Social discovery, enabled by social media platforms like Facebook, allows users to discover new content and information through their social connections. It is emerging as a new way for users to discover things to do, consume, and engage with. For businesses to take advantage, they will need to create shareable experiences and optimize content so that users will share their actions and engagements on social media. Both Google and Facebook are incorporating more social signals into their algorithms to improve search and discovery experiences based on a user's social graph and connections.

1. The Newest Challenger To SEO:
Social Discovery
Presented To:
Search Exchange 2011
Brandon Uttley, CEO
Command Partners
www.commandpartners.com

2. What We’ll Cover
• What is Social Discovery?
• Why it matters
• How to take advantage of it
Especially how to think of it terms of content optimization

3. What Is Social Discovery?
• Until about three weeks ago...it didn’t mean much
• It sounded like a great concept
• Use of social tools to nd relevant content
• Systems that enable sharing of content with other users
• “We’re at 2004-2005 of social networks in social discovery.”
—Tagged CEO Greg Tseng
I had started to read this term “social discovery” in the past couple months. It sounded kind
of theoretical.

4. Boom.
Suddenly, Facebook has brought the concept of social discovery to life with Open Graph via
Timeline, Ticker, etc.

5. Houston, this
is Social
Discovery.
We have
lifto .
Social Discovery, here we come.

6. What are people doing?
Social discovery allows you to discover things via social media...

7. Eating Listening To Doing Buying
Watching Watching
Reading Attending
TV Movies
Goodbye,
Hello, [insert active verb here].
The Like button was just the beginning. Someone called it a “blunt instrument.” We were
forced to use it because it was the only option.

8. “Like” Is So 2010.

9. Now Action & Consumption
Will Be The New Norms

10. “We call it real-time serendipity.”
—Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

11. Serendipity (n.)
The occurrence and development of events
by chance in a happy or bene cial way
Of course, things don’t just always happen randomly. Someone had to put something in the
stream

12. Chance Doesn’t Just Happen
Relevant content increases your chances
of someone “discovering” something
Of course, things don’t just always happen randomly.

13. The New Open Graph
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta
At FB’s core is the social graph; people and the connections they have to everything they care
about. In 2010, FB extended the social graph, via the Open Graph protocol, to include 3rd
party websites and pages that people liked. Now extending the Open Graph to include
arbitrary actions and objects created by 3rd party apps and enabling these apps to
integrate deeply into the Facebook experience.

14. A nity + Interests + Social Sharing
As social media users and consumers, this is how Social Discovery will benefit us.

15. Think Lifestreaming.
The game is changing. Everything that can potentially be shared WILL be shared, allowing
others to be part of the experiences.

16. Nike+ is a great example. Instantly share you activity to Facebook.

17. Trenny is another for social fashion.

18. Pinterest. Lots of stff shared.

19. Spotify is another.

20. “People discover music through their
friends. Because they’re social, they’re
more engaged. Because they’re more
engaged, they’re also twice as likely to pay
for music.
Social discovery on Facebook means we’re
bringing people back to paying for music
again.”
—Spotify CEO Daniel Ek
This is one opinion. Another is, your friends’ music taste is crap...so “social discovery” of
their music stream is worthless to you. Same thing can be said about their choices in food,
clothes, books, etc.

21. “Sharing with your friends generates an
ampli cation. When more of your friends see
it and it generates clicks back to a site, that’s
of value to a media company. We’re going to
signi cantly increase the amount of sharing.”
—Facebook’s EMEA Platform Partnerships
Director Christian Hernandez
EMEA=Europe, Middle East and Africa

22. Four Major Discovery Buckets
Communication Games Media Lifestyle
Stumbleupon Angry Birds Net ix Foodspotting
Reddit WOW Spotify Nike+
Words With
Foursquare Instagram Pinterest
Friends

23. Music
Random
Stu
Discover new music...discover new stuff/ways to do things

24. What friends are participating in...what apps they are using..and much more

25. I learn hear about a new extreme sports race

26. I can discover something I didn’t know about, a new social site in this case

27. How To Take Advantage
of Social Discovery

28. For Businesses To Compete
They will need to “App-e-tize”
Less Marketing, More Storytelling
For businesses, they need to think about how they can enable their users to share what
they are doing, reading, buying, etc.

29. Example where a user adds a food app to their Timeline. Later they take an action in the
app. It shows up in the News Feed, Timeline and Ticker.

30. Changes In the Stream
New Graph Rank
All Updates Will Appear In The Ticker
Only Important Events Go To The News Feed
Graph Rank is joining or replacing EdgeRank

31. Updates + Sponsored Stories
Sponsored Stories Will Increase
Organic Vs. Guaranteed/Paid Distribution
Now Called Graph Targeting By Facebook
Graph targeting will be huge...and Sponsored Stories will be a way to take advantage of social
sharing. Example of person listening to a song, which Spotify or the band can take ads out
on.

32. “Algorithmic discovery worked very well in a
world where links were the dominant force.
When you overlay the social component, you
begin to see a new way of discovery which,
in the real world, happened already—you
bought something at Topshop or a book,
movie or CD because your friend
recommended it.”
—Christian Hernandez
Publish content people care about. Ask: How can you build experiences and publish content
that people will put in their Timelines?

33. Speaking of Algorithms…
What About Google?

34. Google, the No. 1 search engine,
accounted for 11.1 billion searches
in August, according to ComScore.
Well, don’t count them out. Hardly.

35. Google+
Google+ is huge, too. Faster initial growth than Facebook.

36. Google+ has 50 million users.
Google+ hit this number in 88 days
vs. the 3½ years it took Facebook.

37. "Theoretically, Google has the
edge" over Facebook, IDC analyst
Scott Ellison says.

38. "Theoretically, Google has the
edge" over Facebook, IDC analyst
Scott Ellison says.
Duh.

39. Changing Search Results
Google is already zooming ahead with better search results.

40. Tailored Search Results
Now displaying annotated results.

41. Diversity of The Search Experience
Think about the richness of the search experience today
With Google in particular, Universal Search, Personalized Search,
Social Search, Instant Search, Local/Mobile, Preview and even the
currently suspended Real-Time Search all factor together to give
users what they’re looking for
Compared to bland search results made up mostly of just web pages several years ago

42. When you use the schema.org vocabulary to mark up your content, Google can use that
markup to improve the display of your site in Google Web Search. Use Rich Snippets Testing
Tools in Webmaster.

43. Google reports the average
consumer is discernibly in uenced
by 10.4 discrete pieces of
information—up from 5.3 sources
a year ago (Source: Google Insights)

44. Social Authority Is Growing
An author’s authority on social networking sites is in uencing
traditional SEO
Social shows authority—not relevance
Social signals at best will show that something is “rank worthy”
Example: Car insurance (you can get tons of likes, shares, etc. but with no links you won’t
rank. Authority Rank being considered along with PageRank.

45. Google+
Social connections may improve click-through rates on search ads
and organic listings
Tra c is pre-quali ed and may increase the engagement of the
person on a site
Search engines trust the “social web”

46. To Sum Up
Social discovery is here
Sharing is going to grow even more
Think actions and apps

47. Any Questions?

48. Thank you.
Brandon Uttley, CEO
brandon@commandpartners.com
Twitter: @brandonuttley