Social Media Watch: Google, Ford, Fametown, Farmville

Google is struggling to crack social, but it's not a home run internally. An anonymous employee tells the New York Times:

"There is some belief at Google that their DNA is not perfectly suited to build social products, and it’s a quite controversial topic internally." The social part of social media — cool factor, sharing, photos, following other’s every action — are apparently anathema to Googlers and engineers raised in a ‘utilitarian’ ethos, continues this deep throat. “Google’s made a lot of money helping people make decisions using search engines, but more and more people are turning to social outlets to make decisions,” said Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group. “And whenever people make decisions, there’s money involved.”

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Ford’s recent Fiesta Movement and Focus Rally: America, are examples of social strategic moves that are being institutionalized, the automaker's head of social media, Scott Monty, tells SmartBlog: “We are in the process, right now, of training all our communications staff on social media, because we believe it's going to be built into the communications professional’s arsenal of the future…we’re moving from a kind of top-down model to a kind of hub-and-spoke model — and beyond that it’s a hub-and-spoke-and-dandelion process, so each of those spokes have their own expertise. And this not only happens at all the vehicles, but it’s going to happen at the global level as well — all of our regions, all of our countries.”Continue reading...