@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Social Media Topics

What is a Creative Commons License?

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With so much business being conducted online these days, it has become imperative to have methods to protect and copyright our works in a manner just as remote as how it was posted. Regardless of whether your work is writing, photography, or even coding or programming, you will want a means to ensure that regardless of what happens with those items, you are given credit for producing them.

When you apply for a Creative Commons license you can keep the copyright to your work, while allowing others to copy or distribute you work, as long as they give you proper credit, on the conditions you get to specify. You may choose to offer your work freely with no desire for crediting, or you may determine exactly the manner in which you want to be credited regardless of its use.

There are some more reputable websites that can help you to create your licensing for your work.

CreativeCommons.org  is an example of a reputable licensing site. You are able to choose a license and once done they will provide you with an HTML tag that will list your work as copyright restricted. However, CreativeCommons is not a registrar and will not retain records of your selections.

Flickr.com also offers create commons licensing and the format to help you protect your work. Flickr and CreativeCommons both have things in common. Their licensing types mirror one another perfectly.

CreativeCommons offers the following licensing options.

  • Attribution: An attribution license will let others tweak, change, build on, remix, distribute or otherwise alter your work, they also have to credit you for the original creation in the manner you request.
  • Attribution NoDerivatives: This particular license allows for commercial and non-commercial use, as well as redistribution, however, it must remain unchanged and all credit must go to you.
  • Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike: Like Attribution, users can tweak, alter, build on and distribute, however, they must credit you and license their own product or creation under identical terms.
  • Attribution ShareAlike: An attribution sharealike license will allow others to alter, tweak and otherwise build upon your original work for commercial purposes. They must however, credit you and license their own agreement under the same terms.
  • Attribution NonCommercial: Others can tweak, alter, rebuild or build upon your work for non-commercial purposes. Any new works should acknowledge the original creator and also be non-commercial.
  • Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives: The most restrictive license, this one only allows others to download or otherwise save your works and even share them with others as long as you are properly credited. This license does not permit users to alter your original creation in any way.

If you are new to creative commons licensing it may be important to read up before making the decision on your license choices.

This is also likely to be one part of your copyright policy and protection practices, an example of how this is used as part of a policy or image see: Copyright Info

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News and Social Media: The “New Media Press”?

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Social media has, without a doubt, changed how the established news media is handling The News. It has changed traditional media in the most important aspects; news gathering, news reporting and news distribution.

Factitious Example not a real press pass or any real affiliation.

  • News Gathering

One of the biggest benefits of social media is how quickly information can be discovered and shared. News organizations no longer are the main source of news, and they don’t “own” the news.

61% of adults get their news online – making it the third most popular news platform. Reporters have transformed from being the gatekeepers of information to gatherers of content from within a public space. Crowd sourcing it is called – the media of the masses, citizen journalism.

A number of top news stories were covered thanks to citizen journalism. The US plane which landed in the Hudson River, was first announced on Twitter. Twitter was also vital in the coverage of the Iranian elections and the unrest that followed.

  • New Reporting

The immediate and intimate coverage of the social media has inspired news organizations to create their own social media platforms. News agencies have come under tremendous pressure to beat citizen journalists by breaking news on the social wire. Social media enables real time updates. Readers get the information much faster thanks to sites like Twitter and Facebook. And that is especially significant in places were the regime controls the mainstream media and the internet; in Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain for example. Rulers can no longer control the information their Subjects get, and the latest turmoil in the Middle East made it proof positive.

  • Blogs

Debate continues to the role and validity of bloggers. However, Social Media pioneer Erik Qualman made great examples of how bloggers can provide more accurate and timely information then traditional news sources. While the debate continues around their practice and standards, one could argue that those that call themselves professionals have just as many examples of poor professional practices as with which we have seen in the blog-o-sphere. The blogger is likely to be a writer of specific content within a specific community or genre, their work is fueled by passion, which makes it hard to believe they do not have valuable insight or a pivotal role to play in the age of the New Media.

  • News Distribution

Today’s news readers have very different expectations from content providers. News sites are embracing the importance of community by integrating social features. It is estimated that 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about them or spread a news item.

