So it’s finally happened; Facebook has filed for ‘the largest technology IPO in Wall Street history’. Everything about Facebook is immense; almost 850 million users and 2.7 billion likes and comments every day. As recently as the summer of 2008, Mark Zuckerberg was celebrating the 100 millionth user, that means 750 million people signed up in 3.5 years alone. Then there’s Twitter, hitting 500 million users any day now, not to mention Linkedin, who reported 135 million members in November 2011.

These numbers are trotted on a regular basis, but they never fail to make my eyes water. Of course, all these platforms have enormous amounts of information to share with marketers so brands aren’t exactly shouting into the wind, but in the race for likes and followers, many still do forget a few basic social principles; be authentic and relevant. That can often mean thinking small.

Here at Headstream we have broken down how we view communities into three distinct areas. Each of these will be the subject of their own blog post in the near future for us to go into more detail. From how you go about finding them to holding the relationships with large groups of people. These types of communities are:

De-Centralised

This is the overall online community for a specific topic. Made up of each individual, their profiles, fan sites, forums, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages etc. This is often the starting point for activity to discover who is out there and what they are saying.

Centralised

The communities that either exist in specific places, whether it is the owned websites of a company or those that regularly comment on a fan forum/Facebook page. These are the core set of fans of a brand or product that are already advocates. They are the first in line to praise and critique activity and products.

Campaign

This is when a community is brought together under the banner of a specific campaign and once the campaign is finished the members move on. Campaign community individuals fall under both de-centralised and centralised communities. The ultimate goal would be to get those who aren’t already to begin to be part of a community that is run by the brand itself.

Viewing the different types of communities in these three specific ways helps us explain and understand the types of individuals. There is one thing that connects them all and that is the relationship that they hold with the brand. Whether a professional blogger or a casual Tweeter; holding a strong and positive relationship with that individual is the most important aspect of any ongoing community management.

What do you think? Have we nailed it with the ways we look at online communities or perhaps you think there are other ways? Sound off in the comments below.

Nominations are open for this year’s ranking. Let us know what brands you think should be recognised by tweeting @SocialBrands100 with the names of your favourite brands using #sb100.

The ranked brands:

Stuart Handley, Dell: The listening revamp

Claire Kavanagh, giffgaff: giffgaff leading the way: ranked telecommunications Most Social

Jas Dhaliwal, AVG: Top 100 social brands, how we came 15th

Sarah Pettegree, Bray’s Cottage Pork Pies: Say What? We’re What?

The industry:

Anne McCrossan, Visceral Business (and SB100 panellist): The state of the social brand

Ted Hunt, thisishelpful (and SB100 panellist): Social washing

Neville Hobson: 100 brands ranked by social ability to engage

Helen Brain, Mediacom: The top most bestest social brands

John Bell: What makes brands social

Rosemary Bird, Pure Content: Brands embrace social media but not geo-tracking

The Press:

UK

The Wall: Top 100 social brands revealed as Dell, Nike and Starbucks top table

Contagious: Social Brands 100

The Drum: Brands failing to use geo location social media services

Retail Week: How retailers can become more sociable

Third Sector: Child’s i Foundation ranks highly in list of top ‘social brands’

International

Biz-community: Social Brands 100 launches today

Propmark: Social Brands 100 destaca Twitter como a rede preferida das empresas

Marketing Media Review: Dell, Nike и Starbucks возглавили рейтинг «Топ 100 социальных брендов»

Social Brands 100 measures genuine engagement based on a brand’s content and behaviour. Last year’s report recognised the achievements of brands across retail, FMCG, media & entertainment, travel, technology, and more.  It found that any brand can choose to ‘be social’, but it’s not about making noise, it’s about how brands behave with their communities that really counts.

To be included in this year’s Social Brands 100, brands need to be nominated before February 10^th. You can nominate your own brand, or put a shout out for a brand that you love.

