Thursday, 21 May 2009
Monday, 11 May 2009
11 Essential Social Media Stories
We also brought you some useful resources this week, from amazing designers and authors to follow on Twitter to different ways to create your own social media start page.
So without further ado, here are the key stories that made social media news this week:
1. Twitter Co-Founder: “We’re Not For Sale” - Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, made it clear on The View that Twitter is not for sale.
2. 85+ of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Follow - Cameron Chapman opens our eyes to a new level of web design with 85+ great designers to follow, including sample tweets from every person.
3. 7 Ways to Create Your Own Social Start Page - Turn your browser into a social portal with these customizable social media and Web tools.
4. Twitter Search to Become Real Search - Twitter search will soon start crawling not only tweets, but the links within them. Could this development make Google sweat?
5. Seesmic Desktop Fully Integrates Facebook: It’s Awesome - Seesmic released Facebook for the desktop. We review it and tell you whether it’s up to par.
6. Google Sets Contacts Free - Google has made Contacts its own product. Stan Schroeder explores the change.
7. 5 Terrific Twitter Research Tools - I highlight some of the best ways to gather raw data and gleam new insights from Twitter and its millions of users.
8. Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter - Cameron Chapman turns you into a literary aficionado with a recommended list of Twittering authors, as well as sample tweets from each.
9. NIN App Gets Rejected by Apple, Reznor Threatens to Go Jailbreak - Nine Inch Nails’ application was rejected by the App Store, and Trent Reznor wasn’t all too happy about it. Read what he had to say on the matter. (Incidentally, Apple later backtracked and decided to allow the app into the App Store.)
10. A Small Piece of the Old Facebook Returns - Facebook has brought some old news feed features back from the dead, including relationship status and profile picture updates. Adam Ostrow explores Facebook’s decision.
11. Twitterrific 2.0 Makes Twitter Terrific on the iPhone - Pete Cashmore tries out Twitterrific 2.0 for the iPhone. What does it mean for the Twitter applications on the iPhone and especially Tweetie?
Thursday, 7 May 2009
10 Things Apple Should Do With Twitter
There's no reason for Apple to buy Twitter, as rumor had it earlier this week. Apple's business is to sell more computers, iPods, and iPhones, and owning Twitter won't help with that at all.
But using Twitter more in Apple products could help, especially as the messaging/microblogging service picks up more steam.
Here's ten ideas for how Apple could work Twitter into its products:
- Twitter support in iChat, Apple's messaging app.
- Using Twitter for RSS-like feeds, such as featured iTunes songs, movies, TV shows, movie trailers, iPhone apps, etc.
- Tweet new photos (and someday, videos) from iPhone, auto-uploaded to MobileMe, TwitPic, YouTube, etc.
- Tweet new photos from iPhoto on Mac, auto-tagging your Twitter contacts.
- Twitter contacts in phonebook on Mac and iPhone.
- Baking Twitter sign-in into iPhone and iPod touch so all apps can access it via one API for things like tweeting game milestones, high scores, etc.
- Read tweets on Apple TV while you're watching a video. (Sort of like Yahoo's new Twitter widget on some TVs.)
- Twitter search built into Safari as an option.
- Tweet the song you're listening to in iTunes or on your iPhone, with link to iTunes download.
- Suggested iTunes playlists/purchases based on most-tweeted songs.
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Google's Next Social Step Screenshots
It’s worth noting that Google just recently rolled out a version of Google Contacts that is wholly separate from Gmail. Why a Google Finance widget would need to access that data, I’m not sure. Perhaps it has some kind of easy-to-use “share this with” functionality. Or more specifically, as our tipster notes, that data may be be used to filter who you share something with in your social sphere. But the more interesting element is the posting to the Updates area. One would have to imagine that this will be a river of information similar to Facebook’s News Feed, that will pipe in new information from you when you update something.