News organizations have embraced social media to spread their content through Facebook, Twitter, Digg and others. Since news has extended beyond the typed word and now encompasses multiple media formats like video, podcasts, live streaming and cellphone images, the kind of news media you get depends on your attention span.

The integration between mainstream media and social media was never more apparent than in the case of Al Jazeera network which is headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Not many people in the USA get that channel; it is not included in many cable packages. Yet, when the last events in Egypt enfolded and it became too dangerous for Western journalists to gather the news, Al Jazeera reporters were on the ground, among the crowd. Their reporting got to the world via Twitter and other social media platforms utilized by Al Jazeera, not through the mainstream media. A few days later the Al Jazeera office in Cairo was torched.

Journalists like Nicholas Kristof who writes for the New York Times, uses his Facebook page to add personal observations to what he writes for the official publication.

 “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people of Facebook versus the 2 million of Fox.” said CNN president Jon Klein, in March 2010. The integration of social media into the news media is so deeply entwined today, that it is inseparable.

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Lessons in Social Marketing and PR Disasters

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While it is true that smart social marketing can increase your business, it is just as easy to make mistakes that can cost your business in customers and reputation. It is important to learn from mistakes done by others and try not to repeat them.

Mistakes by small business owners frequently go unnoticed by the media. But when a big company does a faux-pas, the media is all over them like a wet suit.

A few examples:

  • BP: Trying to do damage control in the aftermath of the oil spill, BP started pouring money into advertising and public relations. During that time, they drastically increased the amount of the PPC (Pay Per Click). Their logo stared at you from many search result pages, increasing the resentment many people felt towards the company. On another level, they had a hacker. Someone started a fake BP Twitter account and posted satirical tweets about the situation. Things like “Look, cut us some slack. We’ve kinda just been winging the whole ‘deepwater drilling’ thing.” Social Media sites level the playing field and the company could do nothing about it. The fake account had over 200,000 followers and the real BP account had about 15,000. Today the fake Twitter account went dormant, and the real BP is up and updating regularly.
  • Nestle and Greenpeace: Nestle is a big company with many interests, thus is makes it easier to target. When Nestle announced a new product that includes Palm Oil, Greenpeace launched a campaign protesting against the palm oil because the production causes detrimental environmental effects, and cut on the habitat of orangutans. Nestle tried, unsuccessfully, to take their video down from YouTube and that caused the rage of many. People started commenting disparaging remarks on the company’s Facebook page. The company became defensive and posted “We welcome your comments, but please don’t post using a altered version of any of our logos as your profile picture – they will be deleted.” Becoming defensive and arrogant on social media will almost always turn out badly. Nestle eventually apologized, but the damage was done.
  • AT&T: A disgruntled customer wrote an e mail to the CEO of the company, complaining about the way he was treated. After sending two e mails, he heard nothing back from the CEO, but did hear back from the legal department threatening him with legal action if he will not cease and desist sending e mails to the CEO. The customer took it to the blogosphere and to Twitter and even posted the recording of the legal department. The story went viral and was picked up by news organizations. AT & T apologized, but the damage was done.
  • Honda: When Honda launched its hybrid “Crosstour” it gave a sneak peak of the design on its Facebook page. Fans were not impressed and wrote about it. One follower posted an extremely positive remark, and proclaimed how much he loved the design. It didn’t take long for fans to discover that the poster is no other than Honda’s Product Manager. Resorting to deception, Honda attracted the anger of fans. It apologized for using that tactic.
  • Domino’s Pizza: You probably remember the video which was uploaded to YouTube by Domino’s employee, showing what one employee does with the cheese (he stuffed it in his nose before putting it on the pizza). The video went viral and was picked up by the news media. Even though Domino’s swore that pizza was never delivered, it suffered a big financial loss. This is a good example of the destructive power of social media. It took Domino’s weeks to straighten things out, and this one video cost them a lot of money in customer loyalty.

 

What Does this mean?

Businesses and Organizations better get a handle on Social Media in a proactive way, policies need to be developed that invest time into employee education about social media. This provides two opportunities, first it helps prevent events and issues like this from taking place in the first place. Second, and more importantly, it provides companies with the opportunity to use the new media sources as tools for communication, outreach and sales.

