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Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

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The Buzz Around Facebook’s IPO

Everyone knew it was coming, but yesterday Facebook officially filed for an Initial Public Offering, more commonly known as an IPO. Not knowing exactly when the IPO would be filed and announced, I started doing a little research into what the social world was saying about it yesterday afternoon. About 20 minutes after I thought I had enough information to write about, Mark Zuckerberg dropped the news. So, for the most part of this post I’ll be looking at the chatter that led up to the IPO announcement, and then I’ll look at what occurred after.

As I said before, everyone knew that Facebook had been planing to go public for a while. In the past six months (up to about 3pmEST yesterday) I had found “Facebook” and “IPO” mentioned together in 33,452 blog posts, 38,215 online news articles, 5,904 forum postings and 68,143 tweets.

Trending those mentions out overtime we can see that the topic had been part of conversations for a while. We can also see from some spikes in activity when certain new news came to light. For instance, the spike that we can see at the end of November and beginning of December was when a story broke that Facebook was looking to file the IPO in the spring of 2012. That soon changed though as the large spikes right at the end of the chart were people talking over the past few days as they knew the IPO was shortly coming.

I also looked at which countries the talk was coming from. The US, both home to Facebook and the stock exchange the stock will eventually be traded on, accounted for about half of all the conversation. However, we can also see that a lot of countries with strong social media usage also had their eyes on the story. Countries like India (2.9%), Singapore (2.8%), Indonesia (2.1%) and even China (5.8%).

I then pulled up a buzzgraph to get an idea of what the conversation over the past six months had been about. Whats most interesting about this buzzgraph is how many other “social” companies’ names we can find in it. It seems that talk about Facebook’s IPO has been compared to other social networks who have recently gone public like “Zynga,” “LinkedIn” and “Groupon.”  We can even see that Facebook was being compared to “Google” who went public back in 2004.

I then dug a bit further into the activity around Facebook’s IPO in the past week (up to about 3pmEST yesterday). Here the buzzgraph seems to be a bit tighter on the conversation and definitely more focused on Facebook’s IPO. The greater connections we can see in this buzzgraph link to financial institutions. We can see “Morgan” “Stanley” in the graph because it became public knowledge last week that Facebook would be using them to underwrite the IPO. We can also see “Goldman” “Sachs” in there because they had strong financial links to Facebook in the past and it came as a surprise to some that they were passed over for Morgan Stanley.

Now, as I said earlier, most of this data I collected just before 3pmEST yesterday. A short while after that, around 4:30pmEST, the news of Facebook’s IPO broke. I took the liberty of trending out at an hourly rate the talk about Facebook’s IPO over the past two days. Now the chart below looks like a lot of no activity before a huge spike between 4-5pmEST yesterday. However, most of the time leading up to the announcement was averaging between 500 and 700 mentions of an hour. Those mentions vastly pale in comparison though to when the announcement was made and we see the large spike in activity. Between the hours of 4-5pmEST yesterday we saw Facebook’s IPO being mentioned 14,761 times.

So, will you be buying some Facebook stock?

By Sheldon Levine - February 2nd, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Announcements, Samples, Social Media

Why the Buzz about Twitter Brand Pages?

 The world is all a-Twitter about the much-speculated launch of Twitter brand pages.

According to Business Insider, these brand pages will “to build platforms on their pages that could include iFrame environments, allowing users to play games or shop on a brand’s site without actually leaving the Twitter environment.”

Okay, that, in theory, sounds interesting because Twitter.com is still doesn’t have much pizzazz for users despite efforts by Twitter to improve the usability and features.

If there was more to do on Twitter.com, it might encourage people to spend more time there rather than switching to services such as HootSuite and TweetDeck once they get the hang of using Twitter.

The question is whether Twitter brand pages have the potential to incorporate enough interesting features to become destinations that would compete against Web sites, Facebook Pages and, in time, Google+ pages.

In other words, can Twitter build a platform that brands can leverage to create a compelling experience that generates more engagement, relationship building and maybe revenue?

With Twitter brand pages in their nascent stages (only a brands such as Coca-Cola below have launched them), it’s too early tell if they’ll be successful but there is no doubt every brand will embrace them.