Where such an Updates area resides will be extremely important. I’d guess it will be on your Google Profile, but there needs to be a centralized place for a full contact stream as well — or centralized places. Maybe Google will simply make another widget for all of your contacts’ updates to place on your iGoogle homepage or maybe even in Gmail. That seems like a smart play as it would be taking on Facebook by doing something slightly different than what Facebook is doing — allowing you to choose the area you wish to view the social stream. There would only be a walled garden insomuch as Google itself is a walled garden — a giant walled garden that encircles most of the web. Of course, Facebook is attempting to at least somewhat do this as well by opening its data stream outside of its walls.
I’ve made my distaste for some of Google’s social stumbles very clear. But, if this screenshot is legit, it shows a broader picture that is starting to make some sense. The real question now will be if Google will be able to keep all of this relatively complex tangle of social elements (and the underlying social relationships) simple enough for any user to grasp. Facebook had been really good at that, but it’s getting more complicated. Keep it simple, Google — and it just may pay off.
Here’s the key section:
Who are friends in iGoogle?
For development purposes, you can add friends through the friends manager gadget included with the developer tools. You can only share activities with other friends who have access to the developer sandbox. This is not the final network that will be used in iGoogle. Users will have full control over who their friends are and will be able to easily modify their list of friends. Stay tuned for details.Profiles
What are profiles in iGoogle?
For development purposes, you can modify your profile data (displayname and thumbnail) using the profile gadget included with the developer tools. This is not the final profile or data that will be used in iGoogle. Stay tuned for details.Updates gadget
How often can a gadget post an activity to the Updates gadget?
A gadget can post up to 5 activities per user per day. For gadget development and testing purposes, these limits are not implemented in the sandbox. Posting activities requires explicit permission from the user granted during the installation of a social gadget.
And here’s another screenshot:
Monday, 6 April 2009
A Marketing Analysis: Chinese Social Networks ‘Virtually’ Out-Earn Facebook And MySpace
While companies like Facebook struggle to conquer market share in China and to create viable business models everywhere, their Chinese clones have built lucrative cash machines literally earning billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, adopting Chinese methods may not help American social networks due both to cultural differences in Chinese user behavior and industry practices. Below is our analysis of the Chinese social networking scene.
Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) have long played the dominating role in Chinese Internet life and still continue to be one of the most popular online platforms for social interaction. Registered user accounts, which are mostly anonymous, surpass 3 billion (users have multiple accounts) and 80% of Chinese sites run their own BBS. However in the last year social networking services, most of which require real name registrations, have shown explosive growth in China with 19.3% of netizens using them regularly.
Despite the popularity of social networking in China, the social networking market is dominated by local Chinese players, and Western networks have trouble adapting to Chinese culture and user expectations. Facebook does not rank among the top 15 asocial networks in China while MySpace has only 6 million users (vs. the goal of 50 million users after 2 years initially proclaimed by Rupert Murdoch).
As ad sales slump in the recession, only approximately 12% of Qzone’s revenue stems from online advertising with the rest coming from virtual item sales such as applications and avatars. Internet ad spending in China is expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2009, which is about 4% of total ad spend. In comparison, the US is estimated to spend $25.7 billion reaching consumers online through advertising. These comparably low online budgets in China are largely spent at four large news portals, which earn the majority of online ad revenue. This forces most “smaller” portals to find more innovative ways to monetize their traffic.
51.com, which targets working class adults from rural parts of China, is the second most popular social network in China with 130 million registered users. Concurrently, Chinese students flock to Xiaonei with approx. 40 million users. It is backed up with $430 million in funding from its parent company Oak Pacific Interactive and investors like Softbank. Kaixin001, which skyrocketed out of nowhere to 30 million registered users from the middle of last year, targets white collar workers in China’s largest cities by employing controversial invitation techniques and copying apps directly from Facebook.
Yet the astronomical growth of China’s social networks can be attributed as much to its massive market size as to its cultural norms and values. Social networking apps can hit hyper-viral levels in China due to a higher tolerance of intrusive app invitations. It is not uncommon for apps to essentially force new users to invite people and perform tasks before being able to join their friends online. Once friends have joined they are required to interact much more with the apps and advertisements than on Western applications. While this model is not replicable for the US market, certain aspects of this strategy/cultural mindset are necessary if companies like Facebook or Myspace want to compete in China.
