Social media site inspection: Mobile

February 2nd, 2009 by Andy Merchant

Welcome to the regular feature on Liberate Media’s blog: the social media site inspection. Inspired by NMA’s long-running site inspection, which has graced the back page of the magazine for many years, we will be looking at four websites from a different sector each month. This month’s chosen sector is anything mobile related. The chosen few will be reviewed by members of the Liberate Media team and scored on four key aspects of social media:

- Social media components

- Sharable content

- Social bookmarking score

- Freshness of content

We will also add an overview of how we rate the site in its current form, where improvements could be made and generally give feedback on our impressions.

We hope you enjoy the reviews, and please let us know your thoughts on the sites or our ratings - we would welcome the feedback.

BLYK

www.blyk.co.uk/

Social media components – 22/25

Sharable content – 20/25

Freshness of content – 20/25

Social bookmarking score –

194  bookmarks at Delicious
3  pages posted on Digg
0  pages posted on Reddit
12  page references from Yahoo! Answers
248  blog reactions from Technorati

Comments

For those that are not aware of Blyk, it’s the free mobile phone network for 16-24 year olds. Of course by free, I mean advertising-funded so any users signing up to the network will receive advertising messages in return for an allowance of free minutes and texts, which can be topped up at an agreed rate.

The service launched in the UK in late 2007 and sparked much debate about whether mobile-based advertising will succeed and the downside of its potentially intrusive ad-serving nature.

However, I’m not here to review the idea, I’m here to look at the site’s social media capability in what I hoped would be a slick and open site, considering its socially-aware and connected target audience.

On opening the site, I was pleased to see a simple layout and easily accessible core elements:
Information on joining, signing in and getting more credit is upfront and clear. As I continued to look around the site the theme of simple bite-sized chunks of information, supported by helpful content such as video and click-through data continued. What’s more, on the about page I found a link to Blyk’s UK blog. The blog is updated twice monthly on average, other than December where no updates were made, which isn’t great, but the posts themselves were more impressive. No hard sell, okay there were one or two,  and a range of commentators from the founder, to members and even a work experience guy.

The subject matter was useful, helpful and encouraging with tips and content that would be valued by the community. The blog layout is again simple, with good use of images, social bookmarking (which could go further) and a search tool.

The Blyk membership page is also full of personalised information and on further investigation the help menu directed me to a forum, which is well used and includes tag clouds meaning finding information is easy. What’s more the shop is simple to use and actually orientated to help the user locate a product, brilliant!

It’s also easy to click through to the corporate site, which retains the usefulness and offers a different blog, easy to understand layout and helpful biog to what looks like nearly all the senior team.

So, at the start of this review I was confident that as a newish service aimed at a socially-aware audience, Blyk had to deliver on the social media front, and while there is much more it can do, I feel Blyk has got the balance of attracting new users and keeping the community coming back for more pretty much spot on. Overall, well done Blyk, top marks!

Review by: Lloyd Gofton

Other sites in this sector: Not too many ad-supported free mobile networks, but plenty of traditional mobile networks:

www.vodafone.co.uk
www.orange.co.uk
www.o2.co.uk
www.three.co.uk
www.t-mobile.co.uk

O2 UK

www.O2.co.uk

Social media components – 9/25
Sharable content – 15/25
Freshness of content – 23/25

Social bookmarking score -

512  bookmarks at Delicious
35  pages posted on Digg
2  pages posted on Reddit
188  page references from Yahoo! Answers
1415  blog reactions from Technorati

Comment

The one-way signs are very brightly illuminated for the non-O2 customer on this site. It’s very much a sales tool for the UK market, focusing on the people who have signed up to the service.

I thought that the site might open up a little, relax and be more engaging as I drilled down but I had to work quite hard to find points from which I could find sharable content.

There is, unsurprisingly, a massive amount of information on the O2 UK site, covering the company’s consumer and business markets for mobile and broadband. But it’s also unsurprising in its delivery – click and read, click and learn, click and listen, click and watch. Yes, deeper down in the site I found the podcasts and vodcasts for sport and music.

Maybe I’m being a little unfair, in that there is a link from the home page to the “What’s on at the O2 section” but for the novice, the untutored or the bewildered there is no indication that here lies the really interesting, sticky stuff.

