December 24, 2011

Twitter Media Darling of 2011

First published on Technorati by Adi Gaskell.

Yesterday it was revealed that Facebook was visited by over 50% of the global web using population last month.  Such popularity has not translated into media popularity however.

HighBeam Research has released data today revealing the media popularity of various social networks, and Twitter has come out on top in 2011.  The microblogging site received nearly 50% of all press coverage about social media in 2011.

Twitter edged Facebook into 2nd place, earning more coverage every month of the year except February and April.  Twitter also received much more favorable coverage than Facebook throughout the year.

While Facebook mainly hit the news because of privacy concerns, celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher ensured Twitter received a regular stream of positive news stories as the press flocked to the site to find out what the world’s famous faces were saying.

This shift has forced Facebook to respond, rolling out its profile subscribe feature in a bid to encourage celebrities and other famous faces to use the site to interact with their legion of followers.  So far this move has had limited success, although they can count on people such as Britney Spears and Nicole Ritchie as regular users.

Outside of the big two press coverage was limited.  Professional networking site LinkedIn came 3rd with a paltry 3.33% of media attention this year.  Most of this was due to the companies flotation over the summer.  MySpace languished in 4th spot with just 1.3% of coverage, with the majority of this focusing on how poorly the former social media champion was now doing.  Foursquare went largely unnoticed by the press, garnering just 0.71% of press coverage on social media.  Google+ was not included in the data for this year, but seems certain to make a bigger splash in 2012.

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December 22, 2011

20% of all Web Traffic is to Social Networks

First published on Technorati by Adi Gaskell.

Social networking has never been more popular, and this is supported by new data that reveals that 1 in every 5 minutes spent online is spent social networking.

The most popular site was Facebook, which was incredibly visited by over 50% of all web users in the world. That’s right, over half of the worlds Internet users visited Facebook during October. Amazing.

These were the findings of the latest comScore research into our web usage.

“The emergence and widespread global adoption of social networks has vastly influenced human interaction on an individual, community and larger societal level, and underscores the convergence of the online and offline worlds,” said Linda Boland Abraham, comScore CMO and EVP of global development.

“Regardless of geography, social networks are weaving themselves ever more intricately into the fabric of the digital experience, opening a world of new opportunity for business and technology.”

As mentioned earlier, Facebook is the undoubted champion of social networking.  Roughly 75% of all time spent social networking was spent on Facebook.  Twitter by contrast reaches just 10% of all web users around the world, although this figure is growing considerably.

The research found that 15-24 year olds now spend on average 8 hours per week social networking, which is still some way behind the 28 hours of television watched per week on average.

The rise of mobile devices is fueling the social addiction, comScore reports. In America, 3 in 5 smartphone users accessed social networking sites, 2 in 5 doing so nearly every day which is lower than European use, but a rising number for Americans.

Earlier this month it was revealed that approximately 75% of all photos taken on Facebook involved alcohol, which suggests the rise in mobile social networking means every facet of our life is increasingly documented online.

How much time do you spend social networking each week?

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December 21, 2011

Mobile Social Media: The Next Great Disruptive Trend

First published on Technorati by Surajit Agarwal.

Over 1.3 billion users are expected to access social media from mobile devices by 2016. This is almost double the number of mobile social media users in 2011, according to a report from Juniper Research.

The report found “the trend to integrate social, local and mobile experiences is driving the geosocial phenomena. People want to find out not only what their friends are doing, but also their location and other available activities in the area. Geosocial networks are particularly suited to the mobile space as most smartphones now include GPS, and have an ‘always on, always connected’ experience.”

This also means digital content strategies for mobile social media will need to be reconstructed based on how content is consumed on these platforms. Unlike the PC/notebook era, mobile devices come in a dizzying array of screen sizes, platforms and user interfaces. Add to that the context in which the user is accessing the content. Context could be a mashup of any or all of the following:

Device: Smartphone or tablet. Size of screen etc.

Location: Where is the content being consumed…at home, while commuting, in an outdoor environment, in a noisy indoor area like a restaurant or a mall.

Time: When is the content being consumed and what would be the most relevant information at that time.

