Quora, Chain.ly, Coca-Cola, The Walking Dead: The Social 6 News Roundup for 9/6/12
The last 24 hours saw a nice mix of news, from Coca-Cola and The Walking Dead's major milestones to a hot new startup, a great piece on how to best leverage Google+ to make connections, and more. Let's get to it:
#6: Chain.ly Is the Craigslist for Finding People Who Can Help Out
"Chain.ly is a community board that wants to impact the world by making Internet-driven connections less serendipitous. While Twitter hashtags or Reddit campaigns can sometimes lead to success, Chain.ly hopes it will be a go-to platform for people to find the help they need...co-founder Bruno Ligutti added, 'We want to position Chain.ly as the Craigslist meets Kickstarter — not a fundraising website but a social platform for asking for help.'"
#5: Quora Arrives on Android, Complete With Voice Search, Widgets And A Deep Search Integration
"After a long wait, Quora just arrived on Android today...Quora is launching the Android app simultaneously in Google’s Play store and Amazon’s appstore. The app allows you to do almost everything you can on the site."
#4: What my Google Plus “About” Page Does for Me
"The untouched missing element in LinkedIn is the lack of any means of real-time communication...contrast this with Google+: people search terms and tags, come upon content-sharers whom they may not already be following and Circle us or comment on our posts."
#3: ‘The Walking Dead’ Celebrates Facebook Milestone With Awesome Poster
"AMC’s The Walking Dead just passed the 10 million fan mark on Facebook. That’s a big number — especially for a television show on cable TV.To celebrate the event, AMC created an awesome graphic to thank fans of the show. A pitch-perfect homage to the movie poster from 2009′s The Social Network, the graphic even has its own tagline: 'You don’t get 10 million fans without eating a few.'"
#2: With Embeddable Timelines, Twitter Widgets Become More Interactive
"Twitter announced a new feature today that’s supposed to make it easier for publishers to embed a timeline of relevant tweets — the company describes it as a way for 'publishers, writers, developers, and any Twitter user to drop a rich, interactive piece of Twitter into their websites.'”
#1: Coca-Cola Is First Retail Brand to Pass 50 Million Facebook Fans
"Coca-Cola passed 50 million fans on Facebook shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday...[it] is the first retail brand to hit this milestone. Disney, Converse and Starbucks, three of the other most popular retail brands, each have fewer than 40 million fans on Facebook at the moment."
The Social 6: News Roundup, 9/5/12
MistoBox aims to boost your morning Cup of Joe w/the “@birchbox of Coffee”
"A new monthly delivery service, MistoBox, describes itself as “the BirchBox of the micro roasted coffee industry”...the company, which was founded by Connor Riley and Samantha Meis while in an entrepreneurship program at the University of Arizona, launched in June after just passing its Kickstarter goal of $9,000 in funding."
How Pinterest and Instagram are changing your brand strategy
"In 2008, Steve Jobs took the stage at the Macworld Expo and shared what seemed like a startling statistic: “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year…People don’t read anymore.” Many are saying this statement could be seen as a foreshadowing of the explosive growth in visual content. But that wouldn’t really be accurate. Direct marketers have long known this; creating compelling visual content has been at the center of their world for years."
Android dominates Southeast Asia’s smartphone market: Report
"In a study of the major countries in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, 31 percent of smartphones were found to be running Android. Apple’s iOS has about 19 percent of the market with Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Phone rounding out the remaining shares."
Social Media's Issue: Does It Drive Sales?
"“The next 12 months are the make or break time for social media, but I do think the investments have been there. People have sizable communities and want to make them ROI [return on investment] positive. We will really see if the metrics prove one way or another,” said Maureen Mullen, New York University think tank Luxury Lab, or L2, director of research ."
Wolfram Alpha's new "Facebook Report" lets you be a rockstar at mining your FB data
"Nearly 50% of my Facebook friends are married, which adds up to 123 people total. Meanwhile, 20.1% or 51 of my friends are in a relationship, and 13 are engaged. All this information I now know thanks to a new “Facebook Report” by Wolfram Alpha, which will gift you with more knowledge than you could possibly ever want to know about yourself and your Facebook profile."
