Socialbakers have cooked up their Top Australian Facebook Pages Q1 2012 report.  The report delivers the rankings of the most popular, engaging and responsive Australian brands and media pages on Facebook.

Google have just revealed a new Google+ layout and interface:

As part of the rollout, Google appears to have added new share functionality across a wide range of its different properties:

Google Search:

YouTube:

Gmail:

Do you think these new features are primarily intended as social networking functionality, or are they more directed at understanding and profiling individuals and their interests? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The Facebook + Instagram deal is a movie in which Facebook has been cast as the pantomime villain, the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang out to steal the innocence of the Instagram kids. 

But we disagree. If this is a movie, it’s closer to the plot of The Fighter; in which the washed-up veteran helps train the younger sibling to become world champion.

A better analogy of the deal, certainly, bar the washed up part. Facebook is the current champ and shows no signs of being toppled any time soon.

So let’s take a breath, distil the sense from the madness, and discuss why Facebook + Instagram is good news.

It’s ours, and they can’t have it. 

“Facebook is evil,” they cry. “Let’s all delete our accounts, that’ll show them!”

This, a week on from the petulant reaction to the app’s much anticipated launch on Android, isn’t going to have anyone at Instagram or Facebook quaking in their boots.

Instagram is a great app with an engaged base of contributors – but users and owners aren’t the same thing.

The app was built by a couple of guys, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It’s theirs.

In a miracle of engineering, genius and luck, they built it in 8 weeks and took it from unknown to number one photo app in the App Store in a matter of hours.

Initially, some of the appeal of Instagram was being part of a member’s only club. Die-hard users balked when Instagram for Android launched because they didn’t want Android users in their club.

They didn’t want their platform ‘diluted’, even though many Android phones have camera comparable or better than an iPhone.

The same thing happened when the Facebook deal was announced. But here’s the thing; for Instagram it was either evolve or die.

Instagram wouldn’t have been able to fight off better funded apps by bigger competitors forever. If not this deal with Facebook, Instagram may have been bought by another big company and gutted.

Facebook + Instagram is better than no Instagram at all.

Instagram wasn’t going to be free forever

Instagram is free to download. It doesn’t make any money. Thus far it has run solely on investment funding, meaning at some point they would have had to monetise to repay investors.

Either they’d have had to start charging for the app – driving away new users – start charging for filters, which would have pissed off their core fans, or start rolling out ads, which would have pissed off everyone.

Sure, at some point Facebook will seek to recoup their $1billion investment by making money from Instagram.

That doesn’t have to mean simply ads. Data is king, and Instagram will provide a ton of it via social graph integration.

Monetisation may come in the form of sponsored content and accounts, as it does on Twitter, or perhaps in the rebirth of Facebook Deals – dishing out offers to users who check-in with uploads from restaurants or hotels.

For now, the Facebook investment gives Instagram time, money and support to improve the app before monetisation in any form is even considered.

And let’s face it, whether you love it or you’ve never heard it, they need to make improvements.

Instagram is a flawed platform

Instagram works because it is simple. True. But it could also be argued that the app is too simple. It’s lack of features means it lacks true social and viral potential.

At the moment it’s a closed graph. Unless you go to the popular page, your feed is populated only by content created by users you follow.

Users can only like or comment on each other’s pictures. There is no curation aspect, no retweet/reblog/repin function, the same functions that have proved the success of Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest.

There is no way to manage more than one account. No way to filter posts into separate content streams.

You can’t, for example, have a separate account or separate stream for food pictures and sunset pictures, something which Pinterest has proved users want in order to better navigate content.

There is no tagging function on images, users can only be replied to in the comments, and then only users on the Instagram platform.

At least some of these gaps in the Instagram experience will be explored now, and hopefully we’ll have an even better native app to use.

Instagram isn’t dead

“Where’s Gowalla now?” said a user on Twitter, complaining that Facebook will be the death of Instagram.

But Gowalla, along with many of the acquisitions Facebook has made, was a secondary platform, miles behind Foursquare in terms of user adoption.

Facebook made those acquisitions to bolster their talent pool and internal development projects.

But Instagram is different. Instagram has a massive user base and no competitors in sight.

With that in mind, the app will continue as a standalone product, just as YouTube has underneath the Google umbrella.

As Kevin Systrom said in his official statement;

The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. We are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.