My biggest concern is that brand pages won’t have much of an impact unless Twitter provides brands with enough flexibility to make them interesting or useful. At the same time, Twitter needs to push ahead with making Twitter.com more compelling overall.

More: Simply Zesty said Twitter has been working on brand pages for awhile so it expects new features to be rolled out fairly soon.

By Mark Evans - January 30th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Will the Olympics Suffer from its No-Social Rules?

As we near the London Summer Olympics, it seems there will very limited insight provided by the army of volunteers (approx. 70,000) via Twitter, Facebook and any other popular social media services.

The edict, handed down from the Organizing Committee, is an antiquated way of doing business. The victims are the fans and supporters, who have grown accustomed to social media providing a behind-the-scenes look at big events.

This, by no way, means athletes will be limited, but let’s be honest, athletes can be fairly generic compared to someone who is part of the event from a different perspective.

Athletes have an image to protect and future endorsements to consider; a volunteer does not and, as a result, can be an amazing source of  unfiltered information. The lack of filter can go both ways, but a non-athletes or organizers’ viewpoint seems more enticing.

One of the harsher restrictions is that no volunteer can make public statements about the games without permission. This sounds more like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but that was more aligned with Beijing’s social media policies. As well, social media has grown a lot in the past four years.

The lack of communication will impact the overall Olympic experience for those outside of the event. We have come to rely on social media to learn, experience, enhance and deliver a voice to everyone.

The rules are understandable from certain standpoints (i.e. protecting the athletes), but there are bigger issues. Out of the 70,000 volunteers, can you imagine how many wonderful stories will not emerge now.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the London Olympics are being overly sensitive, and not putting their millions of fans first?

 

 

By Mark Evans - January 27th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Was Your Community Manager Appreciated?

This past Monday was the third annual Community Manager Appreciation day, a day to celebrate all the hard work community managers do that sometimes goes unnoticed. Started back in 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang as a way to pay tribute to the people that are behind the scenes of thriving online communities, the knowledge of the celebration has grown as the job has become a lot more common at many companies. Some people think that community managers are the people that play on the internet all day, but really they’re the heart of a community for a business. From my own experience I can tell you that community managers handle almost all functions of a company at some level. They can be PR, marketing, sales and customer service all at the same time. As you may guess, I do have a personal affinity for this day.

Using MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics tool, I decided to take a look at just how much online talk was going on about Community Manager Appreciation Day. Since many community managers these days work in the social space, I thought that would be the best place to get the information from. Looking for the term “Community Manager Appreciation” or the few forms of the “#cmad” hashtag, I was able to find 114 blog posts, 74 online news articles, 80 forum postings and 4,744 tweets.

I then took a look at where this semi-holiday was being celebrated. The USA provided the most talk of Community Manager Appreciation Day at 55.2%. This is likely because a lot of companies have their head offices in the US, so that is likely where the community managers are also located. The UK had the second most talk with 15.8% followed by France, where there’s interesting social media happenings, at 10.2%. Canada, where this community manager is located, only accounted for 4%.

Next I pulled up a buzzgraph which shows us words that we find most connected to our search terms. Right in the center we can see Owyang’s name. He was brought up a lot in conversation as the man that first came up with the idea for Community Manager Appreciation Day. We can also see strong connections to “happy,” which was people celebrating, and “thank,” which was people thanking the community managers for doing what they do. The thing that threw me off in this buzz graph was the “23-oct.” After a little digging into it, I found that a social publishing platform company called Vitrue is holding an award for best community managers and submissions are open until October 23rd of this year.

What’s interesting is that when I pulled up a word cloud around the talk, Owyang actually takes a back seat to the community managers. He appeared in the center of the buzzgraph because he was mentioned a lot in when people were talking about Community Manager Appreciation Day. However, the word cloud shows us the words that are being used most often, and as you can see, it’s the community managers that were being talked about the most on their day.

Lastly, and the thing that makes me the happiest, was the sentiment I found about Community Manager Appreciation Day. To be honest, I’ve actually never seen this before in any analysis I’ve done. Community Manager Appreciation day received ZERO negativity. However, positive sentiment was at an astounding 77%.

