Facebook CEO promises 'something awesome' to launch next week
TechCrunch speculates Facebook will introduce a new mobile photo sharing application in the vein of services like Instagram or Path. Based on roughly 50 MB of images and project documents obtained by TechCrunch in mid-June, the app--known internally as either "Hovertown" or "WithPeople"--is built on top of Facebook's social graph, and it appears to exist as a standalone solution. Screenshots indicate users will be able to tag friends and locations.
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TechCrunch adds Facebook will not unveil its much-discussed HTML5-based mobile platform optimized for Apple's iPhone and iPad but designed to circumvent the App Store distribution channel, giving Facebook far greater control over the user experience. Known internally as Project Spartan, the platform will initially target Apple's mobile Safari browser, but over time will expand to other operating systems, including Google's Android. The mobile web solution will include a drop-down menu featuring various Facebook and partner applications--clicking an app loads it from the appropriate server, complete with a Facebook wrapper that integrates key social media functions. Sources say Project Spartan is still weeks away from completion and was not developed in Seattle.
Insiders say it is also "highly unlikely" Facebook will introduce its social networking application optimized for Apple's iPad. Last month, The New York Times reported Facebook's free iPad app has been in production for over a year, evolving through a series of design iterations. People who have seen the app say its user experience is tailored for the iPad's touchscreen interface, with revamped Facebook Chat and Facebook Groups features. Facebook also will unveil new full-screen photo and video-sharing tools. Sources indicate that Facebook additionally plans to retool its mobile website to accommodate the iPad form factor--one person said the site is not intended to compete with Facebook's iPhone and iPad apps, but will "supplement these experiences."
[Fiercemobile]
Are Women Really Ignoring Social Network Marketing?
Research is mixed
Social media marketers have noticed the millions of women taking to social networks and blogging as a prime target. But research from Q Interactive presented at ad:tech Chicago may be causing marketers to rethink those efforts.
According to the “Women’s Survey,” despite more than one-half of women active in social media visiting social networking sites at least daily, 74.8% reported not being influenced by social networks when it came to their purchase decisions.
A little more than one-fifth of respondents said they were somewhat influenced, and only a tiny 3.3% reported great influence on their purchase decisions by social networks. About 15% of respondents to the survey reported not using social networks at all.
The female Internet users polled were much more likely to say online purchase decisions were affected by coupons and discounts (41.6%), products ratings and review Websites or information searches (22.2%) and even online advertisements (9.5%) than by advice from friends (7.6%) or blog posts and online communities (4%).
Further, the top social networking activities of responding female Internet users—who have been touted as a group highly likely to share product information with their online communities—were sending private messages to friends and sharing photos. Just 8.7% said their No. 1 activity was getting product information, and 1% claimed it was writing product reviews.
It should be noted, however, that only one response to the question was allowed. While researching and sharing product information might not be women’s first priority on social networks, that does not mean they are not doing it.
Among female social network users surveyed by BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners in March 2009, 34% said they used social networks to share their opinions and 20% sought advice and recommendations.
Further, in a spring 2009 study of female social network users by ShesConnected, substantial majorities of respondents considered researching products and services (79%) and finding deals and discounts (64%) important.
eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson suggested that consumers surveyed about their reliance on social networks for purchase decisions may not be thinking of the constant stream of product-related information they share with their networks on a daily basis.
“Perhaps it is true that social networks are not a primary source for this information—yet,” wrote Ms. Williamson in the eMarketer report “Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond.” “But it is also true that social networks are immensely valuable for passive transfers of information, and these may ultimately prove more powerful than dedicated consumer review and comment sites.”
Keep up on the latest digital trends. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription, today. [eMarketer]
sevenload and Friendster Announce Global Partnership
Friendster Partners with sevenload to offer sevenload Video Content and Application across Asia-Pacific Market and on Marketing Campaign
sevenload.com, one of the world's leading social media networks for videos, photos and Web TV content, and Friendster, Inc., a top 20 global website based on traffic and the #1 social network in Asia, today announced their new global partnership for the Asia-Pacific and European markets.