This is a departure for the Facebook way of doing business. In the past, Mark Zuckerberg has favoured folding acquisitions into Facebook under that one brand name.

As part of the deal, Instagram will keep its branding and will effectively act as Facebook’s standalone photo app.

You don’t have to be on this train

The bulk of complaints against the Facebook deal have centred on Facebook’s use of data.

With Instagram now heading for deeper Facebook integration, possibly in the form of check-ins, tagging and friends, users are worried how Facebook will use that data.

The truth is they won’t use it any differently from the way Instagram would have used it if they’d have stayed an independent enterprise.

Part of that use is for advertising, sure, but it’s also about social integration; letting you share more easily with friends.

If you don’t like it, don’t stay. Perhaps this deal is the impetus you needed to leave and start your own photography app/community.

Perhaps you’ll be a $400m man in a couple of years time…

The deal will improve Facebook mobile, too

450 million of us access Facebook every month from a mobile device, many to upload and share pictures.

The problem is that the functionality is bad. Facebook didn’t just spend a billion dollars buying Instagram to fix their photo app, but this will certainly be a benefit of the friendship.

This isn’t just about filters, this is about function. you can reminisce about pokes all you want; Facebook was built on photos.

Making them easier to upload, share and edit will keep Facebook on top for a little while longer.

If they’re willing to take Instagram along for the ride, with the brand and community in tact, then even better.

Are you for or against Facebook + Instagram? Leave us a comment and share your thoughts.

The world is waking up to the news that Facebook has acquired mobile photo sharing platform Instagram for a cool billion dollars.

Here is a round up of the reactions from around the webs;

Mark Zuckerberg makes the announcement on his Facebook page;

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

You can read his full statement here.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom breaks the news via Twitter

The tweet linked through to the Instagram Tumblr where Systrom had posted an official statement;

It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.

The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you.You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.

We’re psyched to be joining Facebook and are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.

You can read the full statement here.

TechCrunch highlights how Facebook has made way for Instagram;

This is a really big departure from the way Zuckerberg has historically run Facebook as a single product. He has always been insistent that everything feed back into Facebook itself.

Keeping Instagram as a separate product and brand is reminiscent of what Google has done with keeping YouTube and Android as separate fiefdoms within the company following their acquisitions.

The website has also remade their logo in honour of the acquisition. You can read the full article at TechCrunch.

Quora weighs in
Over on Quora the techsperts have been sharing their views. Ryan Charles, former head of mobile at Zagat, said;

If you’ve read The Facebook Effect, you’ll understand how pivotal photo sharing was to Facebook’s growth. The ability to tag a user in a photo was also a tremendous social and viral mechanism for Facebook.

Instagram could easily become a baked in component of a Facebook mobile OS and the team understands how to build a mobile community from the ground up.

Tech commentator Robert Scoble shared his views on the $1bn price tag;

Today Facebook has NO revenues from mobile. None. That’s amazing, since so many people, hundreds of millions of us, use Facebook on mobile clients.

Instagram will let Facebook develop a new kind of Open Graph advertising. One where Facebook will be able to offer mobile developers a lot of money in return for opening their apps up to Open Graph.

Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are slobbering over this new potential revenue stream, so having lots of VC buy-in (they just got a nice payday) will be very important.

Imagine that Benchmark now “asks” all of its member companies to support such a new advertising scheme? This could result in billions of revenues for Facebook and member companies.

The Guardian highlighted the negative sentiment the deal has garnered;

Instagram and its various analogues have created a legion of smartphone users who are quite literally uploading billions of damaged images into the public record.

Make no mistake, you aren’t an artist. If you were an artist, you wouldn’t be using Instagram in the first place. You certainly wouldn’t be using a filter as a crutch.

At the end of the day, that’s what Instagram filters are: a crutch, a misguided replacement for a properly composed shot and a decent sensor.

- Chris Zeigler, writing at The Verge

The precedent is worrisome, though, if it means every time a startup encroaches on one of Facebook’s presumed strengths it will need to take out its pocketbook to defend its turf. That’s hardly a robust justification for a lofty valuation.

- Robert Cyran at BreakingViews

Twitter explodes
The most vocal outrage has been reserved for Twitter, with everyone from journalists and tech bloggers to Instagram users venting about the deal;

The strangest part of the deal
The Atlantic and Quora also picked up news that Instagram had sealed an extra $50m in funding only last week;

As a former entrepreneur myself, my sense is that there’s no way Instagram would have knowingly shrunk it valuation slice if they knew a potential sale was imminent.

