The Resource for Entrepreneurs. Why We Speak Freely on Social Networks We message on Facebook but in-person I'm awkward and you're shy. When our Twitter conversation went from @ messages to direct messages, you seemed more reserved and I felt more open to speak my mind. Let's follow each other on Pinterest and share the pictures that are in our mind. I just want to be in your head. I just want to feel what you're feeling. I want to be inside of you, truly. Social networking sites give us portals into another person's (user's) mind, so far as that person (user) makes public their thoughts, ideas, feelings and desires. Social networks are both a space of freedom and a place of imprisonment. Yet in speaking our minds on social networks, we not only share information we also embody the medium itself. The Medium is the Message There is a symbiotic relationship between message and medium, and that medium influences how the message is perceived. Don't Look at Me, I Won't Look at You "In monkeys and apes, face-to-face contact is essentially antagonistic.
Mobile Advertising Is The Baby Huey Of The Media World (And Apple Is Taking The Low Road) Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Frank Barbieri, a serial entrepreneur and sometime blogger. You can follow him @frankba. I had dinner last week with a senior exec from a global advertising holding company who asked what I often get asked these days, “What’s going on with mobile advertising?” it’s a timely question as last week Apple announced they were lowering the buy-in price for iAds from $500,000 to $100,000 and increasing the publisher revenue share from 60% to 70%. The move seems innocent enough, but with a little inspection is actually very worrying for a segment still struggling to shake off its inferiority complex, and potentially chilling for many innovators and entrepreneurs. You would think that the Flurry data posted late last year on exponential mobile adverting inventory growth late last year would correlate with an industry finally reaching maturity. Mobile advertising has become the Baby Huey of the media world: it’s huge and lumbering, but not mature.
Old Dogs New Tricks and Crappy Newspaper Executives (Speaking notes for an address to the Canadian Journalism Foundation Toronto, Canada, 2/16/2012) Good evening. I’m old media. This is my 36th year as a newspaper man – apologies – my 36th year as a multi-platform news executive. It’s a career I started as a copyboy on this same street about a dozen blocks east of here. I was hired for taking a picture of a belly dancer fooling with a drunk columnist. In my career the only reprimand I have ever received – if you don’t count the odd suspension for insubordination – was about expenses, specifically it was about booze. This is commonly referred to as the Golden Era of journalism. And now, like many of you, I am struggling hard to teach this old dog new tricks. Struggling to accept that much of what we know is no longer valid. And trying to come to grips with the fact that crappy newspaper executives are a bigger threat to journalism’s future than any changes wrought by the Internet. It’s not like the Internet isn’t coming to your town. Dr. Such as:
Swoop Gives Food Websites An Injection Of Local Deals Swoop, a startup that’s launching today, says it’s giving food websites a new way to convince readers to stick around, and to make some money in the process. CEO Ron Elwell says Swoop’s technology can look at the text of a food website and automatically inject links to local deals when they’re relevant. So, for example, if a site includes a recipe that calls for mayonnaise, Swoop can insert a link at the mention of mayonnaise, and if the reader clicks on it, a small window will open showing any nearby deals on mayonnaise. Users can specify their zip code and which stores they’re interested in seeing deals from, and they can create shopping lists of the items they want. Elwell says Swoop will add more personalization options over time (the company tracks repeat users through cookies). You can see a Swoop-linked site here. There are other companies offering to insert advertising or affiliate links into online text.
37 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed What better way to end Social Media Week than by catching up on all of the new Mashable digital media resources you may have missed? This week we've covered a special hack to trick out your Pinterest boards, ways for your business to avoid a hashtag disaster and a rundown of the tech skills companies are looking for in the coming year. You'll also find the 10 best digital and tech-related quotes from TED Talks, reasons why Twitter is sexier than Facebook and paradoxes that are shaping the future of mobile commerce. We even had a wedding proposal via infographic on Valentine's Day! Look no further for this week's very best resources on technology and digital culture. Editor's Picks Community Managers Share The Best Apps and Tools For ProductivityCommunity managers from different businesses offer their insight on how to best increase your productivity.Stacy Green, Will You Marry Me? Social Media
The Future of Sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Users of social networks are getting tired of sharing — but that doesn't mean sharing is on the decline. A new study analyzes sharing behaviors on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and makes predictions for the future of sharing. Digital agency Beyond released the study for Social Media Week, along with the below infographic. First, sharing to selective lists — the Google+ Circles model — is on the rise. Second, frictionless sharing — Spotify songs shared to Facebook, for example — is on the rise. Third, discounts and giveaways will spur sharing of branded content. Fourth, the rate of social sharing will plateau as Facebook reaches the majority of the world's population. Fifth, sharing will become personal again, as it was in the early days of social networking for many of us. Sixth, the same three factors — informing friends, expressing an opinion and humor — will continue to drive us to share content. What do you think of Beyond's predictions?
Publications Time Spent In Mobile Far Outpaces Ad Spending 02/21 Web publishers have long lamented the lack of ad spending online in relation to the amount of time spent online. Now Flurry is making the same case for mobile. In a new study, the mobile advertising and analytics firm says mobile is the most imbalanced medium when it comes to ad spending versus time spent, at 1% compared to 23%. That makes the split of ad spending and time spent on the desktop Web -- at 16% versus 22% -- look a lot better. By contrast, print gets 29% of ad dollars but only 6% of time spent. Flurry derived the cross-media figures from publicly available sources including comScore, Veronis Suhler, Mary Meeker, Alexa and its own data tracking more than 140,000 iOS and Android apps. So why is mobile getting short-changed in ad budgets? “We believe the main reason for this disparity is that the mobile app platform has emerged so rapidly over such a short period of time.