In the middle of 2008, Myspace was the only social network to support OpenSocial in China. Despite Google’s effort, the adoption of OpenSocial was slow among the major social networks. Eventually, other platforms caved into the partnership with Google and gave half-hearted support to OpenSocial. Apart from some of the large social networks mentioned previously this included City!N, Yiqi.com as well as the business network Tianji and BBS Tianya. Other social networks such as Douban, Hainei or news portal Sohu had originally announced to join OpenSocial but then never implemented it, choosing an F8 style API instead. Today, only one of the top 50 apps in China’s social networks runs on OpenSocial despite the hard work put in by the Google team in China.
Unfortunately, most social networks continue to ignore “Open Social” practices, opting for the more familiar “Guanxi paradigm” in business practices with third parties. The term ”Guānxi” describes the basic dynamic of gaining influence and receiving favors within social relationships, and is a central concept in Chinese society. For social networks, this means that rather than developing an open ecosystem, they focus on dealing with third parties individually and face to face. New Open Social Networking platforms (or better put, “selectively opened”) such as Yahoo’s Guanxi, Tencent’s Xiaoyou and Tianya court established third party app developers like Five Minutes while largely ignoring the wider developer community.
Additionally, ad sales are also strictly controlled by the social networks themselves even though 51.com set a threshold of a $35k fee to be paid for app developers to operate their own ad revenue -based applications (which until now no developer was willing to pay).
Keso, China’s most widely read tech blogger, who we asked to contribute to this article through China’s online expert panel BloggerInsight, summed up the situation by saying “Despite an open platform strategy, Chinese SNS are still competing with each other on the application level”.
Chinese sites are notorious for their C2C strategy, or “Copy to China”. This applies to the app market in the same way as it did to the social networks and all other Web 2.0 and eCommerce services. A year after Facebook introduced the F8 open platform, Xiaonei.com followed suit and announced its open platform in July 2008. The developer group xCube on Xiaonei attracted individuals and companies interested in third-party apps. Yet Chinese outsourcing developers such as Apptz and Ismole armed with experience working on Facebook applications made significant inroads by launching several apps and attracting millions of users in just a few short months.
At about the same time, the apps space also felt the power of C2C with copies of popular apps on Facebook such as “Friends for Sale” and “Parking War” popping up on just about every social network in China. Other leading social networks such as 51.com and Comsenz!’s Ucenter Home (similar to Ning.com) launched their own open platform soon after Xiaonei’s effort.
Chinas 51.com first social network in the world to open up payment API
While Chinese social networks started out as mere clones of existing sites, they’ve managed to innovate the business models to create a very lucrative market by cementing the relationship between application developers and the site’s user base. Happy Farm, the most popular app in China reportedly collects well over $75k a month through installations on various platforms, and according to Chinese application tracker, Appleap, the value of the total social network’s apps install base is approx. $4.5 million.
Opening up the payment system was one of the most anticipated announcements from Facebook’s developer conference F8 2008 but the company failed to create an integrated ecosystem for users to buy and sell apps. China’s socail networks took the great leap forward in this area when 51.com became the first social network in the world opening up its payment system to third party developers in 2008. Users pay money to 51.com and receive virtual coins which they can then again spend on third party applications. The revenue is split 50/50 between the social network and the developer.
Facebook on the other hand currently does not offer developers access to its payment system. If a third party application redirects Facebook users to their own website and payment processor, they usually lose the advantage of Facebook’s trusted brand name and the majority of potential revenues.
At the same time, companies like Becomedia are cooperating with 51.com to bring OfferPal-style cost-per-click/cost-per-action (CPS/CPA) for virtual currency models to China. CPS/CPA is one of the fastest growing sectors of Internet ads in China. This means revenues for the developers by trading their virtual currency for hard cash.