For some more information on community managers and a nice infograph, check out Social Fresh’s 2012 Community Manager Report.

By Sheldon Levine - January 26th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Events, Samples, Social Media

Death of SOPA and the Rise of PIPA

Does it strike you that the Web and social media have been on the defensive recently, playing the role of victim to the whims of the authorities who are attempting to instill some fairly radical, if not draconian, changes to possibly the greatest tool ever?

Powerful Web properties, search engines and social media services recently displayed their collective power of the digital world.

The Wikipedia blackout, Google’s blackout of its logo and the outspoken support of Mark Zuckerberg all played a vital role in this unprecedented act of Web activism.

Politicians gave up and SOPA has been shot down, but the sense of relief could be a short-lived mirage. A decision on PIPA (Protect IP Act) is nearing and Senate support seems to be high. Of course, the same was said about SOPA and we all know how that ended.

The voice of the Web transferred seamlessly to the political arena. It is fair to say SOPA and its aftermath will become a case study for years to come. The curious part is whether we can expect the same result for PIPA, which some believe has more legs.

It is imperative that we fight to secure the nature of the Web. We can achieve this by allowing social media to grow, not only in popularity but also in power and reach. If nothing else, we learned that our online voices can yield offline results.

SOPA and PIPA aren’t necessarily malicious and evil acts against the Web and its users, but they are out-of-touch posturing based on ideas that do not match our love and use of the web.

Ultimately, they have been born from people more concerned with political maneuvering, than with the unadulterated freedom and purpose of the internet.

For more, check out this video featuring Clay Shirky on why SOPA is going to disappear.

By Mark Evans - January 24th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

The Day The Internet Went Dark

You may have noticed yesterday that some of your favourite sites on the internet weren’t as they should be or were shut down all together. This was a large initiative by many internet based companies to protest the Stop Internet Piracy Act (more commonly known as SOPA) that was scheduled to be voted on in the US yesterday. Some of the sites that went black included Wikipedia, Reddit and even smaller sites like popular blogger Chris Brogan’s site.

For those unfamiliar with SOPA (and a similar bill known as PIPA), here’s a great video that explains just how it would affect everyday internet users like you and me:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Because these bills are heavily supported by the US entertainment industry, there has been very little talk about them in the mainstream media. Most people know about it because everyday people had taken to the internet and social networks to help spread the word. And spread it they did. I took to MAP, our social media monitoring and analytics software, to see just how much talk had been going on through social media.

To be inclusive of the numerous sayings and hashtags people have been using I searched for the terms “SOPA,” “PIPA,”StopSOPA,” “SOPAblackout” and “blackout.” Over the past 3 months I was able to find 247,213 blog posts, 82,713 online news articles, 311,327 forum posts and 2.9 million tweets containing my search terms.

Trended out over time that activity looks like this:

Because yesterday was a known day of protest the activity greatly overshadows all the previous activity. The following popularity chart shows the activity for three months up to January 17th, the day before the blackout. The first large spike in November was when the SOPA bill first started getting attention by the public. Then there were two large spikes in talk in December. The first, on December 15th, was the day that the US government passed NDAA, a non-internet related but also unpopular bill and people made connections between the two bills. The second spike in December was the day that the public became aware that the popular internet domain seller Go Daddy was supporting the SOPA bill. Go Daddy later retracted their support, but the public had already spoken.

While SOPA and PIPA are both bills that could be passed the United States government, they would have a great effect on the way the entire world uses the internet. That’s why the entire world has been talking about the bills. The greatest majority of talk through social media was coming from the United States (53.5%), but other countries were making their thoughts on the bills heard. Brazil, a large Twitter using country, accounted for 5.5% of the talk, followed by Spain (4.9%) and the UK (3.9%).

And just what have people been talking about? Our buzzgraph shows that “piracy” is right in the center of the conversation. But there’s strong connections to words like “protester,” infringement” and “censorship” showing that a lot of the talk was against SOPA and PIPA. We can also see a lot of talk about the websites that went black yesterday in opposition to the bills like “Wikipedia,” “Reddit” and “Google.” There’s also a strong connection to “Go Daddy” from that large spike in November that talked about their support of SOPA.

