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Social Media News 3/22/10

Monday, March 22, 2010

I read about a really interesting study reported by ReadWriteWeb about influence and the number of followers you have on Twitter. Per the research findings, the number of followers you have on Twitter is an almost completely irrelevant metric for measuring influence. Read the RWW recap here, and see the actual report here.

Facebook hasn’t formally announce this yet, but the company has began to send weekly emailed reports on Facebook page metrics to their respective page admins. These reports include only metrics that are currently available to admins, so the weekly reports serve more as reporting summaries than anything else. Read more about this story at MediaPost.

Apple began to accept pre-orders for the iPad last Friday, with the promise that the first iPads will be arriving in the first week of April. Rumor has it that over a hundred thousand iPads have been pre-ordered, and some are speculating that more iPads will be sold in the first three months than iPhones sold in its debut. With all the attention the iPad is drawing, some are wondering if an iPad Killer is emerging… could it come from Palm? Or from HP?

YouTube and Viacom are in the mists of a copyright lawsuit, which has revealed a few embarrassing details about both companies in recently unsealed court filings. Among other interesting tid bits, Viacom had tried to buy YouTube just before Google’s acquisition was finalized. Read more of the story here.

Social Media News 3/1/10

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

March 1st brought joy to many Facebook users, a date which marks the end of Facebook app Notifications. Apps on Facebook are no longer able to send updates via Notifications, which are now reserved mainly for friend activity. Find out what alternatives app developers now have at this Mashable article.

Twitter and YouTube are also rolling out new features. On Twitter, the new “Be Found On Twitter” feature allows users to opt-in to share their email address and/or phone number, making it easier for contacts to find them. For YouTube, it’s a massive redesign that will improve the user experience by adding a video queue feature and improved playlist design. The redesign also includes the release of an AutoPlay feature, which will allow YouTube to be consumed more like TV, allowing the user to sit back and just watch one video after another in a push model rather than the current pull model. Find out more about these releases under the New Features heading below.

“Have you heard of Chatroulette?” The latest fad of social media, Chatroulette is a video chat service which will randomly pair you to another video conferencing user. It’s a bare bones interface with minimalistic functionality- basically just two web cam windows and a chat room. The site connects users to complete strangers, there is no way to control who will pop up on the other side. Some believe that Chatroulette will become as popular as Twitter, though it’s not the first interactive video conferencing site, and probably won’t be the last. I don’t think Chatroulette will be able to go mainstream without significant investment and added functionality. If the interest continues to increase, there’s a good chance that established social networking platforms like Facebook will adopt video conferencing as a new feature, which may kill Chatroulette before it has a chance to get out of the gate.

Want to know how your brand compares to your competitor in social media? Try uberVu Compare. A freemium social media comparison tool, Compare is a new product from uberVu that performs a side-by-side comparison of two brands based on their social media performance. It could be considered overly simplistic for veteran social media analysts, but this a great tool for a quick snapshot of social media presence.

“Crowdsourcing” is a still a hip buzzword. Grogger is a new platform that allows you to crowdsource your blog content. Mash together the words “group” and “blog”, what do you get? A “Grog”! For people that believe two heads are better than one, Grogger is an appealing tool that allows a community of users to write, edit, and vote on blog content. For more details, read the TechCrunch review.

New Features

Be Found on Twitter: Connecting Our Dots in the Social Graph – RWW

Twitter Comes To Yahoo - PC World

YouTube Redesign Keeps You Watching – RWW

Facebook to Say Goodbye to App Notifications on March 1st – Mashable

Chatroulette

Did Chatroulette Just Launch the Interactive Video Conferencing Boom? - AdAge

Chatroulette, by the Numbers – WSJ Digits

Social Media: Strategy

Most Super Bowl Ads Don’t Go Viral – AdAge

Vitrue Adds Facebook ‘Wall Apps’ To Social Platform – MediaPost

Compare Social Media Performance Head-to-Head with uberVu – Mashable

Oh Yeah, Well I’m Going To Twitter You! – MediaPost

Social Media: Consumer Electronics

Scribd Makes Push Into Mobile – MediaPost

Consumers Are Pushing Up Sales of Smartphones – Yahoo! News

Digital Advertising

Measure the Web Like TV and Brand Advertising Will Follow - AdAge

Sources: Twitter Ad Platform Quite Google-Like – MediaPost

Display Ads Stimulate Search, Confirms Eyeblaster Study – MediaPost

Internet Trends

Social Networking In Matters Of Life And Death – MediaPost

Grogger: A New Platform That Lets You Crowdsource Your Blog’s Content – TechCrunch

E-Cards Are Dead… Except on Mother’s Day – RWW

Time Spent on Social Networks up 82% Around the World – BrianSolis

How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement – Mashable

Facebook to Take 30% Cut of Developers’ Facebook Credits Revenues – Mashable

2 Comments | Social Media News | Tagged: app notifications, be found on twitter, chatroulette, crowdsource, facebook, grogger, interactive video conferencing, social media measurement, Social Media News, social media ROI, social media strategy, twitter, ubervu, youtube, youtube autoplay, youtube redesign | Permalink
Posted by Rachelle Maisner

Social Media News 12/21/09

Monday, December 21, 2009

I wish I came up with this term. Guest blogger Judy Shapiro wrote about social media and building awareness at Ad Age, and describes creating “Content Campaigns” to help focus social efforts across multiple channels. What a ingenious concept. She writes, “This approach puts the value on content as an audience builder but in a very strategic way.” Be sure to check out the rest of the article.

