Firefox Could Be the Real Facebook Challenger - ReadWriteWeb. Firefox doesn't keep track of the number of users it has but Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, said today that the company estimates that there are 270 million people using the browser. That's 35% more users than Facebook has signed up for accounts (200 million), and almost triple the number of people Facebook says log in to the social network every day (100 million). Why compare user numbers between a browser and a social network? Because there's every reason to believe that the two technologies are converging in the near term future. Here's why we believe that Firefox should be Facebook's biggest competition. These numbers from Firefox are pretty conservative. This isn't an apples and oranges situation, either. Though we may not be sure about his prediction that Google will act before Firefox, we think Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang offers a very compelling vision of the future of browsers and social networks in his excellent report The Future of the Social Web.
7 Harsh Truths about running online communities. Content Strategy: The estimated time to read this article is 8 minutes Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to see organisations embracing the idea of community. I have been involved in running virtuals communities since 1996 and in 2004 I wrote about the business benefits of community. To this day I encourage Headscape’s clients to build relationships with their users. A well run community can… Drive traffic to your siteGenerate a passionate, evangelistic usersEncourage repeat trafficHelp develop your products and servicesSave you money This is not a ‘rant’ against community, or even corporations running communities. 1. When clients ask for help to build a community, they almost always talk in terms of technology. In ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ I write about how a CMS will not solve your content problems. Community is about people and relationships, not technology. If you implement the technology and just sit back then your community will fail. 2.
It also takes ongoing input. White House Launches New Facebook Profile to Increase Transparen. During the campaign season, President Obama amassed a huge network of nearly 6 million Facebook fans of his public profile page to organize supporters and raise money. Recently, however, the President has refashioned his Facebook presence to highlight his efforts to govern and drive policy changes in Washington with the launch of the White House public profile. The new presence, which launched last week, has grown substantially in the past few days.
Just last Friday, it claimed around 31,000 fans. Since then, that number has surged to more than 172,000 fans. The president’s supporters — as well as people who didn’t vote for him — should view the White House Facebook profile as an integral aspect of his campaign promise to bolster government transparency through the use of the Web. Obama’s ability to deliver on that promise has been met with mixed reviews. But in reality, Obama’s promise to increase government transparency through technology has come to fruition in the following ways: BeamME Integrates with Twitter, Launches App for Beaming Docs - BeamME, the iPhone/iPod Touch application that lets you send contact information wirelessly to any other phone or email address has now integrated with Twitter, allowing you to beam your contact info by entering in anyone's Twitter profile information. At the same time, rmbrME, the company behind the beamME applications, has also just introduced another app to their suite, this one is called beamME Pitch.
With the new app, you can now send documents from phone to phone, phone to email, phone to SMS, or even phone to Twitter. beamME Adds Twitter BeamMe's Twitter integration lets you beam information from your iPhone or iPod Touch directly to Twitter userIDs (@username). But before you panic about an oncoming wave of beamME spam, take heed. If, however, the recipient isn't following you on Twitter, the beamME app will send them an @ message first, asking them to follow you to receive your card.
BeamME Pitch - Could Be Used for More than Just Pitches Save a Tree, Buy beamME. Dear Facebook, I Think You Forgot Your “A” Game… To be clear, I’m a big fan of Facebook, both personally and professionally. As a 20-something I’m addicted to keeping track of friends and secretly stalking new people I meet. As a search marketer, I’m a strong supporter of (relevant) business participation as an effective tool for brand awareness and customer engagement. With that said, I’m more than a little disappointed in Facebook’s lack of basic functionality and advertiser tools.
While Facebook offers a ton of great features (demographic targeting, RSS integration, custom tabs, etc) their lack of attention to detail has left the stale taste of missed opportunity in my mouth. Why? Limited Reporting: I would really love to see more comprehensive options with regards to reporting. Reports w/custom date ranges – options are quite limited here.Data Mining – considering the gold mine they’re sitting on, this can be improved significantly.
Ads Manager: unimpressive, to say the least. Fan Page Updates: this feature is great in theory. The Value of Social Media for B2B Purchase Decisions. Apple to buy Twitter? Is there reason behind the madness? - The. Twitter acquisition drama continues, first it was Google and now, according to TechCrunch and Valleywag sources, Apple (?!). The plan is apparently to announce the acquisition at this years WWDC in San Jose. The reason behind most peoples doubts is that its difficult to see how and where Twitter fits into the overall Apple setup and culture. Valleywag pinpoint the success of iPhone twitter applications as the main and ‘obvious’ driver for the deal, but I still don’t quite understand it. Google, and Microsoft have been linked to possibly buying Twitter, Google just towards the end of last month. As absurd a proposition as this may be however, there may be some truth and potential motive.
