The Farce That Is Google+ Posted On: Posted In: Google+ Comments: 181 Responses (This post originally pointed to a survey about Google+ having more than 300+ million active users and mistakenly, in a blind fit of Google+ rage assumed it was a Google+ study. That was a dumb call by me that clouded the main intent of the post. Those responsible have been sacked. Shout out to Sam Fiorella that got the brunt of the attack. Right when it was launched, I was told I “HAVE TO” get on Google+ Seriously, in all-caps.
So I went, it’s what us social geeks do. But Google+ was different. But not Google+, private beta invites, peer pressure mostly from marketers and the ones trying to stake their claim as Google+ experts the day it was released (I wish I was kidding). So I joined, and started to circle people, looked around and to be honest I didn’t really see the need for it. Google came out last year and said that 60% of their users signed in daily. I beg your pardon? Social campaigns need scale and rigour. 16674 - GfK Aims for Global Standard in Social Media Analysis. GfK has established ‘consistent standards’ for global implementation of its new social media analysis (SMA) offer, which combines automated systems with interpretation by human coders.
SMA taps into the company’s global network to deliver web content gathering and analyses in any language. Local specifics of the web landscape are taken into account, with SMA insights then integrated with other context-specific information - such as survey data or knowledge on purchase behavior. GfK piloted SMA in a recent study run in the People’s Republic of China, identifying, collecting and analyzing the online buzz for four smartphone brands.
The firm’s Global Innovation and Digital Specialist Dr Ralph Wirth (pictured), comments: ‘We chose China because it is the most challenging social media market available, combining strict regulations and a unique online landscape. Web site: www.gfk.com . The four toughest questions you must ask. What exactly are the toughest questions when it comes to social media listening research? They’re the ones that force you to admit your weaknesses, your faults, your errors. So if you’re going to take the plunge, here are five questions that could make vendors squirm. What percentage of your social media data is associated with gender? Age? Go ahead. Like this: Like Loading... The Most Loved and Hated Brands of 2012. Fan advocacy is an important topic for brands. We all want our most loyal fans to spread the word about how much they love our company.
While companies are spending a lot of time and money focusing on “influencer” outreach, I’ve been equally exploring the topic of “fan influencers”. I’ve been looking for opportunities to build strategies for brands that focus on finding your most influential fans and providing them with a platform to amplify their message and we’re doing some interesting testing. As a result, I was curious about how advocates and detractors mention brands online. I wanted to see if I could find interesting findings in how we display our love and hatred for brands.
So I conducted an analysis to see. As you would expect there were some interesting findings, which resulted in a list of the most loved and hated brands online for 2012. Methodology Frequency Social media users have a lot of love and hate to talk about. Sources Domains Top 50 Hated Brands Top 50 Loved Brands Analysis. 7 Things Your Social Media Consultant Should Tell You. If social media consultants are doing their jobs, they should put themselves out of business. I speak as one of their kind. Before joining Fast Company last spring, I was the social media editor at the New York Daily News. So I'll say it even bolder: At some point, Fast Company should fire me. (Just not too soon, please!) Your company will never be truly social if you silo social activity within a consultant or a staff manager. To facilitate proliferation, your consultant should learn how your company works, then create a strategy to spread social throughout your organization. But in the meantime, here's what you should be hearing from your consultant: 1 "What's your goal?
" 2 "Here's the ROI. " 3 "I don't care about follower counts. " 4 "Facebook and Twitter are only a start. " 5 "Let's look at data. " Follow Fast Company's roadmap to social media: surefire rules, data, and expert wisdom guaranteed to show why this market is completely unpredictable. 6 "Your website should be social. " What were the top papers of 2012 on social media? One of the promises of altmetrics — an approach to measuring attention on research papers that relies on alternative measures to citations, such as downloads, social media mentions and collections in online libraries — is that it could provide an almost real-time view of the papers provoking most excitement. Citations, by contrast, are inevitably slow to gather pace. So as Nature was starting to think about its review of 2012 (at the end of November — we start early!)
We also asked altmetrics experts to pick out the most noted papers of the year. The results show some of the promise — and also the teething problems — of the new kids on the block. The wizards at Altmetric.com picked out for us the top research articles mentioned directly online. Immediately apparent is that the papers that dominated were catchy, and most, if not all, made international news media.
What a difference — with three papers on the list relating to ENCODE. And what did citations tell us? Andreessen and Mixpanel Call for an End to “Bullshit Metrics” - Liz Gannes. Page views, registered users, app downloads. A hundred thousand of these, a million of those. These are the numbers and milestones tech companies brag about, both to press and investors. But honestly, Web sites that require you to repeatedly click through to see additional pages are often just crappy.
Download counts can be easily inflated if an app developer is willing to pay. Analytics company Mixpanel and its investor Andreessen Horowitz are trying to persuade the tech world to be more honest with itself by reporting numbers that are far more informative: Engagement and retention. Some people call page views and the like “vanity metrics,” but Marc Andreessen and Mixpanel founder Suhail Doshi have decided they want to raise the shame level by calling them “bullshit metrics.”