Social Relevance: What is their network consuming probably at that time and location. Also what are other people in their vicinity consuming.

Personalization: To what degree can the content be tailored to an individual. One way of doing this would be through data analytics of user and group behavior to serve up increasingly relevant content.

Attention Spans: If web attention spans were low, they are even lower on mobile devices. According to a survey on mobile content consumption users typically consumed:

a) Less than three paragraphs of text

b) Less than 30 seconds of audio

c) Less than one minute of video

Mobile social media creates new and exciting ways for businesses to connect with consumers. Information like location and time can be used to produce a compelling consumer experience. For example restaurants giving consumers details of its breakfast or lunch menus depending on the time the data was accessed. This could be followed by a discount coupon valid for a couple of hours and directions to the nearest restaurant. Compared to what most restaurant websites serve up today, it’s almost as if boring old web pages got a magical Steve Jobs makeover. 2012 is already looking good.

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Want More Happy Tweets? Study Says Try Weekends

First published on Technorati by Steve Woods.

Want to feel some social media love? You might want to steer clear of your Twitter stream until this weekend.

A University of Vermont study snuck a peek at over 4.6 billion of our tweets for three years, beginning in September of 2008, and discovered that the “mood” of Twitter users ebbed and flowed over the course of a week, month, and even a year.

Over the 33 month study, researchers found that overall, we’ve been slowly sliding into an online depression. Measuring and weighting words such “love,” “failure,” “won,” “party,” “rejected” and others “has shown a gradual downward trend, accelerating somewhat over the first half of 2011,” according to the study’s authors.

With the poor economy, did Government bailouts make us tweet happy thoughts? Nope. How about the death of Osama Bin Laden? According to the study, when news arrived of Bin Laden’s demise, Twitter’s happiness index showed the “day of lowest happiness” of all months studied. Michael Jackson’s untimely death sparked the biggest one-day drop.

Confused about Bin Laden? Perhaps it was the terms we used in our tweets, such as “death,” “grave,” “shot” and “gone,” all likely measuring lower on an overall happiness scale. Researchers admit that the study has its flaws, and that they might have used a “non-representative subpopulation,” including tweets from paid employees and even from automated services, known as “bots.”

Is it perhaps the atmosphere from Twitter itself? In the past six months, the popular micro-blogging service has been shedding employees after co-founder Jack Dorsey was brought back on board to spice things up. Likely not, as Twitter’s tone comes from its users sharing on their social stream…

The study found that if you’re seeking positivity and joy, you’re more likely to come away from your Twitter stream with a smile on weekends and Holidays.

So I suppose I’ll see you tweeting on Saturday!

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Google+ Brand Pages Begin Appearing in Search Results

First published on Technorati by Adi Gaskell.

Back in the beginning of November I raised the spectre of Google using their undoubted market leadership in search to gain a foothold in the social networking market for Google +.

So it is with some alarm that Mashable report today that Google + brand pages are beginning to appear at the top of Google search listings.  A search for AT&T for instance reveals the companies Google+ account near the top of the listings, well above the companies Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn presences.

By having the companies Google + account so prominently displayed in the Google search results it allows the company to easily display a regularly updated promotional message at the top of searches for their brand name.

At the moment AT&T appear to be one of a few brands to have received such a placing in the search listings.  Toyota are another company to have enjoyed this perk however, alongside T-Mobile and Macy amongst others.

A Google rep offered the following statement about the search results: “Content from the +Page, such as recent posts, will appear as annotations attached to its associated web page under the sitelinks in search results if that site is eligible for Direct Connect. It uses the same bi-directional link and algorithmic criteria as Direct Connect.”

When I first spoke about this issue I compared Google to Microsoft in the 90′s, when they got into antitrust hot water for bundling Internet Explorer with their Windows operating system.  At the time the US Justice Department hit Microsoft hard, saying that their monopoly position with Windows was used unfairly to knock Netscape out of the browser market.

With Google holding near monopoly status in the search engine market in many countries could the same be true with Google?

Is Google in danger of following the same path as Microsoft?

