Social Media Blog: Businesses, are you ready for mobile ecommerce?

March 7th, 2010

Move over computer, you are becoming extinct; well at least slowly moving into oblivion as far as social networking sites go. Comscore, a company which reports web metrics found that 1 of 3 smartphone users accessed social networking sites through their mobile browsers. Facebook saw a 112% increase in mobile users and Twitter saw a 347% increase.

Comscore senior VP of mobile thinks that "Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser."

The mobile social media access numbers reported by Comscore are staggering when you think about it. Over 25 MI Facebook users and approximately 5 million Twitter users logged in using mobile browsers.
 
Here's some food for thought for all business owners out there:

You know that mobile users aren't just logging into Facebook and Twitter through their mobile browsers. They're doing other browsing too; from buying quick ticket items to ordering food.

Are you ready with a "MOBILE" compatible website for these mobile users?

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Posted in facebook, Mobile Phones, Mobile Shopping, Social Media Marketing, twitter | 1 Comment »

Social Media Blog: Facebook Gripings Protected Under the 1st Amendment???

March 5th, 2010

I always tell my kids to be careful what they say and to be extra careful about what they write in emails or online. Now I read about this case of a high school student who sued a principal and won because her online posts were protected under the 1st amendment and I'm just waiting to hear my kids debate the issue with me.
 
Here's what happened.
 
A federal magistrate in Florida has ruled that a student who created a Facebook page to complain about her teacher was protected under the 1st amendment. Apparently in 2007, a senior named Katie Evans said this about her teacher "the worst teacher I've ever met". She took down the page a few days, got suspended by the school's principal, and got moved from her advanced placement classes to regular classes. The principal got sued and the magistrate ruled that the suspension was unconstitutional AND asked the principal to compensate the student who was "wrongly" suspended.
 
Should social networking sites where people bare their deepest emotions and post things sometimes without thinking be protected under the 1st Amendment? But then where will we draw the line? Will criminals who brag about their crimes online also be protected? I don't know about this social networks and free speech.
 
Do I hear the attorneys world over taking a deep breath and preparing themselves to defend people who find themselves demoted, fired, jailed because of what they wrote online?

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Posted in facebook, Free Speech | No Comments »

Social Media Blog: Asian Companies Shy Away from Twitter & Facebook

March 3rd, 2010

79 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies are at least on one of the following four social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or a Corporate Blog.This according to Burson-Marsteller, a company that conducts studies on social media usage.

However, the same study found that Asian companies are shying away from Facebook and Twitter, focusing more on using local platforms that are used in their country or region. Those social networks include Mixi in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea and Baidu Spaces and Renren in China. These Asian companies appear to limiting their usage of Facebook and Twitter only to communicate with consumers in international markets. They prefer the local social networks for reaching their most targeted audience.
 
According to Burson-Marsteller, Asian companies are more concerned about time, money, and measurement of their social media involvement thus making their use of social networks much more conservative.

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Posted in facebook, Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Social Media Blog: Department of Defense’s Social Media Policy Annoucement

March 1st, 2010

Ok, so better late than never right? I'm talking about the Social Media policy finally unveiled by the Department of Defense on Feb 26, 2010. And perhaps keeping the new way of communication in mind, Price Floyd, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, broke the news of the policy announcement on his Twitter feed.

So it appears that the military will allow it's troops to access popular social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter from their "non-classified computer network" also known as NPRNET (for Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network.)

This is huge people! Think about it, we're talking about the unbending, conservative military. Troops who wish to stay in touch with family and friends will now be able to do so and they'll also be able to share information with others who may be interested in what's happening with our military personnel stationed in remote locations.

The policy includes provisions to balance access with the necessary security measures to protect against malicious cyber and virus attacks. And naturally the policy also includes provisions to restrict access to pornography, gambling and hate-crime related sites.

As with all military policies, local commanders have the discretion to shut down the access to social networking sites. If a commander is uncomfortable with social networks, the troops will more than likely not be able to access the sites either which may cause unhappiness among the troops.
 

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Posted in Blogging, facebook, twitter | 1 Comment »

Social Media Blog: Want to Connect with Fortune 100 Companies? Find them on Twitter!

February 26th, 2010

The Global Social Media Check-up is yet another social media usage study released by Burson-Marsteller. The study shows that:

  • Globally, 65% of Fortune 100 companies have active accounts on Twitter
  • 54% have a Facebook fan page
  • 50% have a YouTube channel
  • 33% have a corporate blog. 

Overall though, only 20% of Fortune 100 companies, globally, are using all four platforms. Only 20%!!! What are they thinking? If they can do one or two, they can certainly do all four.

But the good news again is that Twitter is the platform of choice for 65% of them. So get yourself on Twitter and make sure you are focusing on balancing quality AND quantity of your Twitter participation. What I mean is be sure to have "Quality" content while you continue to build the "Quantity" or number of followers who will read your tweets.

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Posted in Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Social Media Blog: Google AND Facebook Together, finally!

February 25th, 2010

Finally!! Google and Facebook are together! Isn't it great? Ok, what I mean by "together" really is that Google has started indexing and showing Facebook results in it's own real-time feed. Until now Goolge was only showing Twitter and MySpace results.
 
However what's this? Facebook will only share about 3 million of its page information that has celebrity, business, and organization information with Google. When it comes to Bing, Facebook's allowing them to view all user updates. Facebook has over 400 million users, making it the largest social networking site.

In a way, it's good that all updates are not being shown on Google. How annoying would it be to scroll through real-time Facebook content to try to find relevant business information you may be looking for?

 

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Posted in facebook | 1 Comment »

Social Media Blog: Facebook Vs Google, the battle lines are drawn.

