The Current Pulse of the Social Media Revolution

July 18, 2010

 “Social Media isn’t a fad; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.” This quote is from a YouTube video entitled Social Media Revolution 2.

It has been estimated that social networking accounts for more than 22% of all time spent online in the U.S. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago. Two-thirds of Americans now use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social media sites. This is up about 230% from the 20% penetration in 2007. In addition, 43% are visiting these sites more than once a day. 

We have discussed many social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Ustream, 12seconds, Flickr, Dailybooth, FriendFeed and Tumblr in The Keaton Chronicles.  These new media platforms are evolving so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up with their statistics. I have compiled some interesting facts and trends that I wanted to share. Some of the most popular social networking sites include: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Facebook   

Facebook currently has more than 400 million active users. Fifty percent of the active users log on to Facebook in any given day. The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. The data show that Facebook has come to dominate social networking in the U.S.

There are more than 100 million active users who access Facebook through their mobile devices. These mobile users are twice as active on Facebook as their non-mobile user counterparts. There are more than 550,000 active applications on the Facebook Platform and more than one million Web sites have integrated with the Facebook platform.

This platform has a global reach with about 70% of Facebook users residing outside of the U.S. There are over 70 translations available on the site.

The Social Network, a movie about the history of Facebook, will appear in theaters this October.  Check out the trailer.

MySpace   

The number of Facebook users has greatly surpassed MySpace users in the past year. However, MySpace’s 57 million U.S. users are highly engaged. The user composition of MySpace has shifted to younger people. Nearly half of the site’s users are 24 years old or younger. MySpace users want games and entertainment (Facebook users want both news and community and Twitter users mostly consume news). 

Twitter     

This micro-blogging social network only allows for a maximum length of 140 characters per Tweet. Twitter users are sending 55 million Tweets per day. The site reaches approximately 10% of all Internet users and has a user retention rate of 40%.

Twitter has more than 106 million registered users and gets 300,000 new users a day. It receives 600 million search queries a day and more than 3 billion requests each day.

Since the inception of Twitter in March 2006, there have been over 10 billion tweets. One percent of Twitter visitors are addicts and account for 35% of the visits to Twitter. That is an astonishing figure! Regular Twitter visitors account for 27% of the visitors and 41% of the visits to Twitter. The remaining 72% of Twitter visitors are considered to be passers-by.

What does this data tell us? Twitter users are not active and the growth rate of new users is slowing. Despite these numbers, Twitter remains as one of the top social networking sites and should be utilized by marketers.

What do Social Media Users Want?

The chart below shows the varied interests of the unique visitors to specific social networking sites. This information is important for marketers, advertisers, public relations specialists and other communications professionals to be able to effectively leverage each site.

My thanks go out to Chitika.com, HubSpot.com, Mashable.com, Web-strategist.com, Facebook.com, MySpace.com and Twitter.com for compiling and sharing their statistical data.

You’ve come a Long Way . . . Barbie!

July 17, 2010

Barbie’s newest addition, Video Girl, is a Barbie doll, video camera and LCD screen in one! How cool is that?

Mattel is showing the world that they are in tune with today’s “Barbie Girl.” She is into the digital and social media scene, and, of course, sports her signature, platinum hair. To stay in line with Barbie’s mission to promote different professions for girls, Barbie Video Girl is designed to get girls excited about a career in video production.

As a celebrity Foursquare user, Barbie will be using the location-based social media platform to help her navigate her travels across the U.S.  Foursquare is a mobile marketing application that is gaining popularity as a social medium as well as a game.

Foursquare will steer participants on an innovative scavenger hunt from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. This summer vacation promotion will officially begin on July 20, 2010. On-location tasks, such as checking in on Foursquare, will be part of the fun.  Barbie will also use Twitter to tweet out text, photo and video clues.  A winner in each city will be awarded a Barbie Video Girl doll.

By teaming up with two social media platforms, Foursquare and Twitter, Mattel is going to gain a lot of positive publicity. The dolls sell for $50 and can be used as an educational toy. I predict the Barbie Video Girl will be a top seller — just in time for the holidays. What do you think of this marketing initiative?

Secrets on Facebook

July 10, 2010

Many studies have shown that Facebook users want information about new products and special prices and promotions. That is exactly what Victoria’s Secret Facebook pages offer their customers.