Andreessen told me in an interview last week, “People think they’re richer if they have Zimbabwean dollars than U.S. dollars.” “We and other investors need to get more vocal,” Andreessen said. This Is Your Brain On The Internet. 64Share Synopsis Is the internet and social media influencing your brain? Documentary filmmaker Tiffany Shlain investigates our changing behaviors in the connected world.
As kids, we all learned what our brains look like on drugs, but what do our brains look like on social media? The rapid rise and adoption of the Internet, gaming, and social media have no doubt had an impact on how we see the world and interact with one another. The study of brain plasticity has become a hot topic in recent years, as scientists realize that the brain is not static, and that it never stops reorganizing itself in response to outside stimuli.
In our latest video, documentary filmmaker and Webby Award Founder Tiffany Shlain explores the affect that media and technology have on our brains and human interaction. Filmmakers like Shlain and researchers like Dr. Researchers have discovered that we can become addicted to the Internet just like we can become addicted to nicotine. WaveMetrix launches best-practice framework for Twitter. UK market research sector worth £3bn. Would You Pay To Discover Social Influencers? The first thing we usually think of when we hear the word "influencer" is Klout, followed by a bad +K joke. The idea of tacking a be-all, end-all number onto our social significance may seem trifling, but social scoring is becoming an increasingly attractive method for businesses, marketers, and agencies to discover their best customers and brand evangelists. And following them are a crop of startups who are trying to help them wade through all that social data and, along the way, make a profit.
One service, Little Bird, is trying a novel approach: surfacing what it calls "trusted influencers and experts on any topic online. " Formerly known as Plexus, Little Bird just launched today in private beta with $1 million in funding from investors including Mark Cuban and early Twitter lead engineer Blaine Cook. Little Bird lets you run reports based on specific search terms and will spit back up to 3,000 organizations and people it thinks are relevant. [Image: Flickr user James Cridland] Social Sentiment: Are You Listening? Voting Influence Survey - AYTM. Its no secret that social media can be a powerful tool to impact human behavior, but it’s been mostly unknown just how effective this type of communication can be, especially when it comes to actions like voting. But scientists at the University of California, San Diego recently conducted a study that suggests a single Facebook message that went viral encouraged over 340,000 people to vote in the 2010 mid-term election.
How many Americans have changed their political opinions or voting preferences because of social media, and could a similar trend happen in this year’s election? Voter Turnout In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 26% of US respondents said they are not currently registered to vote. 15% said they have registered within the last year. 14% have registered within the last five years. 9% have registered within the last ten years. And 37% said they registered to vote over ten years ago. 64% of respondents said they definitely intend to vote in this year’s election. Twitter CEO: Apple is our Mentor, Facebook our Opposite. Photos and Videos are Key Social Currency Online. Online Life in Pictures Creators and Curators Photos and videos have become key social currencies online. 46% of adult internet users post original photos or videos online that they themselves have created. We call them creators. 41% of adult internet users take photos or videos that they have found online and repost them on sites designed for sharing images with many people.
We call them curators. The creator group is made up of those who have shared photos they have taken themselves (45% of internet users have done that) and those who have shared videos they have created themselves (18% of internet users have done that). The curator group is made up of those who have taken photos they found online and posted them on a site that is used for sharing images with others (35% of internet users have done that) and those who have taken videos they found online and posted them on a video-sharing site that is used for sharing videos with others (25% of internet users have done that). 52 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed. Between the anniversary of 9/11, the attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East and the political sparring match that ensued, it was a tumultuous week.
At least the weather was nice, right? It was an incredibly busy week in the tech world, so you may have missed some important stuff if you weren't paying close attention. Apple announced the impending release of the iPhone 5, a new version of iTunes, upgrades to the iPod Touch and Nano lines and even a redesign of the now-iconic earbuds. Feeling overwhelmed? Fear not because even if you didn't have time to follow along, we were all over it. This recap includes everything you need to know about those new Apple products, along with some outside-the-box suggestions for what to do with your old iPhone if you choose to upgrade. Although it was a tech-heavy week, that's not all we covered. Check out this week's features roundup. Editor's Picks Social Media Business & Marketing. What Does an Influencer Really Look Like? How to Measure Online Influence that Makes a Difference.
What Does an Influencer Really Look Like? How to Measure Online Influence that Makes a Difference An exclusive, live webinar from Social Media Today September 18th at 12pm EST / 9am PST The nature of social media is that it's driven by the behavior of consumers, whose decisions are in turn influenced by other people online. There's never been much question that some web users have a stronger or broader influence on people's decisions than others - the challenge for marketers has been to identify these web influencers, and in some cases attempt to influence them in a positive direction as it concerns their business. Measurement tools have come into being to assign rankings to the influence of an individual, and most social platforms display metrics that purport to describe reach - but does a number of friends or followers aptly illustrate trust, admiration, respect, shared values and the other factors that really make up influence?
