Archive for the 'social networks' Category

Run for the Roses or Buzz?

Published on June 4, 2008 in analytics, blogpulse, buzz, digital, marketing, social networks and websites. 0 Comments

Horse-racing fans are eagerly anticipating the Belmont Stakes as Big Brown will compete for the Triple Crown on June 7th at Belmont. After breezing through the Kentucky Derby in May and the Preakness later that month, Big Brown caused an uptick in online conversations around the Triple Crown. The first spike in consumer discussion took place on May 3rd, as Big Brown captured the Kentucky Derby crown. Conversation drivers included the remembrance of second runner-up Eight Belles, who collapsed after the race and was immediately euthanized, Big Brown’s big win, and references to Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who shattered his leg in the 2006 Preakness, and then put to rest. Online discussions for the Triple Crown peaked again on May 17th as Big Brown won the Preakness, up 18.5% since May 3rd, while conversations increased 64% for Big Brown.

The horse racing world is eagerly anticipating the Belmont Stakes. Big Brown, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, will compete for the Triple Crown on June 7th at The Belmont Stakes in Elmont New York. With two-thirds of the Crown complete, Big Brown has been causing an uptick in online conversations leading up to and the day of the events.

The first spike in consumer discussion took place on May 3rd as Big Brown captured the Kentucky Derby crown. Conversation drivers for the first spike were not solely focused on Big Brown’s win. Other topics driving discussion included Eight Belles (the tragic runner-up who was euthanized on the spot after the race) and Barbaro, the 2006 Preakness Winner who was put to rest after shattering his leg during the race.

Online discussions for the Triple Crown peaked again on May 17th as Big Brown won the Preakness Stakes; it was up 18.5% since May 3rd, while conversations increased 64% for Big Brown. Discussions were primarily based around whether Big Brown would be able to capture the Triple Crown or if he would fall short like Smarty Jones.

Special thanks to Sandra Parrelli for helping with the data/idea to this post. And have fun at the race this weekend.

Nielsen Online Top 10 Social Networks for April 2008

Published on May 20, 2008 in analytics, consumer insight, digital, marketing and social networks. 0 Comments

Some data from my company, the latest information on social networks. Enjoy.

NIELSEN ONLINE PROVIDES TOP U.S. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND BLOGS FOR APRIL 2008

Nielsen Online provides April’s top U.S. social networking sites and blogs for your reference. They are ranked by unique audience and rounded to the nearest thousand, so LinkedIn had 8.7 million unique visitors in April 2008, growing 361 percent over April 2007.

Please note that these are custom lists compiled by the Nielsen Online PR team with the help of our media analysts. While these lists are not meant to be exhaustive, they provide a good idea of the significant players in each space.

We periodically review the lists and add new sites, so the results may change accordingly. Please source data to Nielsen Online.

Tweetniks

Published on May 16, 2008 in creative, digital, networks, personal, social media and social networks. 0 Comments

A quick post to shout out about Pete Blackshaw’s latest post for ClickZ. In it, he discusses Twitter segments and different classes of individuals on the site. As the micro-blog evolves it will be interesting to see all the different types that join up and further the analysis.

One interesting footnote, Pete actually used Twitter to gather his data by proposing this tweet to this followers, “ok i think im going to write my mkt column about twitter “types” (user segments) send thoughts 03:55 PM May 08, 2008 from web.” The tweet stoked some thoughts in my head. As I have been thinking about that very thing for quite sometime and was happy to help. I added a few segments including: TweetSquatters and Tweetniks.

I wanted to talk about the Tweetniks, or someone who uses Twitter to write 21st Century prose. Listed below are a few examples of these modern day Whitmans.

Society’s becoming more connected and much more digital. Artist are sometimes the first to adopt new technology for purposes of expression. Social platforms provide a natural fit for artist to express themselves and explore new mediums. How will digital change creative endeavors? Tweetniks might be blazing a trail of digital creativity that is a game changer but only time will tell.

