How Social Media times have changed

I've been actively engrossed in the business side of social media for over 1.5 years now and it's amazing how things have changed. Words like Klout and 'likes' common on our community have replaced huge follower counts and fully customized myspace profiles. Social media integration has become the priority of companies with website and complicated CMS tools left by the wayside. The difference between social media and social networking is clear.
The new shinny objects are still popping up but the dust (at least for me) has settled. I'm comfortable with my set of tools and move through new beta sites at the speed of light. Sure, the tools will change. They always do but I'm good with my strategic and tactical approaches. I have a few successes under my belt and preparing to unleash even more thought leadership around it (through social media of course!).
So where are my interests these days? Better penetration in the bigger sites (twitter, facebook, youtube), how social media can impact search, globalization of social media and of course the occasional shinny object. My mind envisions a world where email doesn't exist anymore and real-time, aggregation, and on-demand are commonplace. Where there will need to be classes on how to select your communication channel because we will have so many options and information overload will be addressed in formal education.
I'll coin the Notorious BIG's phrase "Mo Money Mo Problems" and say our future outlook seems "Mo Info Mo Problems" -- then again who wouldn't want more money. =)

Twitter users - Twitterriffic or Twitterrible

My twitter feed is a bit lackluster these days. I only have a few account focusing on my passions and my time spent reading updates, filtering direct messages, and retweeting seems to have few peaks and many valleys. Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, I'm still at the top of the twitter user engagement stats as a member of the 17% of registered Twitter accounts who sent a tweet in December of 2009. Now, 17% may seem like a small number but with over 75 million user accounts, that still a whopping 12.7 million people.

Now the question is - what are people tweeting about? Twitter since inception has received its share of criticism especially with the baby-boomers questioning the value of social media. As the new generations (Gen X and later) desire to post their life events on social media becomes even more popular, Webinars, articles, white papers and semaniars are giving almost daily attempting to answer the ever so daunting question of how social media will add value. Value to your buesinss, yoru customers, and your employees.

Where will we be in a year, two years, even 6 months from now? Social media within its own industry has evolved. In fact, the one true variable that I feel will remain constant is the continued change and modification of how we interact with and benefit from social media. Take for example, Twitter's use of lists and regional related feeds or Facebook's ever so popular fan pages covering products to non-profits. Similar to FM going to XM or VHS going to blue ray, social media will surely take on a new form in the near future.

Twitter Stats
Twitter ended 2009 with just over 75 million user accounts.

The monthly rate of new user accounts peaked in July 2009 and is currently around 6.2 million new accounts per month (or 2-3 per second). This is about 20% below July’s peak rate.

A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet.

About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times.

Only about 17% of registered Twitter accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009, an all-time-low.
Despite these facts, Twitter users are becoming more engaged over time when we control for sample age.

Tweets from Space - Now that's out of this world!

When I initially heard that last Friday astronaut TJ Creamer made history, my mind raced with images of new moons, precious minerals, even E.T. Wrong! In Texas, a sprinkle of snow is considered an arctic freeze and on some media stations, an astronauts tweeting from space is considered a history event.

I will admit that it is pretty cool. Especially for the Twitter.com marketing team who is probably beaming from ear to ear about the publicity.

So is Twitter still a fad? Is it still nothing but spam and porn? Do people waste their time retweets, replying, and direct messaging other members?

Regardless of where you stand on the Twitter-love Scale, one tweet brought Twitter into the spotlight:

"Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"

Awesome shirt - really, just beautiful.

I think the shirt says it all. Wonder if they teach this in Psychology class. =)
http://site.despair.com/socialmediatee/

My stream, your stream, now it's everybody's stream

What better news than Subway's foot long for $5? How about Facebook opening up it's activity stream for external developers. Now that's quite a mouth full!


The stream is all the updates that take up the middle of your facebook page. It shows you all the posts from your friends in real-time. This keeps you up to date on everything that's happening. And now other apps and websites can utilize it too.

What's going to be interesting to see how the stream is utilized. The Facebook Open Stream API allows websites to "access the stream on behalf of a user and then filter, remix, and display the stream back to that user however you choose, wherever you choose, in the manner most relevant for the user experience. Other new API methods will allow users to both publish into the stream and to add comments and "likes" to posts in the stream." It's got some other pretty interesting features so make sure to check out the full article at:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/163898/facebook_opens_up_activity_stream_to_external_developers.html

or

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php

What's the deal with WAYN?