Also, and although extremely speculative, it is quite interesting how Apple decided to profile the site just last week. Arrington (Michael that is) is convinced the story is bull, despite making a meal of it on Techcrunch over the last few hours. Hospital Creative Draws Inspiration from YouTube, Facebook - Mar. Akron's unscripted oeuvres Rather than slash ad budgets, recession-hit hospitals are changing creative tactics with the times Hospitals typically emphasize messages about their skilled doctors, caring nurses, and teamwork - or plug ratings given from a magazine or website, The New York Times observes.
One campaign by the Marcus Thomas agency in Cleveland runs ads for Akron Children hospital in Ohio that are entirely unscripted, for example. It features cancer-stricken 14-year-old Austin, who is bald from chemotherapy, leaping from footage of him playing basketball in his school gym to walking down a hallway in a hospital gown. "It just blows my mind that I end up getting it. Traditional testimonial spots featuring patients focus on families and about how they are coping. Sprite recently brought a similar low profile ad campaign to Youtube.
New York ad firm DeVito/Verdi is also steering clear of stereotypical ad campaigns in their work for Mount Sinai Medical Center. For the iPhone App Store, Future Means Chaos. Omar Hamoui, founder and chief executive of AdMob, a San Mateo, Calif-based mobile advertising network, is in a unique position: With nearly 20 percent of his 2 billion monthly ad impressions coming by way of the iPhone and iPod touch, he can offer deep insights into the devices’ application ecosystems. His company helps monetize many iPhone applications by giving them the ability to embed advertisements. With many more app writers waiting in the wings, Hamoui thinks that there will be a big surge in the number of available apps on the iTunes App Store. This is going to cause some challenges not only for app developers, but also for Apple. After all, as he noted: “How do you discover apps when there are 100,000 apps in the iTunes store, vs. 25,000 at present?” Hamoui stopped by our office yesterday and I asked him a few questions.
Here are some key points of note from our video conversation, which is available in its entirety below the fold: Hi5 Adds Chat, With A Social Twist. 5 Free Web Services to give your Photo that Crazy Touch. NASA Selects New Projects to Study Mars and Mercury | Universe T. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter ExoMars Rover. Credit: ESA Click for larger version Making good on its promise to work together with other space agencies, NASA has selected two science instruments that will fly on board European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, one heading to Mars on the ExoMars rover, the other to Mercury with the BepiColombo orbiter.
“The selections will further advance our knowledge of these exciting terrestrial planets,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The international collaboration will create a new chapter in planetary science and provide a strong partnership with the international science community to complement future robotic and human exploration activities.”
The Lander Radio-Science on ExoMars, or LaRa, will use NASA’s Deep Space Network of radio telescopes to track part of ESA’s ExoMars mission. BepiColombo - Mission to Mercury. Source: NASA. Friends Are Most Trusted Source on Internet : Buzz Networker - S. Social networking increases in importance when you consider the TNS report on who people trust on the internet.
In a global sense 42% said that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations which is now similar to the more traditional TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%). When you look at the split between the US and Western Europe You can see the overall importance of friends and getting a recommendation from friends rather than through traditional advertising. There is a wide spread in the trust level between newspapers and the TV across the countries. So when I saw this research what did I think 1) Investment in friends has a high return on influence. 2) The limit is now not necessarily financial but time related 3) Any brand strategy needs to think of combining the traditional with the social media tools. It is strange because the social media tool which has had the greatest impact on my business is podcasting! Why Facebook Can't Become Twitter: Its Closed Nature | Tech. There's been plenty of talk about how Facebook has been trying to morph more into being like Twitter, to avoid being "last year's model" when it comes to the "social networking hype focus.
" Last week, the company got some news for supposedly "opening up" newsfeeds for outside developers to build into their apps, with many people saying that this is how the site becomes more "Twitter-like. " The NY Times had a big writeup over the weekend, talking about what a crazy idea it is that Facebook would just let anyone come in and "take" its content and put into other apps -- even though, there are tons of services that do exactly that and have found it to be quite useful.
