Source: Shutterstock (edited) As the flame of 2009 flickered into the history books, Facebook celebrated its rise to 350 million users and certain dominance in the U.S. social networking market. However, in December, analysts questioned whether or not Facebook was losing its cool as time spent on the popular social network dropped three consecutive months among 18-24 year old users. Experts feared that the “family effect” was having a negative impact within this highly coveted demographic. As I observed: Facebook…
Ideas Connect Us More than Relationships
Earlier in the year, I was invited to share my thoughts and observations on the state of and vision for socialized media and the networks that connect us. Shot in a mobile studio outside of the Austin Convention Center during SXSW09, I joined Gary Bolles to discuss the theory that ideas are the “ties that bind” us in social networking – over relationships. In the era of Web 1.0 and instant messaging, we assumed, in many cases, alter-egos rather than…
Ning Proves That There’s Life Outside of Facebook and Twitter
Source: Shutterstock I was recently asked in a 2010 planning meeting about my views on Ning and whether or not it was worthy of consideration or attention. It seems that the question is increasingly raised as Social Media becomes pervasive within the halls of marketing, advertising, customer service, and public relations. My answer is this. If your only focus is Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, the grapevine to which you’re connected is only telling you part of the story. Listening to…
Socialized Media: The Powerful Effects of Online Brand Interaction
Shutterstock As we’re learning, many updates on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks are actually invitations for answers regarding brands. We’ve also discovered that 44% of users readily share brand-related information with others. And, as action speaks louder than words, 48% of those who came into contact with a brand name on Twitter and 34% on other social networks went on to search for additional information on search engines. Does this information in and of itself serve as an invitation…
On Twitter and Social Networks, Brands Benefit from Conversations
Source: Shutterstock A recent study revealed 20 percent of tweets published are actually invitations for product information, answers or responses from peers or directly by brand representatives. Now we learn that Twitter users are actively paying attention to brands on the popular information network. According to research conducted by Performics and ROI Research, about half of Twitter users who were introduced to a brand on Twitter were compelled to search for additional information. The companies studied the activity of 3,000…
The Rapid Evolution of Search
Source Over the past several weeks, leaders in the search industry launched an aggressive, very public series of campaigns designed to capture the elusive future of search mind and market share. The accelerated evolution of “real-time” search, introduced to us mostly through the adoption of Summize, which was eventually acquired to now serve as Twitter search, inspired both Google and Bing to release new iterations of its search engine to now include live Twitter results. Bing also announced a deal with Facebook to include status…
We’re Spending More Time with Social Media: Advertisers Follow
Source: Shutterstock The attention dashboard is rapidly emerging as the online hub for sharing and discovering information, connecting us to people, content, and events in real-time. According to research, we’re already spending more time in social networks than we are in email. New studies are only fortifying these findings, documenting an increase time spent specifically in Social Media and blogs. In fact, the Nielsen Company reports reports that time spent on social networks and blogs accounted for 17 percent of…
The Dichotomy Between Social Networks and Education
Einstein Chalkboard: Source Recently, I discussed the validity of whether or not social networking (the verb) and social networks (as a noun) were impairing our ability to learn. A Stanford study suggested that this might be the case. It seems that the initial research and its supporting data is now emerging to help us further analyze whether or not this is indeed true or merely hypotheses based on the various samplings of individuals who may or may not serve as…
Breathing New Life into Virtual Worlds
Source And you thought Virtual Worlds were so passé…a new study suggests that virtual worlds may be getting a second life. In 2007-2008, many brands and companies flocked to Second Life to build a virtual presence, which spiked, peaked, and created somewhat of a backlash and ultimately a bit of a retreat in the process. By mid-2009, virtual worlds were realizing a comeback of sorts. In July 2009, virtual worlds consultancy kzero.co.uk reported that membership of virtual worlds grew by…
Everything You Never Knew About Facebook
Shot at SXSW While I’m currently in the midst of writing my next book, I stumbled across some very interesting and useful statistics that offer a glimpse into Facebook behavior and activity as well as the state of the Facebook platform. I believe that they reinforce many of our hunches and assumptions and also introduce facts that may alter the ingredients of your next Social Media initiative. General: Facebook has more than 250 million users 120 million users log on…