Taking a proactive approach allows a company to develop a history of interaction and creates a more complete picture of its practices and personnel. This is useful in two big ways: It helps challenge bad media as it ends up one touch point or instance in a mist of values of positive history. It also educates a staff on how to handle an issue based on which form of new media the issue developed.

“Look at the New Media as a opportunity not a threat, in most cases it provides a chance to have a business, organization or individual shine, displaying who they are and what they can do. Now that’s credibility and value!” Basil C. Puglisi

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Social Media Analytics

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Social Media Analytics – Can They Be Measured and Tracked Accurately?

Since social media is one of the toughest things to justify in terms of ROI, current analytics simply are not well suited to measure this data accurately. There are many tools available that all propose to offer the most accurate results, better than any other tool available. This can create the notion that all you may need is the one wonderful tool. However, it is likely this sort of approach that has created inaccurate statistical results and other anomalies that prevents power users from building a proper foundation for analytics.

Some of the best ways to track you social media are:

  • Try Mashable Digg Analysts Tools.
  • Want to find out what people are talking about on Facebook? Soon to return should be Facebook Lexicon.
  • Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard can be a helpful tool and the first line of defense in brand management.
  • For those interested in mining social medias for hot and trending keywords should try buzz pocket mining tools.
  • Keotag is great for tracking tag usage.

However, remember that at best even these tools are limited to minimal measurement of brand mentions and tracking.

Additionally, it is important to remember not only the number of friends or followers on your lists when making statistical calculations, you must also take into account how strong those relationships are, which is once again an immeasurable aspect.

One of the strongest reasons for why analytics aren’t always suited to measuring social media effects properly is that the logs or even JavaScript tags are recorded from each visitor, which is where the fancy analytical information comes from. The problem is, what it needs to be able to read is all of your friends and followers minds. Back to square one again when you consider it that way, and you will continue to end up back there over and again until mind or mood reading technology becomes available.

I suppose that may be a slight exaggeration, but truly it is not as far off or as far out as it sounds. The point is, is that what you want to measure, record and analyze is the actual network of friends and followers. So although there are tons of helpful tools available, many of which provide incredible analytics for many aspects of your social media projections, the main thing you really need seems to continually go back to basics, and those basics still require a human behind the wheel. So what are some of the ways you can encourage social media networking on your own sites?

  • Send some business there way
  • Link to them
  • Answer questions they may ask
  • Send them helpful messages, not spam
  • Add them to your list or lists you support
  • Link to or shared their profile with your own users
  • Acknowledged accomplishments posted by them

I once posted about the blog statistics referring to 1000 visitors, in return I got questions like how many unique, how long did they stay, where did they come from, etc, etc  but none of these provided value for why I used the blog, after all if I have visits that I know are not mine, those visits consistently grow then the detail numbers are not as important as one would think. I found value in that if my blog had 100 page views today, that even if that was only 30 unique visitors, that those 30 unique visitors are stronger and more valuable than the 100 unique visitors with 110 page views that the next guy got. In this case my visitors where not brought to my blog on false pretences, my visitors found value in what was there. This is why they stayed and visited more than the page they landed on… this is success because I have caught their attention beyond the initial media that brought them here… now engaging them in comments, tweets and so on is another story.

So although once again, many of the social media tools have their purposes, the absolute best way to make sure your social media is effective for you and your business, is to build and measure relationships, their growth and their strengths. That is the best place you can focus on analyzing.

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Foursquare – Location Marketing and Check-in Technology

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Although the knowledge of location marketing may be old news to some, to those who are just tuning into the usage of Smartphones and as well as other advanced mobile digital equipment, it may be an entirely new concept to others.

I did an article about FourSquare a few months ago, but in review I thought it be useful to take a bigger step back and reevalute this so new visitors could see a better picture, or blog! (Original Blog Entry – Promotional Social Interactive – FourSquare)

Simple Concept?