In this partnership, sevenload will promote Friendster's popular social networking suite of features with an extensive onsite marketing campaign on sevenload.com. In the next several weeks, Friendster will implement sevenload's state-of-the-art video player technology and video application and provide access on Friendster.com to a variety of sevenload's licensed premium content and user-generated content. Friendster users can consume, share and discuss sevenload video content with friends and other members online.
sevenload's video content will be made available to over 100 million registered Friendster users via Fan Profiles and/or as an application integrated via the Friendster Developer Program. First, Fan Profiles will be created specifically for sevenload premium content as channels, where users can become a fan of each channel, meet other people who share the same interests, and share this content with their friends.
Second, over 50 million fans of thousands of existing Fan Profiles - which support over 50 different entity types, such as musicians, artists, celebrities and organizations - will now be able to post and distribute video content via the sevenload video player. Third, the sevenload video player application will be made available to both Fan Profiles and regular user profiles through a variety of means, including Friendster's global applications directory located at www.friendster.com/apps
"We're excited to announce this deal which presents a mutual benefit for both our companies. As sevenload is expanding across all major Asia-Pacific markets, this partnership emphasizes our strategic expansion in the social media space, as we will gain access to Friendster's massive user base of 100 million registered users", said Axel Schmiegelow, CEO at sevenload.
"Friendster welcomes sevenload's rich video, photo and TV content along with their video player into the Friendster experience for the benefit of our users. And, since Friendster has a loyal and growing user base in Asia and an emerging user base in Europe, we hope that our partnership with sevenload will drive greater awareness, user adoption and user engagement throughout Asia, Europe and the rest of the world," explains Richard Kimber, CEO at Friendster./PR
Everybody Loves Social Networking, Except Some Advertisers
MyAdSpace?
These days, wherever and whenever marketers gather, social networking is a hot topic. eMarketer estimates that marketers spent $2 billion to advertise on social network Websites worldwide in 2008.
And this year worldwide ad spending is projected to increase 17%, to $2.35 billion. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
A double-digit rise in spending is certainly good news at a time when forecasters are shrinking their worldwide online ad spending projections to the low single digits,” says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Social Networking Worldwide: Ad Spending and Usage. “But the expected growth in social network spending in 2009 is half of what eMarketer had projected it would be in our previous forecast in December 2007.”
The slowing revenue growth does not necessarily spell doom and gloom for the social network business, however.
“In markets such as China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, some social networks have built growing revenue streams from selling virtual items to members,” says Ms. Williamson, “and from fees that members pay to play games or access premium content and services.” Another factor cannot be overlooked.
“Social network usage is growing substantially in many world regions, in several cases surpassing the usage levels seen in the US,” says Ms. Williamson.
Across nine countries studied by Nielsen Online, social networking and blogging accounted for 9% of all time spent online.
According to comScore Media Metrix, in Europe, 75% of Internet users ages 15 and older visited a social network site in December 2008, up from 61% one year earlier.
More than 210 million people in Europe visited a social network site during the month.Though there are many activities that people can engage in on social network sites—games, applications, listening to music—the key benefit is that they are an easy way to stay in touch and share information with friends and acquaintances.
“Socializing online is simply not going away,” says Ms. Williamson, “in any part of the world.” [eMarketer]
Social Networks and 40-Something Women
Social media marketing might be more effective than just putting ads on social networks.
More than four out of 10 women in their 40s surveyed in October by SheSpeaks had a social networking profile. And over 70% of women with children ages 13 to 17 had talked about products on social networks, compared with 62% of all responding women.
“40-somethings are active users and members of online social networks,” said Aliza Freud, CEO of SheSpeaks, in a statement. “These women have started to use the Web and social networks in ways that mirror the rest of their lives—from finding out about a product to shopping or monitoring their children’s activities.”
Of all women surveyed by SheSpeaks (not just 40-somethings), 46% used social networks.
