Survey Finds Trust in Governments Sharply Eroded
February 11, 2012
From the “we don’t know if this is accurate” department:
If you’re a government and need a reason for censorship, look no further than RT’s “People Let Down by Government Turning to Social Networks.” The write up reveals:
The Edelman Trust Barometer has found that people around the world have lost trust in their governments over the course of the last year. . . . Among the main causes for such a downturn, [Edlelman CDO Robert] Phillips said, is the dispersion of authority and the rise of social media.
The annual survey asks residents of 25 countries about their feelings on government, businesses, and non-governmental organizations. This is the sharpest drop in trust in the US and European governments the company has found since beginning these surveys a dozen years ago. Instead, folks are placing their confidence in peer networks.
Could social media be a threat to the untrusted? If so, perhaps censorship is a comin’ round the mountain. Yep, here she comes. And one cannot search if the information is not in the indexes, right?
Cynthia Murrell, February 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Quote to Note: Google Plus Is a Winner
February 10, 2012
Navigate to “Google Social is Exploding Online!”
It is now safe to say that Google+ is becoming an enormous success, with nearly half of the unique visitors of Twitter (40,411,065 unique visitors in December). With a steep upward trend and knowledge of the power behind a Google product, expect continued growth from the unequaled search engine’s social platform known for ingenuity, creativity, and revolutionary product offerings.
There you go. Google TVs are coming as are more cloud apps.
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Facebook Reigns Supreme
February 10, 2012
In a world dictated by technology the latest and greatest products headline the news. Apple products such as the iPad, iPhone and iCloud continuously dominate the news and the attention of tech lovers everywhere. However, as captivating as these products may be, when it comes to internet searches they are not the fan favorite.
According to the Experian Hitwise article “Facebook Was the Top Search Term for Third Straight Year,” social media continues to dominate the public’s interest. “Experian Hitwise, a part of Experian Marketing Services analyzed the top 1,000 search terms for 2011, and Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the US. Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches.”
Furthermore, social media terms have topped the list for the past six years. It seems that social media outlets such as Facebook show no obvious sign of slowing down but in a world where it’s out with the old and in with the new it will be interesting to seethe data for 2012.
April Holmes, February 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Managing an Online Reputation
February 10, 2012
Zimbio calls our attention to the judgment of the Web with “Monitoring Tools for Management Reputation Online.” (As evident in the title, the piece seems to have originally been written in a language besides English, one in which the adjectives come after the nouns. Keep that in mind when reading it.)
The freewheeling nature of the Internet, at least for now, means that anyone can go online and say anything about any person or company. It is the wise business that monitors and manages its online reputation. Besides working to remove or bury negative information, companies should make the effort to promote their brands online in a positive light.
The write up asserts:
Thus management reputation Internet, reputation web or reputation online with the help of e-reputation enterprise and cleaner nets not only saves the name from being violated on the Internet but also has the tendency to create business for those who have their e-reputation handled very carefully.
This is a very brief piece, with imbedded links that point to French online reputation management company Zen-Reputation. (Ah ha, French! That explains the sentence construction.) Whether through this company or a competitor, though, paying attention to their Internet image is a good idea for many companies. What happens if someone posts something unfavorable and links aggressively to that write up? Good question.
Cynthia Murrell, February 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Bing on Social Search Controversy between GOOG and Facebook
February 9, 2012
Bing finally speaks up about its social search advantage; surprising, since the company has somehow been flying under the radar recently with the controversy surrounding Google privacy and social networking.
Liz Gannes from AllThingsD.com interviewed Bing Search director Stefan Weitz regarding social data and search results in the article, “Bing–Which Has Deals With Facebook and Twitter–Finally Speaks on Social Search Controversy.” In the interview, Weitz states that social search has positively impacted the Bing experience and attributes that impact to the company’s attention to people. Weitz also comments on capitalizing on the debate around Google’s privacy and social settings. The article states:
“They [Google] are doing a nice job on their own of handling this problem. But they are learning just like we are. They did what we didn’t want to do, which was make the user experience peppered with this stuff, with +1s everywhere, the Google+ content in the top corner. I think [Google] realized we were ahead and they overextended. But I know a ton of guys there and they’re smart and they’re reacting to what has been said.”
I struggle to see exactly how Microsoft is different than Google on this issue. Instead of pressing the company’s own network (like Google using Google+,) Microsoft is using Facebook and Twitter in the same regard. Bing has just been a little slower about incorporating social data into its search results—according to Weitz, this is because making sense of social signals is complex.
I think making sense of this social search contention is possibly even more complex. Is there too much ego and testosterone in the social locker room?
Andrea Hayden, February 8, 2012
Social Networking and Ad Revenue: Trending Down
February 9, 2012
Google Plus or Google+ (yikes, a name with a reserved character) is supposed to be the new Google. Well, Google depends on ad revenue. Some Googlers will insist that the 95 percent of the revenue is NOT from advertising, but I don’t believe them. Sorry.
Social networking accounts for one of every five minutes spent online, making it the most popular online activity worldwide. Media Post recently reported on the financial impact that social media is having on ad spending in the article “Social Networking Lags in Capturing Ad Spend.”
According to the article, a new report from comScore found that social networking sites lead all content categories in the number of display ads delivered, accounting for more than 1 in 4 U.S. display ad impressions. Despite this fact, it is not attracting ad dollars.
The article states:
The 17% of time spent online using social media is roughly comparable to the 15% share of display ad dollars. Furthermore, much of the marketing on Facebook comes in the form of earned or owned media via brand pages and apps, rather than through paid advertising. Much of the paid advertising on Facebook is small, low-cost ads from long-tail marketers rather than high-cost campaigns from big brands.
