I have recently been chastised at every turn for “falling off the radar” so to speak. By “the radar” most people are referring to that of the social media world; blogs, twitter, the book of face and many others.

But here’s my question, How quiet is too quiet? I don’t feel I’ve dropped of the radar too dramatically. I completely agree that I am blogging less but I think that’s because my paradigms are shifting a bit.

I no longer believe that the web is the best place to throw down your thoughts and hope for some response. I no longer believe that my blogs are the best way for me to spend my time online. I have a job that pushes me to my limits almost every day and fulfills my need to constantly be innovating, creating and developing within a new and uncharted territory. So what do I need blogs for?

Don’t get my wrong, I love my blogs and they are a great outlet for me to do precisely what I am doing right now, a dump of mental thoughts (moughts?) running around my head that help to keep my very few readers up to date with the direction of my thinking and life. That’s it.

SA Rocks serves an entirely different purpose so that’s not really worth discussing in the same context.

Regarding Twitter, the book of face, the space of my, linked in, last fm and any (every) other social network I belong to, I am fast feeling that they are all relatively useless to me. I don’t understand the value of Facebook. Linkedin is a network worth keeping alive, but just barely and the others were great for me when I wanted to keep abreast of the latest tech out there. But right now, I am in a different paradigm that has very little to do with the web and how social it can be right now.

So I think I am being the correct amount of quiet up in here.

Let me explain this to someone, anyone, as explicitly as I can. I DO NOT WANT FACEBOOK NOTIFICATIONS IN MY INBOX. EVER. EVER. EVER.

Below are two screenshots, the first is what Facebook changed my notification settings to and the next is afterwards, my settings. Click the images to see fullscreen (and take note of the date).

Think at the point of receiving the error I was posting a link to WhyVOTE? to a group. Oh well.

I hate MySpace because it’s so unbelievably kitch and cheesy. Now FB can be those things too. Have a look at my profile.

I read about the application that allows you to do this on ReadWriteWeb. I am all for democracy and choice and blah blah blah, but I honestly think this is horrid.

What are your thoughts?

The application is put out by PageRage and will definitely help you take one step closer to a MySpace feel to your FB. I’m not convinced about the necessity for this sort of thing.

*Note: You need to install the application to see my profile on Facebook and to see anyone else who has an altered profile. I cannot be held liable if your friends leave you and no one writes on your wall subsequent to adding this application to your Facebook.

Anyways, here’s the message that’s been floating around and around. I haven’t personally received it but a friend sent it to me in an email after contacting me on Facebook in a frantic spin talking about the internet running out of space.

Attention all Facebook members.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to 15 other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerber

Well, I am trying to be as “inactive as possible” so that I can test this little theory and maybe be saved from Facebook. Please Mr Zuckerber, delete me.

I can only imagine that by the sheer number of South Africans that are using Facebook (over 700 000) and are actually writing innocent “notes”, well outnumber us “real bloggers”.

Furthermore, if on average let’s guestimate that these “note bloggers” have +-250 friends and that each note is being read, or at least viewed by half of these people. Imagine if every article you wrote on your blog was read by between 100 and 300 people. You’d have a thriving “real blog”.

“Note blogger” vs “Real blogger” – what’s your poison?

Not anymore apparently. I discovered an application that you can add to your FB Fan Page that will allow you to create boxes on your Fan Page that you can code in to. It’s called FBML. If you do a Facebook search for FBML you’ll find a host of other apps and groups that can help you with the application and your skills.

I was somewhat sceptical but decided to give it a go with my South Africa Rocks! Fan Page. It worked.

Now I haven’t spent much time on the two boxes that I have added so they are suffering from lack of attention but the proof that the FBML application works is there.

Have a look:

If you have used this app and have a great example (I know mine isn’t so hot) of what FBML can do, let me know. If you are interested in messing around with it drop me an email or comment and I’ll let you try some stuff out on the SA Rocks Fan Page for some experimentation.

I am relatively young but I think that these posts are referring to bloggers younger than I am.

Where are the young bloggers under the age of 21 in SA? Are there any and if not, why not?

