Social Media « Social Networking and New Markets

Twitter, anyone | Advantage social

March 18, 2010 Leave a comment

Well SXSW, WP Barbeque and Twitter Ev keynote. Hoo boy! Sad it doesn’t sound half as exciting as the new Audi sales figures. It is a statement of the times that one should temper one’s social enhusiasm with some hard hitting nos. Well the numbers go east and west, north and south every minute, SO i believe it’s fair for you to know these. All due references would be avl elsewhere on this portal

I am in Top 0.1% of active Twitter users that is 19% of all registrations not deleted. Upto 8% twitter accounts are deleted every month, reasons ( i’m extrapolating, inferentiating and instancing for all of you) ranging from don’t know what this is to why me? to what am i doing here to more germaine.. geez, why did I choose that name

Being in the Top 0.1% means being in fair demand and actually fulfilling all those ideas you had when you came to sign on twitter – namely,

- someone would be reading you all the time, outside of your universe of friends, family and even twitter followers.
- you will be able to talk about yourself and your work ( it is not very easy till you have a sizable following for either of the two factors/ideas/aspirations)

Well, only 6 million of Twitter’s 25 million users are active and probably 25000 have more than 500 followers But with @anywhere this might change. As you need your twitter account to login to digg, maybe yahoo mail after a few months and whenever schools raise their fees, you’d want to login to sledge. This is other than the sports events, brand trails and the twitterlympics on any random topics that you might want to indulge in. Thierre Henry is a good topic as we pen this.

From 6 billion tweets in November 2009 we have already covered 10 billion in February 2010 and now we can add location, manage lists and look for it to discover any news and url we might be looking for. Apart from the 40% babble it engenders, twitter is quite a repository of social news and with us you get defined seminars on any and every subject that is of value on a day.

@anywhere actually envisions as a social journey rather than just a destination you park your browser on..that essential difference is the gamechanger. However much like its analytics which is more tweet count and follower counts than engagement, the users may be interested in not making their web a dynamic fluid experience everytime they log on..then the mountain must go to he/she.

That is an enormous challenge. But today I can reach my users and followers from anywhere on the web, just because i tweet when i have something to say. Isn’t that a new history?

Filed under Social Media, Twitter Tagged with Social Media, Twitter

The world is going @twitter

March 15, 2010 Leave a comment

At the SXSW pre-launch announcement that was Ev’s keynote:

“Discovery is one of the hardest challenges,” Williams said. “It’s putting these in context where you’re already aware of them…Twitter is a very easy way to keep in touch.” The company has 13 launch partners, including Digg, The New York Times, MSNBC.com, eBay, Amazon, and Bing. As Williams describes it, “it’s not an ad platform, it’s an ‘@’ platform,” referring to the syntax of using the ‘@’ symbol to denote communication between individual Twitter users.

Twitter goes live with business

Twitter will thus roll out as an essential part of amazon.com, bing.com and NYtimes among others, going beyond Facebook connect. It is not clear whether any f the partners have kept changes to their front pages in tow, and we mean the UI for you and me. The tweeting will be available directly though, Ev making some cute assertions at his SXSW keynote and simul-published for effect at blog.twitter.com:

Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning.

These are pioneers in their own right and all Twitter is saying of itself right now is that because of Twitter, “companies started interacting with customers, celebrities connected with fans, governments became more transparent, and people started discovering and sharing information in a new, participatory manner.”

I am looking forward to the Amazon experience and the news experience with my New York Times. It’s gong to be a hard test, Twitter! I wouldn’t say tweet fest unlike the Twitter founders because that I am already getting now. It has to be a new socially interactive experience to make any commercial impact for Twitter. If it does work, Facebook Connect would by faar be inadequate to describe my interaction limitations.

Filed under Digital Media, Social Media Tagged with Social Media, SXSW, Twitter

A small step for Twitter, a giant leap for Tweetmeme | ToyotaConversations.com

March 13, 2010 Leave a comment

Well, Tweetmeme try some British ‘hands’ at Ldy Gaga on thei rblog, singing a song and tweeting merrily on their first sweet success.

They have the troubled carmaker luckily in time trying out their new “Conversations Engine” by Tweetmeme (no pun on Pokerface) and social media esp. the deserving Twitter getting a leg up marketing & communications strategy. As I said earlier, myself, I would have budgeted 25% of my Marketing cash or Twitter out of the 30% for Digital for the corporation, not the 2010 average of 7%…

That still doesn’t mean Toyota know how to handle social media, but now it will be more visible to the Marketing frat and the digital world if they actually make sense. They have to be careful, forthright and innovative to maximise their win from the tweet-portal and they will not get a second chance in this medium.