Facebook and Twitter are the leading social networking sites and they are becoming internationally popular and a phenomenon that is enjoyed by all age groups. If this report is correct, then the ad industry should strike while the iron is still hot. If social ad revenue does not hit the lofty targets required to keep billion dollar babies in diapers, trouble may arrive quickly.
Jasmine Ashton, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Fairy Tale: AOL Was Facebook a Long Time Ago
February 8, 2012
The Wall Street Journal amuses me. A Murdoch property, the newspaper does its best to minimize the best of “real” News Corp. journalism. I appreciate objective editorials which present oracular explanations of meaningful events in the world of “real” business.
A good read is “How AOL—Aka Facebook 1.0—Blew Its Lead” by Jesse Kornbluth. What is interesting is that this is a report from a person with Guccis on the ground. According to my hard copy edition, February 8, 2012, page A15:
Mr. Kornbluth was editorial director of America Online from 1997 to 2003. He now edits Headbutler.com.
I did a quick search on Facebook 3.0—aka Google—and learned from no less an authority than the Huffington Post the Mr. Kornbluth edits a blog which is a “cultural concierge service.” He is a “real” journalist and has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and new York, and a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, etc.”
The addled goose is still in recovery mode, sort of like a very old restore from the now disappeared Fastback program. Thinking of old software and AOL, I think in 1999America Online was in hog heaven in terms of stock price. I recall shares coming in the $40 to $100 range. The accounting issues of 1993 were behind the company. The merger with Time Warner was a done deal by mid January 2000. The $350 billion was a nice round number. The New York Times marked the 10th anniversary in its “analysis” on January 11, 2010, with the story “How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong.”
Now I learn that AOL was Facebook 1.0. I had forgotten about AOL’s chat rooms. When I think of chat rooms, I recall CompuServe, but I was never into AOL despite the outstanding marketing campaign with the jazzy CD ROMs that seemed to be everywhere. Here’s Mr. Kornbluth’s Facebook parallel:
Infegy: The Social Radar Company
February 8, 2012
In 2006, founders Justin Graves, who was working for an interactive advertising agency at the time, and Web developer Adam Coomes used $50,000 of their own money to launch Infegy. Its key technology is “Social Radar”, a social media monitoring and Web analytics platform that measures online sentiment to gauge trends, predict consumer needs, and drive corporate strategy. The data is delivered through the cloud in a subscription-based format. A March 2011 upgrade generates faster results and features new spam filtering and a customizable drag-and-drop dashboard.
Social Radar sorts through some 8 billion Internet posts (including Tweets, blog posts, and customer comments), ranking not just the rise and fall of volume on a topic, but also the tone of discussion and the words that resonate. Companies can run in-depth analytics on Web and social media content to see how products and campaigns are received in the marketplace, what customers are saying online, and how and why trends have changed over time. Social Radar’s database allows views within targeted demographics.
In 2009, the company had over $350,000 in revenue and became profitable. In 2010, Graves and Coomes were Bloomberg/Businessweek’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs finalists. In 2011, International Data Corporation selected Infegy as an Innovative Business Analytics Company Under $100M to Watch. Following the March 2011 upgrade release, Coomes left the company.
Infegy’s primary clients are mostly advertising agencies and market research firms, such as ORC International, VML, and Mason Zimbler, interested in what consumers are saying about their brands and campaigns in the social media sphere. Think candid focus group minus the two-way mirror. Political campaigns have also shown interest. Brands using Social Radar include Viacom, 3M, Pizza Hut, MTV, and Sony. Competitors include Radian6, Collective Intellect, Crimson Hexagon, and Temetric Research.
Rita Safranek, February 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Facebook in Brazil
February 4, 2012
It is no secret that Facebook is the world’s leading social networking site. But it is not every day that you see it leave competitors in the dust. Read Write Web recently reported on the social networking giant in the article “It Only took One Year for Facebook to Beat Orkut in Brazil.”
According to the article, after being launched in 2004, Orkut quickly became the top social networking site in Brazil and it remained dominant until a few months ago. However, a recent ComScore report showed Facebook steadily increase and eventually beat out Orkut with 36.1 million visitors in December 2011.
Alex Banks, ComScore’s managing director in Brazil said:
Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for social media, Facebook adoption had traditionally lagged in the market.
What changed? maybe globalization has proven to be stronger than Brazilian nationalism?
Jasmine Ashton, February 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
IBM Helps Electrolux Workers Connect
February 3, 2012
IBM makes a social software sale. Did Watson help or is me-too-ism at work? Writer Darryl K. Taft doesn’t say in “Electrolux Taps IBM for Social Software” at eWeek. Looking to bring its workers in 60 countries together for collaboration, appliance maker Electrolux turned to IBM. The new intranet is based on IBM Connections and, not surprisingly, Microsoft SharePoint.
The write-up reports:
Electrolux employees are using IBM Connections microblogging to quickly spread information across the organization, including new-product and customer care ideas, and strategic organizational announcements. In addition, Electrolux employees will also have access to a social-collaboration dashboard. Through integrating IBM Lotus Notes email and IBM Sametime instant messaging, employees will be able to drag an email into a Connections Activity and discuss with colleagues in that specific window.
Besides enabling teamwork, the software cuts down on space-eating email attachments. There is, of course, also a dashboard feature. Whatever did we do before those were invented? We are still waiting for a public demonstration of Watson, not via television post production.
Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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