Marissa Mayer is now reviewing *every* single serious candidate for employment at Yahoo
"Back in early August, there were reports that new CEO Marissa Mayer intended to do what Google's cofounders have always done: review every single new hire the company makes. Now, according to a Yahoo executive involved in hiring, Mayer is actually doing it....Yahoo has about 15,000 employees and it is hiring all the time, so this is no small task."
The Social 6: Stories You Missed This Past (Long) Weekend, 9/4/12
Welcome back to work, guys! Not surprisingly, there wasn't a tremendous wealth of news & views out there to curate from the long weekend, but here are some of the highlights you may have missed:
#6: My1Login’s test page is a nifty way to see exactly how weak your password choices are
"The password management service My1Login offers a smart way to remember all of those passwords and key phrases by literally boiling them all down to one. Now it is also offering a Web page where visitors can find out why they might need a password manager and measure the strength of passwords they might consider to be safe."
#5: 6 Tips For Using Instagram In Your Social Media Marketing
"Marketo released an infographic recently with 5 steps to success using Instagram in your marketing. They are...Curate…Snap…#Hashtag…Engage…Repeat…[and one more,] Measure and Improve."
#4: 5 tools for managing your contacts and boosting your network
"In a lot of ways, a contact manager can incorporate new, innovative services to not only help users take a smarter approach to meeting new people but also transmit readily available information from social media profiles directly into that contact profile...here’s a breakdown of five applications that are breaking the barriers of the traditional contact managing system on the computer as well as mobile devices."
#3: Job Seekers: Beware These Social Media Traps
"First impressions are everything, but sometimes they creep up on you. As a job candidate, 86% of potential employers will look at your social profiles — even if you don’t explicitly share those links...Column Five Media put together an infographic [included below] of tips for using social media to make first impressions — and included a few things every job seeker should avoid."
#2: Ever wonder what the top 25 pages are on Facebook are? Here they are.
"Entertainment continues to dominate the list of most popular Facebook pages, according to our PageData tool, which counts the number of fans added to a page daily. After Facebook’s own pages for its mobile app and main company page, the most Liked pages are those of entertainers, athletes, TV shows, games, and a few international brands."
#1: Facebook Improving Site Integrity Systems To Combat False Likes
"Facebook updated its site integrity system today in an effort to crack down on fake likes, a move that the company says will benefit legitimate users and page owners.The company says the improved automated efforts will detect and remove Likes obtained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users or purchased mass Likes. While Facebook says it has always protected against these threats, the new system will specifically be tailored to identify and erase suspect Likes."
The Social 6: 8/31/12 News Roundup
The last 24 hours or so had a bunch of news (& views), considering it's late August. Here are some of the highlights:
#6: The #1 Oversight in Social Media Community Building
"No matter now compelling your content, how widespread your reach, how generous your reward, community attrition will be the undoing of any social media campaign leaving you to constantly rebuild sand castles at the foot of waves.To avoid this a brand of any size launching nay campaign must studiously walk through five stages:..."
#5: Facebook Sponsored Stories: Engaging Content is More Important than Ever
"Brands wanting to connect with fans need to be even more creative about the content they post, especially if you plan to use Sponsored Stories. Your fans still want to look smart in front of their friends, share funny photos and feel like they have a connection to something larger than themselves. Even if you pay for that positioning, these rules still apply."
#4: Bing rolls out a dedicated tool for searching your friend’s Facebook pictures
"Today, Bing announced and released ‘Friends’ Photos,’ a tool that allows you to search the social giant for specific pictures that your friends have uploaded....Bing’s recent redesign includes Facebook integration, but this new tool is a singular tool, unlike the right side-bar in the New Bing."