What do you think?

FYI - Here is Pete’s website dedicated to the topic. Please visit and leave him some feedback on users you have encountered. Additionally, if you would like to add me to your twitter list feel free to do so @stemato.

Miami Dolphins Draft

Published on May 1, 2008 in blogpulse, buzz, digital, marketing, social media, social networks, viral, websites and word-of-mouth. 0 Comments

Saturday was the NFL draft and my favorite team the Miami Dolphins had the top pick. I was naturally curious about the level of discussion in the blogosphere and then something interesting happen. The Dolphins announced early that they had signed Jake Long as the top pick ending months of speculation.

This buzz chart identically follows the way the story broke. His name is first mentioned very sparingly and then on April 10 we see a small spike due to speculation about negotiations beginning. And on April 22 you see the announcement that they had signed him four days ahead of the draft. Then Miami Dolphins buzz spikes again on the actual day of the draft.

Actionable Data for the Miami Dolphins

The Miami Dolphins could use this chart for marketing in a variety of ways. Qualitative and quantitative analysis lies within this study. The Miami Dolphins could make operational decisions such as whether a Jake Long jersey would be a viable choice for the coming year and how many to order. Marketing decisions like promotions and which brands may be interested in using Jake Long are also a viable options.

Deeper qualitative drill downs are also available via clicking through to the points on the chart. For instance, scoring some of the listings from draft day yields valuable PR insights that could overt misinformation. Below is one of the quotes:

  • “Now that the Dolphins have signed their #1 pick, Jake Long, it’s now time for the organization (and the trifecta, to be specific) to move on to other things….And as CBS Sports’ Clark Judge writes, the Dolphins are already working hard on moving Jason Taylor” http://www.thephinsider.com/2008/4/22/2155/03979

Social Media Speeds Up Reaction Times

In the old world sports model a reporter would find out about negotiations and write about it to be published for the next day. Then the team’s official PR department would issue its statement regarding the draft pick. Relationships have changed and the world has become much more social. Media has cut down on its delivery times and PR departments are scrambling to keep up. Measuring social media and listening to your fans is crucial to keep up with changing relationships in an increasingly social world.

How will the Dolphins react to this buzz-touchdown and help further their PR strategy for next year?

My guess is they may have a small team devoted to “listening.” I have not seen many sports teams actively using social media as a viable means of listening and reacting. The Colts (mycolts.net) have a social network but I have not seen much feedback to its success for the team. I would suspect that they have an amazing amount of data and hope they are using it gather valuable insights. Insights that could be quickly gathered and analyzed to facilitate on the fly changes to the marketing and PR strategy.

The Future

Social media is predicted to evolve into a vertical driven space (ie. mycolts.net). Leaving little room for brand invasions to drive consumers to trust them less. Mining your base for crucial insights to help evolve your marketing plan can become social overnight. Will you take advantage?

Social Networking Users

Published on April 7, 2008 in community, consumer insight, digital, personal, social media, social networks and websites. 0 Comments

A recent report, from OfCom of the UK, about social-networking shows their prolific growth and deep saturation in the UK. I first read about it in a MSN UK story located here and I found its classification system to oversimplify these users. Surely, we can come up with a more profound classification than: Alpha Socialisers, Attention Seekers, Followers, Faithful and Functionals. It seems to only scratch the surface of what is a much more complex eco-system driven by many different types of users and scenarios.

Lets first take a look at scenarios that could evolve as a result of shifting user profiles and maturation of the space. As my company reported last month, Facebook’s numbers have slowed in recent months but its not endemic of the death of social-networking in the UK. The fact is the numbers were growing at a rate that could not have been endured much longer.

But, have they reached critical mass?

