Social Media Report 2012: Social Media Comes of Age. Social media and social networking are no longer in their infancy. Social media continues to grow rapidly, offering global consumers new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events and brands that matter to them. According to Nielsen and NM Incite’s latest Social Media Report, consumers continue to spend more time on social networks than on any other category of sites—roughly 20 percent of their total time online via personal computer (PC), and 30 percent of total time online via mobile.
Additionally, total time spent on social media in the U.S. across PCs and mobile devices increased 37 percent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012, compared to 88 billion in July 2011. The recent proliferation of mobile devices and connectivity helped fuel the continued growth of social media. Facebook remains the top social network, but new social media sites continue to emerge and catch on. #SocialEra. 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era: Nilofer Merchant: Amazon.com. Traditional Strategy Is Dead. Welcome to the #SocialEra - Nilofer Merchant. By Nilofer Merchant | 10:34 AM September 12, 2012 When I say, “Social is and can be more than media,” people resist. It’s as if the two words (social and media) are now permanently fused together. But they shouldn’t be. The fact that they are joined at the hip in so many people’s minds means that marketing agencies are thriving — but that the rest of our organizations are not.
Social can be — and already is — more than Media. The companies thriving today are operating by a new set of rules — Social Era rules. Companies like REI, Kickstarter, Kiva, Twitter, Starbucks — they get it. The failing organizations around us — many of which I explore in my new book, which publishes today — continue to follow the operating rules and ethos of Traditional Strategy. It’s helpful to call this new context the Social Era to emphasize a point: while in the industrial era, organizations became more powerful by being bigger, in the Social Era, companies can also be powerful by working with others.
How the San Francisco Giants Hit a Home Run with Social Media. InShare72 It wasn’t too long ago when sport industries were confounded by the openness of social media and the ability for fans and players to share experiences in real time. Now of course, times have changed and teams in every sporting league imaginable are experimenting with social media to improve relationships and experiences with fans. The San Francisco Giants are among the sports teams that are leading the way for a new genre of engagement and community building. 2010 was a whimsical year for the San Francisco Giants. Bryan Srabian is the team’s first director of social media and he joins me on this episode of Revolution to share the story of why social media is part of the team’s official roster.
“The city of San Francisco really started to bond together. The social media rule of thirds. To the uninitiated, Twitter in some ways, has made a bad name for itself. So much so, that sometimes the first path of resistance to joining it or other social networks is something along the lines of, "All people do is talk about what they had for lunch! Why should I be part of that? " Along the same road, some use social media to post either very literal updates ("I'm driving to work! ") or self-promote with little success.
Sharing your own news and showing your human side are important parts of using social media but it's important to strive for balance. This balance is what many call the "rule of thirds," and by putting it into practice, social media can be a far richer, more satisfying experience. One third of the time on social media, post about you and/or your brand: Fulfilling this is usually pretty easy, as you know your business better than anyone. So Social is a social media tips column by The Tribune Media Group's Amy Guth and Scott Kleinberg. Can Digg Apologize Its Way Back to Popularity? It’s hard not to feel sorry for new Digg CEO Matt Williams. The poor guy has only been on the job for a little over a month, after replacing founder Kevin Rose as chief executive in August, and his first major appearance is on a blog post in which he apologizes for all the flaws and missteps in the recent Digg redesign (none of which he was responsible for, of course) and promises to roll back the changes and restore almost all of the various features that die-hard Digg fans complained about losing.