It is indeed as simple as it sounds. Location marketing is marketing that is targeted to people based solely on their geographic location. With GPS available on Smartphones, this type of marketing is not only much more realistic, but much more lucrative. With the huge influx of Smartphones and other similar mobile devices, location sharing services seem to be drawing a large crowd.

Foursquare was quite possibly the first location marketing and sharing service to succeed. With Foursquare, Smartphone users can check in with nearby friends and family as well as take advantage of possible discounts from other Foursquare members in the area. With a unique rewards system that encourages users to take advantage of its features, it seems to have no trouble keeping many users rapt.

Who is Taking Advantage of Foursquare?

Although there are certainly specific demographics, usage can also vary depending on aspects of each locale. The statistical answer is that only around 4% of web users were utilizing the location-sharing services available to them, however, this still amounts to around 38.9 million people, certainly no small market. It is predicted that location-sharing services are expected to double between the years of 2010 and 2015.

Currently primary users are mostly younger men who use it to check in all around town to some of their favorite places, or with their favorite people. Over 70% of reporting male internet users between 18 and 34 say they have previously or currently use their location-sharing services capabilities. Females around the same ages report about a 64% usage of the same services.

Foursquare Highlights

The lady hunter. Wheretheladies.at uses Foursquare to do one simple thing, locate the ladies in the locale. Foursquare will actually retrieve public data from locations nearby and direct you towards the one with the highest density of ladies. Talking about tracking down the ladies! However, I think this is just technologically advanced enough to be considered unique and cool, and not stalky and worrisome.

  • National Foursquared?

The National Archives and Records Administration has been Foresquared. You can now check in at the George W. Bush library with Foursquare. You can now say you have step foot into the place where all former presidents have deposited some of the most important papers and archives associated with their terms. The claim is that by joining Foursquare with the National Archives, social medias can help to invite users to learn more about their nations history.

  • Check into Dinner

While McDonalds and Dominos have reported relatively good check in responses, there has been no real measure taken of just how good, and why it mattered. Even these corporate giants have no idea how many additional people, or extra sales the check in offer even generates.

  • The Best Check in Ever, The Big Game

The Superbowl has Foursquared itself too. On the recent Superbowl they created a special Foursquare badge that has fans checking in and being given a code that can be redeemed at NFL shops for up to 20% off of their merchandise.

  • Foursquare My School

Syracuse University became the third school to gain its own badge that users were able to unlock by checking in. Harvard and Stanford Universities also have their own badges as well.

There is no doubt that this kind of marketing capability could mean endless possibilities, and an endless flow of people in your area looking for your own products or services. It seems like it is just a matter of technology in mobile devices becoming more common in worldwide users, that may be preventing Foursquare from turning into a widespread GPS type of service that only directs us to where we actually want to go.

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Facebook Success Stories

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We have heard and read a lot about Facebook, about its 500 million users, about it overtaking Google as the most visited site per day. But what does it have to do with your small business? Those businesses who don’t have a department for social media? Can Facebook help small businesses expend above and beyond what they could have done with traditional advertisement?

Facebook enables business owners reach their targeted audience. With users profile information posted and open for all to see, with details about their hometown, relationship and employment status, interests, religious affiliation, education and favorite books , TV shows and movies – small businesses  can target their potential customers.

Here are some success stories from different walks of life:

Sprinkles Cupcakes – Los Angeles. A small cupcake store opened in Los Angeles. To get the word around, the owners, both former investment bankers, turned to Facebook. Every day they post a ‘code word’ on their page and give a free cupcake to the first 50 customers who whisper that word. Their fan base grew and they now have 254,785 followers and branches in other cities across the US. “Be patient with it.” Mr. Nelson, one of the owners, advises. ”People are not going to flock to your social media site overnight. Technology is about the network effect. It takes time for those connections to build.”

Wedding Photography – Mr. Meyer is a wedding photographer from Woodbury, Minnesota. He had very little luck with traditional advertising. A full page ad in a bridal magazine didn’t bring any new clients, and a trade show yielded only 4 bookings, not even covering the cost of the booth. So he turned to Facebook. Aiming at women ages 22-28 who listed their status as “engaged” in the Minneapolis – St Paul area, he connected with them and offered to join his page. Mr. Meyer estimates he spent about $300 on Facebook ads in the past 2 years and has generated about $60,000 in business. The majority of his clients now come from Facebook, either from ads or from recommendations.