Nominations are being collated through the @SocialBrands100 Twitter profile. Once the nomination period has closed, Headstream will work with its data and analytics partner, Brandwatch, to create the ranking. To find out more, and to nominate a brand, go to www.socialbrands100.com.

Inclusion in the Social Brands 100 is a great way to show the world how your brand is performing in social, or give recognition to a brand you think is doing it right.  It’s as simple as sending a tweet to @SocialBrands100 with the name of the brand you would like to nominate, and the hashtag #sb100.

So, what are you waiting for?

Their YouTube channel has pretty much the entire three days uploaded for you to watch but we thought we’d pick our four highlights for you:

Robert Scoble talks to Dennis Crowley (CEO and Co-Founder) about the future of location and Foursquare:

Alexia Tsotsis interviews Kevin Systrom (CEO) about Instagram, his small team and their future:

MG Siegler discusses the latest Twitter developments with Ryan Sarver (Director of Platform):

Loic Le Meur speaks with Dave Morin (CEO and Co-founder) about Path, the value of closed social networks and where he sees things heading:

And if you are still with us here are two bonus videos (seriously all the LeWeb talks were really interesting this year). The first with Joanna Shields (VP & Managing Director EMEA) from Facebook where she discusses the latest and greatest developments with the worlds most popular social platform. The second features a discussion with Sean Parker and Shervin Pishevar where they talk about being entrepreneurs and where they see online tech going in the future.

There are also some great panels which are worth watching (I recommend this Facebook one) and insights from the likes of Kevin Rose (Milk), Eric Schmidt (Google), Marissa Mayer (Google) and Phil Libin (Evernote).

Enjoy!

P.s. Special thanks has to be given to Loic for putting on another great event for us all to enjoy and learn from.

There’s loads to cover and possibly even more announcements from #LeWeb today, but here are our top level insights about the different changes announced yesterday:

New Twitter (Really, it’s new, new Twitter as I still see people tweeting about the last ‘new’ Twitter, but you get the gist…):

- It’s a big change in terms of it’s design, while still remaining simple – as Twitter should be, it is very different and it looks like users will need to look again at the design of their backgrounds.

- There are two main phrases that Twitter has used around this announcement: ‘Let’s fly’ and ‘Yours to discover’. Discovery is a really important part of this new Twitter, as a lot of the changes have been created to help you better discover information that will be of interest to you.

- We will be able to see a lot more detail surrounding tweets, which for us industry people will be very helpful with reporting.

- Everybody will now have their own personalised ‘stories’ section (think Facebook Timeline nostalgia generator).

- Third party apps are able to take advantage of the new features.

Brand pages:

- According to Twitter themselves, these will be “enhanced profile pages that help marketers create an even more compelling destination on Twitter for their brands.” While these brand pages are currently exclusively available to 21 partner brands, these will be rolled out to a wider audience of brands in the next few months.

- Basically, with your new page, you will be able to show off your brand and your key messaging more than you have before. Pages will continue to be free and what will be really interesting is that you can create a tweet and select it as a ‘promoted tweet’ allowing it to essentially be pinned to the top of your page. This is ideal for showing off your key messaging and most engaging content.

- Brands, like individual users, will need to have another look at their page visuals. The new profile page will help you better communicate your brand with a large header image for showing logos, tagline and additional visuals.

Embeddable tweets:

- The third (and I don’t think last) piece of functionality Twitter is announcing is the permission to embed tweets into websites. With these tweets having full functionality, it just further allows people to discover content that is of interest and follow the conversation. For brands, it is a great way to highlight important messaging and drive traffic to brand pages.

So, Twitter opened its bag of tricks last night and what it’s hinting at is that there is lots more to come. We love Twitter; its simplicity and clarity of purpose are great strengths and it looks like new Twitter will just help improve these.

Looking forward to seeing what else is on the horizon!

It’s a new initiative to encourage people to take charge of their investments, where players can set up their own teams, choose their shirt strip and team badge to play against their friends, family and colleagues to win a number of different prizes.

Skandia are also giving away a signed Real Madrid shirt by Jose Mourinho to the best short and badge combo, so get cracking!