This is an interesting question, but with 23% penetration in a country that has only 30 million people total online, it would seem social-networking is still red-hot in the UK. Certainly with that kind of reach, users would fall into more than a handful of types and morph from one classification to another. In fact, I believe that user intentions on social networks are so varied and amorphous that any attempt to classify must be primarily organic.

Lets take deeper look at my organic classification system.

Instead of a linear zoological approach to classes, it should appear more as a hexagon with overlapping interest and a sliding scale. Something like this:

Social Networking Users

Using this hexagonal approach, you could then further define user personality traits based on aggregate sentiment analysis. What does this mean? If you could take a predefined number of UK social network users evenly dispersed across the three majors and parse out there profiles into text. Using that text you could then score the sentiment into different buckets (eg. dating, networking, spammer) based on keyword recognition.

Further refining your chart to something like this:

Social Networking Users Profile

Building out these finite profiles, you get a clearer picture of social networking users and how they interact and relate to one another. The more data ascertained the better the profile. Time of day, age and other demographics can also enhance the map to show more in-depth details of how people engage.

In a very general sense OfCom gets it right, they just leave out a big part of the picture. User interactions and how they effect user profiles. My father said it best when he said “you cannot be, all things to all people.”

Social Media and Ad Spend’s shift to Digital.

Published on April 1, 2008 in ads, consumer insight, digital, engagement, marketing, social media, social networks and websites. 0 Comments

Yesterday eMarketer reported that online advertising spend is approaching 10% of all media spending and will be there by 2009. Considering the accountability, that digital commands and traffic quality it should come as no surprise that money is shifting to online at a quicker pace than other media. But what are some of the social media trends that this move will precipitate? Here are three that I think will be important part of my work here at Nielsen Online.

1 - Social Media become increasingly salient as connection hotspots - As trust continues to erode in traditional media, consumers will look increasingly to social media as a trusted opinion for all sorts of decisions, from which restaurant to eat at or what jeans to buy. Malcolm Gladwell describes, in his book The Tipping Point, “weak links” as influential to humans for making connections that make ideas tip. These individuals will become even more important as online migration triggers even more diverse and larger groups of connections who will exert overwhelming force over trends and ideas. (As I write this, I have over 100 twitter friends most I do not know but they shape many of my opinions on any number of things)

2- Brands continue to fortify their digital positions - With dollars shifting to the internet so quickly, brands will rush to keep up with the digital consumer migration. Brands will increasingly face the tough questions about social media and what they should do in this new platform based web. Corporate blogs are not for everyone but opening up the lines of communication can benefit brands. The question is, what is the best way to leverage social media, to empower your consumers and gain valuable insights.

3- Web trust factor becomes site currency - Inevitably, web sites will come that try to game the system and erode consumer trust in social media. From this, will arise a digital trust factor that will eventually become a web currency. It could come in an organized fashion or maybe it will just be semantic based - meaning you don’t travel far from home on the web. You have a few sites you visit and trust based on history, promotion and recommendations and only visit them frequently. This trend will hasten the move to platforms that portalize you to the web at large - Facebook applications are a good example of this in action.

As we see all media continue its move to digital, these three trends are one to watch. Any I missed?

Facebook Notification Spam & The Emergence of a Model

Published on January 14, 2008 in digital, engagement, reputation, social media, social networks, viral and websites. 0 Comments

Why are my so-called friends spamming me? I open my notifications in Facebook to find this monstrosity and it is only a portion of the tower! The really amazing thing is that most of these notifications come from the same 2 or 3 people. As I think conscientiously about my social connections managing them will become ever more important as I seek to filter the best data from this spam.

Which part of the importance filter are you? Our reputation economy is eroding quickly and I suggest you stay on the side of value. Needless notifications will only serve to invalidate your reputation and further erode your social networks trust. Its the essential “boy who cried wolf” model.

Think about the content you choose to disperse and make it useful to your network. We are all dealing with so much information and your reputation will be the defining factor of whether you wind up being a digital loudmouth or important addition to a network.