The researchers suggested that social media marketing—not just ads on social networks—could be especially effective among women for spreading word-of-mouth, since 26% of respondents actively ignored most online ads and 20% were annoyed by ads on social networking sites.
Female Internet users ages 45 to 54 are a larger audience than male Internet users of the same age, according to comScore Media Metrix. There are also far more female Internet users ages 45 to 54 than there are ages 55 to 64. [eMarketer]
Learning to Work with Social Networks
A developing medium offers new targeting options.
While many marketers want to use social networks as part of their strategies, they still have no clear list of best practices for the medium. Getting friends to spread a marketing message to each other is a great goal, but how is that best done?
A November article in Ad Age detailed efforts to use the connections between social network users. Paul Moore, director of insights at Yahoo!, found that targeting friends of a given sports fan led to more reach than targeting fans who did not know each other—even if the fan’s friends did not identify an interest in sports themselves.
“We got an additional 40% reach from people who would otherwise not be targeted by this ad because their sports-enthusiast behavior wasn’t apparent,” said Dr. Moore in the article.
Other approaches included targeting opponents in video games played on social networks. Nearly three-quarters of retail executives surveyed in August by Zoomerang for SLI Systems said they thought social media would have a greater impact on their marketing goals in the near future.
But the lack of established social network ad and marketing strategies is, in part, why use of the medium is still relatively low.
The fact that it is a new area also helps account for the wide range of marketers’ reported social network usage: 16.9% of US marketers surveyed in May by PROMO magazine said they used social networks in their campaigns, compared with the 62% who said so in a July William Blair study. [eMarketer]
MySpace Mobile launches on Android
By Jason Ankeny
Social networking giant MySpace announced the launch of a new, free MySpace Mobile application optimized for Google's Android mobile operating system and available via the Android Market virtual storefront.
MySpace Mobile promises deep integration with Android-based devices like T-Mobile USA's G1, with features including instant photo uploading, friend searches and status and mood updates--the app will also integrate with music discovery service Shazam, enabling users to identify songs and connect to the artist's MySpace page.According to MySpace, its mobile website now welcomes two million unique users each day.
A recent ABI Research study adds that 70 percent of mobile social networking users have visited MySpace--in addition to Android, MySpace has developed mobile applications for the iPhone and Sidekick, with an app optimized for Research In Motion's BlackBerry device platform currently in development. [FierceMobileContent]
Is MySpace a Social Network?
Yes, but it wants to be more.
MySpace is the largest social network in the world, with more than 122 million members. However, the company does not necessarily want to be known as king of the social networks.
As some industry observers— including some at eMarketer—have questioned social media’s financial prospects, it is enlightening to note that even the top company in the space sees the term as potentially confining.
In a briefing with eMarketer, MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe put it this way: “From the very beginning, we’ve always said that we were a next-generation portal and that MySpace was all about people connecting over shared interests.”
Jeff Berman, the company’s president of sales and marketing, added, “The classic portal model is content-driven, and it’s top-down with a separate communications platform.
“We sit in a hybrid space. If you think about how others in the space are trying to define what they want to be, you hear more people talking about wanting to be the starting point on the Internet. Well, that’s what we are,” Mr. Berman continued.
This is not just a matter of semantics: Ad spending on social networks still represents a small fraction of total online ad spending—much less than the search and display ads of the largest portals.
“Last year, we saw a lot of agencies and brands setting aside 10% of their budgets online for social media buys,” Mr. DeWolfe said. “We usually got 60% to 70% of it, but it didn’t really amount to the tens of millions of dollars that we thought we should be getting given our reach and impact.”
“As the US economy worsens, nearly every ad-driven Website will be under pressure to generate revenues,” said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “By positioning itself as a portal, MySpace can potentially gain a larger share of online ad dollars. But the company needs to prove that its users are receptive to display advertising.” [eMarketer]
Universal McCann: Social Media Offers Huge Advertising Potential
Universal McCann has released an extensive report on the growth and impact of social media around the world. Surveying over 17,000 users in 29 countries, this paper is a detailed analysis that should be read by everyone whose business may be impacted by this major trend.