The division of the two brands – Victoria’s Secret (for the mature customers) and Pink (for the college-aged customers) has increased the effectiveness of the brands’ overall integrated marketing communications. The social media marketing tactics are tailored to the unique target audiences of each brand.

Victoria’s Secret’s Facebook page features a “Bombshell Blast: Summer Songs” promotion. The page showcases songs, which can be downloaded for free to the first 5,000 fans. Listen to VS’s featured song of the week “Meddle” by Little Boots.

You can download it for free at:

http://www.facebook.com/victoriassecret?v=app_7146470109#!/victoriassecret?v=wall

The VS Facebook also showcases profiles of top “Angels” models. It includes fun facts, beauty secrets and fashion tips. This is a way to further the models’ notoriety and fame, thus, increasing brand appeal.

The fan page for the Pink brand is very engaging to the visitor. In fact, it leads the fashion category on Facebook. This fact is understandable given the demographics of the Pink target audience. The Pink fan pages have creative content, two-way communication with their fans, interesting videos and beautiful photographs that promote the products and the Pink brand as well as publicize sales, discounts and events.

One of Pink’s most successful promotions is “Pink Nation,” an online membership club.  This campaign features the “Pink Collegiate Collection” line of clothing. Last spring, there was an online competition among 58 colleges to win “Pink’s biggest bash of the year.” The winning school was West Virginia University! This was a terrific way to engage the co-eds as the “Collegiate Showdown” competition went viral and visitors were allowed to vote daily. Weekly statistics were posted to the site and this ran during and after “March Madness.” The winners were unveiled just like the NCAA brackets.

This wallpaper can be downloaded for free. It provides an affinity with the college and the Pink brand. Plus, it promotes one of the popular designs found on their collegiate line of apparel.

Pink has done an excellent job of obtaining their social marketing goals of increasing brand awareness, increasing brand loyalty and driving sales. This has been achieved by offering a multitude of discounts and specials through their integrated social marketing efforts as well as engaging their fans with videos, interesting photos, downloadable wallpapers for computers and cell phones, quizzes and coupons. Through Pink Nation and its Facebook fan page, fans and followers can join in the discussion of why they love VS Pink products and which ones are their particular favorites.

From Blog to Blog – Update on InnoCentive’s Oil Spill Disaster Solutions

July 10, 2010

As the oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, InnoCentive continues to reveal solutions to this disaster and offer assistance to BP officials.

(As I talked about in an earlier blog, Ustream is a social media that features live video streaming of events online and lifecasting. It is an emerging media that is proving to be a powerful platform. For live feed, go to http://www.ustream.tv/).

InnoCentive, a company that utilizes online crowdsourcing to solve some of the world’s toughest problems, is still receiving hundreds of solutions for the oil spill crisis in the Gulf. These scientific and mathematical answers are not even being explored by the executives of BP. Why — because BP says they have the situation “under control.” Really?

Dwayne Spradin, President and CEO of InnoCentive, wrote in his recent blog posts,

“The teams at BP lack an urgency to involve the outside world.  They appear to actually believe they have this crisis well in hand while putting forth that stoic, concerned face we’re all now use to seeing – working around the clock and doing everything humanly possible .  BP is not the victim here.  A catastrophic leadership failure, driven by a closed and arrogant culture.  This does not bode well for the Gulf.”

“The issue now is that BP could not even move forward with the two problems THEY identified as vital in this cleanup phase: remote sensing of the oil and better skimming technology.”

Please check out some of the innovative, scientific and creative solutions for handling the oil spill as recommended by some of the world’s experts. These solutions are eco-friendly and many are very inexpensive and easy to initiate.

Some of these solutions include:

1. The Barge Barrier;
2. The Bubble Squid;
3. The Coconut Coir; and
4. The magnetic plug.

How will this ongoing crisis ever be stopped if the executives of BP are unwilling to accept FREE suggestions from outside experts?

More Social Networks to Explore

July 4, 2010

Over this long 4th of July weekend, you may have some extra time to explore some social networking Web sites of which you may be unfamiliar. If you like to use social networking for keeping in touch with people or for entertainment or even for marketing your brand, here are a few sites in which you may be interested.  

  Dailybooth is a picture-taking social network. The concept is to take a picture of yourself everyday and chronicle them for the world to see. It is simple to use – upload or email your pictures daily. For a marketing tool, the site could be used to showcase fashion by uploading different pictures of outfits or brand images.