It’s more likely that either the Facebook deal floored them, or that they were using the latest round of venture funding to show off their accelerating valuation to Facebook.

- Matthew O’Brian at The Atlantic

It seems clear that closing the investor round helped Instagram improve its negotiation position/valuation with Facebook. Instagram (closed) a big round that gave it enough money to stay independent for a long time while growing the company.

At that point, Facebook’s only option was to go big or go home.

- Muhammad At-Tauhidi on Quora

We are still gathering our thoughts here at the We Are Social office, and will be posting them on the blog shortly.

In the mean time, tell us; is this the end of Instagram? Does this change anything? Let us know in the comments.

Welcome to your Easter round up of the top stories making headlines in social media.

1. Facebook buys Instagram for $1 Billion
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of the hugely popular photo-sharing app Instagram yesterday in a post on his Facebook Timeline. On the future of Instagram Zuckerberg commented:

In order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

Instagram launched its iOS app in October 2010, and came to Android for the first time last week.

2. Top Australian marketers shift budgets to digital and social
In a recent article from the SMH, Australia’s leading CMO’s from Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, Coles, Unilever and Myer discussed the ’tectonic shift’ in some of the country’s biggest marketing budgets towards online.

Andy Lark, Commonwealth Bank’s chief marketing officer, estimates that 40-45% of the bank’s marketing budget will have shifted to digital by the end of this year. At Telstra, 30-35% of the budget has moved online. In the retail sector, Myer is doubling its spend each year, although off a low base.

3. Australian designer wins Heineken ‘Future Bottle’ design competition
Sydney based freelance designer Lee Dunford teamed up with Rodolfo Kusulas of Monterrey Mexico to win Heineken’s ‘Future Bottle’ design competition. Heineken invited designers to collaborate with one another through the beer brand’s Facebook page and create a design that represents how people will connect in the next 140 years. The compeition attracted attracted 30,000 entries and six finalists.

4. Problogger launches blogger competition for Tourism Queensland
Darren Rowse aka Problogger has launched a competition for Tourism Queensland to find ten of the world’s most creative bloggers from around the world to win a trip to the Great Barrier Reef and write for the official Tourism Queensland blog.

Bloggers must explain in 150 words why they would make the ideal Queensland Blogger Correspondent. The winning bloggers will get a five day all expenses paid stay in Queensland, trips to the state’s main bucket-list attractions, as well as a blogging workshop from Rowse.

5. Australian social media research update
A Nielsen report found recently that more than two-thirds of Australian Facebook users post remarks about products and companies each month,  And 60% ”liked” a company due to a friend’s post in the past month, while 51% of Facebook users and 67% of Twitter users said they were more likely to buy since becoming a fan or a follower.

6. Samsung in search for Olympic bloggers
Samsung is searching for 100 bloggers to blog for them during the Olympics and join their Samsung Global Blogger (SGB) programme. Winners will blog and produce a daily show across the entire Olympic Games period using Samsung products, including the Samsung Galaxy Note, which the company wants to position as the perfect blogging device.

7. YouTube hits upload record, holds Vlogging contest and adds video duels
User uploads to YouTube have hit one hour per second, and to mark this milestone YouTube have launched a website which visualises what happens in a minute on the site.

In addition, YouTube are running a new video blogging competition:

Starting today through April 18, applications will be open for sixteen promising vloggers to take part in three months of intimate educational workshops held on Google+ Hangouts. Each vlogger will receive $5,000 worth of video equipment and more than $10,000 worth of promotion on and off YouTube. Participants will also receive mentoring from industry experts, such as iJustine, one of the most successful vloggers and content creators on YouTube!

Finally, in a busy week for YouTube, they’ve launched YouTube Slam, where users can create their own video duels, and people can vote for which video they prefer. Although YouTube has been experimenting with this for a few weeks, it’s the first time users can manage the game themselves by choosing the videos included.

8. Pepsico and Arby’s offer rewards for engagement
Although they’re doing it in different ways, both Pepsico and Arby’s are offering consumers rewards for engagement through digital channels.

Arby’s, an American fast-food chain is offering Facebook Credits in return for in-store purchases, thereby driving greater football.