#3: Twitter launches 'Certified Products' to further encourage the apps it wants
"Twitter launched a new certified products platform Wednesday. The program is initially launching with three verticals Twitter says are “based on the needs we see from partners every day” — Engagement Products, Analytics Products, and Data Reseller Products...the 12 partners launching today are Attensity, ExactTarget, HootSuite, Mass Relevance, Radian6, Sprinklr, SocialFlow, Crimson Hexagon, Dataminr, Topsy, DataSift, and Gnip."
#2: Is Google selling off a portion of Motorola?
"Google (GOOG) supposedly wants to sell a portion of its recent acquisition of Motorola, and has hired Barclays Plc (BCS) to do the dirty work of finding a buyer. Google wants to sell the “Home Business” division of the messy ex-techno-giant, which it acquired for $12.5 billion in May. Bloomberg opines that this unit might net about $2 billion."
#1: I Am A President -- Obamamania Shuts Down Reddit
"In another social-media first, President Barack Obama took to Reddit today to become the first sitting head of state to moderate the site's "AMA," or, ask me anything, series.
The chat lasted an hour, and got so much attention that it shut the site down during his post."
The Social 6: 8/29/12 News Roundup
By all you know the drill: I share the stories y'all found most interesting over the last 24 hours. So if you disagree with the picks, you'll just have to comment/retweet/favorite things more tomorrow ;)
#6: Social media plays a huge role in product discovery for beauty consumers
This Andrew McDougall piece outlines how social media marketing is on the rise among larger beauty conglomerates such as P&G and L'Oreal.
#5: My Personal Social Story: Why Social Media Platforms Are Fads
April Rudin of The Rudin Group shares her story, which isn't really an anti-social media rant as you might think. Instead, April shows how "social" has always been present in her life, and where she thinks "social" will be going in the near future.
#4: Despite its falling out w/Twitter, Flipboard added 15M users over the past 8 months
While there hasn't been as much buzz around Flipboard lately, it's interesting to see how the adoption of their news aggregation apps haven't slowed down one bit - in fact, they're growing at a 300% clip.
#3: How to stop "social media shiny object syndrome"
Jason Keath of SocialFresh delivers a great piece (as always) summarizing a recent SocialFresh webinar, and outlines 8 steps to take to properly analyze social media shiny objects.
#2: SumAll Social Metrics Tracks Social Activity Against Web Traffic & Revenue
TechCrunch shares how SumAll, a data visualization firm, has launched SumAll Social Metrics, which can help a company track all of its social activity against KPIs such as web traffic and revenue. Another example of how the conversation is changing from how to get your company to engage, to how your company can monetize that engagement.
#1: How to be yourself on social media...without freaking out your boss
This Forbes piece by Dorie Clark (a writer you need to be following) on how to walk the fine line between representing yourself well online, and embarrassing your company. Dorie's tips are great ways any employee can start thinking about their own approach to social media.
4 Ways Fitness Brands Can Use Facebook's Open Graph
Today Rose Yao shared on the Facebook Developers Blog some Open Graph success stories in the fitness category. Among the highlights featured include Nike+ Running, Livestrong, runtastic,and RunKeeper, among others.
Here are some best practices these apps employ in order to resonate:
#1: Make signing up easy. It's not just fitness apps that use Facebook Login to help drive easier sign-ups from mobile, but they are many cases of them doing it quite well.
#2: Make stories social. Fitness apps should add friend tagging, if it's relevant to their app. Nike gives a good example of this, allowing runners to tag who they're running with. On the whole, stories that tag others are more likely to be engaged with.
#3: Help users share achievements. Facebook offers explicit sharing functionality to Fitness apps (and apps in general), so app users can share milestones and other non-routine activity. RunKeeper is one example of an app using Facebook's explicit sharing API to ask users to post their completed activity, such as a new distance milestone.
#4: Make stories visual. Visual stories can often lead to better Facebook click through rates. Fitness apps can publish stories using the map layout for a more visually compelling narrative.
The Social 6: 8/25/12 News Roundup
As you may know, I’m a voracious reader and tend to share a good deal of news via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here .
