February | 2009 | Social Networking and New Markets

Twitter Fires Up the Spotlight | Marketing Pilgrim

February 24, 2009 Leave a comment

Last month Twitter launched its ‘suggested users’ feature and the impact on those who were put on Twitter’s red carpet has been significant. Some of these profiles saw tens of thousands of additional followers added to their own personal profiles which created some very happy folks and, you guessed it, some not so happy people. The LA Times Tech blog has all the details but here are the high points.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, co-founders of Twitter put this feature into place last month. When users sign up for a new account which is happening at a dizzying pace they are given a list of suggested users to follow. The folks at Twitter were noticing that many folks were signing up then not using the service. The hope by offering this was to get the newbies in the game. Makes sense to me since Twitter can be somewhat daunting for those beyond the early adopter / social media savvy part of the population.

The list includes Felicia Day, The Guardian, Rainn Wilson, Dell, The New York Times and CNN to name a few. The benefit to those who made the cut is very clear:

Since Twitter began endorsing a handful of personalities in mid-January, The Guardian was among several entities to reap a subscriber windfall. Its account jumped from about 4,000 followers to 66,000 in about a month, according to stat-tracking service Twitter Counter. And within the last two weeks, @GuardianTech added new users at a pace about 300% faster than the previous two weeks.

Day, an Internet video maven, experienced similar results. She has jumped from 20,000 to 83,000 since mid-January.

TechCrunch went… from 41,000 to 111,000 in the same period. The New York Times’ Twitter account increased its subscriber base by a factor of six — to 145,000.

The Twitter purists, however, are crying foul. The concern is that those who have grown their following organically and around ‘real’ value or severe self importance, you make the call are going to suffer. Leo Laporte of TWIT puts it this way:

via Twitter Fires Up the Spotlight.

Filed under Online Maketing Tagged with 2009, Amitonomics, Entertainment, Facebook, Guy Kawasaki, Online Advertising, Social Media, Social Networking, socialtoo, Twitter

Facebook Photos Pulls Away From The Pack | Techcrunch

February 22, 2009 Leave a comment

Facebook Photos Pulls Away From The Pack

by Erick Schonfeld on February 22, 2009

If Facebook has one standout application it has to be Photos. Measured on its own, it is the largest photo site on the Web. A full 69 percent of Facebook’s monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos, based on comScore data. And more than 10 billion photos have been uploaded to the site.

And it’s been pulling away from its competitors. As can be seen in the comScore chart above, as recently as last September the top three photo sites in the U.S. were running neck-and-neck, with Facebook Photos at 23.9 million unique visitors, followed by Photobucket at 21.3 million uniques, and Flickr at 19.5 million uniques. But by January, the number of monthly U.S. visitors going to Facebook Photos shot up 41 percent to 33.6 million. Meanwhile, Photobucket is up only 7 percent to 22.8 million, while Flickr is up 12 percent to 21.9 million. Picasa is a distant fourth in the U.S. with 8.1 million.

In other words, Facebook increased the gap between its closest competitor Photobucket in the U.S. from 2.6 million monthly unique visitors to 10.8 million. On a worldwide basis, the gap between Facebook Photos and Flickr which is the No. 2 site globally, and looks like it is about to pass Photobucket in the U.S. went from 41.2 million unique monthly visitors in September to 87 million in December the most recent data available, see chart below.

What accounts for Facebook’s advantage in the photo department? The biggest factor is simply that it is the default photo feature of the largest social network in the world. And of all the viral loops that Facebook benefits from, its Photos app might have the largest viral loop of all built into it. Whenever one of your friends tags a photo with your name, you get an email.

via Facebook Photos Pulls Away From The Pack .

Filed under Online Maketing Tagged with Entertainment, Obamanomics, Online Advertising, Social Media, Social Networking

And Hollywood needs monetization…

February 22, 2009 Leave a comment

After more than a decade of hype about the Internet being the next great stage for mass entertainment, it remains dominated by amateurs with most Hollywood stars watching from the wings.

Even as talent agencies like William Morris and television networks such as NBC push for more celebrities on websites and better quality programs, many actors and producers balk at Internet projects, saying they have meager revenue potential compared with TV and movies.

The future of Web entertainment is front and center in fractious labor contract talks between the Screen Actors Guild and Hollywoods major studios that, after a nearly eight-month stalemate, begin again on Tuesday.

Among major sticking points is a demand by SAG, the largest U.S. actors union representing some 120,000 actors, for payments when members work goes online.

But the studios argue they are making too little money on the Web now, and its future as an entertainment medium is uncertain. Still, they are pushing ahead because they see an audience of teens and young adults — consumers of the future — who are more often online than in front of the TV.

“Digital media is really one of the great avenues of the future,” actor and producer Ashton Kutcher told Reuters. Still, he noted that because of the uncertainty surrounding financial models, “I dont know that anybody, truly from an entertainment standpoint, is firing all guns at that arena.”

SHOW THEM THE MONEY

Kutcher is one of the few trying. This month he unveiled a Web series called KatalystHQ on website Facebook.com. In under three minutes, the reality-style vignettes take viewers behind the scenes at his production company.

The 31-year-old former star of TV comedy “That 70s Show,” said he asked workers at his Katalyst Films if they would rather lose the Web or their TV, and they picked the latter. “I felt like that was a great indicator,” he said.

via

Hollywood struggles to find wealth on the Web

| U.S.| Reuters.

Filed under Online Maketing Tagged with blip.tv, Facebook, Hollywood, Hula, Internet, Sports Marketing, Twitter