Equine Dentist – Mr. Geoff Tucker from Palm City, Florida, has a very specific business. He’s a dentist for horses. His business is driven by word of mouth and personal recommendations. People like to do business in his profession with people they know and Facebook allowed him to express himself and let people know him. That led to appearances in a magazine, radio and TV. Over the past year, he estimates, Facebook has generated about 100 leads and 10-15 new customers he would not have had without a page on Facebook.

SteelMaster – of Norfolk Va. deals with steel structures.  About a year and half ago they decided to go on Facebook. What does a steel company do on a social media? They found that posting pictures of their constructions is very helpful. Not only do the pictures engage existing customers, they demonstrate to potential customers what the company can do in other areas. In this case, chicken farmers and woodworkers that usually don’t think about using steel structures, suddenly showed interest. It opened a new market for SteelMaster which they didn’t have before.

Neenah Paper – the manufacturer of high quality paper products found it extremely hard to reach new customers. Their traditional ways of making business, phone conversations and personal meetings, were not working very well. Since most of their customers; designers, graphic artists and printers spend a lot of time on their computers, they thought that social media can provide a better way to engage them. Today they have 10 sales representatives across the country and their business is on the upswing. “Social media is an invitation to have a conversation. You’re getting permission to have a conversation – a conversation that used to happen in person.” says Jamie Saunders, Neenah’s marketing manager.

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Twitter: A five year review

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Here is what everybody is talking about: Twitter. Twitter is a free social network, which enables its users to write what’s on their mind, at any given moment, at any given place, and share it with a group of their friends.

It is called micro-blogging because the “tweets”, as the messages are called, have a limit of 140 characters. People send and receive tweets through the Twitter website, or, with the help of external applications,  through cell phones (SMS), smartphones, iPad etc.  Users may subscribe to other user tweets and become their “followers”. An e-mail or other kind of alert is sent every time that member posted a new tweet. You can reply to someone and engage in conversation back and forth in real time (Just like SMS).

Users can post links as well. It may be a link to an interesting article or a link to their personal, more elaborate, blog. Posting a link is a little bit tricky since some of the URLs are longer than 140 characters. To make it easy, the Twitter button on many sites shorten the URL for users, or they can do it through an external website (Tinyurl.com) if they so choose.

There are many reasons why people use Twitter.com; some sign in to get updates from their friends, young adults sign in to get updates from their favorite star (Justin Beiber is the # 1 subject tweeted about). Newspapers use Twitter.com to spread the news fast, businesses use Twitter to keep in touch with their clients and let them know about promotions and discounts. Tweets about news may include a link to the whole article and blog owners tweet to let their followers know that a new post has been uploaded.

The idea for Twitter was conceived by Jack Dorsey when he was part of the board of directors of a podcasting company called Odeo. The first prototype was used at Odeo as an internal service. A few months after Twitter.com went public, some members of Odeo board formed a new company and bought Odeo and Twitter from the investors and shareholders. Twitter became its own company in April 2007.

It has been 4 ½ years since its launch, in July 2006. Today, Twitter.com is processing 65 million tweets a day – about 2 billion tweets per month.

Activity on the site spikes during International events like the 2010 FIFA World Cup, or the Lakers win in NBA 2010 finals. When Michael Jackson died, the servers crashed when users used the words ‘Michael Jackson’ at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.

Twitter is sometimes called SMS of the internet age or Facebook for the ADD age. It’s short, quick and simple. Users can also retweet –tweeting what someone else has said. It’s a way  others give credit to the person who produced the original tweet.

Privacy – why would you like to be private? The whole purpose of tweets is to let people know what’s on your mind. Well, you might not want all your tweets to be seen by all your contacts on your ‘following list’. Once you choose the option ‘private’, you’ll have to approve all those that the tweet is meant to reach.

