The fact that Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed accounts are free and Ning costs $25/month are red herrings. What you do with them is more important than the tools themselves, and that's where the value lies. Creating a compelling, premium experience that works both for the site owner and their audiences are likely to remain difficult and require specialists for some time to come.

Sites that work will exploit the addictive real-time-ness of streams of Twitter-like data, but make it mindlessly easy for non-expert, non-geek users to understand and manipulate. The tools and content that will help us do this will be be part-machine, part community and part-expert created. We'll want to be able to get it everywhere we are online and off.

Knitting all this together with what's out there in the billions of social spaces, niche communities and blogs - especially at the level of your own identity and its portability and usefulness - will continue to be a very complex job, probably for a few years at least. And making it all work at both a data level *and* providing a premium user experience will be as difficult - if not more difficult in relation to the data side of things - as it always has been. Even if you have the right ideas, building it properly will also remain tricky. Scale and optimisation will continue to be toughies.

The next generation of social software will likely be made from lots of free/cheap stuff but it won't be any easier to get right. One of the enduring problems with microsites has always been their strategic un-joined-up-ness. The fact that they were always easier to get done than a 'proper' site kind of encouraged rubbish thinking and lazy planning. Making them even easier may be like giving a child a loaded gun. Look no further than Skittles: they managed to fist themselves (and I bet they paid for the privilege too).

Agree that agencies are going to need to radially change due to the huge shifts that are accompanying the rise in social media (which in themselves are probably dwarfed by the changes required as a result of the recession!) What I constantly bang on about though is its simply not enough to replace one outmoded agency model, with another that is too closely aligned to one particular sphere. i.e. that of social media, or of mobile, or interactive TV of whatever is going to be big this year.

Brian was absolutely right to highlight how this shift is taking place within established digital agencies (my own comments on that are here http://is.gd/scoT), but he rightly points out that a comprehensive approach over all methods is going to be essential in the future.

Separately he also put together a nice post on the relationship between paid and earned media which you can find here http://is.gd/rBYZ

It should go something like this: The microsite is dead.. long live the microsite. Whilst Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter et al represent the walled garden social cloud we know today, the microsite of the future will integrate these technologies and break down those walls.

This is good for the user - more 1-1 conversations between brands and users is good news. Of course in the short term that might also mean an increase rather than a decrease in the price of development by those "restructuring agencies" ;)

I agree in part. I was actually shocked to see a figure of $200,000 quotes for a microsite. So in that sense there is a big change ahead.

Like you mention, Facebook and Ning offer some excellent facilities for marketers to converse with their consumers. And even for the companies that want more control and freedom, there are plenty of open source initiatives such as Wordpress and Drupal which offer them that. There is no need for agencies to re-invent the wheel, other than it gives them the opportunity to work at an extreme premium.

It's not the building of the destination that will be important, it's helping companies interact with their customers. Content is key on the web and far more important that a nice and flashy website which Google is unable to index!

Microsites are easy. Period. I like some microsites that have been built of late, but the reason why I like them is more important. They engage my interest momentarily. Momentarily. That's the important word. Another microsite comes along and boom! If it engages me enough, my interest is shifted.

As Tim said, :"The next generation of social software will likely be made from lots of free/cheap stuff but it won't be any easier to get right". So what will? That we're still navigating. But it's difficult, alright. We need to discourage lazy planning. But what that will herald is still in waiting.

Regardless of the tool it still comes down to having something interesting to say or content worth interacting with. There is a lot of social media which is just self indulgent and some brands are merely copying that. Innovation whether in the agency model, the tools or the communication channel tends to succeed best when it has some basis in what has gone before albeit hopefully the best of what has gone before.
New agencies will be about synthesizing all the various changes and helping steer brands through a path to customer dialogue. With the ever changing landscape many brands have even less bandwidth than before to cope with understanding and penetrating the mist. Thinking and insight can still command a premium.

Microsites still have their place, because they allow the organisation to have a place to deliver a particular experience. The challenge for the creative community is to deal with the fact that the microsite is ephemeral and a part of the experience - and in particular consumers like engaging from social media spaces so the over-ambitious microsite shoots itself in the foot.

I rather like www.comparethemeerkat.com, for instance. It's a moment of fun, backed by some social media engagement, the whole enriching a TV+radio campaign.

We're in the middle of a time where the total web experience is being shaken up, and I don't see anyone yet with a credible story of where it will all end. My own view is that the social media experiment is now in its transformation stage - we've seen plenty of caterpillars, and it can't be long before we see the first butterfly.

Not to completely disagree here, but when it comes to brands and consumer packaged goods, a microsite may be necessary depending on what the business goals are. For example, if you are driving awareness of a product improvement, of course it's imperative that you incorporate social media as a form of consumer conversation and feedback, but a microsite that holds product information, houses a landing page for promotional activities (awareness driver) and incorporates social media extensions (facebook connect, social bookmarks, etc.) will really help perpetuate said goals. Finally said, there is SEO to think about. Finally we come to the important factor of branding. Lots of my clients are in the food/beverage industry. They rely on a premium looking microsite to show beauty shots of the product that will enlist the consumer to read through recipes and then ultimately trial or purchase the product incrementally.