I already noted that talk on January 18th greatly overshadowed the previous three months, so I dug into the conversation that just happened yesterday. On blackout day alone I was bale to find 32,548 blog posts, 13,107 news articles, 18,504 forum posts and 1.4 million tweets containing my search terms.

All of the talk and support from everyday citizens led to the bill being temporarily shot down and not voted on yesterday as was originally planned. However, PIPA is still set to go in front of US congress on January 24th, so the internet blackout happened just as it was planned. The fate of the internet is still up in the air, but if enough people raise their voices, the people with power may just get the message that there has to be a better way to solve the piracy problem.

By Sheldon Levine - January 19th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Samples, Social Media

Will the Lawyers Neuter Social Media?

 Social media has given companies and their employees new ways to communicate and engage with key stakeholders such as potential and existing customers but it has also opened up another can of words: the potential to create problems around competitive, regulatory, liability and human relations issues.

As much as companies want to be active and more transparent on social media, they also need to be pragmatic about how and what they communicate and, as important, who gets to do it. We’re not talking about companies controlling the conversations because that horse left the barn a long time ago, but having the ability to manage different situations or, at least, have processes in place to deal with them.

In a recent blog post on Texas Lawyer, Darin Klemchuk puts the spotlight on some key issues and the things companies need to do to protect their interests. On one hand, it’s solid advice because he identifies issues and considerations that should not be ignored. But on the other hand, it is interesting and perhaps troubling when lawyers step into fray, particularly when it involves a fast-moving, free-flowing medium such as social media.

The mandate of many corporate lawyers is keeping their employers and employees out of trouble. It means they often take a conservative approach if there is any indication an issue or problem could arise. While they have the company’s best interests in mind, the involvement of lawyers can be frustrating for people running social media because it means they may not be able to operate with as much freedom or react as quickly as they would like.

One of the key considerations going forward as social media becomes baked into the corporate landscape is how much freedom and latitude social media will continue to enjoy. As much as social media opens new opportunities, social media can also make a company more vulnerable to criticism, lawsuits, regulatory issues and liability concerns.

So the $64,000 question is how involved will the corporate lawyers be when it comes to social media, and if they do have a growing presence will it hamper or neuter a company’s social media activities?

In many ways, the rules when it comes to social media and the role of lawyers is still work in progress. As much as companies need to have best practice policies and codes of contact, they will undoubtedly have to be sure they are legally onside as well.

Here’s hoping the lawyers play an important role but, at the same time, allow companies to use social media as creatively and actively as they can.

 

By Mark Evans - January 18th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

How Should Twitter Improve?

The whole world is a Twitter! Whether you get it or not, Twitter is gaining more users and credibility each passing day. This being said, we’ve all had some issues with Twitter so now it is time to brainstorm some solutions.

Here are some ideas I have, and it is on you to agree, disagree, demand change or accept things the way they are:

Update the Newsfeed:

Twitter needs to take a page from Facebook, which wrote the book on fickle design and the need to constantly reinventing the wheel. Twitter’s interface is old, it is not intuitive and even though there is a nice simplicity to it, it fails to wow.

Twitter needs to go back to the drawing board and create a sleeker design that also includes more features and quicker access to some of its key features. As well, the direct messaging process needs to be re-thought and enhanced.

Twitter gave us something revolutionary concepts when it opened its doors; now it is time to give us a design that will make us connect on a whole new level.

Become a Home for Interactive Content:

This is my wild idea but consider this: at its very core Twitter is a content aggregator yet it doesn’t really lend itself to anything dynamic. It lends itself to micro-blogging via text. Twitter has to land upon a compelling and useful way to allow interactive content to appear on the website.

Maybe the answer is to embed content or maybe it borrows from Facebook in how it enables the viewing of content. Either way, Twitter needs to become a home for dynamic content rather than just a gateway.

Twitter has come a long way in terms of marketing and  monetization, which has let it become one of the leading social media services. At the same time, there is always room for improvement.