This 80 page document looks at all the major aspects of social media, including blogging, social networks, content sharing, and discusses their impacts and implications. Some of the highlights include:
- Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media, 73% of “active users” have read a blog.
- Social media impacts brand reputation: 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog and 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs.
- Bloggers actually value advertisements, not only for the money they can bring, but also for the credibility they lend to their site.
The study also shows how the different social media have developed around the world. For example, this chart shows the percent of active internet users that have started their own blog in different countries:
This is an extensive, extremely interesting study and Universal McCann should be commended for producing it and making it available. [MobiAdNews]
Social Networks Are Not Yet Universal
Not everyone is pokable.
More than one-half of adults surveyed in 17 countries do not know what social networking is, according to Synovate. The company said it asked over 13,000 consumers in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US if they were familiar with social networking.
Although such aggregate findings are useful in a directional sense (many consumers worldwide have yet to hear about social networking), Synovate noted differences in individual countries and among demographic segments. For instance, awareness was higher among younger users.
As for membership, 26% of respondents belonged to social networking sites. Membership was highest in the Netherlands, at 49%; UAE, at 46%; Canada, at 44%; and the US, at 40%.
Synovate also asked adult consumers if they were losing interest in online social networking. Overall, 36% of social network users said yes, led by those in Japan (55%), Slovakia (48%), Canada (47%), Poland and the US (45% each). Social networkers in Indonesia and France were the least likely to be losing interest, at only 18% and 21%, respectively.
Read more - eMarketer
Social Networks Get Down to Business
Think of them as digital water coolers—surrounded by thousands of workers engaged in serious business conversations. Do business and socializing mix?
Apparently so. As the number of business users of social networks continues to increase, advertising expenditures will rise, too. In the US this year, advertisers will spend $40 million to reach a business audience on online social networks, and that is just the beginning. According to eMarketer projections, that ad spending will reach $210 million in 2012.
"As compelling as the ad growth is, marketers will spend far more over the next few years to create and manage their own social networks for business customers, partners, suppliers and vendors," says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, B2B Marketing on Social Networks: Engaging the Business Audience. "These business networks will serve a range of purposes, from improving customer communication and collaboration to aiding product development."
A clear sign of the revolution in business thinking and behavior is the popularity of LinkedIn—the most widely known professional social network—where the audience has more than doubled in the past year, and the rise of additional business-oriented networks, including a raft of networks aimed at verticals.
In fact, vertical industry networks targeting just about any job description or category are proliferating. Among the most prominent are ITtoolbox, a 1.3-million-member community of information technology professionals; Legal OnRamp and LawLink for attorneys; and Reel-Exchange, for film and video professionals.
Read more - eMarketer
Online Social Networkers Consume More Media Content
Two recent surveys conducted by ABI Research have revealed that compared to average mobile phone service subscribers, those who also participate in online social networking via sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo are much heavier consumers of digital content including text messages, mobile email, photos, music, games and mobile TV. These findings are detailed in a new white paper from ABI Research, available for free download on the firm’s website.
“The fact that online social networkers consume more mobile content and media than mobile subscribers who aren’t into online networking may not be really surprising,” says principal analyst Nick Holland. “However, what we have long suspected is now confirmed by the numbers: for most kinds of mobile content, online social networkers consume about twice as much as their non-networked peers.”
The two surveys, conducted online in the United States in November, 2007, sampled just over 1000 mobile subscribers and just over 500 online social network mobile subscribers respectively.
Three quarters of the latter group were aged between 18 and 30, and were twice as likely to own a smartphone as their non-networked equivalents.
What drives online social networkers towards consumption of mobile media? They are on average younger and more tech-savvy for a start. Also, many social networking networks are organized around a specific media-related interest such as photography or music.
What are the implications for the mobile content industry? According to Holland, “Advertising on social networks isn’t working particularly well, so promotion of mobile content on online social network sites should be a high priority for mobile operators, content distributors, media companies, and advertisers.”