Great work Tweetmeme. It is off to a good English Sunday start and I can only hope that you do get your coffee on time..every waking hour..I just got this carry from another social bob, If you can carry the retweet button in video, then why does the Video page carry tweets? I think it is more than a technical hitch if I go to a dashboard and cannot find the play button for Video news.

Hootsuite and Postrank have even more Corporate partners as of now, and among these 3, we do cover significant ground in the Top 100 brands. Will Twitter monetise this on a royalty basis? After all, for us who share their IP on Twitter, it is Twitter who should win too.

Anyhow, while those terms eventually get on the Tweetboard, I am sure Tweetmeme is also looking at enhancing their first generation product. Chirp should throw up some good plans in April next, this one probably just going into what great plans Twitter has for them.

Also it will take more than Pepsi, Toyota, Coke and P&G to bring this hi speed project into ready cash..

Filed under Digital Media, Marketing, Social Media Tagged with 3rd party apps, Facebook, Social Media, tweetmeme, Twitter

Adding Location based Services | Advantage Brands

March 10, 2010 1 Comment

I am on Foursquare.com, there is gowalla.com and I am not mayor of Times Square. Well, if you are still sitting in a big chair in a Fortune 200 company’s marketing office spending $800m and printing your own in-house magazine, secure in the knowledge that Location based services are the map providers on your car GPS and Navstar systems, this wake up call is for you.

You are happy that your ad agency has worked to the letter on your last 3 briefs..read on. You are the boss of department untouched by the latest storm to hit Facebook and Twitter, because you have a friendly social media strategy where the web is abuzz about the best that you offer and the not so good has been taken care of. Well, your and my world is about to change. The last privacy brouhaha was when location being made available to all my readers and any other publisher’s post meant that tweeting was risky. There had been reports of burglary’s because the robbers knew you were away..Not that any of them have been sorted out, they never are. In October 2009, foursquare.com was launched and to cut a long story short, millions were anointed mayors of their favorite cafe, mall and even schools. A lot of global travelers can now access tips of travel, stay and food at a diner, or in a new town and much more. That till last week was as far as it got. Now with a couple of 2010 conferences and well-timed roll outs this is going to be a long distant past in the history of the social revolution, the social web.

Facebook is adding inline location information with each status update

Now location-based services mean Four Square and more. Twitter’s location moves on from coordinates and nonsensical rhymes to geographically verified locations. Four square is also getting special treatment for iPhone apps and integration with Facebook. All this in the coming few weeks. Location based services have seemingly overpowered significant privacy concerns and make the web capable of communicating meaningfully and locating your own social circle in the ‘real’ world. It still can’t tell whether a NFL athlete is on or off the field when tweeting so it’s not that easy for users. Apps based on Foursquare have thus also made an entry, making beautiful GUI on the iPhone, (or Blackberry or Android) these apps let you check in to Foursquare and locate yourself for the handy tips and points, while if you are looking for tips, the same are available. Mapquest and the other geo coding apps of course remain at the base of the revolution, so the apps on top will have the same level of accuracy and can easily add features like driving directions etc on to it.

How do brands come into it? They will have to find a way. At least in the consumer / retail – lifestyle space, the users are not going to wait for their offline Macy’s, Starbucks or even the Coke or Pizza they want. The brand’s social strategy has to move from a Facebook page and find innovative ways to touch the customers with electronic coupons and in fact their own social games rather than ‘advertising’ on or around social games and animation. There is less reason today for not knowing your consumer personally and to keep in touch with customised preferences of all individuals from the billions that consume your drink or wear your shoes is now possible. If you don’t make it, someone else will. For the socially aware world ( 20% of the world is on Facebook right now!) not knowing their each and every quirk could soon become unforgivable. Banking and Healthcare should start using it now to earn their badges back. Maybe some brands can help them do that. Also I think Yahoo and Google could really start a counter trend by sponsoring such free Wi Fi services all over! It has to be a real brand to get mileage from Wi Fi on almost all domestic flights and major airports..

Filed under Digital Media, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter Tagged with 4sq, Cadbury, Coke, Consumer, Facebook, Four Square, GPS, Kraft, Lifestyle, Location based services, Marketing, P&G, Pepsi, retail lifestyle, Social Media, Twitter

WordPress, anyone? | Advantage social

March 5, 2010 Leave a comment

We take pride of place as the undisputed #1 in all Marketing , Social Media and Advertising subjects courtesy the in depth analytic engagement measurement criteria of postrank. It has given us great satisfaction to follow each of our instincts as Advantages.us brands spread themselves as #1 in Business, Finance, Banking and all things TWITTERONE for it was a job well done and the world was going some place better.