Except, it appears that Facebook isn't quite as open as the press coverage and press releases would lead you to believe -- and a big part of it is the foundation on which Facebook is built. Well, not exactly. Why People Are Better At Lying Online Than Telling A Lie Face-to. In the digital world, it’s easier to tell a lie and get away with it. That’s good news for liars, but not so good for anyone being deceived. Michael Woodworth, a forensic psychologist at UBC Okanagan studying deception in computer-mediated environments, says offering up a fib in person might make you provide certain signals that you’re trying to deceive, but lying online avoids the physical cues that can give you away.
“When people are interacting face to face, there is something called the ‘motivational impairment effect,’ where your body will give off some cues as you become more nervous and there’s more at stake with your lie,” says Woodworth. “In a computer-mediated environment, the exact opposite occurs.” When telling a lie face-to-face, the higher the stakes of your deception, the more cues you may give out that you’re lying. Woodworth’s research is very timely as technology and deceptive practices converge. Common threads detected in psychopath texts The results were revealing. Live Updating the Stream. 85 of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Follow.
There are thousands of designers on Twitter tweeting about everything from ongoing projects to their personal lives. But only a small percentage of those tweet about design topics of interest to other designers and design addicts. These people cover everything from their design process to their own projects, and design resources from all over the web. Below is a list of more than 85 of those Twitterers.
Have another designer to recommend? Multi-Disciplinary @abduzeedo - Fabio Sasso is a graphic and web designer, as well as . @AndrewKelsall - Andrew Kelsall is a web and graphic designer who does all sorts of creative work including logo and print design. @anthonywoods - Anthony Woods is a graphic designer and web and software application developer. @artistech - Artistech Newmedia is a design and production firm working with web, print, and video. @bartelme - Wolfgang Bartelme is a user interface and graphic designer.
@bongobrian - Brian Paulowicz is a web designer and graphic artist. Everything You Need to Know About Creating Killer Content in 3 S. When to avoid the conversation. My latest Adweek column is up. It's called "Silence is Golden: when talking back is not always a brand's best bet. " The original title was, "When to keep your big trap shut" Take a gander and decide whether you want to join or avoid the conversation on this post :) Full text: Silence Is Golden Why talking back is not always a brand's best bet - By Joseph Jaffe In this new "enlightened" era of joining the conversation, it appears that the ship has set sail once and for all on the debate as to whether or not brands should participate in online conversations. 1.
Just because you've implemented an extensive "commitment-to-conversation" program and --thanks to your listening strategy-are ready to pounce the very millisecond anyone has anything to say, this doesn't mean you always should. For starters, it's a little creepy if a big brand responds too quickly. 2. If you've earned the trust and affinity of a base of consumers, why not let them respond on your behalf? 3. 4. 5. One Degree: What My 15-Year Old Son Taught Me About Marketing. By Lynda Partner The other day I was irritated by the lack of response to an email I had sent a few days before to my 15 year old son.
That night at dinner, I asked him why he hadn’t responded. His answer? “Mom, it’s not like I check email every day you know!”. That statement stopped me in my tracks. While I am a user of blogs, Facebook, twitter, and text, I am also of a generation who couldn’t survive without email. Curious, I asked him how best to reach him when I was at work and he was at home.
Text me (I always have my phone with me) IM me (it’s the first thing I do when I get home from school and it works when I am playing video games on TV too) Facebook me (yes Facebook is also a verb) Phone me (but not on my cell phone cause it costs me money) I then asked him how many emails he gets each week – “about 3-6 per week depending on the time of year”, and how many he sends each week – “about 1-2, mostly for school projects and only because Facebook won’t let you send attachments”. Seth's Blog: Can you change everything? The Sustainability of Social Media. To Sell Well, We Must Understand The Human Communication Process. 302 Found. As It Inflects, Twitter Must Add Value to New Users, Faster - Jo. Twitter. The Future of Journalism: Content Marketing. Facebook Shuts Ku Klux Klan Group: TOS WIN. Micro Persuasion: The End of the Destination Web Era.
Greasemonkey UserScripts Updater. Anthropology: The Art of Building a Successful Social Site - Re. Thinking about thunder. 2012: Not Doomsday, It. Integrating AdSense In Your Google Analytics Stats. Weekly Wrapup: Facebook vs Twitter, State of the Web, Google Pub. Reading My New FriendFeed Real-Time Feed. Seth's Blog: The banal brazenness of telescammers. How To Win a Social Media Award! : Buzz Networker - Social Netwo. The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What' Other Sports | Sports go mad for online pastime Twitter | Seattl. Swine Flu as Social Media Epidemic. Adds comments with Disqus - blog.chi.mp. The Online Ad Recession Is Officially Here: First Quarterly Decl. Running List of the Five Eras of The Social Web.