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Banning Social Media at Work is Useless

First published on Technorati by Adi Gaskell,

Whilst there are still, sadly in my opinion, debate over whether social media should be banned at work, there are still many organizations that would like to shut down access during work hours.  New research by KPMG however suggests that such attempts are useless.

The study suggests that companies that try and stop staff using social media are losing the battle.  The study found that over 1/3 of employees who worked for companies who had blocked access to Facebook and Twitter had found ways to circumvent the firewall.

Some employees owned up to hacking their machines so that they could access Facebook whilst at work.  Job satisfaction and employee engagement are also impacted by access to social media: 63 percent of employees at organizations with open policies on social media said they were satisfied in their job, versus only 41 percent of those who had their access restricted.

“Executives may be naïve in thinking that banned access to social networks eliminates employee use,” suggested Tudor Aw, KPMG’s European head of Technology and a partner in the UK firm. “Indeed, the survey shows that by restricting or blocking access, many employees tend to move their activity to their own personal devices which are often less secure and completely unmonitored.”

The study found that around 50% of organizations trained staff on the use of social media, with 62% having a policy on appropriate social media use.  60% meanwhile,  monitored staff activities on social networking sites.

“Clear, practical and concise policies supported by appropriate training should be high on the agenda to give employees the confidence to be active in social media, while reducing risk by knowing the boundaries within which they should act,” noted Malcolm Alder. “We recommend organizations first listen to what is being said about them in social media; the unvarnished truth and then set the rules of engagement before they head out on the path to social network adoption.”

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December 15, 2011

Myspace Drops out of the Top 10 Social Networks

First published on Technorati.com by Adrian Gaskell.

It barely seems like yesterday that MySpace was the hot property on the web, attracting a big bid from NewsCorp and generally enjoying life at the top of the social tree.

How quickly life changes in the web 2.0 world. Data by Experian Hitwise revealed today that the social network had fallen out of the top 10 social networking sites visited by British people in the last year.  MySpace has been replaced in the top 10 by sites such as StumbleUpon, with other community sites such as Moshi Monster and Moneysavingexpert all achieving more traffic than Myspace this year.

“MySpace traffic has been on the decline for at least three years now but this is the first time the social network has fallen out of the Experian Hitwise top 10,” said James Murray of chart tracking service Experian Hitwise.

“In its place, Stumble Upon has risen in the rankings and is now the UK’s tenth most popular social network.

“As the social media landscape continues to evolve, brands need to be aware of the fast moving trends and which social sites people are visiting

Not surprisingly Facebook tops the chart with an impressive 52% of the social networking market.  YouTube comes in 2nd place, with Twitter rounding off the top 3.  Google+ is noticeable by its absence from the top 10.

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December 14, 2011

Facebook Works to Prevent Suicide, Potential for Misuse

First published on Technorati.com by Craig Blaha.

Facebook announced a suicide prevention service on Tuesday that will allow Facebook subscribers to tag posts that they believe show that someone is having suicidal thoughts. When a subscriber sees a post that makes them think someone is having suicidal thoughts, they can use a drop down menu next to that piece of content and select “suicidal content” from the “harmful behavior” menu, according to the Chicago Tribune.

When a piece of content is tagged as suicidal, an invitation for an instant chat with a counselor from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline will be sent to the person who posted the content.

With 800 million subscribers, half of whom update their status daily, this program can be a great step in preventing some of the 100 suicides that take place every day in the U.S. Like with any new service, the potential for misuse exists.

We know that cyberbullying using social media is a real phenomenon, with the suicide of Megan Meier in 2006 as one of the more high profile examples; the mother of a “friend” of Meier’s created a fake MySpace identity and made friends with Meier, eventually telling her “The world would be a better place without you.” the day she committed suicide.

Without good policies and accountability measures in place, this new chat app could be used  to bully or harass other subscribers by sending unsolicited “suicide prevention” chat requests. I think the benefit of the service outweighs the risk, but a policy that limits misuse and protects privacy should be in place.

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Social Media Policies In The Workplace Can Impact Professional Health

First published on Technorati.com by Lisa Stephens.

Usage of the internet outside the scope of daily work flow is a question employers can evaluate prior to executing a plan for marketing. A stance on where, how, and why employees interact with one another and also with the larger population of internet users over open communication platforms during the course of their job performance might require the involvement of hiring managers prior to the creation of a job description.

