Last week, Oracle Social Cloud sent Senior Content Manager Maggie Schneider Huston to Internet Week in New York City. Below are her thoughts from the experience:
1. You were Periscoping like crazy! What happened?
I confess - this was my first experience with Periscope, and it was pretty cool. Coming from a broadcast news background, I was very familiar with live video but unsure how well it would play from our @OracleSocial handles. I discovered viewers really liked seeing interaction on the floor of the conference, but not the panels. I spent about an hour and a half walking through the conference, going to exhibits, and talking with the representatives. People loved it! We had over 600 viewers and 3000 hearts. It was a huge success.
I built on that idea by grabbing the keynote speakers AFTER their panels and conducting my own interviews with them. It got a lot more interaction than the static shot of their panels, and it allowed me to tailor questions for my audience. My favorite part was when our viewers told me questions to ask the people I was interviewing - I really felt like I was being useful for our customers.
2. What were some of the main themes from the conference?
First and foremost, privacy and big data dominated nearly every conversation. As consumers, we’re generating a lot of data points across multiple platforms and devices. Oracle Social Cloud Group Vice President Meg Bear summarized this concept as “audience of one,” where marketers combine these data points to paint a complete portrait of a customer. With this audience of one, consumers will receive highly targeted marketing.
On the flip side of this, however, is privacy concerns. At what point does it become creepy that a company knows intimate details of your life? How do you keep private information private? FTC Commissioner Julie Brill raised a very interesting example: if you’re a woman and using an app to track your menstrual cycle, that information can be sold to third parties. When paired with other data points, it’s possible that a company could send you specific marketing based on when you are ovulating, PMSing, or whatever.
Nuala O’Connor, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, expanded on consumer privacy as well. As consumers become conscious that their digital footsteps are being tracked and marketing becomes more targeted, our society at large becomes more siloed. Intellectual exploration will be limited, as we are not forced to go beyond our comfort zone.
As a mother of three, I asked her how she teaches her children about data privacy. Here’s what she said:
In short - what are you walking away with?
Gary Vaynerchuk said it best: “Be a doer.” Be a practitioner of social media. In an environment that is new and rapidly evolving, the only way to stay on top is to keep trying. You can’t sit back and observe social media - you need to participate.