Tech Crunch recently posted a piece on the latest update from ComScore on worldwide traffic stats for social media sites. Interesting to see how the top 20 panned out. Here’s the rundown:
Blogger (222 million)
Facebook (200 million)
MySpace (126 million)
WordPress (114 million)
Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
Flickr (64 million)
hi5 (58 million)
Orkut (46 million)
Six Apart (46 million)
Baidu Space (40 million)
Friendster (31 million)
56.com (29 million)
Webs.com (24 million)
Bebo (24 million)
Scribd (23 million)
Lycos Tripod (23 million)
Tagged (22 million)
imeem (22 million)
Netlog (21 million)
Some were expected for me (Facebook, MySpace, Flickr). Others not so much (Yahoo Geocities, Lycos Tripod). Are you a part of communities on more than 5 of these sites? Seeing this is making me think I may need to be a bit more social…
As it’s coming to a close, I’m feeling pretty good about this Tuesday. I was productive, dipped out during lunch for a little tech talk at the Media Future Now Lunch and got to think for a bit about Twitter.
The Media Future Now lunch was organized by none other than Shana Glickfield, the DC Concierge, and panel members included:
- David Almacy, VP of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide’s Studio D Group for the North American region
- Peter Cherukuri, Roll Call Group, Publisher
- Ben Coffee Clark, Fleishman-Hillard.
- Ernie Mosteller, Blattner Brunner, VP, Interactive Creative Director.
- Sarah Romer, Washingtonian, Director of Sales & Marketing, Washingtonian.com
The Panelists talked about talked about a variety of things including the growing attention directed towards and the use of social media, the election, the role of technology in both campaigns and digital spending in this economic downtown.
David Almacy, Waggener Edstrom VP and former White House Director of Internet and E-Communications definitely wins the PR Prescriptions speaker of the day award for his way with words. David’s presentation included focused on the White House’s adoption of internet technology and social media tools. He also gave new definitions to the terms ROI and OD:
- ROI: Risk of Inaction. Refers to the consequences of lost relationships, conversations, business partnerships if not engaged in social media.
- OD: Over Digital[ize]. This was in reference to some PR pros’ tendencies to not keep things simple and pump too much digital talk into business pitches.
David started with a screen shot of the first White House website, which looked nearly prehistoric, and moved on to share stories about the BarneyCam and the involvement of the White House’s use of the Google government search, the iTunes government podcast section and Twitter to get news and other important info out.
Must say that David and the White House team were very smart in their use of the internet and social media. They were observant and learned as they went, realizing a couple things:
1. You where the people are, and you need to make sure your content can do the same. In the case of the BarneyCam, it wasn’t long before traffic to the video on YouTube and other video sites surpassed viewers coming to the Whitehouse.gov site. It’s about getting the content out there.
2. If you’re not doing it, someone will do it for you. When he and his team set out to create a twitter account, he was surprised to find that one was already setup. Fortunately (in large part because of his team’s online strategy), the person who set it up did so using the official White House RSS feed.
They aren’t perfect, but I wish more companies were willing to experiment as much as the white house has so far.
With all the election happenings, I’ve been a little delayed with the recap from last week’s Social Media Club DC event.
Here’s a quick description:
Social Technologies in Associations and Non-Profits: Understanding the Present, Exploring the Future
“As associations and non-profit organizations begin to implement social technologies in their work, we are learning valuable lessons. Drawing on research findings, strategic insights and the actual case examples of two leading organizations, this session will explore the current state of social technology use in associations and non-profits. It will also examine future applications of these tools.”
The speakers all shared great points about the use of social tech in associations, if you have any questions at all, these are your people. I’d like to focus for a bit here on a few findings from research conducted among associations:
- Associations are mainly still in the experimental phase when it comes to social media/ social technologies.
- Many of the associations who do blog focus on issues relevant to them, but some do have blogs which focus on the association.
- Some associations are using social networks and some are using wikis internally.
- Almost half (48%) of social tech conversations are being driven by the Marketing or Communications Team.
- 13 % of conversations are being driven by people working on Membership.
Jeff’s general thought on this: As far as adoption of social technologies go, associations are moving forward. Groups are now trying to develop social media policies (who on staff should blog, including volunteers, featuring external content, endorsing external views). We need to bring it (the use of social tech) out of this marketing focus area and spread it across the company.
Jeff touched on something that associations really should pay attention to, the Facebook effect. Much in the way facebook and other social technology have empowered the masses, they are empowering your members and changing expectations of membership. People are creating their own groups on social sites and, in some cases, are using official association logos to recruit members. What are the major issues here?
- These “members” aren’t really linked to the organization. They don’t pay dues and aren’t connected to association happenings.
- You aren’t a part of the community!
I’ve done searches and surprised a few clients with myspace pages, facebook groups and twitter mentions that they had no clue about. If you (or your account team) is not already monitoring your online presence, please start or find someone to do it for you and let you know what’s going on.
There’s no reason to try to jump in and take control of every conversation going on, but there’s also no reason to NOT know what people are saying about you, your brand and/or association.
The debate about banning or blocking social sites has been going on for some time. Listening to the conversation, it seems like the most heated debates surround the topic of banning facebook, with some making the argument that it hampers productivity and others claiming that it can help the employee get work done.
I have blogged about my productivity before. Truth be told, finding a balance or system for getting work done while being engaged in social sites wasn’t easy, but I did. It is my responsibility to get the work done, and at times, social sites like Twitter have helped tremendously. I am a firm believer in the idea that all that matters is that the work gets done on time and done well. Outside of that, what else matters?
