Captivating Connections.

young ladies heart social media.

"Generation Y females have redefined the idea of 'peer group' to encompass online friends, bloggers and anonymous reviewers, according to the 'Why Y Women?' report from PopSugar and Radar Research.

Looking to this expansive group of peers, rather than experts or celebrities, Gen Y women are particularly influenced by social media.

Younger women are nearly twice as likely as their Gen X counterparts to say they had discovered a new brand or product when a friend mentioned it in an online status update. They are also significantly more influenced by blogs, by both professionals and especially by 'someone like me.'

Telling friends in person or on the phone is still by far the most common way for Gen Y women to spread the word about products or brands they love. But they post about products and brands on social networking sites or online forums nearly twice as much as older women. Gen X women, on the other hand, are more likely than younger females to share information via e-mail."

TMT (too many tweets).

Are Twitter (over)users out of control?

"Simply put, there is way too much information on Twitter — lately, it defies navigation. In January, there were 2.4 million tweets a day, according to Alessio Signorini, a researcher at the University of Iowa. By October, he reports, there were 26 million tweets a day.

Why should we care about information overload at Twitter? Isn’t Twitter about the individual experiences — a Tweeter and her followers — not the totality of millions of Tweeters around the world?

Perhaps this is true for most users. But the promise of Twitter — the reason Google and Microsoft have paid to be able to search millions of Tweets — is that it gives the best approximation of the pulse of the world: How popular is the new iPhone? Did Kanye West make a spectacle of himself at an awards show? Or, more ominously, what is it like when there is a shooter loose on an Army post?

Until lately, the main way to make sense of an urgent outpouring of tweets on a particular subject was to use text searches: look for the phrase 'Fort Hood for example, or maybe an agreed-upon label, '#fthood,' within tweets. Yet during events like the shootings on Thursday at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead, this method is useless. Hundreds of 'relevant' tweets pop up every minute, most repeating the same news reports over and over again or expressing concern from far away.

Which is why a new feature that Twitter says it could unveil in the next few weeks — 'geolocation' — holds such potential to make the Twitter rapids navigable.

The idea is to take advantage of global positioning systems on cellphones to allow Twitter users to include a precise location with each tweet. Users would be able, right off the bat, to limit their searches to tweets from a particular location."

is sharing caring?

"Tweeting the name of a product's brand on Twitter may have become one of those so-called 'touchpoints' in the sales funnel that marketers try desperately to capture. It all boils down to where marketers will spend the dollars as they try to allocate budgets for next year.

It may help to know that nearly half -- 48% -- of people who saw a brand's name on Twitter went to a search engine to look for the product, compared with 34% on any social network. That's according to a joint study released Thursday by Performics, the marketing arm of Publicis Groupe's VivaKi Nerve Center, and ROI Research, an analytics and technology firm.

At Ad:Tech on Friday, Performics Marketing Senior Vice President Michael Kahn will present the findings. Of the 3,000 active social network users in the United States, about 70% use Facebook, 40% use YouTube, and 22% use Twitter. Participants answered about 100 questions total that focused on how they use social networks to discover products, and the type of advertising they will tolerate.

It appears that consumers will tolerate more interaction than marketers first believed. 'Consumers are receptive to brand marketing messages,' Kahn says. 'Being in a social network is like going to someone's barbecue. People are talking about the experiences of their lives. The sharing experience that happens in the physical world also happens in the social.'"

twitter (finally) aging down.

"More evidence of Twitter uptake among young people comes from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to a September 2009 survey, 33% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use a status update service, a significant difference from the research firm’s previous poll on the subject.

This meant young adults were more likely to tweet than users ages 30 to 49, who had previously been considered the core group for Twitter.

Overall, Pew found that 19% of online adults used Twitter or another status updating service. This is higher than eMarketer’s estimate of 11.1% of adult Internet users; however, eMarketer does not include the use of other status updating sites in that figure.

Status updaters were more likely to belong to other social networks in addition to Twitter, and users with multiple Internet-connected devices participated in services such as Twitter at a higher rate."

there are such things as (successful) paid social media.

"While mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have always been free to users, paid social network content models are alive and well. Networks that cater to market niches have particularly thrived on hybrids of paid models and ad-based systems. Some of these, such as LinkedIn, Classmates.com and MyLife.com, are earning at least as much revenue from fee-based content and services as from advertising.

'As the online ad market continues to struggle, paid services including membership fees, premium features and virtual goods will take on increasing urgency for social networks, either as primary revenue generators or as ancillary income sources,' said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, 'Social Network Content: Are Users Willing to Pay?'

Advertising has been the main focus of social network monetization, but data points to paid content as an important revenue source. In July 2009, Piper Jaffray forecast that US paid social networking site revenues will surpass $1.4 billion in 2013, more than doubling the 2009 figure of $627 million."

facebook changes - good for brands?

"Facebook on Wednesday laid out a 'roadmap' for developers, outlining upcoming changes aimed at making it easier for users to find and use applications and help app creators build their business on the social network.

Among the key updates in store, Facebook will enable developers to ask for users' primary email address within applications to facilitate direct contact. At the same time, developers will only be able to send notifications and invitations via email, a user's Facebook Inbox or the News Feed and other activity streams.