But can all of this apologizing bring back those frustrated users, or have they moved on for good? Just to recap, Digg launched the new version of the site in late August. Almost immediately, there was a backlash from long-time Digg users. Many were concerned that too much content from mainstream media outlets was making its way to the site’s front page, instead of the quirky or off-beat content that Digg became famous for.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Timing your posts on Facebook and Twitter | DesignBrother. Why the Future of Social Is in the Palm of Your Hand. When I leave the house in the morning, the first thing I check is that I have my phone with me. It's not my keys nor my wallet, but my phone that I'm most worried about forgetting. My mobile device has become my lifeline in a lot of ways — and I know I'm not alone. When I walk outside, it seems hard to find someone who's not on their phone. Whether they're looking up directions on a maps app, checking in to their current location on Foursquare or taking a photo with Instagram, many of us rely on mobile devices to get things done efficiently and conveniently — and to stay connected.
Long before Facebook bought Instagram last month, the mobile social networking boom was upon us. The $1 billion acquisition was just the icing on the cake. This was the jumping off point for a discussion on stage at Mashable Connect with me, Brett Martin, co-founder and CEO of Sonar, Steve Jang, co-founder, chief product designer and CEO of SoundTracking, and Bart Stein, co-founder of Stamped on Saturday. Facebook, Google Must Adapt as Users Embrace 'Unsocial' Networks.
When Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion, theories flew as to what it might mean. Was Mark Zuckerberg defensive, worried that his 850 million Facebook users might stop uploading 250 million photos a day? Or was he making a proactive move into mobile, where Instagram’s friendly interface makes Facebook look clunky on iPhones? The real story is both—and one of splintering social networks that are breaking up the vast, open “social graphs” that give Facebook and others such power.
Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram is a signal that smaller, closed networks are growing popular by giving audiences more control over what they share. For nearly a decade, marketers have been agog over the promise of social networks to provide free advertising, a cascade of word-of-mouth in which consumers act as advocates for a brand or product. Trouble is, Metcalfe was wrong, at least with human networks. Human networks, like words in English, have long tails of diminishing usage. Whether tweets live or die depends more on network, competition for attention than message or user influence.
On the global social media stage, it's not so much the message but rather network structure and competition for attention that determine whether a meme becomes popular and shows staying power or whether it falls by the wayside, research led by Indiana University has determined. After analyzing 120 million retweets connected to 12.5 million users and 1.3 million hashtags, the team from IU Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing was able to model the mechanisms of meme competition in the Twitter social network and show how information spread is shaped. The findings show it's not as much the message as it is the medium, and even memory, that determines whether an Internet meme goes viral or dies without a trace.
The research, published March 29 in Scientific Reports and conducted at the school's Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, is the first to attempt addressing social media as a series of new, unrestrained epidemics continuously input into a system. Your complete social TV guide to SXSW. Last year at SXSW, we discovered a handful of social TV sessions, and they were packed to the gills. This year, there are more sessions and a bigger social TV presence across the board. In fact, taken together, it’s shaping up to be one of the biggest social TV events held so far. Both Natan and I will be there, and we’ve pulled together a social TV guide for those of you headed to SXSW later this week: Thursday: Upper Deck Social Panel by Social Distillery (session)4:00 – 6:00 PM Abel’s on the Lake 3825 Lake Austin Blvd., Suite 201 Lost Remote/Sawhorse Media’s Natan Edelsburg, Facebook’s Stefan Parker and several other social media experts gather to talk about social business strategy, cutting-edge social campaigns, advancement of social CRM tools and the future of the industry.
Friday: @TVEngagement: Does Social Media Drive TV Ratings? Saturday: Integrating Brands into Social Television9:30AM -10:30AM InterContinental Stephen F. Sunday: Monday: Tuesday Did we miss any events? How Storify And Pinterest Are Cultivating The Wild Web, And Why Social Media Will Civilize The Internet. Why NBC News Bets on Social TV. The death of broadcast TV news has been greatly exaggerated. And social media might just breathe new life into it. NBC is betting social channels can invigorate “The Today Show,” “NBC Nightly News” and its other news programs. The network, which leads in the nightly news ratings, has gone all-in on social, building a solid community of 10 million followers across several social platforms. Its personalities, such as Ann Curry, Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams, eclipse the 5 million mark on Twitter alone. And the network has a strong following on Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus and Tumblr. That’s good news considering that NBC, like its competitors, faces a demographic challenge: TV news is for the olds.
