interesting infographic on how mobile is shaping the way social media is consumed.
some highlights: 25% or more than 100 million of all facebook users access it from a mobile phone, and those who do, are twice as active on social networks compared to people accessing from a computer. also, 35-54 year olds are the most active mobile social users.
another cool graph. great job by digitalbuzzblog.com stuffing as much facebook data including facebook facts, a facebook timeline, and facebook statistics into one infographic or visualization.
some of the facebook numbers are really mindblowing.
Check out these interesting infographics based on Barracuda Networks recent study of Twitter. This study analyzed Twitter accounts with at least ten followers, who followed at least ten people, and has tweeted at least ten times. This pared down the users by 79%.
Full story and graphics at Next Generation Online.
More Twitter tips and tricks.
twitter to launch @anywhere, a tool that will allow third parties to tap into its functionality and content.
twitter plans to roll out a set of API frameworks enabling third-party sites to allow their users to log-in using their twitter accounts, pull information and content from twitter and add functionality that lets people tweet or share from other sites directly onto twitter. The functionality, that will be similar to Facebook Connect, isn’t yet ready for a full launch but participating sites will include a slew of big players including: Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Digg, Ebay, The New York Times, Yahoo, and YouTube.
Biz Stone, twitter co-founder, said, “Soon sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com.” Twitter was expected to unveil plans around its advertising model, but instead announced the @Anywhere tool at the South By South West festival in the U.S. yesterday. Last week it launched location-based functionality, which allows users to show the town or city they are tweeting from.
twitter is finally starting to unveil something that resembles a plan - something that has been missing for too long. Just look at all the improvements and changes Facebook has made in order to stay ahead of the pack.
A recently released study by comScore showed that more than 30 Percent of Smartphone Owners Access Social Networking Sites via a Mobile Browser. That's a lot of people. But, the even bigger statistic is that access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has grown at an almost unbelievable rate: Facebook access via mobile browsers grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter saw a 347% increase. Very interesting is that comScore does not include mobile apps in their statistics. Adding in all the Twitter and Facebook apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry surely push the percentage even higher.
I think Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile says it best: "Social networking remains one of the... fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web... "
| Number of Mobile Subscribers Accessing Social Sites via Mobile Browser(3-month average ending Jan. 2010 vs. Jan. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+) | |||
|
| Total Audience (000) | ||
| Social Network Site | Jan-09 | Jan-10 | % Change |
| Facebook.com | 11,874 | 25,137 | 112 |
| MySpace.com | 12,338 | 11,439 | -7 |
| Twitter.com | 1,051 | 4,700 | 347 |
| Source: comScore MobiLens, March 2010 | |||
A recent study from Ruder Finn shows that U.S. mobile users:
All these statistics support the finding from the Guardian that 50% of all the U. K. mobile usage goes to Facebook. This is another fact pointing us in the direction that real-time search, mobile and social media are all merging into one.
I've often thought about how Blogs fill in nicely as the bridge between a stale corporate website and social networking websites(Thanks for the info-graphic 10e20). Moreover, it helps a brand jump-start their online presence in the world of social media.
The simple creation of a blog in order to bridge the space between a site and a full-blown social media presence is often overlooked. I am often asked by overwhelmed clients what they should create first in this fast-moving online world where the groundswell is in full effect. My answer 9 out of 10 times is: A Blog.
A good blog is very powerful in the online world. Instead of simply adding social networking badges on a homepage saying “Follow us on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook" a blog can help a brand successfully create social awareness for itself rather than just pointing website visitors to where the official social media account are.
According to 10e20, online social media users "are constantly looking for new and fresh content." I couldn't agree more - that is why my number one advice to clients is that 'content is king.' This mantra applies to all aspects of Interactive Marketing. Using SEO as an example: Having great content creates strong links to your site which in turn will increase your rankings in the Search Engines. A blog can create this great content for your brand. You may not always be able to change the contents of a corporate site, but you can almost always make new posts to a blog. A blog helps you reach users that are constantly on the search for fresh content. With ongoing, strong and effective content creation related to the brands business and sharing by the brand of the blog content into the social presence a brand can create a tremendously effective link between its social networking presences and its main company website.
Of course, there is always the question about how to create content for a blog. The answer will vary and depend very much on the brands industry and comfort level with the online world. However, most of the time it can start out by simply turning a newsletter into "bite-size" pieces on a blog. Getting on a fairly regular schedule and figuring out who will contribute are also very important considerations.
The most important thing is to remember that a brand can easily live and thrive in the world of the Groundswell & Social Media: It can all start with the creation of a blog.
Reading a great blog post by Brian Solis on "The Future of Interactive Marketing" got me thinking about the "Golden Triangle" that I frist heard about a few weeks ago. By the way the aforementioned blog post is a MUST READ for any marketer.
In a nutshell, in addition to my favorite local search, the three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are: mobile, social, and real-time. It's like a "golden triangle.” It's why the search engines were so keen on being the first to implement real-time search (Google), design mobile apps (bing), and partner with social networks (yahoo with Facebook & Google with Twitter).
As with Brian Solis puts it "the Golden Triangle [...] facilitates a new genre of content production, distribution, and consumption as well as social interaction and collaboration. It’s borderless, untethered, and practically device agnostic.
“You” are at the center of the Golden Triangle and remain connected to your social and professional graph via devices, applications and networks hosted on mobile and Web-based (cloud) platforms."
To steal a line from Battlestar Galactica: All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again:
A group, in this case college age kids, discover an online sanctuary just to find out that everyone they have ever been in contact with including their parents are on it. First it was MySpace and everyone moved to Facebook, a safe haven for college age kids that required a .edu email address to join. This meant no parents, no relatives, no spam, no junk.
Then Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook decides that he needs to monetize Facebook and rake in the ca$h. He opens it up to everyone and there was only a tiny initial wave of users that committed Facebook-icide including myself (I only came back 2 years later because as a marketer I couldn't miss out on this phenomenon). Then around this time last year, so November 2008, I started hearing stories that people's parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were now on Facebook and seeking them out - as if it wasn't already awkward enough dodging Aunt Beth at the annual Thanksgiving dinner, but now people had to do it online? That's where where many people are drawing the line.
Now Adweek throws out an article today about how Facebook is "getting" uncool for 18-24s (a.k.a. the college crowd) - to the surprise of many, but not people that have been following the pulse of this development.
Back to Battlestar Galactica: All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.
So, now the (1 Billion Dollar) question is: What is next great thing that the kids are going to migrate to?
Twitter? I see twitter more as a compliment to Facebook and not a direct competitor. Sure there are people that only use twitter or Facebook, but they are such different beasts that they don't directly compete.
Leapfish? I doubt that they can fill the shoes of Facebook as Leapfish is an aggregator, but not a source like Facebook or Twitter.
The only thing that is for sure is that "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again."
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