In similar news, Pepsico has announced a tie in with reward company Kiip to offer fitness enthusiasts ‘achievement rewards’ when they log a run through fitness apps such as Nexercise and MapMyRun.

After a workout, bike ride or run users are rewarded with PepsiCo’s Propel Zero drinks mix packets.

Econsultancy’s David Moth drew a salient conclusion from the two campaigns:

The two examples are slightly different – Pepsico is offering physical rewards for digital engagement while Arby’s is offering digital rewards for physical purchases – but in essence they are part of the same trend. Consumers have come to expect discounts and rewards and increasingly we are seeing that brands are willing come up with the goods.

9. Barack Obama joins Pinterest
Barack Obama joined Pinterest last week – and although he quickly added 9,000 followers, the Daily Mail chose to focus on his chilli recipe.

10. Crackdown on social media in parts of Asia
In China, police arrested six and shut down 16 websites after rumours spread online that military vehicles were on the streets of Beijing. In addition, the biggest micro-blogging site stopped users commenting on other users posts over the weekend, although they could still post on their own channel.

What was behind the rumours was that a military coup might take place – and it’s clear the Chinese government was worried enough that it took action.

In Dubai, the government is also trying to fight back against social media users stirring the seeds of discontent against the government. The Chief of Police Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tami accused the country’s Muslim Brotherhood of trying to cause trouble through Twitter:

We aim to clean Twitter’s space from any abuse. We want to make it a social networking medium and not a tool to create disharmony and disintegration.

Tom Smith, founder of Trendstream, the company behind the GlobalWebIndex, exclusively talks us through the implications of Google’s Search plus Your World and the concept of the ‘Googopoly’.

With the introduction of Google’s Search plus Your World, personalising your search results to include information from you and your friends, Google is driving the way we gather information, communicate socially and interact with brands online.

Our presentation, given at the International Search Summit in Munich, discusses the idea of what we’ve coined as the ‘Googopoly’, where Google has risen to control most of what we see and do online. Our deck also highlights some of the interesting findings from our 6 waves of research, including that each experience online is different and understanding this unique interaction is key to creating a winning campaign, that social media is continually increasing important, brand websites shouldn’t be neglected and rewarding customers who engage with your brand will foster lasting relationships.

In this new world, where search and social are two in the same, knowing what drives your target audience is more critical than ever. Understanding how you can leverage your audience to get the most out of all of your online marketing activities will be a key competitive advantage.

Welcome to your drawsome weekly round up of the top stories in social media, a finger painted top-twelve that won’t leave you guessing.

Without further adraw;

1. Australian Social Media stats – March 2012
Facebook grew by nearly 200,000 Australian users in March, though the surprising figure is the Myspace traffic, with nearly half a million visitors.

Room for Justin Timberlake to bring Sexy Back? We won’t cry him a river if not…

1. Facebook – 10,889,960 Australian users/accounts (up 186,800) – 13 million UAVs according to Google Adplanner. The difference between the user numbers and unique visitors is people probably logging in from multiple locations – home, school, work etc.
2. YouTube – 10,000,000 UAVs (down 1,000,000)
3. Blogspot – 4,000,000 (up 500,000)
4. LinkedIn – 2,100,000 (down 100,000)
5. Twitter – 1,600,000 (down 200,000)
6. WordPress.com – 1,600,000 (steady)
7. Google Plus – 1,289,940 (up approx 90,000 – Estimated calculation below)
8. Tumblr – 1,100,000 (steady)
9. Flickr – 840,000 (down 80,000)
10. MySpace – 470,000 (down 50,000)

2. Visualising the Australian digital revolution
Marketing Mag have put together a neat Infographic on Australia’s digital revolution between 2010 and 2011.

As expected, social media use is surging, up by 127% during 2011. Australians now spend 9.3 hours per week on social networks.

3. Spending on digital marketing continues to rise
According to a survey conducted by Duke University, US marketing budgets will rise by 8.1% over the coming twelve months.

This rise will mainly be spent online, with digital marketing budgets forecast to rise 12.8% over the next year, whilst ad spend on traditional media will drop by 0.8%.

The area which will rise most is social media: marketers said that they planned to allocate 7.4% of their overall budgets to social media in the coming year.