The question is what to do with all these social network followers — and whether they can invigorate the rather tired genre of TV news. “Social TV is a cross-functional effort at NBC News,” said Osborn, who leads a team of three. But for NBC News, it always comes back to the story. How Storify And Pinterest Are Cultivating The Wild Web, And Why Social Media Will Civilize The Internet. Why the Super Bowl’s Social Media Command Center Scores a Winning Touchdown. An exclusive, in-depth look into the Super Bowl’s first ever social media command center, the folks who ran it, and how the convergence of technology and people created the ultimate online Super Bowl experience. Me with Taulbee Jackson, CEO of Raidious You would think that, the day before the biggest sporting event of the year, the people in charge of the Super Bowl's Social Media Command Center would be frantic, running around and putting out last minute fires.
So imagine my surprise when I walked in and found it to be quite the opposite. Entering the offices of Raidious — the Indianapolis-based digital communications company behind the social media command center — the air was full of activity, but the mood was quiet and calm… almost, I dare say, serene. And it’s no wonder.
Having worked with such brands as Finish Line, Bass Pro Shops and Comcast, Raidious has honed the art of making, managing, and measuring the content that makes digital marketing work. Mission & Goals Connect: Quantum Leap Buzz. Socialize Releases Action Bar 1.0 for Building Better Social Apps. The team at Socialize has released a new action bar that centralizes the user interface of its mobile engagement platform. Developers can now drop the Socialize SDK into their app and create an bar where users can interact within the app through Facebook, email, text and Twitter and also use in-app commenting.
The new action bar can either be a stand-alone feature within an app or developers can strip the UI from the bar itself and just place the functionality of the action bar within an app. As the Socialize SDK is open source, developers can add the social engagement layer that the startup provides in whatever way they want. This is a significant step for the startup but the team has more up its sleeves coming soon. Socialize is a 10-person startup based out of San Francisco that grew out of a consulting and development firm that CEO Daniel Odio and partners sold to boostrap AppMakr, the beta channel for Socialize products and kind of parent company.
The history of social commerce. Reasons why the social graph deserves to die. If you’ve ever gotten a little creeped out by the way social networks have invaded our lives, then you aren’t alone. There are a lot of people who enjoy using the social web, but struggle with it too. Unfortunately, most of the rhetoric about this part of the web is still pretty uncomplicated, broadly split between those who gleefully champion the new openness and those who deride it as meaningless or destructive.
That leaves many of us who have more complicated feelings stranded in the middle. Good news, then, for this silent majority: perhaps we have a new manifesto in The Social Graph is Neither. Written by Maciej Ceglowski, the founder of bookmarking website Pinboard, it’s a great essay that covers a lot of ground about the problems today’s social networks have, and I’d urge you to read the whole thing. Right now the social networking sites occupy a similar position to CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL in the mid 90′s.
But he doesn’t just pick on the semantics. Brands Create Exec Roles For Social Media. InShare8 Newly hired marketing specialists talk integration. Six months ago, Adam Kmiec sat across from a group of Walgreens marketing execs, who quizzed him on what he could do for their social media program. As numerous other brands have this year, the pharmacy/grocery retailer was looking to hire its first social media director. Kmiec, who at the time was with Chicago-based agency Marc USA, was getting a scent of the job he would soon fill. "It was something baked right into the interview process," Kmiec (pictured) told ClickZ News.
"For social to be successful, it needs to be able to scale and it needs to get local. If you treat Facebook and Twitter vertically, it's really tough to get that to scale. If job listings during 2011 are any indication, executive social media marketing roles are here to stay. Compared to Kmiec, Sabrina Caluori's climb to VP of social media and performance marketing for HBO was more evolutionary. Office Politics Part of Integrating Social Media.