Season Xu from Five Minutes, the maker of China’s most popular app, confirmed the three basic revenue models for apps in China: shared ad revenues, income through virtual currencies, and customized development for branded applications. However he and Herock, a leading figure in the Chinese tech blogosphere whom we also spoke to, expect a consolidation in the app development market soon with larger companies taking over and benefiting from effects of scale, rather than individual developers still being able to produce top apps.
What can Facebook and Western social networks learn, if anything?
If monetizing a social network is so easy, then why hasn’t Facebook opened up its payment API to third party developers? While the aggressive and intrusive hyper-viral aspects of the apps in China may not be replicable in a Western Market, the problems for creating a more viable business model run deeper. Western companies cannot innovate in the same way due to institutional problems stemming from their own struggle for an identity and revenue.
Facebook has just recently announced a “credits” system, but it seems to miss the mark. The new system demonstrates little incentive for users to shell over money, and does not speak to the same need as paying for a social application that all your friends are already on and talking about. Facebook may be afraid to become a marketplace for applications, because they are reluctant to be labeled as a social gaming network or a social app store. Instead, they are a self-styled guru of dynamic human interaction. If they opened up their platform to become an apps store, their major revenue streams would put them into a pigeonhole, calling their $15 billion valuation into question. They obviously don’t want to be labeled as a “gaming platform” either, and don’t want to fully depend on selling digital trinkets.
Like during the American gold rush in 1849, where Chinese merchants prospered while most prospectors went bust in search of striking gold, it appears that building viable, scalable businesses for Social Networking sites may still be an ancient Chinese secret for Westerners.
Thursday, 5 February 2009
The Marketing Power of Flickr
You have the potential to expose yourself to millions of potential customers.
Blogs, social networking websites, and other products of the latest internet technology shift have changed the way we think about online marketing, and marketing in general. In fact, it is now accepted that traditional marketing techniques are losing their effectiveness as young people spend less time in front of the TV and more time in front of the PC.
One of the most popular free ways to market products is on Flickr. Ultimately, Flickr combines social networking and media sharing by allowing users to upload photographs.
So what does this mean for you? If you want to increase exposure, especially if you sell a product, you can simply publish product photographs on Flickr. If you can provide useful captions for your photographs, you'll be ahead of the curve. You also have to be different.
What's wrong with traditional product images on retailers' websites? They're too small. Why do you think most sites have a "see larger image" link? Because most people want to be able to look at something as if they're holding it in their hands.
However, the benefits of Flickr run deeper than photographs. Web 2.0 has given consumers a voice that they previously didn't have. If people like a product it will create a buzz, or a viral effect, immediately boosting its exposure and popularity. Many consumers are proud of their "stuff". Whether it's a nice car or the latest gadget, if they like it they will tell people about it. Even if you don't post product photos on Flickr, someone else may post your product's pictures.
Many marketers have posted photos of their products on Flickr and invited other users to leave comments. There is, of course, an inherent danger to this that runs through much of Web 2.0 marketing. If people don't like your product, or they don't like you, they now have the ability to let you, and the rest of the world, know. Because of this, you need to make sure you have damage control measures in place. Just because Web 2.0 has opened up more doors doesn't mean you need to let everyone in.
There is little doubt that a savvy marketer can use Flickr to their advantage. From the smallest one person home business to major multi-national corporations, more and more people are using websites like Flickr to get their marketing message across.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Get traffic to StumbleUpon Your Website
Of all the Web 2.0 driven websites that have opened up the internet for marketers, StumbleUpon is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the best, free marketing opportunities on the interne
t.
StumbleUpon was founded by three Canadians: Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, and Justin LaFrance. With almost two million users, the marketing potential on StumbleUpon is excellent. Its basic premise is that people join and, when they find a website that interests them (they "stumble upon" it), they bookmark and rate it for others to see.
What makes StumbleUpon unique is that content (i.e. websites) are categorized according to topic. Instead of using automated software, the site allows humans to determine what's important, or not. Most search engines use complex algorithms to determine importance.
So how exactly does StumbleUpon work? Users install a toolbar on their browser that lets them stumble upon random websites, giving them a positive or negative rating. The more positive ratings a site gets, the more traffic is driven to it.