Employees, interviewees, and HR resources are not necessarily on the same page during the process of evaluating for placement of interested potential. Vacillation on subjects of boundaries according to where the employer requires or requests input from their contingent as employed, and where an employer decides separation from the job and the profession, or the professional as employed, can impact not only the business of an organization, but the occupational health of the employable professional. Regardless of opinion as to employee behavior online, an employer who does not currently require firm understanding of when and how work dictates the use of social interests online, and when the use is separate from work so that rather than speaking and acting as or for the company, instead an employee should be speaking and acting alone, might precipitate the need for a general use policy which clearly identifies use within the scope of employment.

A policy or employment guideline could include the idea that speaking under the context of being an employee and an expert on any opinion of the employer, on any issue, is either understood as acceptable, or it is not. Jeremy T. Simons, Esq, an attorney blogger, suggests “There are some reports by national news media outlets that employers are requiring potential employees to disclose their social media account names and passwords as part of the employment screening process.” He questions this employment practice as overstepping a potential boundary, “how far can an employer base its initial employment decision or its continued employment status on the employee’s personal life and decisions?” Suggesting that employers may someday use relevant personal habits and opinions an employee or professional decides to make public to communities or networks of potential common interest with the employer, an offense, and one that is cause for termination.

Careful consideration given to online activities keeps connections healthy and might be the difference between staying employed, and employing a remedy.

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December 12, 2011

Blogger Smacked With $2.5 Million Fine in Defamation Suit; Are Bloggers at Risk?

First published on Technorati.com by Carole Ditosti.

If you are a blogger and heard about THE BAD LAWSUIT AGAINST A BLOGGER, you are probably concerned to know what is going on and are wondering if you are at risk doing what you love to do.

Well, it depends upon a few things. The answer may be, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps: 1) if you are up front, in your face defamatory (must be proven in a court of law); 2) if the state where you live hasn’t updated its journalism laws; 3)if you do not cite your sources (But journalists are at risk for this as well and some of the finer ones have been caught passing off another’s ideas and not giving credit for it.) 4) if you create out of thin air stories…extensive ones… that have no basis in fact and pass them off as fact, i.e. as in Shattered Glass, the film, based on a true story, or Frey’s A Million Little Pieces,). But even then the idea of court is anathema for both sides and not entered into lightly.

Now about this blogger lawsuit. A Montana blogger, Crystal Cox, who styled herself as an investigative journalist was not afforded media shield protection for sources under Oregon law. The judge determined that she was not a “journalist” working for a “bona fide” news organization, according to a number of online reports.

As noted in Seattle Weekly, Judge Marco A. Hernandez said Cox, who runs a few blogs, wasn’t “affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

In a number of blog posts, Cox was critical of The Obsidian Finance Group and co-founder Kevin Padrick. Obsidian Finance Group sued Cox in January for $10 million stating that the writing was defamatory. Not hiring a lawyer, Cox went Pro Se and represented herself in court.

The judge used only one blog post which he determined to be more (this one), factual in tone than her other posts which were essentially opinion pieces. According to press reports, Cox was being “fed information from an inside source” who she didn’t name. However, the crux of the issue was defamation. And it was the one post that the jury unanimously ruled was defamatory and which led to a judgment against Cox for $2.5 million.

Cox, herself, states in a video she uploaded on her website, that The Seattle Weekly didn’t get the information correct. In the video she claims that she never said she had a human source. Cox holds up a heavy binder of information which she states is her source and which she said was revealed, but to no avail.

According to reports because she couldn’t prove the information in the post was true, she didn’t qualify for Oregon’s media shield law since she wasn’t employed by a media establishment. In the court’s eyes, she was a blogger, not a journalist.  However, according to Padrick, the case was won on defamation, not on whether Cox was a journalist or blogger. For the Seattle Weekly Padrick stated,

“Let me reiterate that our case did not turn in any way on the Oregon Shield Law. And even if Cox was entitled to heightened First Amendment protection we are confident the jury would have found in our favor using a higher standard given the lack of any proof of the truthfulness of Cox’s statements.”