4. L’Oreal has a team of 400 staff working in social media
At Wednesday’s Facebook Marketing Conference in London, L’Oreal CMO Marc Menesguen revealed that L’Oreal has a team of 400 staff working in social media who post new content on Facebook everyday:

It’s a lot of work and requires a lot of commitment. The digital revolution is on at L’Oreal and we are integrating digital and social as early as possible in the marketing process.

5. Social media delivers higher value sales
New research has found that ecommerce sales which occur after exposure to a brand on social media deliver more than $280 per order, compared to less than $100 for those driven by natural search:

6. 10.5 billion minutes spent on Facebook daily, what’s Timeline’s effect?
According to a tidbit of info released by Facebook, in January users spent an average of 10.5 billion minutes on the site daily, excluding mobile – or around twelve and a half minutes each a day.

This increase has mainly come from a growth in the userbase: aggregate minutes per day increased 57% and average minutes per user per day increased 14% year-on-year.

Nonetheless, it’s unclear whether Timeline is driving a boost in engagement, in addition to the figures above.

Inside Facebook detailed a few studies which have been released about Timeline engagement rates, but the small sample size, coupled with the important caveat that most engagement takes place in the News Feed, means that it’s essentially impossible to draw a verifiable conclusion.

The most reliable study comes from Edgerank Checker, which has looked at over 3,500 Pages and they have struggled to find anything which suggests Timeline has a discernible impact on engagement.

7. Local Facebook Pages outperform global Pages in reach and engagement
New research has found that local Facebook Pages with 30-100 fans reach five times more fans (as a percentage) than corporate Pages with 100,000+ fans, with engagement eight times higher.

It goes to show that for businesses with multiple small branches – say, McDonalds – there’s value in having both a corporate Page, and a local Page for each store.

8. Tumblr hits 20 billion posts, integrate with Timeline
Although Tumblr has been very understated in its reaction to the news, the micro-blogging service has now reached 20 billion posts, meaning it’s doubled in size in just six months. Pretty staggering.

The platform has also finally been accepted as social graph partner by Facebook, meaning Tumblr posts can now be properly integrated into the Timeline, Newsfeed and Ticker.

Timeline integration has seen staggering traffic growth for launch partners such as The Guardian, so Tumblr is set to get even bigger. Pinterest who?

9. BBC News personalise content on their Facebook Page

As different people are interested in different news stories, BBC News have added a Control Panel which allows Facebook fans to filter which updates they see. By liking different BBC News sections, correspondents and programmes, more relevant updates will appear in your News Feed.

10. Heineken unveils bottle designed by two Facebook fans
Beer brand Heineken has released a limited edition bottle which was designed by Facebook fans. The competition asked fans to design a bottle and then pair it with another in the gallery, and it attracted 30,000 entries. Nice.

11. Spotify puts over 1,000 years of music on Facebook Timeline

Spotify have launched a really cool Facebook Timeline, which goes through 1,000 years of music history, and lets users discover some music they might otherwise have missed. On song.

12. Twitter user jailed for 56 days
A Welsh Twitter user who tweeted racist abuse about Fabrice Muamba, the footballer who collapsed on the pitch, was jailed for 56 days last week for inciting racial hatred.

That was our pick of the week’s social media news – what caught your eye? Leave a comment!

My recent post on the #Occupy movement and how it can help organisations become more social prompted me to dig out and (re)read some of the great work written by the late and great organisational thinker and writer, Colin Ward.

One short essay in particular, Harmony Through Complexity, started me thinking again about non-hierarchical and self-organising systems and how today’s ‘networked enterprises’ – to use McKinsey’s terminology – should embrace Ward’s clear and forward-thinking work to become better at managing the organisational complexity necessary to survive in the contemporary networked reality.

Originally published in 1978, Harmony Through Complexity is well ahead its time, drawing as it does on anthropological studies of tribal societies, linking this with the (then) still emerging field of cybernetics and distilling this complexity into a clear argument for the benefits of leaderless organisation.

Ward’s fundamental argument is that tribal societies, organised around informal and largely leaderless practices are far from simple or primitive as sociological or scientific “experts” in the civilised West believed. They are, rather, held together by vastly complex social arrangements that rely on customs, cooperation and collaboration to evolve and survive.

Such “socially-calibrated” practices are not, Ward suggests, representative of “society’s simplicity and lack of organisation, but of its complexity and multiplicity of social organisations.”