“Mobile Content End-User Survey,” a white paper which presents and interprets the results of the two surveys in detail, is available free on the ABI Research website. (Free site registration is required.) It can be viewed or downloaded here. [ABI Research]
“Grown Up” White Label Social Networking Targeting the Enterprise
Networking through online communities in the consumer world has become a huge success, and now enterprises are beginning to embrace this form of technology. To enable such communication in a business environment, white label social networking vendors provide platforms that can be rebranded to meet the requirements of enterprises. ABI Research forecasts indicate that this market will be worth nearly $1.3 billion in 2013.
Potentially linking employees, customers, and other stakeholders, enterprise social networking is most commonly seen as an aid to marketing, CRM, and general information distribution.
“Social networking within and around the enterprise can deliver a number of benefits to a company, though some may be difficult to quantify,” says industry analyst Zippy Aima. “For example, many networks can be searched by keyword, offering fast and easy access to company-wide pools of expertise. One vendor of these solutions targets only trade show and conference organizers. Their networks allow people attending the event to save time by learning who else is going, and setting up meetings in advance.”
Setting up and running a social network is a specialized task, however, and can be costly. So most white label social networking vendors offer the technology through an SaaS (Software as a Service) model, based on a subscription fee, which can be fairly economical for the customer. Client companies can add their own branding, look and feel, but have no other responsibilities or burdens.
“White label enterprise social networking is a very young market, but a busy one,” notes Aima. “It is flooded with vendors, but most of them are only a few years old and still see annual revenues below $5 million. Despite this market’s promise, they must overcome several challenges, including lack of customer education, competition from open standards, budget constraints, and the need for feature-rich applications.”
While the potential market for white label enterprise social networking is worldwide, the majority of vendors today — including HiveLive, Intridea, KickApps, Drupal, Cisco, and Mzinga — are based in North America. “The White Label Social Networking Market” discusses the opportunities in this market, and the challenges facing vendors entering it. It identifies the parameters that enterprises use when choosing a white label social network, and examines the pricing models of a number of vendors. It forecasts revenue grow through 2013. [ABI Research]
Baby Boomers and Social Networking
Facebook took the college scene by storm. Boomers may be another story.
Less than one-quarter of US Internet users ages 40 and over use social networking Web sites, according to the JWT BOOM/ThirdAge "Boomers, Healthcare and Interactive Media" study conducted last month.
The JWT BOOM/Third Age figures on social networking usage by those 40 and older generally agree with a study by ExactTarget conducted last month.
Instead of using one large category of older Internet users, ExactTarget divided users who were ages 35 and older into 10-year increments, with 65 and over being the oldest cohort. Although 39% of 35 to 44 year-olds used social networks, use fell sharply with age: Only 13% of 55 to 64 year-olds were social networkers, and only 4% of those ages 65 and older. In comparison, three-quarters of Internet users ages 15 to 24 use social networking sites.
Read more - eMarketer
Will Social Networks Remain Low-Ad Districts?
By David Hallerman, Senior Analyst
The question of whether social network sites will become major centers for online marketing is one that my colleague Debra Aho Williamson and I have debated for the past couple of years—she on the yea side, and me more on the nay side.
In the spirit of that debate, I set out to write a counterpoint to her recent piece, "Will MySpace Revenues Add Up?"—but, after some digging, my point of view has changed.
That change spins on two factors: money and people. That is, do a site's ad revenues match its traffic? The relationship of traffic to revenues is not an exact one, since it fails to factor in elements such as the amount of time people spend on a site. However, matching eyeballs to dollars builds a rough estimate of how well any Web site monetizes its audience.
To research this, I gathered eMarketer's projections for 2008 US ad revenues at five sites—MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Then, using Nielsen Online's April 2008 data for US unique visitors to those sites and extrapolating that data across the whole year, I created a rough placeholder for unique annual visitors.
Read more - eMarketer
UK Advertisers Shy From Social Networks
UK social networking advertising hits a bump.