For a defamation suit, truth is an absolute defense. Cox could not prove the truthfulness of her claims. That is why she lost, not because she was a blogger.

However, Cox disputes the judge’s finding for Padrick and says that she provided the detailed information in the binder, proving that what she claimed about Padrick and the company was accurate and true. She has indicated that future posts on her blog will deal with presenting specific whistleblower information that reveals the truth about Obsidian Finance Group.

This defamation suit has heightened the tension between journalists and bloggers to a stretching point, because the question of whether a journalist is a professional and a blogger isn’t can lead to spurious arguments, as can the debate of whether a blogger is a. journalist. This controversy which has been going on for years has been settled in states that have updated their protective shield laws. Washington’s shield law is technologically neutral and it relies on the definition of “news media as any news media, including Internet.” So under Washington state, Cox would have been deemed media, but might have lost if she couldn’t prove the truth of her claim against Kevin Padrick and Obsidian.

In the meantime, Cox has put out a call to bloggers, capitalizing upon the blogger vs. journalist controversy, asking for bloggers to come forward and investigate The Obsidian Financial Group and Kevin Padrick. She encourages bloggers to prove that they are deeper more investigatory researchers than traditional journalists because bloggers are not beholden to corporate media boards, editors and advertisers..

On her site Cox posts, “We Demand Transparency in the US Courts, Bankruptcy Courts, and we demand that Attorneys not be above the Law just because the {sic} know the process, the game better then the ones they wish to silence.”

“Stay Tuned, I will Prove My Case Against Obsidian Finance Group, no matter how long it takes and if they kill me, I Hope you will continue to {sic} your Investigation into all dealings of Obsidian Finance Group based in Portland Oregon,” she has posted.

Cox plans to return to court in an appeal and again represent herself Pro Se. Others have suggested she contact a legal group who specializes in electronic media and represents individuals pro bono.

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December 6, 2011

StumbleUpon Adds More Features for Website Traffic

First published on Technorati.com by Mark Brown.

StumbleUpon.com recently received a new design and some new features that the social media company is hoping will increase their web traffic and social stats.

The claims are that they have made changes so that it’s now easier to Stumble and explore new and interesting content from all over the Web.

New key features include:

~ An improved and easier to use StumbleBar

~ New Channels to explore from your favorite sites, people and brands

~ The Explore Box: just type a word or phrase and see amazing new Stumbles

StumbleUpon’s management wants the site to be seen as a new way to search the web, and are attempting to appeal to businesses as well as website owners.

Channels features will now allow every site, celebrity, brand or business to set up their own profile and get people to follow them on StumbleUpon, adding an experience similiar to other social sites. Currently there are 250 launch partners for the StumbleUpon channels.

Their mobile apps have been designed also to pull content that comes from the new channels, but you won’t be able to manage your channels from the mobile apps right away, this will come in the future and is expected soon.

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December 2, 2011

Original Research – Most Facebook Subscribers Don’t Trust Facebook

First published on Technorati.com by Craig Blaha.

One important part of the FTC complaint against Facebook that hasn’t received as much attention as it should is count 7:

Facebook has provided third parties with access to a user’s profile information – specifically photos or videos that a user has uploaded – even after the user has deleted or deactivated his or her account.

A study of Facebook subscribers I conducted this summer finds that 80% of subscribers don’t “trust” Facebook to follow through with their promises. When asked whether they believed Facebook would delete their records immediately after the subscriber deleted their account, 119 people out of 150 surveyed, or 80.41% said they did not. 56% did not believe Facebook immediately removed posts after they were deleted, and 65% believed their records would still be available on backup tapes after they deleted them.

In focus group discussions that followed, respondents repeatedly used the word “trust” to describe their relationship with Facebook. They said they didn’t trust that Facebook would handle their records the way they expected; deleting the records when they hit delete, keeping information private when they set privacy settings. But, they said, they used it anyway because they had to: all of their friends were on it.

With these survey results in mind, the FTC settlement that not only requires Facebook to be more consistent and truthful about privacy, but requires a third party review of their practices, may actually lead subscribers to trust Facebook more. A good sign for a company about to go public.

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