New application and games dashboards are slated for the home page, making it easier for people to see the latest apps they have used as well as discovering new ones based on what friends are engaging in.

To provide easier access, the applications bookmarks will be moved from the bottom left side of any page on Facebook to a more prominent location on the left side of the home page. An 'Ad Bookmark' button will also be created for apps.

Among broader changes in the works, Facebook will end its verification program for apps, instead applying the initiative's more rigorous standards to all apps. Facebook is also launching an 'Open Graph' API (application protocol interface) so any Web page can, in effect, become a Facebook brand page -- users can become a fan of the page, and it will show up on that user's profile and in search results."

all about 'badvocates'.

Here's an interesting look at managing 'badvocates' on the Internet:

"During General Motors' financial meltdown this year, politicians, corporate executives and journalists piled on to gripe about the auto-maker's business. Most of the chatter was expected, admits Christopher Preuss, GM's vice president of communications. What surprised company execs was the number of bloggers and social media hounds who chimed in to grouse about the car-maker and its vehicles.

One was David Meerman Scott, a blogger on WebInkNow.com, and the former vice president of marketing for media company Knight-Ridder. Scott’s scathing commentary about 'faceless,' 'nameless' GM's marketing strategies fetched 20-plus comments from other GM bashers on his blog.

GM is one of many companies trying to manage a slew of online critics like Scott, particularly since the economic downturn has made so many bloggers--and their followers--distrustful and critical of big companies. The musings and grumbles of these 'badvocates,' as they are called, can now be transmitted around the globe. These powerful critics represent 20% of the world's adult population online and they reach an estimated 14 people with their opinions, according to New York public relations firm Weber Shandwick.

Muzzling them is impossible. So how do GM and other companies handle these critics? At GM, a social media team of six employees trolls the Web, tweeting, updating Facebook and occasionally commenting on personal blogs. In the case of Scott, who has 29,000 followers on Twitter, GM invited him to Detroit and encouraged him to log the details of his trip and post video clips of interviews Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson and other executives. Other companies are also setting up meetings with bloggers to try and establish better relationships with them. Some even hope to drown out critics by getting brand fans to write positive blogs.

GM's Preuss says executives can't invite every blogger to the company, but they plans to reach out occasionally to make sure that influential writers are equipped with correct information about the car maker. In July the Detroit company also launched AskFritz.org, a site where consumers can leave their gripes or ask questions and actually get comments from Henderson. The site, Preuss says, has helped GM respond to critics who might otherwise be splattering comments elsewhere on the Web."

How have you seen other industries or brands manage this?

wht r u doing?

"It appears that more people these days tweet or use social networks to gain updates or inform others about what they are doing. In fact, the Pew Internet Project's September 2009 survey data released this week suggests the number now sits at 19%, up from 11% in 2008.

Advertisers and marketers planning search campaigns might want to know that women outnumber men, at 21 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Looking at ethnicity when sharing information through social status updates, the study reveals that 26 percent of African-Americans, 19 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 18 percent of Hispanics either tweet or share information through social updates.

Age makes a difference. The study reveals a rapid uptick of Twitter and other 'status-update' services in the past nine months. For example, 37% of Internet users ages 18 to 24 use Twitter or another service, up from 19% in December 2008. Thirty-three percent are between the ages of 18 and 29; 22% between the ages of 30 and 49; 9% ages 50 to 64; and 4% age 65 or over."

google & facebook get musical.

"Music fans are about to get two new ways to find and sample songs on the Web, as Google and Facebook introduce new features on their services.

Google, the search giant, plans to announce a music initiative at an event it will hold at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood next Wednesday, according to three people briefed on the details, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the service before it was announced.

The service will give users a more efficient way to find, learn about and sample music after they search for information about bands, albums or songs, said a person who has seen an early demonstration.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., will not host any music, nor has it forged any new relationships with the major music labels. But it has struck deals with several streaming music services to let people easily sample music directly from the search engine."

new-media users have new demand.

"A just-released study from Cone Inc. reports that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools -- up from 59% the year before. And these users are conversing with brands more often: Some 37% say they do so at least once a week -- up from one in four when Cone did the study last year.

It's not enough to simply have new media presences (although 95% of users expect it.) Increasingly, they are looking for companies and brands not just with Web sites (58%) and email (45%), but with involvement in social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace (30%) and online games (24%).

Surprisingly, given their loathing of pop-ups and other intrusive ad methods, 43% say they want to see companies advertise online, up from 25% last year. And women are especially enthusiastic about offers that include freebies, coupons or discounts (58%).

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Cone's data, however, is that consumers strongly believe that new media is a two-way street, with 62% saying they can influence business decisions by voicing their opinions through new media.

"About a quarter have contributed their point of view on an issue (24%) or contacted a company directly (23%), and most want the conversation to be two-way -- 74% expect companies to join conversations about their corporate responsibility practices happening on new media," Cone reports.

The survey found that 30% have bought something because of positive information they got online, and that 23% have switched brands or boycotted a company based on negative news.