Two new social platforms launched recently by the creators of Twitter could present new opportunities for B2B brands, says Alex Aspinall
It’s interesting to think that the founders of almost all thriving social platforms couldn’t have predicted with any degree of accuracy how their creations were going to mature. The fact that the world’s largest brands are investing huge sums trying to leverage the social space these companies have created is, in many cases, more a welcome development than always part of the plan.
This organic ‘build it and see where it leads’ approach has created Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, LinkedIn.
Thanks to the success of these top tier social platforms, new generations of entrepreneurs (as well as some familiar faces) are striving to create the next platform you can’t imagine being without.
It can be hard to see the value and extended uses of fledgling platforms, especially through B2B-tinted spectacles, but keeping one eye on the start-ups is the best way to stay ahead of the curve. In a world not exactly lacking in social media options, editor-in-chief at SugarCRM, Chris Bucholtz, believes new platforms live and die along very simple principles. He says, “The winners have a specific audience in mind and it’s almost always an audience that has gone un-served. They also have something unique about the way they foster social interaction.”
Two (very) new platforms that look like they may well fit the bill are Medium.com and Branch.com, both announced recently by The Obvious Corporation, the company set up by Twitter and Blogger founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Given the prominence of Twitter in the B2B space these days, it’s likely you’re going to be learning more about these fledgling platforms sometime in the near future.
What’s new?
With Medium and Branch, The Obvious Corporation has focused on two popular areas of social media and marketing; content and sharing. The intention, however, is to allow these things to flourish in a space less dominated by unwelcome noise and vanity metrics; something brands creating decent content should welcome.
Its founders described Medium as “re-imagining publishing in an attempt to make an evolutionary leap, based on everything we’ve learned in the last 13 years and the needs of today’s world.” What this means in real terms is a platform designed to generate collections of content and curated spaces, intended to stimulate debate.
The potential uses for content-focused brands are obvious here. Such a platform could play into the hands of those brands conducting content marketing properly. As Matt Gierhart, global head of social at Ogilvy Action, suggests, the re-imagined content delivery may encourage brands to focus on the content and discussion more, rather than simply working towards abstract metrics. “I think Biz and Evan have a vision of Medium forcing businesses to focus on being a leading voice for a topic or an industry rather than just positioning their brand narrative (as they are easily able to do with Facebook or Twitter),” he explains.
“Medium seems to be structured in a way that promotes relevant content for a wider conversation rather than Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn that allow for accounts to rise to the top.”
This concentration on facilitating real interaction is furthered by Branch. Marketed as a way of helping propagate collaboration and correspondence while avoiding the clutter increasingly associated with 2.0, Branch can be seen as a social skin covering the web.
The platform is potentially offering socially engaged organisations the opportunity to practice what they frequently preach in terms of the
wider web. Some exciting possibilities soon emerge, if you follow the logic to
its conclusion.
Scott Wilkinson, founding partner at agency Bordello, says, “Google might direct us to a thread of the conversation or the most relevant posting within a collection. But then the services themselves will take over, helping us discover relevant new ideas and content that we could never have thought of – and therefore could not have located via a search engine.
“These services may again make the internet exponentially more useful for B2B users. The key will be ways of finding mechanisms that relegate the dross and allow the brilliant posts to shine.”
What’s next?
Of course the difficulty with looking at new platforms not actually open to the public yet is that we’re dealing with possibilities and conjecture. But voices in social media are giving these platforms credit for working to put right the things currently unattractive about the space.
Giles Luckett, digital engagement director at Balloon Dog, says, “Medium and Branch are taking established principles of sharing and communities based around content and giving them – on the face of it, at least – a more powerful and more user-friendly
platform. They appear evolutionary rather than revolutionary and this could well attract an easy migration of users from other platforms.”
And this is the crux of the issue. Creating excellent platforms and facilitating new methods of sharing and interacting is not enough for any social platform. Without the critical mass of user adoption no platform can thrive. It’s clear The Obvious Corporation’s two newest ideas have a significant amount to offer. The test will be whether or not the world will be interested.
Danny Whatmough, account director at EML Wildfire and chair of the PRCA Digital Group, sums things up neatly. “Content marketing is where B2B companies are really succeeding at the moment. So it’s very telling that most of the new social tools that are appearing have content at their heart. New ways of presenting and distributing content are always going to be of interest.
“But as with all new platforms and channels, there is a danger of jumping on the bandwagon just for the sake of it. As ever, selecting the right channels to reach your audience is the secret to success.”