#6: Most Organizations Still Fear Social Media
This Business 2 Community article by Troy Larson covers why many organizations are still wary of social media, and how to overcome that fear.
#5: USC promotes players' Twitter handles on depth chart, bios
Am I a football fan? Much to my father's shame, not at all. However, I do like this move by USC to include its players' Twitter handles in their 2012 season depth chart. Nice way to encourage players' use of social media.
#4: Social recruiting app Silp recruits 700,000 users, just 12 days after launch
The Next Web reports on how Silp, a Swiss startup that offers a social recruiting service, has seen tremendous adoption since its launch just 12 days ago, even to the company's own surprise. Robin Wauters shares just what happened.
#3: Social Proximity: could Reachable surpass LinkedIn?
The original title for this piece on ZD Net's Between the Lines blog was "Social Proximity: are LinkedIn's days numbered?" -- but I thought that was a bit inaccurate, so I reworded it for Twitter. Reachable, the company known as 7 Degrees, is looking to take a page from LinkedIn's playbook, and possibly take that concept to the next level. IBM's Gery Menegaz explains how.
#2: Kred Launches Kred Story to Help Visualize Influence for People and Brands
BetaKit reports on how Kred (PeopleBrowsr's influencer scoring tool) has launched of Kred Story, with the stated goal of visualizing an individual’s presence on social media as well as overall online influence. Kred CEO Andrew Grill announced the move, which should be a good way of reemphasizing that there is more than one influence scoring system around. I'm really not trying to make a pun here, but what Kred is doing has a good deal of credibility.
#1: *Great* study on correlation between Klout score & actual talent
Speaking of influence scoring, here's a piece on Klout by Piers Fawkes of PSFK for Mashable. PSFK underwent an extensive analysis of executives' Klout scores, to see whether or not scores had any correlation with company performance. The PSFK research suggests that Klout does matter in a somewhat directional sense, which is what I've been arguing some time. Regardless of what size of the debate you fall on, this is absolutely a must-read.
The Social 6: Stories You Missed This Past Weekend, 8/27/12
Social Media 101: Getting Started On The Top Social Networks - Business 2 Community
Reading this Business to Community piece made me feel like I was reading one of the earlier chapters of my upcoming book Going Social (shameless plug). Really nice set of tips if you're just starting out.
How Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope developed a winning social media campaign
I don't normally share Jewish news despite growing up as a Modern Orthodox Jew, but this crosses over into my love for leveraging social platforms to create value. This Clodagh McGowan (great name) on Brooklyn Ink gives great insight as to how the congregation used grassroots support to create a powerful campaign.
Big investors rethinking social media
This San Francisco Chronicle piece outlines how the stock market's treatment of Facebook, Zynga and Groupon has led many Silicon Valley insiders to rethink their investments in social platforms. I believe this to be ultimately a good thing, as investors will really be thinking about what companies are working on initiatives that can be monetized in the near future, versus companies that brag about how many users they have without a clear path towards building impressive revenue numbers.
How Instagram's New Geotagging Feature Can Be Used by Brands
While the title is somewhat misleading in that Instagram has had geotagging for awhile (its Photo Map is truly the new innovation), this article by Allie Snelius outlines some of the opportunities now available to brands.
She's 14, Going on 140 Characters
This New York Times piece really elicited a ton of clicks. It profiles Maude Apatow and her intense Twitter following of 67,000+. Pretty nice profile; I personally loved seeing how her famous director/producer father, Judd, uses Twitter to engage with her.
Barry Diller's InterActive Corp acquires About.com for $300M
Pretty big business move, as Barry Diller’s massive but surprisingly under-the-radar Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp (IAC) has purchased About.com for $300 million in cash, according to reporting from the New York Times and Mashable.
The Social 6: 8/25/12 News Roundup
Social media in sustainability: your questions answered
This Guardian piece is a Q&A with Dana Poole, a global digital communications consultant with BP. The answers given here are useful not just for a social media practitioner interested in sustainability, but for anyone involved with social marketing in general.
