paid in Facebook stock. A nice payday for Friendfeed's small team (and most likely a relief to the company's investors, who must have known Friendfeed wasn't going anywhere as a solo act). But not a vast sum of money for a company that pays a million dollars a month just the keep the lights on.

So why all the attention?

Friendfeed was (and still is) arguably one of the web's most interesting and reliable applications, particularly in comparison to Twitter's legendary flakiness. The service aggregates pretty much any RSS feed you can throw at it, dispensing and indexing it in near real time. Think of it as Twitter, Google, and Facebook, all rolled into one. Perhaps too complicated to ever crack the mass market - but an irresistible playground for hyper-active, hyper-noisy early adopters. 

The same users are screaming bloody murder today over what will most likely be Friendfeed's swan song. Facebook clearly purchased the company for its technology and engineering team, and is unlikely to preserve the Friendfeed website after assimilating its better features. That's the take of Friendfeed's community, in any case. They're vocal about it - angry, even. I confess I had a tear or two over it. Being populated by social media movers and shakers, the Friendfeed story is punching well above its actual weight.

The real take away

There's a lesson in Friendfeed's sale for all of us who spend time with social media, interact with customers online, or guide corporate digital outreach. Here it is: We are playing in somebody else's yard. And we can be told to go home at any time.

That API your team just wrote an application for? It can be changed overnight - or disappear entirely. Maybe you've spent months developing a customer base on some promising service. A quick weekend deal, and that service is gone. Just business, of course. Companies don't run on promises and rainbows forever, and cash is king in a tough economy. Things can change in the blink of an eye.

In a way, businesses working social media channels are sharecroppers. So are all the users. They labor on the services, both creating and receiving value. But they don't own the fields they cultivate, and can be put off the land whenever it suits the landlord. That's fine, if one can afford to leave crops rotting in the field. It's not so cool if you have to explain why a media line item has suddenly come to grief.

What to keep in mind

At Conversation Agent, we have constantly drawn parallels between social media and the telephone. This is both a truism and a way to limit your exposure when choosing a social media portfolio:

We didn't stop using the telephone when the web became available. Social media is not a replacement for traditional forms of contact with your staff and customers. Don't sacrifice one for the other.

Diversify. Friendfeed's disappearance isn't likely to upset many business plans. What if it had been Twitter, Gmail, or Facebook itself? We got a taste of tweedom last week, when Twitter crawled into a hole to wait out a Denial of Service attack. Is any social media service indispensable to you? You're headed for trouble.

Backup. Your customer base should be under your control. If your social media channel lost all your information, could you recover? Is it even possible to backup data? If not, do you feel good about that?

Farm your own field. The attractive part of developed social media networks is that your customers may already be there. It might still make sense to build your own tools - white label versions of existing services, perhaps. Or entirely new sites, services, and ways to engage which are under your control. 

Social media is a wonderful and productive outreach for many companies. But like any investment, it is not without its risk. Friendfeed folded its tent and disappeared into the shimmering desert heat with virtually no warning to its userbase. Who is next?

Comments

[CASUDI]

A very timely post and very timeless reminder to keep control of our information.

[Eric Brown]

This is an excellent article. It becomes pretty hard to be mad at Free when something happens.

[amymengel]

This is particularly timely, not just in terms of the Facebook/Friendfeed issue but also with the demise of the Tr.im URL shortener, too.

It's not our yard, and we can't get too hooked on one set of tools without retaining the capability to adapt and move on to something else once they are no longer available.

[Elizabeth]

Great reminder that we shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket and that we should always have a backup plan.

[Jenesys Group]

You are very correct. A proper backup plan as well as alternatives should be kept in mind always.

-Jenesys

[Paul Chaney]

I've said for a long time that, while it's good to get a seat at someone else's table to hold a conversation, it's also good to set a table of your own.

Wise, sagely advice Valeria and much needed.

[Eric Tsai]

I've always asked clients to abstract more value to the table as an ongoing effort to improve and innovate. What if Google is gone tomorrow? How will you reach your customers and vice versa? The same can be applied to bloggers/marketers, how will it impact your readership/audience if one day Google or RSS no longer exist? Those with strong following shouldn't be impact much, although backup plans should always be in place.

[Tanveer Naseer]

In light of last weeks Denial of Service attack on Twitter, this is a timely reminder for both businesses and individuals to not only diversify their communication/contact point outlets, but also the fact that access to any social-networking site will always be subject to the terms of those who operate it.

With the explosion in popularity for Facebook and Twitter, I think many of us take for granted that these services are not public ones where we can feel a certain level of ownership in because of our contribution of content.

Following a recent article in the NYT pointing out how more people are checking their Twitter and Facebook accounts first thing in the morning, your article is a great reminder, Valeria, that while we tend the fields, we shouldn't be confusing that with owning a piece of the turf.

[Maria Reyes-McDavis]

Timely and poignant post about the real data risks of social media. Thanks!

[Carlos Jimenez]

Thank you for the reminder!
We have to be cautious about our customers’ base and what platform we are using to talk with them

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Caroline - I'd say harness, invest, collect as well. I think we would be amazed at what we give away on these networks...

@Eric - we get used to perks so quickly, don't we? I'm amazed at how relatively easy it is to provide a platform for people to be social. Which should make us think.

@Amy - or investing our time in building timeless and portable digital assets so we can benefit our communities more than a third party, which may end up being at odds with what the rest of us wants to do next.

@Elizabeth - it's like diversifying investments.

@Jenesys - thank you for stopping by.

@Paul - glad the thoughts resonated. I've been thinking about this for a while, but it sort of crystallized as I really put more on FriendFeed than any other network.

@Eric - put like a true designer of conversations. More than content creators, marketers should consider becoming context builders as well.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Tanveer - you got it, yes, in the excitement and willingness to gather leads, we forget that we're stepping into someone else's home. It's seen as a bit selfish to have blogs, still, but this is the best tending one can make. Life streams many be fashionable, but they are transitory. Web sites evolved, but they certainly didn't go away. There's a very good reason why, too.

@Maria - glad the post was useful and thank you for spreading the word.

@Carlos - when building community, you want to make sure you can benefit new comers with the wisdom collected by all. That is hard to do on someone else'e turf.

[Jamie Favreau]

I am new to Friend Feed and I still haven't quite figured it out yet. I am glad I am getting subscribers but I still am NOT into it. I get agreggators but I guess if I want to be on Twitter I will go to Twitter.

Is FF a backdoor to Twitter which FB wanted? Just a thought?

[Kevin Donovan]

You miss the solution - we need free and open source alternatives like Wordpress or Identi.ca.

[Brad Weikel]

Kevin, as usual, is spot on here (although I don't think Identi.ca is pointed the right direction yet).

This post warns that "That API your team just wrote an application for? It can be changed overnight - or disappear entirely." -- but as Kevin's comment suggests, that's only a problem with a closed source model.

Hopefully more tools will go the Tr.im route (go open source to survive), rather than selling to FB or other walled gardens.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Jamie - it took me a little while to figure out, too. Your experience depends on who you follow. There have been speculations that FB baought FF for its awesome search feature and to compete better with Google.

@Kevin - yes, open source, OpenID.

@Brad - sounds like you two know each other. Somehow, I'm seeing evidence that although many talk about collaboration, we do not really have an open source culture online, at least not in the circles I've traveled. It's not the tools we miss, it's the focus on those alternatives. Just a thought.