What are some of your suggestions for Twitter improvements? Or are you happy with the way it is now?

By Mark Evans - January 17th, 2012 - 4 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Has Google Opened the Door to New Search Rivals?

As Google scrambles to establish a strong social foothold, it has unveiled a new version of its ubiquitous search engine called Search Plus Your World.

While it may make sense for Google’s social strategy, it’s a controversial move because it arguably biases search results by putting Google+ front and centre. In particular, Danny Sullivan, one of the leading search engine analysts, has been extremely vocal about how Google’s new initiative had made its results less relevant.

Meanwhile, John Battelle has a thought-provoking blog post on how Google+ represents a conundrum for marketers and anyone interested in being found via Google search.

Given Google’s new bias for Google+, he suggests brands and people who care about search results will have no choice but to be on Google+ because their Web sites and blogs will rank below their Google+ profiles.

In many respects, Google has diluted the accuracy and relevance of its search results by placing the interests of Google+ above the interests of people seeking high-quality search results. That said, Google is a business as opposed to a public utility so it will clearly do things that serve its own interests without alienating its users in a significant way.

A Strategic Error?

Based on first impressions and the strong pushback from the Web community, Google has made a key strategic error in thrusting Google+ into the spotlight so aggressively.

As much as many people are die-hard Google search users, Search Plus Your World may given people news reasons to consider alternatives such as Bing, which has made solid market share inroads recently.

Blekko, Anyone?

At the same time, Google may have opened the doors to new rivals. Despite Google’s dominance, there have been a steady string of search startups who believe they have a better mousetrap. This includes well-financed startups such as Cuil, Powerset and Blekko.

The big problem has been while these startups may offer better results, Google users are so entrenched in their behaviour they can’t go through the aggravation of switching, let alone see whether a startup is a better experience.

But the launch of Search Plus Your World may provide search startups with a much-needed window of opportunity because it prompt even entrenched Google search users, including myself, to seriously consider and check out other options.

The reality of the digital world is there’s no such thing as guaranteed market dominance given other services are just a click away. This applies to Google, which has enjoyed a long and easy reign as search’s top dog.

If a new search engine captures the imagination of people, including influencers and mavens, it wouldn’t be farfetched to suggest Google could lose some market share in a heartbeat.

For the past few years, search startups have been looking for a crack in Google’s armour. With the introduction of Search Plus Your World, Google may have given startups what they’ve been seeking.

More: Another interesting read is CNet’s Peter Yared’s post, which includes this strong assertion:

“As I’ve written in the past, Google well knows that its search results suck, and over the past few years, it has started to short-circuit those results by putting more and more direct “answers” at the top search pages. That, of course, makes the search results themselves less and less important.”

By Mark Evans - January 16th, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

What are the Best Social Media Campaigns Ever?

Now that we’ve had five or six years of interesting social media campaigns, it is time to ask the question, which are the best and, as important, which ones may have viral capabilities years from now?

First, let’s set some parameters. A great social media campaign has to be interesting, memorable, creative and it is always best if someone asks, “Has this been done before?”.

Right off the bat, Old Spice and Burger King are two brands who have carved out special status when it comes to creativity, reach and sometimes even a bit of harmless controversy.

Old Spice had the luxury of a popular spokesperson, but they didn’t rest on those laurels. They created an interactive social media campaign in which users and fans could ask questions through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The answers poured in and were quickly answered much to everyone’s delight.

For Burger King, their Whopper Sacrifice campaign is still described as brilliant, edgy, different and controversial. Essentially, you defriended someone on Facebook in exchange for a Whopper. Facebook quickly shut it down but that only added to its allure. There have been so many great social media campaigns, including Blendtec’s “Will it Blend?”.

And don’t forget one of the early landmark campaigns was The Blair Witch Project. The filmmakers used a well-researched and academic looking website, along with video and word-of-mouth to turn a small film with no budget a huge mainstream success.

In the end, it is up to organizations to think outside of the box. They must create exciting content and campaigns, that will further connect with users.

To help in the process ask yourself, what are your favourite social media campaigns and why did they resonate so much?

By Mark Evans - January 13th, 2012 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

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