Storytelling, One Frame at a Time
Want a compelling for how visuals elicit engagement on social platforms? Look no further.
Global communications agency M Booth developed this great Infographic from multiple data sources,which was then shared on Mashable, which I then pinned, and later tweeted. Don't you just love how information spreads these days?
Facebook releases update for iPhone/iPad app, claims it's twice as fast
I'll admit I was late on sharing this news: the new "5.0" version of Facebook's iOS app debuted Thursday on the App Store, debuting to largely solid if not spectacular reviews.
What's wrong with Microsoft's new logo, & how to avoid the same mistakes
Microsoft unveiled its new logo this past week, and many have called it an outright failure. While there's truth in the fact that a logo might have less power for a multinational conglomerate for which most people have quite established views already, it's hard to argue logos simply don't matter. This Entrepreneur piece by Jason Fell outlines what went wrong, and how to avoid those pitfalls yourself.
Multiple People Shot Near Empire State Building
I work a few blocks from the Empire State Building, and yet I found out about the situation via social media. Within minutes, the news of the shooting was seemingly everywhere. Yesterday's shooting was another case study in how quickly journalists need to get the story right, as there's such pressure to be the first to report on details.
Apple v. Samsung verdict, & what it means
As you've probably read, a judge had a $1 Billion+ settlement in favor of Apple in its case against Samsung. We'll probably be dissecting this case for awhile to come, but Rachel King's ZD Net piece begins to frame how Samsung and other phone manufacturers will have to steer pretty clear of designs and gestures originated by Apple in the future. When you think about it, isn't that better for us consumers?
The Social 6: 8/24/12 News Roundup
As you may know, I’m a voracious reader and tend to share a good deal of news via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here .
#6: Nicholas Sparks Beat Box Office Predictions After Social Media Campaign
While this is old news in that The Lucky One came out earlier in the year, Jason Boog of Galleycat shows how author Nicholas Sparks used social media to spark (sorry, I tried to avoid it!) increased word of mouth and box office receipts.
News Corp.'s Jonathan Miller, who has led its digital efforts for a year years, is stepping down. This is just one of many executive moves since the company announced it would be splitting its traditional publishing business from the company's other properties. Miller's departure is just another sign that News Corp. is going through a pretty significant overhaul.
#4: Facebook Has 44% Fake Followers; Twitter Has 33%
The @facebook account on Twitter's following is 44% fake, and @twitter's number is at 33%. That's according to the new online tool provided by StatusPeople, a social media management company out of London, that looks at a Twitter account's following and estimates its number of fake, inactive, and authentic followers. I've tried this tool, and while I can't (yet) attest to their entire methodology, it's certainly a good place to start. From some of the accounts I've tested already using their tool, it appears that it's at the very least a good tool to get a directional sense of whether or not you have an inactive/fake follower problem.
#3: Mayor Bloomberg & NYC launches digital toolkit for small businesses
Mashable, Google, Tumblr, Weebly have partnered with the City of New York to provide small businesses a digital education program to, essentially, start kicking butt and taking names with respect to their digital aptitude. Rachel Sterne, NYC's Chief Digital Officer, will be teaching the Digital Toolkit's first course on September 20th. All in all, a really cool initiative to give small businesses some of the tools they need to compete effectively.
#2: 7 Ways YouTube Can Grow Its Platform
Is YouTube still one of the top social platforms, and the web brand most associated with video? Absolutely. However, it's important to continuously innovate and address its challenges to stay ahead. In my second piece for Mashable, I outlined ways that YouTube can accomplish just that, some of which are already in the process of being addressed (good for them!).
#1: 3 of 4 CMOs Say Social Media Impacts Sales
This Forbes piece shares results of a Bazaarvoice survey asking 100 members of the CMO Club how they feel about social media. While it's a pretty small sample size, over half of the CMO respondents represent brands with over $1 billion in annual revenue, so it's very interesting -- and important -- to note their results on how social media affects sales.