It took me more than half an hour to find this rich seam of data – and that’s where I stayed for some time because it was engaging and shareable (links to Facebook, MySpace, del.icio.us and Digg). I felt human again – albeit a left-out human because I wasn’t a part of the Priority posse snapping up tickets for Pink, Tina Turner and Simply Red.  I’m being unfair again, there are also no Priority tickets available for Depeche Mode, Kings of Leon and Walking with Dinosaurs. Anyway, O2 understands the meaning of Exclusive. I almost wanted to change mobile providers.

The user reviews are again enclosed, with no opportunity to respond on the page but with the facility to go to the forums. The reviews that I tasted were, largely, uncritical and solo. I had expected a few more.

The forums are lively enough with nearly 35000 members and the widest range of concerns, questions and expertise on display – and you don’t have to be an O2 customer to rant there. Tempting … very tempting.

And I can send a free text message from the site to *any* mobile. But you have to register using your mobile number, then get a validation code and then text away. I lost the will to live after the first stage.

On its own ground, the site delivers – selling phones and services. But I was surprised and disappointed that it did not engage as a social media tool. After all, the company is all about connecting people.

Review by Tim Greenhalgh

Other sites in this sector:

Vodafone www.vodafone.co.uk
Virgin Mobile www.virginmobile.com
T-Mobile www.t-mobile.co.uk

Ericsson

www.ericsson.com

Social media components – 10/25
Sharable content - 16/25
Freshness of content - 17/25

Social bookmarking -

73 Delicious
5   Digg
1   Reddit
10 Yahoo! Answers
795 Technorati

Comments

Ericsson is a Swedish manufacturer and supplier of a GSM family of radio access networks and core networks.

First impressions always count, and my first impressions of the site are “what a drab looking site!”
My first glance seemed to suggest no social media elements at all, no sign of an Ericsson forum, blog or community, no link to a Facebook group, Twitter feed, or Youtube video.
A second more extensive look around reveals a couple of social media elements, including the Telecom report podcast, technology news via RSS and press releases via RSS all of which look reasonably up-to-date.

Next I spot the multimedia tab, maybe there will be some shareable video here – to my surprise there are no videos at all – what a let-down!
It feels like Ericsson are yet to truly embrace social media, one suggestion could be that the press releases featured on the site, none of which have shareable social bookmark features, could be turned into social media press releases – here’s hoping!

Review by: Andy Merchant

Other sites in this sector:

www.motorola.com
www.quios.com
www.nokia.com

3

www.three.co.uk/

Social media components – N/A
Sharable content – N/A
Freshness of content – 5/25

Social bookmarking score –

52  bookmarks at Delicious
1  pages posted on Digg
1  pages posted on Reddit
71  page references from Yahoo! Answers
797  blog reactions from Technorati

Comments:

It’s a bit ironic that a mobile network publicising mobile broadband on its homepage has barely anything to offer to its customers by way of social networking features. While networks such as Orange are using websites as entertainment and networking portals, 3 is sadly lagging behind in terms of social innovation.

In all honesty, it is almost impossible to write a social media site inspection for the 3 website. The site is primarily being used as a UK sales tool, and doesn’t seem to have been updated in a long while. In terms of content and services on offer, there is little to pull 3 customers back to the site or entice new customers in. On comparing this to the Orange website the differences couldn’t be more stark – I quickly got lost in the Orange celebrity blog and user reviews on films, whereas the 3 website took me a matter of minutes to browse through.

In terms of personalisation, a service called My3 is available to 3 customers only, which I wasn’t able to access. This wasn’t a massive loss going by the description of the service, which refers to paying bills and checking number of minutes/texts left, with no mention of exclusive content or networking services.

The ‘Products & Services’ section of the 3 website is the one glimmer of hope that I came across, but again, without being a 3 customer I was not able to access its ‘Planet 3’ entertainment and information portal which is available solely through mobile handsets. The absence of any integration between web and mobile is surprising and disappointing – surely mobile networks should be leading the way in offering a joined-up and open user experience?

I was left with a very poor brand experience, which goes to prove that price isn’t everything when it comes to selecting a mobile network nowadays.

Review by Wendy McAuliffe

Other sites in this sector:

www.orange.co.uk
www.t-mobile.co.uk
www.02.co.uk

      

Tags: mobile site review, mobile social media review, site inspection, social media site inspection

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 pm and is filed under Blog, Social media site inspection, Social networking, Trends and research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.