Even as we speak, the IPL juggernaut rolls on, NFL Combine gets candidates ready for the draft and Reebok just tries a XXX campaign as Coke puts over on all the radioactive social viral brands like P&G, Pepsi and more. They are all here. And it was all enabled by that Content Marketing System, the gem which is undoubtedly getting a rough deal in the market as a blogging platform.

What WordPress gives you, some times unknowingly, goes far beyond simple blogging and journo licences for day-bloggers. This piece of software and the linked Web partners are one up on the best in Online, digital media and offline conventional marketing engines. Also, WordPress is literaly 10^6 ( A million times ) better in saving you from spam, digital advertising pots and the myriad scams that give the internet a bad name and make it a scammy, spammy non-live game..To be in tne with the social web must have been a constant race for that which started as a blogging engine, but they have done it and we must all make use of that to grow the web’s own franchise. It’s not just Facebook, It’s not just Facebook and Twitter but it ‘s definitelyy Facebook, Twitter and WordPress and these are all tools you need to carry your trade, whatever that may be.

Here we are and here you are, we will be with wp.com for a while just because it’s so cosy here. I hope they give me a call to discuss growing their business somewhere. That would be something to talk about…

Filed under Digital Media, Social Media Tagged with Advantage social, Blogging, Social Media, social web, Web 2.0, Wordpress

The Social Trends for Non-Profits | Advantage Social

February 26, 2010 1 Comment

Tweets have collected a lot of easy money from people donating for AIDS relief, hunger in Africa and other such causes. Head over to @mynazis for a partial list of active non profit sponsor accounts on Twitter. The serious social brands like Oxfam here. A lot of brands have been able to make their impact on the social web. While causes have been easy to sign on, esp on your casual Facebook account, many a time suspect causes turn you off mich like the technically private DM feature on Twitter which ends up feeding you all the Hormel, ever shipped on the planet in each logon to your social Facebook/Twitter account.

I just hopped on to http://osocio.org, as increasingly my web browsing experience is dictated by the social web ( though I did land on the site from Dr. goog)

The latest are from GAPA/BS (Grupo de Apoio à Prevenção à AIDS da Baixada Santista) on You Tube and the launch of the 4th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards

My definition of the social web of course precludes You tube in its current form, so it gives more to google to spin out in the google social experience across Buzz, YT and GMAIL? BTW, the most successful social campaign from this winter is definitely the Embrace Life campaign from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership (SSRP).

Coming back to our happy definition of the social web, it’s contribution has been more than popularising social service blogs with well funded campaigns for tweets for women, children, drinking water, sanitation, Africa and AIDS patients.

Where Aid generally follows Arms and OIL from NATO in the first hypothesis, the social web allows an easier dissemination of observed needs and gaps to a common public perception. In time bigger organizations like the INdia and China centric Gates’ Foundation may also be able to globalise their voice on Twitter and Facebook.

However, the latest fashion life in UK with Naomi Campbell and some really ground-breaking stuff from Debenhams shows how seriously non-profits are poised for a comeback this 2010.

Filed under Social Media Tagged with Advantage social, Advertising, Branding, Facebook, Facebook vs Twitter, Marketing, non-profits, social brands, Social Media, Twitter

The earthbound tweet | Soyuchi Noguchi

February 12, 2010 Leave a comment

Soyuchi Noguchi found some time to go over the planet in relief

Filed under Digital Media, Social Media, Sports, Twitter Tagged with Digital Media, Facebook, Social Media, Sports, Twitpic, Twitter

And get your self a Twitter background

February 10, 2010 Leave a comment

Facebook vs Twitter series 26/800

Another first for Twitter, that has been neglected by more important things and we self important people. Featuring some great designers, esp those nominated for awards..

That’s the way shorty wanted it..you know, but thenimportant is, important will be.

She set me off on this idea: Lasertron, just nominated for a shorty. Just click on the snippet here for her profile, portfolio and if you like it , grab your next background here ( This stuff is more important, every time you put it away..) Megan is good, visit her blog sometime.
This one here, my first tweet-run in with an Indian graphics ware consultant; Cheth . He proves, India is not a techno functional spectacle
Rahul, ofcourse is busy on foursquare.com these days..busy guy!
The other one, is also nominated for the shorty awards and i think, they are related to Themelion in some way. Themeleon, is the team that gives you new snappy palettes when you sign up on Twitter..yes official connections and all that jazz. BTW, they are nominated in the apps category