The more friends you have on StumbleUpon, the more successful you will be. You will stake your reputation on your ability to supply expertise without overly promoting yourself. This is what makes Web 2.0 marketing, with its inherently social structure, so hard to penetrate with marketing messages.
With StumbleUpon users rate your website and its content. The better it is, the more likely you are to be successful. What should go without saying is that you need good content.
As you might imagine, simply providing content, audio or video, that blatantly promotes your product or service won't get you very far. Like any other social media, patience is the key to getting your word out.
You need to entertain people to get high rankings. Try to be original, funny, or both. One of the chief advantages of StumbleUpon is that visitors have a stated an interest in your particular niche. This creates an opportunity to design your content to match your market's likes, and get rid of what they don't like.
You can also join communities that are related to your business. These communities, or groups, fall under many categories, including Commerce, Computers, Health, Hobbies and more.
StumbleUpon is one of many socially organized sites that give you an opportunity to engage your market. You must think like a marketer but you must also be aware that social marketing is innately anti-marketing. Before you can market, you have to prove yourself. If you can stay committed to the social framework, you stand a better chance of beating out your competition simply because you didn't give up.
Monday, 19 January 2009
2009 New Business Model ?-----Twitter
The new Twitter "suggested friends" feature is a natural place to sell friend connections between users and companies wanting to communicate with them. It's great traditional lead sales, in fact. Who says you can't buy more friends? $1 per user who takes the suggestion and opts in to getting messages from JetBlue or Zappos? That could happen. Could those companies keep their freshly purchased friends? Only if their Twitter output stayed interesting! We'll see if something like that works with Twitter.........
Sunday, 18 January 2009
What Is Your Social Networking Strategy in 2009?
If these social-networking concepts are not on your radar, you are ignoring a dynamic trend that could have a profound impact on key areas of your business, such as revenue growth, talent acquisition and development, and operational efficiency and effectiveness.
Wikipedia defines a "social network service" as one that focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities.
The concept of social network analysis a(SNA)—the intersection of several key disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, organizational design, and graph theory—has existed in academic circles since the 1930s and 1940s. Although interesting, the study of patterns in human interaction has unfortunately been confined to academia, with little visibility or application to corporate leaders and their efforts in not only strategy formulation but also strategy execution.
In many leadership circles and boardrooms, there is seldom a shortage of organizational mission, vision, strategy, values, or beliefs (what I often refer to as "wall art"). But where it consistently breaks down is in dealing with concepts such as the strategic relationship dashboard, strategic relationship initiatives, and personal relationship development action plans—all of which lead to strategic relationship outcomes.
Strategic relationship planning is driven by a core set of questions around critical company business goals, including the identification of the most relevant and strategic relationships we need, critical relationships we already posses within and external to our corporation today, and a plan as to how to systematically, intentionally, and strategically add value to the social network we currently have to create leverage with the relationships we need.
This dynamic "Favor Economy" is the core motivator of the 17 million users in over 150 industries that have converged on a single online platform that didn't exist until only a few years ago.
Although many leaders have heard of LinkedIn, there are still many who are either under the impression that it is a fad that will simply go away or that it has little bearing on them personally or professionally.
What they neglect to realize is that 499 of the Fortune 500 companies have director-level profiles and higher on LinkedIn. Even Barack Obama recently teamed up with LinkedIn to reach entrepreneurs, small business owners, and executives, asking them very pointed questions regarding their needs from the next US president.
Friday, 16 January 2009
social bookmarking online experiment
I'm going to heavily rely upon Social Networking, Blogs and Social Bookmarking websites. These along with some really neat automated scripts, software and tools. Keep in mind this is going to be pretty much normal SEO work and I’m not going to dive into my blackhat bag of tricks to get this accomplished.
I'll be using some automated social bookmarking software tools, but not in a way that generates spam. You’ll have to subscribe to see it all in action and find out what I'm talking about. I'll update you with videos and posts to this blog. Be sure you subscribe by filling in your name and email on the top right of this page. You’ll be notified of any updates and it will unlock the door to some behind the scenes content. When it's all over I'll also share with you all the techniques I used and any software or tools that helped me along with way.