So every Monday, I blog about a social networking site that all the innovators and early adapters yawn at, the mainstream feels some varying degree of familiarity and the laggards skip over to more important things for them like changing the record because the needle is hitting the edge.


Today, I feel WAYN.com is one of those necessary sites. WAYN which stands for What are you now? is part of a large family of social networking sites related to the travel industry. It's connected to facebook and twitter - so you can login through your facebook account and your tweets are synonymous with your "what are you up for doing?". You can post pictures, blogs, reviews and videos. And you can also plan trips, search trips, and if you've added the "where have you been" app that's also integrated on the WAYN site.

While the design is very nice -- clean and simple -- I'm still struggling with what gives this site an edge. They receive 32,936 unique visitors daily according to http://checksitetraffic.com and receive an estimated 258.4K US people monthly according to quantcast.com. That's no Tripadvisor.com or expedia.com and for get about playing in the leagues of myspace.com and facebook.com, but you have to admit in the land of a dime a dozen of social networking sites, it's pretty good.

Let me know what you think about WAYN.com. Is it another site you'll use when traveling or just another social networking site in the pack that's getting left behind?

Is Facebook the new excuse for not doing your homework?

Nothing like waking up to a new study that show facebook is the reason why I didn't get summa cum laude. Damn it, I knew it wasn't all the drinking and partying. A study by Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University shows that college students on Facebook have significantly lower GPAs than those who are not on Facebook - typically a full grade lower (3.0-3.5 users vs. 3.5-4.0 non-users).

Of course, we all know (even the Facebook users) that these studies suggest correlation not causation and even Karpinski admits that "maybe [facebook users] are just prone to distraction. Maybe they are just procrastinators." People also speculate that Facebook or social networking is no bigger distraction than TV, video games or going out.

The fact is that studies support both the pros and cons of using the internet/social networking. Some studies like Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield's cautioned that social networks like Facebook and Bebo were "infantilizing the brain into the state of small children," basically shortening attention span jeopardizing capacity for learning while another study by the University of Melbourne shows Internet use at work can improve employees concentration and increase productivity.

Maybe if we all take ginseng tablets, they wont take our Facebook away.

To read the full article: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1891111,00.html

What is the deal with Twitter?

I've been social networking for about 4-5 years.  And yes, I believe it when Facebook claims that people spend 3 billion second a day on their site.  What's the first thing I do in the morning, check my email, respond to any linkedin requests, check out facebook - maybe comment on a picture/message a friend happy birthday, and then of course eat breakfast.  It's only the natural order that I love and have grown accustom to.  But recently, I find myself asking what's the deal with twitter.  So last week I hopped on the bandwagon for a bit of research mixed with pure curiosity.  Jumping in with both feet, the sign-in process was extremely simple.  In fact, you could probably count the features of twitter on one hand.  To set up your profile, you can add a picture, short bio and website link.  Once that's complete, you can search for friends, colleagues, companies, etc.. to follow them and in turn you can be followed.  Then the core part of twitter is tweeting.  Each tweet can be 140 characters long and tweets are meant to answer the question...what are you doing?  Oh and you can tweet as often as you want.

So to establish myself in this tweeting-twitter loving world, I tweet every few days, follow several people and as a result several people are following me.  I added a picture, filled out my bio and of course linked my website.  OK. Success.  But now what?  I find myself asking the question "What's so great about twitter?"  Then my marketing brain starts kicking in segmenting their target market, reviewing close competitors, and conceptualizing the major strategic initiatives for twitter.  My conclusion is that twitter has a very different profile than facebook/myspace.  Twitter which has no connotations for attracting a huge body of high school/ college 'kids' is more comparable to linkedin (or wants to be).  The major tweeters are individuals for professional development and businesses.  If I want to tell my friends I partied till 4am or just ate a big sandwich for lunch -- facebook or myspace it is, but if I want to know what's going on with all the various IT networks out there - SEO Jobs, website design companies, wordpress, and share blog stories or freelance jobs - tweeter it may be.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep tweeting (www.twitter.com/webalicious) and take maybe 20 seconds away from facebook time and give it to twitter.