In 2007, more than half of the UK’s Web users used social networking sites, according to an European Interactive Advertising Association-sponsored study conducted by SPA Research and Synovate.
Despite being popular with UK Internet users, social networks are getting a wide berth from some UK advertisers.
One of the most memorable Internet stories of 2007 centered on a number of high-profile British companies—including Vodafone, First Direct, Halifax, Virgin Media, the Prudential and the Automobile Association—withdrawing advertising from Facebook, because their ads were seen on pages with content promoting the far-right British National Party.
“I estimated that within a year [from January 2008], advertisers would begin to back away from social network advertising,” wrote Michael Masnick, CEO of TechDirt, on that blog. “Apparently, my estimate was wrong. Brands are already staying away.”
Read more - eMarketer
India Joins the Social Networking Village
A recent Nielsen Company survey of Internet users in India sheds some light on their reasons for joining social networks.
Keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, cited by 82% of respondents, was the number one reason given for joining a social network.
Reconnecting with old friends, at 58%, was the number two reason, while making new friends was third at 53%. Professional networking came in fourth at 43%.
"These days, the world has become a global village, and social networking sites are bringing people closer together and helping them to interact and share their thoughts within the group, no matter where in the world they are," said N.S. Muthukumaran at The Nielsen Company.
Two-thirds of the social networkers in India surveyed spend more than a half hour during each social networking session. More than half reported having more than 50 friends on the social networking site they use most often. [eMarketer]
Who's Spending on Social Networks?
Big spenders may be in the minority.
While social networks are struggling with how best to monetize their millions of users, some marketers have yet to commit major budget to the channel.
One-third of US marketers and agencies surveyed in an iMedia Connection poll in March said that they planned to spend $300,000 or less this year on social network marketing. The poll was conducted among attendees at the recent iMedia Breakthrough Summit.
"At those amounts, social network spending may still be categorized as experimental for many marketers," said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer.
To be clear, the poll was not conducted among a representative sample of marketers. However, it is useful in a directional sense. The 29% of marketers polled by iMedia Connection who plan to spend $2 million or more will help social network ad spending add up.
eMarketer predicts that US online social network ad spending will near $1.6 billion this year. The figure includes all forms of advertising appearing on social network sites, including branded campaigns as well as search, video, local advertising and ads delivered via ad networks.
Read more - eMarketer
Mobile Social Network Growth Ahead
Does audience growth foretell a global mass market?
The number of consumers worldwide using their mobile phones to access social networks will more than triple from 2010 to 2012, according to Pyramid Research's "Social Networking Goes Mobile" report.
Mobile social networking has been hit-and-miss in the US so far. Mobile carrier Helio positioned itself in part as the best network for MySpace users—or at least one of the first. On the verge of bankruptcy, the company got a reprieve last year thanks to a sizable investment by South Korean carrier SK Telecom.
Despite that high-profile stumble, AT&T continues to offer a paid version of MySpace Mobile, while MySpace itself offers a free mobile version of the site.
The demand for these services, while not necessarily universal, is strong among some specific geographic and demographic groups.
Mobile social networking demand is high among UK mobile users, more than one-quarter of whom said they desired the service, according to a January 2008 Webcredible study. That was second only to their desire for mobile e-mail.
Read more - eMarketer
Social Networks Hot in Australia and New Zealand
A brushfire of social networking has caught on in Australia and New Zealand, according to a Nielsen Online study.
The study found that 55% of Australian and 62% of New Zealand's Internet users have used a social network in the past year.
Furthermore, 33% of Australian and 25% of New Zealand’s social network users had joined in the past three months.
"Based on the viral nature of social networking adoption, we expect to see further significant increases in the near future," said Melanie Ingrey, market research director, Asia-Pacific, Nielsen Online. "As many as one-half of current non-users have already indicated they will sign up within the next 12 months.”
The largest group of users, 45% in Australia and 48% in New Zealand, spent one to four hours per day social networking.
The most popular site in Australia was MySpace, followed by Facebook. In New Zealand, Old Friends was ranked first and Bebo was second. [eMarketer]
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