It’s Friday night at around 11:15 PM . I'm not sure if I’ll get much work done this weekend or not. If I don’t work on the site I'll start the official “countdown” on Monday the 19th.
I’m really crossing my fingers and toes on this one. I’m pretty confident I can pull it off (I’ve done it many times before) but this is out in the public for everyone to see if I don’t.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
What is Wakoopa? A software social network
Wakoopa is the perfect place to discover software and games online. Sign up, install a small tracker on your desktop and automatically create your own software profile. Track what you use on your desktop (even web apps like Gmail) and share it with your friends through widgets or even on Facebook. Wakoopa will also give you smart recommendations based on your own software usage. Games, audio & video players, instant messengers or office tools: Wakoopa helps you discover the best apps out there. Software discovery is social again.
Share your experiences
Wakoopa allows you to share your software usage and your opinions about software. Just invite your friends to your profile or put a widget on your own site, blog or forum.
Find what you like
If you still don't know what anti-virus program to use, what games to play or which only community your friends use, then just look in our database. We know what the cool kids use! Browse by tag or category,it's all there.
Maybe you can join us......... which looks a little something like this:
http://wakoopa.com/Brothersoft
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Create Social Opportunities
Even Facebook, with its engagement ads, seems to be falling short. Less than 10 minutes into the Sheryl Sandberg-led Facebook panel at Advertising Week, when asked what the next big thing will be on Facebook, what did the group of agencies on the panel say? Branded applications.
Everyone is asking the same questions – what happens after a user clicks on my ad? What is the user experience AFTER the click?
Is the user taken to a page outside Facebook? That’s where most ads go. The problem is that most users don’t WANT to leave Facebook. So they come right back to where they were. And if you’re lucky enough for them to stay, congratulations, but you’ve taken the user out of the environment where they’re able to easily communicate and share your brand with their friends. What’s social about that?
So instead follow Facebook’s advice and send them to a brand Page. But what does the user do on the page? How compelling is the post-click experience? Without some investment the user will likely see a rather generic page, hardly differentiated or strongly branded, with little to engage with. Hopefully the user becomes a ‘fan’ of the brand, but why would the user return? How are users empowered to share brand messages with their friends? Has the Page not only built brand awareness but grown brand affinity?
Perhaps you take the plunge, follow the advice of Publicis’s David Kenny and the agencies on Facebook’s panel, and you build a branded application to engage users in a social context. The application is viral so users naturally share with friends. With the branded application the reach of the media buy is extended as each user shares with their friends, so even after the ads stop there is an active community of advocates sharing brand messages that not only build brand awareness but build brand affinity within their social circles.
The best solution for brand marketing on social networks combines a media buy for reach with a compelling application to provide branded engagement. Applications that build on the developer platform as a marketing channel for brand messages have the power to not only grow brand awareness but also build brand affinity. Applications that provide utility and entertainment, when shared with friends, not only spread brand messages, but the social connections help brands build brand affinity within the community on the social network. Ultimately, successful applications empower users to become brand advocates, sharing their brand affinity with friends.
Some Social Marketing Experiences
2.Select effective social network
Spam Socila Network Mashable,stumbleupon-related things more effective than Facebook,myspace and
others.
3.Go to "feed" a good account
Cultivation account is more important than the registered account.Using a good account Spam more
effective than one account with the new Spam 10 times.
4.Not just spectators, positive to comment
5.Note your title, tag or classification
6.Choice a great head
7.Maintain your own PROFILE
8.Social Network of Profile's SEO
Social Network but their internal search engine is still very effective as far as possible to increase their own SOCIAL NETWORK's PROFILE foreign chains.
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Welcom to My New Blog
As you see, here is the new home of Brothersoft on my blog. It doesn't matter that you are software develoers, programmers or just common users, please feel free to contact us for cooperate, support, business or friendship. We believe that all of users and us are a family.
Best wishes.