February 21st, 2010

Well, if you have a Facebook account, you know how much time you spend on Facebook and you also know how much time others are spending, right? Now we have statistics that show that Facebook is the 2nd most popular site from a total number of visitors perspective.

Compete Inc, (a company which publishes research data on these kinds of interesting web & other stuff) published results that showed that Facebook's 134 million unique visitors in January bypassed Yahoo's 132 million unique but was just short of the 147 million unique visitors on Google.

Another statistic reported by Compete was that users spent 11.6% of their web time on Facebook which is more than double the time they spent individually on Yahoo or Google.

I think that Facebook's popularity is largely due to the connectivity it offers which no other site currently offers. Even Google Buzz just doesn't have the same "connectivity" and interactivity which I feel Facebook offers.
 
Will Facebook bypass Google in traffic sometime soon? Well, given the January 2010 numbers reported by Compete Inc (shown above), I think that that could happen sooner rather than later. It's not just the sheer volume of users interested in networking with family and friends that will make Facebook the number one site. I think it's also because Facebook offers personal and business interactions; what with the fan page and group participation opportunities that no other site offers. LinkedIn and Google's Buzz have a few features that may grow over time but I feel that they have a while to go before they catch up with Facebook. 
 

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Posted in facebook, Google, Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »

Social Media Marketing Blog: Mobile TV with AT&T’s LG Arena SmartPhone

February 20th, 2010

Social networking and mobile TV, the two most touted features of AT&T's LG Arena are coming to you soon. Starting February 26th, AT&T will begin selling the LG Arena with Qualcomm's MediaFLO chip in its online store. The LG Arena will have a 3-inch WVGA touchscreen and also a 5 megapixel camera.

 

 
LG-Arena-ATT-Mobile-TV

 
So you can watch live and time-shifted programming from most major networks and their affiliates including ABC, CBS, CNBC, COMEDY CENTRAL, Disney, ESPN, FOX, MTV, NBC, and many more. Last but not the least, the LG Arena offers a full browser through which you can network on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace.

So what will all this cost you?

The LG Arena will cost $250 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate may be available. The Mobile TV is available for an additional $10 per month over the monthly contract that you get for yourself.
 
The LG Arena is AT&T Mobile TV-capable, which means that subscribers will be able to enjoy FLO TV content from TV channels like ABC, CBS, Disney Channel, Comedy Central, Fox, MTV and NBC.

Hmmm. So my cell phone plan is coming up for renewal soon. Should I get the iphone (Yeah, we're a minority who haven't succumbed to the iphone bug yet)? Or now do I just get the AT&T LG Arena?

Decisions, decisions, decisions!

 

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Posted in Mobile Phones | 7 Comments »

Social Media Blog: Ecommerce Shopping Using Smartphones: Is Your Website Mobile Compatible?

February 19th, 2010

Wow! I shop online using my phone but even I was surprised to read that online shopping in the US tripled between 2008 to 2009, according to ABI Research which released its Mobile Commerce report last week.They also predict that 2010 will see a sharp increase in online commerce (shopping).

According to ABI Research, approximately $1.2 billion dollars in trade took place using smartphones and in 2010 that number is expected to double.  Consumers shopping online frequently do impulse buying
But the trend goes beyond comparison shopping. The report shows that consumers are using their smartphones for impulse shopping such as buying video games and social networking games. Also items like pizza and flowers were quick purchase items via mobile phone.
 
The reason this is an easy way to shop is because consumers can pay for these items simply by entering their phone number. No credit card is required because the charge is added to the user's cell phone bill which is then deducted from their monthly billing.

International ecommerce trade is predicted to grow as well as mobile usage is gaining popularity across the world. The report predicts that internationally, users will spend around $119 billion by 2015.

So double-WOW! The question that begs an answer is how will retailers begin taking advantage of this trend in online ecommerce? So many companies are still not actively accepting online payments from the web, never mind from mobile phones. It's time for retailers to spruce up their web presence and make sure that their website not only accepts online payment but also is mobile compatible to accept mobile orders. So get set pizza parlors, icecream shops, florists, car washes, and companies that deal in impulse or casual items for sale. It's time to get online and mobile!
 

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Posted in Internet Marketing, Mobile Shopping | 2 Comments »

Social Media Blog: More on Google Buzz!

February 15th, 2010

So I finally got around to checking out Google's Buzz. It allows convenient sharing of pictures, videos, and full links. And Buzz is like Twitter without the 140 characters, YAY!

Not quite like a full blogging platform, Buzz also allows setting up of groups of followers to post to. The format for posting is very fluid. You can comment on a Buzz in the Buzz folder or via an email or chat if the user and you are both on GTalk. Interestingly, you can also edit your messages later on. So you may find posts changed at a later time. Buzz interface collapses multiple posts from the same user by default. If you use IMAP, buzzes will appear as regular emails in your inbox. If enabled, Buzz on mobile shares your location down to street level with other Buzz users.

But over and over again, users in the social networks continued to criticize the Buzz for features that were encroaching on user privacy.

And so over the weekend, Google apologized to its users for those privacy intruding features and announced product changes. Basically Buzz allows users a ready-made circle of friends which was based on a user's most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Google announced that in the future, it will merely suggest a group of people rather than make them immediately available to the new user.
 
By turning off the auto-follow, Google has been able to quieten down the uproar to some extent. Google also plans to make the following changes to Buzz:

  • Creating a new Buzz tab in Gmail’s settings page to allow users to hide Buzz. This will allow users to disable Buzz.
  • Disabling auto-connect to picasa albums and items shared on Google reader.

Oh and Google announced that within the first 48 hours of its launch, "tens of millions of people" had tried Buzz. I was one of them!!!

Posted in Branding | 3 Comments »

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