Initially, I felt the urge to join the conversation Matt Elliott started, but I wanted to come up with something different from the majority of the comments already posted at Brazen Careerist. I wanted to find a way to articulate to employers what social media means to most people in my generation, and it hit me last week on the metro as I was reading Geoff Livingston’s white paper The Socialprise.
Geoff’s paper includes some nice insights, and I definitely encourage you to check it out. The thing that led to my great metro moment was actually a quote he provided from Charlene Li. Promoting Groundswell, the book she co-authored with Josh Bernoff, Li said:
“Social Networks will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be. And also, without that social context in our connected lives, we won’t really feel like we are truly living and alive, just as without sufficient air, we won’t really be able to breathe deeply.”
EXACTLY! That is it right there! It’s like air! If you take social sites away, it would be like trying to breath with no air! If you’ve been following PR Prescriptions at all, you know I like to make musical references. Here’s one for today’s post:
Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown – “No Air”
But how do you expect me to work all day and NOT Tweet?!
My world revolves around it, it’s so hard for me to breathe.
Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air? No Air… No Air…
Common Craft is a great company I learned about in early 2008. In their own words: “We are two passionate people and Common Craft is our company. Our product is explanation.”
They may want to add the line “Smart PR pros love us.” I know I do. Common Craft has been extremely helpful in explaining social media and networking tools to co-workers. Normally, I give my two cents on a given tool/application/site and follow up with: “Check out the Common Craft video.”
As Zoe Siskos, author of medium & the message, says in one of her recent posts, most people don’t know what Common Craft is. Zoe brilliantly developed a short video called Common Craft in Plain English, and while they don’t detail all the possibilities (and they shouldn’t), the Common Craft creators Sachi and Lee LeFever do a great job of answering not only “What is this?” but also “How and Why would I use this?”
Here are some of videos I normally tell people to check out:
Social Media in Plain English
Twitter in Plain English
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
If you liked these videos, check out www.commoncraft.com and spread the word!
Many thanks to David Cutler and Chris Brogan for spreading this nice ad by Adidas. I found my way to Chris’ post through a link he posted on twitter and pleasantly surprised by the ad. I didn’t get distracted once. When was the last time an online ad really engaged you?
Adidas really hit the mark with this one and came up with something perfect for the Gen Y audience. In my mind, any company producing online video for the Gen Y audience needs to do the following:
- Make sure its interesting!
- Talk about something we can relate to or something we think would be cool to learn about.
- Provide a way for us to share it with our friends.
Why does this ad work? As Chris noted, it’s a quality ad. I think it tastefully promoted a brand while giving us a look into interesting micro-culture, the world of graffiti artists.
I’m not sure if the ad was perfectly designed for me or if I am just easy prey, but after I watched the video, I decided to check out the Adidas website and liked the fact that I was greet by another video like the ad.
Once the short intro video is over, you are directed to this page which clearly features links to the key sections of the site and provides the option to connect to Adidas on Facebook.
When it comes to engaging the Gen Y Mind, Adidas appears to be in pretty good shape.
While watching VH1 Soul and catching up on the Google reader, I came across a Fortune story that caught my eye: Finding cracks in Facebook. Fortune writer Jessie Hempel sets the stage for the story with an interesting lead paragraph:
“Late last year Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old CEO of social-networking phenomenon Facebook, got onstage before a Madison Avenue crowd and declared that he was leading a once-in-a-century media revolution. Long story short: The revolution hasn’t panned out. Six months later, advertisers could be forgiven for mistaking Facebook for a smaller MySpace or a much larger Friendster (remember them?). And far from changing media as we know it, the virtual home of Superpokes, Funwalls, and other such time wasters is showing cracks in its foundation.”
Hempel’s piece gives Facebook its due for being one the fastest-rising dot coms in history shortly after, but when I read it I couldn’t help but think of two things:
- Where is the Love? The song. And not the Black Eyed Peas version (no offense BEP). This one by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.
Porter does a nice job of walking readers through the stages of the lifecycle from “Unaware” to “Passionate Use” and provides examples of sites which are really creating passionate users. People commenting also added “Boredom” and “Notices Superior Competing Product” to the process.
While Porter’s post was geared towards designing for the Social Web, I think it can be applied to many things. It’s what the media does with companies (In this case Facebook). It’s what we’re doing with our Presidential Candidates, and I think it’s what companies do with employees at times.
The recent grad turned new hire learns a few things, spreads his or her wings, shows everyone what they’ve got, and as soon as they become comfortable and start experimenting, people start looking for their “cracks.”
Like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, members of Gen Y have traveled an interesting road in our first few years, and only time will tell what the future will bring. Hopefully not too many of us will be left at work asking: Where is the love?
Yes, that’s right. I said digitally promiscuous! I learned about that and so much more at PodcampDC, the ” ‘unconference’ focused on educating people on how to use, implement and share any/all new media tools including, podcasts, videocasts, blogs, Second Life, Facebook and YouTube.”
Co-founded by Chris Penn, CTO at the Student Loan Network and Producer of the Financial Aid Podcast, PodcampDC was one of the best conferences that I have ever attended, and it was 100% free! Several PR/Marketing/New Media industry leaders presented on key topics such as:
In addition to being surrounded by some extremely knowledgeable and successful new media pros, all of the speakers were truly down to earth and provided several great analogies to help participants understand their messages. Hands down, Chris Penn gets the best quotes of the day award:
“Social Networks are the new water cooler.”
“It’s okay to be digitally promiscuous.” (Referring to LinkedIn)
It’s a surprisingly warm, sunny Saturday in VA, but the UGA/Kentucky game is on so I’ll be in for at least a few hours. I came across a great list of 300+ social networking sites I discovered on Mashable and thought I’d share.
Posted by jaywalk1 
Posted by jaywalk1 
Posted by jaywalk1 