Strategy - Five Trends B2B Marketers Need to Understand to Succeed in 2012 To learn how to defeat their enemies, kings and other rulers once relied on soothsayers who read animal entrails or on astrologers who charted the stars to divine the future. More recently, farmers (and others) relied on the Farmers' Almanac to decide whether that new winter coat or snow blower would be a good or bad investment. Gaining a glimpse into what tomorrow holds has always been a strategic advantage. Fortunately, today we have something a little better than entrails or stars to guide us—namely, hard data. Although statistics and the trends they reveal may not always be entirely accurate (ask any stockbroker about that), they certainly give us a quantifiable advantage when making decisions about strategies and tactics for the future. With that advantage in mind, consider the following five significant trends that will affect B2B marketers in 2012, according to GlobalSpec. 1. And where are they going for all this content? That doesn't mean everything you create has to be new. 2. 3.
Playing The News: To Push Social Gaming Forward, Two New Startups Look To The Real World When most people think of social gaming, they likely think of Zynga and its flagship titles, like FarmVille and CityVille — or even Words With Friends. Yet, as Facebook social gaming matures (right along with mobile technology and platforms), we are starting to see studios begin to push the boundaries more, looking for new ways to engage and educate gamers, maybe even reinventing the wheel while they’re at it. One example is the New York City-based startup Playmatics, part of the Swiss-based Shadow Government Ltd., which collectively raised $1 million last year to build a new game franchise called Shadow Government. For those unfamiliar, beginning with mobile and later moving to Facebook, Shadow Government looks to bring real-world data and modeling to the social game sphere. Using this reality-based simulation model, the goal for Shadow Government is not only to create a gaming experience that is entertaining but also one that is decidedly educational.
Vom Beziehungs- zum Interessen-Netzwerk, oder von Facebook zu Pinterest Bei Facebook geht es um Beziehungen zwischen Nutzern und Marken. Kontakte gehören meist zum persönliche (erweiterten) Freundeskreis und man tauscht sich über private und berufliche Erlebnisse aus. Anhand diese verschiedenen Aktivitäten, hat sich Facebook auch zu einem Empfehlungs-Netzwerk entwickelt. Inhalte die meinen Freunden gefallen, könnten auch für mich selbst interessant sein. In vielen Fällen trifft das auch zu, oft unterscheiden sich aber auch die eigenen Interessen, mit den Interessen seiner Facebook Freunde. Genau hier setzt Pinterest an. Aus diesem Grund ist es auf Pinterest auch sinnvoller Boards (Themen) zu folgen, als kompletten Nutzern. Wie Twitter, können Nutzer auch selber viel aus Pinterest ziehen, ohne selber aktiv werden zu müssen. Facebook hat Jahre damit verbracht seinen Open Graph zu füllen und mit den Open Graph Apps, wurde dieses Konstrukt nochmals deutlich erweitert. Sein genanntes Beispiel trifft es auf den Punkt. Evtl. klickt man trotzdem auf diese Links.
Americans spend 100K years on Facebook each month (infographic) From posting status updates to consuming news, the collective time Americans spend on Facebook amounts to more than 100,000 years each month. The eye-popping figure comes by way of statistics portal Statista. The company pulled data from comScore, Compete, and Google Ad Planner on social network usage in the United States. The infographic included below, made exclusively for VentureBeat, vividly depicts how Facebook is by far the most dominant social network stateside. Facebook attracts 167 million unique U.S. visitors per month. These users spend an average of 6 hours and 33 minutes on the social network each month. Ignoring Facebook for a second, Pinterest and Tumblr are standouts when it comes to average time spent on site. A look at the graphic also shows that nascent Google+ already commands a commendable 18 million unique U.S. visitors per month. Photo credit: Michell Zappa/Flickr Are you making or losing money with marketing automation?
Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job Some men see things as they are and ask why.Others dream things that never were and ask why not.George Bernard Shaw Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development, Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. I’m beginning to suspect this assumption may be wrong. Where Did We Go Wrong? It’s not that the tools are wrong, I think the entrepreneurship management stack is correct and has made a major contribution to reducing startup failures. Where I think we have gone wrong is the belief that anyone can use these tools equally well. Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job For the sake of this analogy, think of two types of artists: composers and performers (think music composer versus members of the orchestra, playwright versus actor etc.) Founders fit the definition of a composer: they see something no one else does. Lessons Learned Listen to this post here:
The 20 most interesting social media stats and insights of 2012 The year's not even two months old and already we've seen a number of big splashes in the social media scene. Here are the top stats so far. By Adam Vincenzini | Posted: February 20, 2012 We're not even two months in 2012 and the year has already seen a number of big changes to the social media scene. I'm not sure about you, but keeping up with the all the updates to usage stats is hard work, so I've tried to compile some of 2012's best resources. Here are some of he better ones I've located this year: 2012's most useful posts, infographics and round-ups: 1. 2012's most useful real-time resources, sites and tools: 1. Are there any other resources out there you have spotted in 2012 that might come in handy? Popularity: This record has been viewed 25231 times.