Also from Ad Age, an awesome article about geo-targeted mobile marketing. If you need a quick primer on the key players in this field, Garrick Schmitt (a VP at Razorfish) has developed an informative who’s-who list, including Foursquare, Yelp, and Gowalla.

How would you like to rent movies from YouTube? The world’s largest video sharing site is in talks with major movie studios and is exploring a new paid subscription model. The service would be a new way of generating revenue, as YouTube currently makes its money through advertising. Get the details from this article at Reuters.

To many, online forums and bulletin websites are so 1990′s. However, three ex-MySpace executives are currently working on a project called Gravity, which TechCrunch describes as an evolved form of forums and groups. Check out the article which includes a video of the founders as well as some screen shots. Gravity will be an important startup to watch. It’s not a direct rival to Google Wave, but it might have more utility than Wave to more users; and it’s not the answer to real-time search, but it may prove to be the closest solution yet, as Gravity is interest-centric and will provide detailed analytics on interests and conversations. Plus, the group has raised $10 million in funding. Read more here.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone. My Social Media News gift to you, 5 Ways to Connect With Santa on the Web. Happy New Year!

Ad Age

How Marketers Use Online Influencers to Boost Branding Efforts

What the Trend?’s Top 50 Twitter Topics of the Year

Social Media’s the Little Engine That Can Build Awareness

The Future of Geo-tagged Marketing, Now

Two Questions Every Marketer Should Ask Its Social-Media Agency

Brandweek

American Apparel Grabs YouTube’s Long Tail

Consumer Appetite for ‘Three Screens’ Grows

Pharma: Socializing in a Straightjacket

Tech Crunch

Facebook Passes Aol In The U.S.

Expensify Leaves Beta, Continues To Take The Suck Out Of Expense Reports

Appolicious Lands $1.5 Million For Social iPhone App Directory

Exclusive: Ex-MySpace Execs Launch Gravity Into Private Beta

Google In Discussions To Acquire Yelp For A Half Billion Dollars or More

Blogs & Other News Sources

Report: Twitter Made a Profit in 2009 (ReadWriteWeb)

Blogger Integrates With Amazon Associates (Official Blogger Blog)

13 Types of Posts that Always Get Lots of Comments (ProBlogger)

YouTube Looks At Subscriptions, More Ad Dollars (Reuters)

Google may Anger Phone Makers – Or Inspire Them (Reuters)

Twitter Reveals Most Discussed Topics of 2009 (Mashable)

Leave a Comment » | Social Media News | Tagged: building awareness, content campaigns, foursquare, geo-targetted, gowalla, gravity, paid subscription, social media, social media marketing, yelp, youtube | Permalink
Posted by Rachelle Maisner

Social Media News 11/25/09

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

(Covering the social news from 11/14 through 11/24)

With 2010 just on the horizon, we’re beginningto hear social media predictions and the new strategies that advertisers will be rolling out next year. Here’s a quote I liked from Chris Bruzzo, VP of brand, content and online at Starbucks: ”People are saying this is going to be a big year for social media and we’re a microcosm of that. Whereas last year it was a curiosity, this year it’s a core part of the program.” Starbucks is planning to cut back on its TV spend and invest quite a bit more in social media. Read about their strategy in this story from Ag Age.

LinkedIn has been busy working on sweeping changes to its features and services. Earlier in the month Social Media News reported LinkedIn’s plans for a homepage redesign and the new ability to link Twitter with LinkedIn updates. On Monday, LinkedIn announced that it will open its API to third party developers, a strategy that has been critical to the rapid success of other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Last week, LinkedIn announced a new program for advanced group pages, called Custom Groups. Currently, LinkedIn group pages are little more than discussion forums. With Custom Groups, organizations can transform their group page to a central, multimedia social hub that will allow groups to post videos, white papers and feeds. The program costs $50,000 a month, however LinkedIn will include advertising support to drive traffic to the custom groups. Lastly, LinkedIn and Microsoft are joining forces to sync Outlook contacts with LinkedIn information. In the 2010 release, Outlook users will be able to quickly view LinkedIn user activity and information of their contacts as a subpane of the email window. These are very smart updates to the LinkedIn product offering, and will ensure that LinkedIn becomes an even more powerful business social networking tool for individuals as well as businesses and organizations.

A couple small updates on the Twitter front:

The Twitter Geolocation API has been officially released, however we won’t see anything new on Twitter.com just yet. For now, the release is significant for several third party developers that have built applications that will utilize the Geolocation feature, like Foursquare and Seesmic.

Twitter has also made a small improvement to its new Twitter Lists feature, allowing users to add descriptions to their Lists. It’s a nice-to-have, but personally I can’t wait to see Twitter roll out the ability to search Lists. I believe the lack of a search feature is the single most crippling disadvantage for Twitter Lists.

HootSuite is a Twitter publishing and management tool preferred by many, including myself. New updates launched this week allows HootSuite users to connect their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for the first time. In addition, HootSuite users can create new columns to pull in their Twitter Lists feeds.

YouTube also released new updates this week:

YouTube Direct is a new platform for professional news organizations to solicit and utilize video content from citizen journalists. It’s an API that news media can incorporate on their existing websites to allow individuals to submit video coverage around current events. The news organization’s moderate can preview submitted material on a backend interface, then choose whether to approve the material to be linked from their site. Get the details from MediaPost.

Google has matched its speech recognition technology with YouTube’s caption feature to unveil a new automated video captioning service. Laurie Sullivan from MediaPost explains how the new service will have a big impact on SEO.

Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!