In fact, Ward argues, civil society institutions from Government through to NGOs and businesses can – and should – learn a lot from these social, self-organising arrangements.

Putting these anthropological insights into an organisational framework Ward fascinatingly makes the connection between these complex, tribal organisational forms and cybernetic management theory – still a relatively new idea in 1978 – which offers a novel way of approaching the management of “complex, self-organising systems”.

For a handy overview of systems thinking, see Joanna Beltowska and Amy Rae’s great presentation below:

Ward also draws on the work of British cybernetician William Ross Ashby to highlight the ‘Principle of Requisite Variety’. This organisational theory demands that the variety of practices within a controlling system must be at least as varied as the system it controls. Or to put it another way, while we have traditionally attempted to ‘simplify’ organisational structures by creating discrete, siloed departments managed hierarchically, the reality is that effective organisational co-ordination and management can only come from an approach that is as social and complex as the organisation itself.

The full problem organisations face is brought to life by another British cybernetics pioneer and mathematician, John D. McEwan, who observed:

First we have the model current among management theorists in industry. This is the model of a rigid pyramidical hier­archy, with lines of ‘communication and command’ running from the top to the bottom. There is fIxed delineation of responsibility, each element has a specified role, and the procedures to be followed at any level are determined within fairly narrow limits, and may only be changed by decisions of elements higher in the hierarchy. The role of the top group of the hierarchy is sometimes supposed to be comparable to the ‘brain’ of the system.

The other model is from the cybernetics of evolving self-organising systems. Here we have a system of large variety, sufficient to cope with a complex, unpredictable environment. Its characteristics are changing structure, modifying itself under continual feedback from the environ­ment, exhibiting ‘redundancy of potential command’, and involving complex interlocking control structures. Learning and decision-making are distributed throughout the system, denser perhaps in some areas than in others.

So far, so good. But what can we learn from this? The top-down model is widely adopted and ingrained in current industrial and social practice. It’s the dominant model for government, schools, businesses, NGOs and most other institutions conceived and established in the industrial era. It’s how we used to operating so why should we change?

One reason we need to think about helping organisations to embrace complexity and become more social is that failing to do so impacts signficantly on their viability and sustainability.

Research by the Deloitte consultant and ‘edge’ guru, John Hagel, shows that the efficacy and performance of US firms has fallen significantly with return-on-assets down 75% from 1965. Not only that, but the current life-expectancy of businesses in Standard & Poor’s 500 has fallen from 75 years in 1937 to just 15 years today.

Significantly Hagel traces the cause of these downward trends to the mid-20th century when companies began to consolidate their structure and operations, rather than seek continual institutional innovation and adapt to the growing complexity of the social environment.

The significance of this institutional innovation is highlighted by Dave Grey from XPlane who, drawing on the work of Shell’s Head of Startegic Planning, Arie de Geus, argues that sustainable and successful organisations all feature three common traits:

• Ecosystems: Long-lived companies were decentralized. They tolerated “eccentric activities at the margins.” They were very active in partnerships and joint ventures. The boundaries of the company were less clearly delineated, and local groups had more autonomy over their decisions, than you would expect in the typical global corporation.

• Strong identity: Although the organization was loosely controlled, long-lived companies were connected by a strong, shared culture. Everyone in the company understood the company’s values. These companies tended to promote from within in order to keep that culture strong.

• Active listening: Long-lived companies had their eyes and ears focused on the world around them and were constantly seeking opportunities. Because of their decentralized nature and strong shared culture, it was easier for them to spot opportunities in the changing world and act, proactively and decisively, to capitalize on them.

Bringing all this together it’s interesting to see how a lot of what we have been doing recently in the consultancy team here at We Are Social seems to support the call for embracing and empowering organisational complexity.

For example, you can quite nicely boil down our process to an ‘active listening’ stage where ongoing research is conducted across an organisation’s internal culture and its external social landscape; followed by a strategy stage where we use research insights to identify organisational shared-values or define the social capital that binds internal and external networks together; next we build on this strategic vision by designing a social business ‘ecosystem’ that enables networked communication – both internally and externally. Finally, we then help clients create an evaluation framework to ensure they are measuring and improving the performance of their organisational ecosystem.

While this process is, of course, bespoke and flexible enough to meet client’s diverse needs at it’s core is the ability to enable clients to embrace and harness the emergent potential of their organisational complexity.