 

Another platform that is increasing in popularity is FriendFeed. This site allows the user to put all of his/her social media into one stream (i.e. all of the tweets from Twitter, pictures from Flickr, Blog posts from wordpress.com, links from StumbleUpon, etc.). Everything is in one neat package to share!

Here is an example of what a FriendFeed page looks like: http://friendfeed.com/amyrsward

FriendFeed is something to watch. It may cross over to mainstream use in the near future.  

 

  Tumblr is another micro-blogging site that allows the user to post text, pictures, audio, video, chat and links. Currently, Twitter is the only other micro-blogging site with which it interfaces. Check out the Tumblr account for Lenny Kravitz. It definitely is a lot more interactive than Twitter. 

 http://lennykravitz.tumblr.com/

Lights, camera, action . . .

July 3, 2010

Sure, everyone knows about Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr. But, I am going to talk about some social networking sites you may not have heard about.

There seems to be an endless list of new platforms popping up as social networking is increasing in popularity. Video cameras and webcams have sparked the creation of two networking sites – 12seconds and Ustream.   

12seconds is a micro-blogging video Web site. The videos are limited to 12 seconds in length. The concept came from the fact that an eight-minute YouTube video may only have a little bit of entertaining footage. Users have the ability to video message their friends via Facebook and Twitter.

While in concept it sounds cool to video message your friends, I thought the site was boring.  But who am I to judge, I am not a huge fan of America’s Funniest Videos either.

If you love clogging, you might be interested in this clip:

It can be found on:  http://12seconds.tv/v/RUK36

Ustream is a platform, which features live video streaming of events online and lifecasting (a continual broadcast of a person’s life through digital media). The concept behind this social media tool was created when two of the three founders returned from active duty in Iraq. They wanted their Army friends who were deployed overseas to be able to communicate with their families back home. Ustream allows soldiers to talk to all of their loved ones at one time as free time in the war zone is limited.

Ustream.tv is the live interactive video broadcast platform that allows anyone (with a webcam and computer) to broadcast to a global audience. The user simply creates a channel on Ustream and is able to engage their audience and further build their brand.

This Web site was used by nearly all of the major candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. It helped the campaigns by allowing a greater number of voters to ask political questions. Barack Obama used Ustream to rally his base.

Here is a YouTube video for the Soldier Knows Best channel. This user is in the Army and is a self-professed techno-geek.  His live feed is broadcasted every Wednesday at 8:00 pm Eastern on http://www.soldierknowsbest.com.

Have you used any of these video sharing platforms? If so, what are your thoughts?

BP rejects over 900 ideas by InnoCentive for saving our Gulf Coast!

June 27, 2010

InnoCentive is a global company that uses crowdsourcing to collectively solve some of the world’s toughest problems. This company has offered FREE advice and solutions to BP to help contain the Gulf oil spill.  So far, BP has been saying they have the situation under control and do not need any outside advice from the world of experts. Amazing!!!! InnoCentive is not giving up though.

What is InnoCentive?

InnoCentive is an open innovation company that challenges anyone to solve particular problems in exchange for monetary rewards (up to $1 million). The company publicizes research and development problems ranging from engineering, math, chemistry, information technology, food/agriculture and life sciences to business and entrepreneurship. InnoCentive utilizes social media outlets, such as Twitter, Facebook and the InnoCentive Blog to rapidly disseminate challenges for the experts of the world to solve.

A little History of InnoCentive

The company’s founders worked at Big Pharma Eli Lilly and Company. This group believes in the wisdom of crowds. The concept of InnoCentive was developed to help generate research and development solutions for the pharmaceutical company. By networking with retired scientists, university professors and students and other top people in their respective industries around the globe, many solutions have been developed. The concept grew and there are over 1,000 challenges posted on the InnoCentive Web site.

The Oil Spill Challenge

InnoCentive posted a challenge on its corporate Website on April 30, 2010, for any solutions for the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. This was the first challenge issued by InnoCentive that did not offer any monetary rewards. Instead, they appealed to their vast pool of expert “Solvers” to respond quickly with ideas and approaches to help with this emergency situation.

 

 

Track the efforts of InnoCentive on:

      FaceBook at http://www.facebook.com/InnoCentive

      Twitter at http://twitter.com/InnoCentive

      Perspectives on Innovation (InnoCentive Blog) at       http://blog.innocentive.com/