What do social technology platforms really measure? Just Picture It: The Imagesphere. Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Bob Lisbonne, CEO of in-image advertising company Luminate. He was previously a General Partner at Matrix Partners, and worked at Netscape Communications, where he was the senior vice president and general manager of its browser division. Images shock, delight, inspire and provoke. They grab our emotions in ways that text simply cannot. Would Facebook be Facebook without photos? You want to see what’s going on in the lives of your “friends,” not just read a status update. Images also drive the entire ecommerce movement. Can you imagine purchasing a sweater online without seeing a picture of it first?
Images play such a crucial role in every part of our online experience, and yet, until relatively recently, remarkably little changed in how we view and use pictures. We’re in the midst of an image explosion. Kodak No More Pinterest pushes images further. This is a breakthrough moment for digital images – the dawning of the Imagesphere. Shopping Apps, Social Media and Branded Text Messages Playing Critical Role in Shopping Decisions.
SOURCE: Hyper Marketing Inc. New Study by Integrated Marketing Agency Ryan Partnership Urges Retailers and Brands to Work Together to Win Hearts and Market Share WILTON, CT--(Marketwire - Sep 6, 2012) - Branded shopping apps are the strongest driver behind unplanned purchases, branded content on social networks drives people to try new products, and texts and social media are most likely to influence where people shop, according to a new study released today by Ryan Partnership, an integrated marketing agency that is part of the Hyper Marketing, Inc. network. The 2012 Ryan Partnership Digital Retail Study comes out just 18 months after the company's last retail study. Shoppers' usage of digital retail tools -- ranging from store websites and mobile coupons to daily deal sites and QR codes, has doubled or even tripled, depending on the tool, in the 18-month period.
The Ryan study surveyed 8,000 primary household shoppers about their usage of various digital retail tools. 404 Not Found. SumAll Launches Analytics Tool For Working Out Social Media ROI. Klout and PeerIndex Don’t Measure Influence. Brian Solis Explains What They Actually Do. Are We All Braggarts Now? Greater Than You: Energizing Health Online. How Individuals Use Social Media to Personalize Medicine. Our new place to complain about the boss: Everywhere. Please, NBC and IOC, Learn How to Share the Olympics. Google+ traffic soars: 66 percent increase in nine months. Survey: Google+ Whomps Facebook on User Satisfaction. O2 Tweets a Primer on Dealing with Rude Customers.
5 Reasons Email Marketing Crushes Social Media Marketing for B2B. A Best Practices Approach to Social Media Research « Research Design Review. Leahbesajimenez : Congratulations @TweetupMN... Online Shopping for Electronics, Computers, Appliances | LAZADA. Sorry, Marketers, You're Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT] How to Build -- and Keep -- an Engaged Audience [INFOGRAPHIC] Should Social Media Replace Surveys? | Competitive Advantage Marketing Inc. Announcing a Breakthrough in Measuring the Impact of Social Media on Sales.
"the social" has always been there. 3 Ways to Use Pinterest for Marketing Research. Digital Stuff / #CMO guide to #SocialMedia Landscape. Our unhappy addiction to social media. What are Social Media KPI’s? Kit Kat and JWT Singapore launch widget to help cope with social media stress - News - Digital. Do You Know If Your Competition Is Kicking Your Butt In Social Media? A New Category Defined: Social Performance Software. Social Media Users Spend 21% More On Brands That Exceed Customer Service Expectations [STUDY] What is the Future of Social Media for Orthopedic Surgeons? For Brands, Social Media Shows Returns but Measurement Hurdles Remain. Digital Stuff / TV shows with the most #buzz on #socialmedia week of the 24th April 2012 - (TV)^socialmedia. Digital Stuff / Brands and #socialmedia - an #infographic. Digital Stuff / #pepsi #now - not too shabby a #socialmedia effort ":D. How Can Marketers Build a Real Community of Customers? | Small Agency Diary. Social Media Analytics – How to Engage With The Data Of Social Media.
Klout Doesn't Really Measure Influence [STUDY] Slideshare. Data Analysis | Analytical-Solution.com. Exploiting social media: The next step in business analytics. Over 80 per cent of Asia's top companies using social media. Why Groupon Must Change Its Business Model for Long-Term Success. Klout to update algorithm, launch score insights tomorrow. Hands on: Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone [video] What is Social Media Research? Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value. Twitter used to track moods. Marketers doubt social ROI. The Daily Social. Social media for business 101 « eskimon. Beyond social media buzzwords: It's your business that matters and how you think and what you believe that really matter.
The (Realistic) Risks & Rewards of Social Media: 15 things you stand to gain, and lose, by engaging in social media. As Net Stocks Sizzle, Zynga Aims High for Its I.P.O. Login - Advertising Age. What Is Facebook, Really? - Jeffrey F. Rayport - The Conversation. Philiptiongson. How Facebook eclipsed Google in 2010. Six Social Media Trends for 2011 - David Armano - The Conversation.