I can’t think of any and don’t read any but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But is there really value for this sort of market in SA? Should we be looking for the next big thing now and getting them online and benefiting from their potential success? Is this exploitation?

I am also extremely interested to discuss what the next generation of bloggers will look like.

Should there be a batch of teenagers coming to the fore? Surely if blogging was taking off as much as bloggers think it would be reaching the younger generation and adopting the practice of blogging?

Could this be a sign that blogging is not all that it’s cracked up to be and it isn’t growing at the rate we all think it is? With so many teenagers on Facebook and using Mxit in SA in my mind it makes sense that some of them should be, could be and would be publishing their own content on blogs. But they just aren’t. Why?

I eventually saw that one of my friends on FB had joined the group as well as ±1500 people.

My immediate reaction is that this is a flop of a campaign. Advertising on radio is no cheap affair but an affair it is. You face the risk of being caught out by your better half – the listeners or target market. And to me it seems as though this has happened to Doritos.

Why I think this is campaign was a flop?

Coming off the back of a great advertising campaign with their “Moment of boldness” A few years ago I can’t believe that Doritos could have done so badly with this one. That campaign was a viral campaign before there were viral campaigns. To this day I know many people who still joke about their moments of boldness.

At the time of writing this post there were 777 122 people from South Africa above the age of 18 on Facebook. That works out to about 0.2% of the users on FB, from SA actually bothered to become a fan of the brand. In my mind, that’s a bit of a flop.

Why this could be perceived to be a successful campaign

Theoretically what we could be looking at here is quality over quantity. Involvement and activity over masses of inactive users/fans.

But let’s look at this for a moment before we get ahead of ourselves. The available features on the FB page of Doritos are: Notes, Photos, Video, Wall Comments, Events and Discussion Board.

To analyse these in a bit more detail:

Wall
313 posts

Discussion Board
Topic 1: 120 posts by 95 people
Topic 2: 29 posts by 25 people

Videos
12 fan videos

Photos
44 photos
5 albums

Events
Event 1 – 6 confirmed guests, 4 wall posts
Event 2 – 28 confirmed guests, 6 wall posts

Notes
7 notes
144 comments

Looking at the above breakdowns I honestly cannot say that all the money Doritos must have spent on their mainstream ad campaigns was worth it. 44 photographs and 12 videos is really not a good response in my opinion. Especially considering that there are ±1500 people in the group and over 750 000 people in SA on FB. That means that less than 1% of the fans on the page posted a video and almost 3% of the fans posted a photograph.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve posted, viewed and commented on hundreds of photos on FB, that should’ve been the saving grace but alas, it wasn’t.

What Doritos could have done differently

Expanded their “moment of boldness” campaign to an online network of viral campaigns. Blogs, videos, podcasts and “fake events” that could have boosted the reputation of the brand for the young and socially in touch.

I can picture the blog and videos now; South Africans all over filming their moment of boldness, recording fake jumps, dares and ironic, satirical parodies of the “bold” factor.

Doritos could have done more with their Facebook group. Updates, invites, ads, coupons, giveaways, freebies. Sometimes it just takes a bit of gritty interaction to spread the word for a fan page, not an entire radio ad campaign. Other than giveaways the Doritos fan page gave nothing to its members. No community offering. I know a lot of people who feel an affinity to Doritos, it’s their choice chip, but they were not enticed to join this group. People like Apple Students has it right on their page. They have a community, not a product.

Below the line marketing would have worked better. Get bloggers involved, send them a box of crisps and ask them to eat them, rally a party around the chips, get other bloggers in on it and spread the word slowly to all their readers via the subsequent posts.

Print would even have worked better than radio. More people will sit near a computer while reading a newspaper/magazine than will be listening to the radio, so why put it on the radio? You are probably driving in your car when you hear about the Doritos fan page, not sitting by a pc with internet access. Bad move.

I did try to contact Doritos, the admin of the group or anyone but no one responded. I gave them a few working days. I’d love to know if they consider this campaign to be successful or if they are looking in to recovering from the flop that I see?