Again, I agree with everyone's thoughts, but just as the microsite seems to be looked at as an easy way out, done strategically it can be very successfully in the overall plan. This goes for any social media plan, it comes down to strategy and not using a cookie cutter.

What about people slagging off products via third party social media with no control? OK say you moderate it - and moderate it well - what's the cost? Which client is brave enough to allow that to happen?

And also, what we're really talking about here is a full-scale restructuring of a client's communication strategy. That isn't something that is going to be sorted by a product launch marketing campaign for example. Gimme a microsite!

It's not not just the microsite that's dead (and I think you are digging specifically at Flash fluff in your articles) - but the website and browser as we know them are fading away too.

It's simple: ROI. A $3,000 investment is much easier to justify than a $250,000 investment. If the million-dollar microsite drives $6MM in sales, who cares? But that's the point: it's very hard to do that. Plus, a microsite is a cul-de-sac on the Internet, where a conversation just keeps going...and going...and going. As long as the client / brand has the testicular fortitude to ride the conversation, a lot of good can result for little money.

Nice post Robin. I agree.

The world should stop polishing turds and go do something meaningful.

I agree with Tim Malbon's point above that:

"Sites that work will exploit the addictive real-time-ness of streams of Twitter-like data, but make it mindlessly easy for non-expert, non-geek users to understand and manipulate. The tools and content that will help us do this will be be part-machine, part community and part-expert created."

Instead of companies investing in ad budgets to buy bells and whistles from graphic and web designers, I see them investing more in the content and relationship building psychology. They'll aim for writers and experts who can aggregate and harness all the tools available --- be they free or inexpensive -- to drive a lasting (lifetime) conversation with consumers. A 250K dollar web site is a poor investment. Put that into long term R&D on conversation building through free social media tools and you've got a more robust model.

Feeling compelled to play devil's advocate, just a bit ...

Yes, the bespoke-CMS-microsite is dead (or dying), and all those agencies that invested all that time and effort to create and sell their special system should pack it in. In this game Wordpress, Blogger and just a couple others are the winners. For some companies, using Wordpress instead of Vignette (for example) is smart and could potentially save certain companies a ton of cash. Agencies should be helping smart companies make that transition, where possible. And they'll make money from doing it.

But to imply that all micosites should be canned and that conversations are always king is a step too far, for me. Look at Uniqlo. Or Lynx Blow. Look Puma's new Lift site. Check out Lacoste Red. And a ton of others. These are highly creative and engaging campaign sites that attract attention and entertain.

Robin, is *everything* a conversation? Can't I just buy something? Or have a little fun watching something? Must everything be lean-forward internet? Can't we sit back every once in a while?

As Mark mentioned, this discussion fits nicely inside the wider context of "Paid media vs. Earned media"... something @armano and @fredwilson @bmorrissey and I (@iboy) have been discussing quite a bit lately.

It isn't Paid vs. Free for a reason: Because it isn't free.

It takes time and money for brands to generate traction, interest and conversations. The idea that a Ning, Facebook or Twitter feed or whatever can be done for free or on the cheap is a fallacy.

Blanket statements like a "250K dollar web site is a poor investment" is silly. Go ask Hertz or Amazon how much they spend on good 'ol fashioned web design and build. Sure, they're spending on social media as well, but not everyone can put Twitter, blogs and Facebook at the centre of their universe. Even Jet Blue, with hundreds of thousands of followers certainly spends a hellofalot more on the "basics" than they do on social media.

And while we're at it, microsites are not necessarily a the "cul-de-sac on the Internet" ... They only are if you plan them that way and don't make them part of the wider user experience and architecture of your activities. These things need to fit together or they'll all die on the vine, regardless of what they do or how cool they are.

You can't outsource your brand to a Facebook group or a Twitter feed. They're pieces to the puzzle but not the only pieces.

More soon ...
@iboy

With the rise of the real-time update streams being popularized by Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed, users are becoming accustomed to a constantly-changing flow of pictures, videos and new snippets. Even actively-maintained websites seem locked in languid stupor in comparison.

This will change company’s interactions with customers, who will start to expect and then demand real-time interaction online marketing [...] The style will shift from slickly-produced mass marketing to a one-on-one responsive back and forth. Smart marketers will think less in terms of selling and more in terms of relationship building.

Clients want more of an emphasis on igniting conversation and less on the rich, textured sites that have typically accompanied their campaigns. The goal, as EVB CEO Daniel Stein put it, is to “stop building $1 million microsites that attract [only] 10,000 visitors.”

Advising a client to skip a $200,000 microsite in favour of a free Facebook page or social network built on Ning for $25 per month might be the right move, but it begs the question of whether the agency can make money. By best web hosting company