There’s still time to register your team, with hundreds of different badge and shirt combos to choose from.

I also recommend following Big Frank – @Frank_Pundit on Twitter for the latest updates, news and stats from the game using the hashtag #fanfunfoo

You can play the game within Facebook
or direct www.fantasyfundfootball.co.uk/

Yep that is one awful headline but I couldn’t think of anything less cheesy. It is however true.

The last 24-48hrs have seen the Facebook “frictionless sharing” debate come full front and centre once again. From what we are reading, to where we are, will be shared with people across our networks and through technology without us having to worry about hitting the ‘share‘ button.It would appear, most who are talking about real time sharing are in the “OMG this is going to end the world” camp (slight exaggeration I’ll grant you that). I am in the other camp and this is why. (Oh and if you missed it have a read of MG Siegler’s post from earlier today, it probably articulates my point better anyway).

Apple, Google and Microsoft are preparing us, Facebook is pushing us, and companies like Twitter and Foursquare have already got some of us there (it would appear a few of us are yet to realise this). Real time sharing, or as Facebook eloquently puts it, frictionless sharing, is an aspect of the new web that will become the norm in a few years.

In the first instance let’s look at the big three; Apple, Google and Microsoft.With the introduction of iOS5, Apple brought with it a number of new apps. One of these being Find My Friends which is nothing less than real time location sharing which can be set up between you and your friends/family’s iPhones allowing you to see at any time where they are (providing they have their phone with them).
Google+ has real time search implemented and it is addicting to watch the conversations roll in around different topics. Plus for the short while that their search engine was linked to Twitter (here’s hoping they strike a new deal soon) the real time web search was the most useful Twitter search engine out there.
Microsoft has been doing real time sharing in another form for years through Xbox Live. I can see which of my friends are online and what they are playing or watching at any time. This includes the times they are clearly playing dubious games just to increase their gamer score.

If you are a user of Twitter and Foursquare you have been doing near real time sharing for a while now. Especially those of you who state “I’m eating this”, “I’m watching this”, etc. Granted, to some these things may be interesting…to most perhaps not so much, but it is this kind of sharing that many people have become used to.

Of course the difference in most of these situations is that they were not frictionless. Xbox Live and the Find Friends app are more like where Facebook is moving. You have made an active decision to share these details and ultimately pressed a digital button to tell the world/your friends/a select group. What many are struggling with now is the passive behavioural sharing that is being introduced but ultimately is the next step. The evolution of sharing what we are doing in a care-free manner will allow us more freedom in our lives as it will become perfectly natural to be sharing information with certain groups and expect them to be aware of your activity.

These features will allow technology to become a part of our lives in an effortless manner. The goal of replicating and enhancing our offline lives online will be ever closer through passive technology. There of course should be some initial opt-in e.g. I am happy sharing this, I am not happy sharing that, I do not want these people to see this etc. We have a basic form of this right now with Facebook, and that is where it will take the majority of its users when it is rolled out to work across all apps, sites etc.

As always there will be some who question, some who will run screaming and others who will start #OccupyFacebook in protest to those changes. But do not then be surprised if, once Facebook have ironed out the kinks and sorted the initial privacy issues, we see everyone else introducing real time ticker feeds. Twitter are most likely testing website plug-ins that will share in real time what you are reading/watching on the web. Google will be working on similar features and one day Apple will introduce a “feed” app that plugs into you and your friends and family’s iPhones to let them know what apps you are using, where you are using them and how much time you have spent using them. Microsoft will continue to bring together their different products and in all possibility Windows 8 will have similar functionality taking inspiration from Xbox Live.

Real time sharing is in the future plans of the biggest tech companies. Facebook have made it the now (or at least the near future) and are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. Ultimately because of that attitude they will always succeed.

Two other blog posts worth reading:
C|net’s Molly Wood who provides a good argument against Facebook.
The ever entertaining Robert Scoble who looks at all the facts and comes out on the side of Facebook.

Read the full post on The Wall.