Since micro blogging became very popular the last few years, people started to think how to make money using Twitter. Today there are several companies with which users can sign up and sell advertising space on their Twitter profile or tweet stream.  Advertisers will pay the owners of a Twitter page to let them promote their business on their page, but the users allow them access to their accounts. In one model, the company places an advertisement on the profile page, and on others it will insert advertising directly into the stream of conversation. Many people however find this to be offensive.

Smart use of Twitter.com

Newark Mayor Corey Booker, got $100 million for Newark schools through keeping himself visible and in the conversation. In the recent snow storms he turned himself into a one man snow patrol by asking people who are stuck in the snow to tweet him. That is how he keeps in touch with the residents of his city.

For businesses, there are a few ways to utilize Twitter:

  • Creating a buzz: Tweet about events you are going to participate in. Talking about a new product, a launch, etc. The simple fact that activity is news in real time means that there is value in knowing where you are, what you’re doing, or even who else you see doing it.
  • Develop On Demand Promotions: One company that is very successful on Twitter is the San Francisco based ModCloth.com, seller of vintage clothing. They are in constant contact with their followers, even asking them what they would like to see on sale. Businesses can tweet about sales, specials etc.
  • Tweeting Teams or Teaming up with another account holder:  If you see an event coming or an important launch or promotion, you can help them by tweeting about it, and they agree to do the same for you. The best could be by leveraging employees as people and their own social networks, after all everyone always promotes themselves first and always to the people they know best, get your employees or clients to promote themselves and you for a big win!
  • Public Relations: Imagine the ability to counter public opinion by creating the next trend! A new company or new product is out, it may be the next success, but others are waiting trying to get a feel for the product or company. Using twitter to show the overwhelming trend of others that are buying, talking or investing into that product or company might seem mediocre on a local level at 2 to 3 sales a week, but if you can combine the reach of hundred or so local markets into one location the twitter feed would run at 5 – 10 sales an hour during a business day, how’s that for creating the next hot trend!

Info: Twitter.com ranks # 10 in the world in traffic, and # 8 in the USA, according to Alexa.com. The users tend to be childless, disproportionately highly educated. High income women ages 25 and 45 who browse from work are the majority of the users, but only by a little (48% men to 52% women). About 29% of users come from the United States.

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Facebook: A Seven Year Review

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What has not been said and written about Facebook?  Articles, numerous books and a movie -“Social Network”, which is nominated for this year’s Oscar awards. Mark Zuckerberg, the name and the face of Facebook was the subject of exposes and studies; how did a 20 some year old managed to create a company from his dorm room that is now estimated to be worth 50 billion dollars?

Facebook is a social network website, launched almost exactly 7 years ago (Feb. 4, 2004). This free access site is privately owned and operated by Facebook Inc. Each registered user gets a profile page on which s/he can write, post links and share experiences. Users can upload pictures, links to website they found interesting and stories they found fascinating. They can share it all with members of their circle of friends.

Users can join networks organized by businesses, workplaces, schools and connect and interact with other people. They can find friends from the past and make new connections.

Facebook has distinguished itself from its rivals partly because it offers a Spartan design ethos and limits how users can change the appearance of their profile page. This cuts down on visual clutter and threats like spam which plagued social sites. Many analysts see Facebook as the default platform of a new age of information organized around personal relationships.

Throughout the years, this social network has transformed from a college only social club to the most popular website in the world. With over 500 million users it overtook Google as the most visited website, and is a broadly popular online destination, used by teenagers and adults of all ages. In country after country Facebook is cementing itself as the leader, often displacing other social networks, much in the same way it overtook MySpace in the US.

The headquarters moved to Palo Alto from Harvard University in June 2004. In September of that year the Group Application was added and the Wall made its debut. By the end of this first year, TheFacebook, as it was called then, had 1 million users. The photo application was added in 2005 and at the end of that year Facebook had 5.5 million users.

In 2006 Facebook mobile debuted, the Facebook Platform was launched, Note Application and News Feed. By the end of the year it has 12 million users.

2007 saw the launch of Ads, apps and Platform. Facebook invited third party software makers to create programs for the company and to make money on advertising alongside them. The announcement drew many programmers and hundreds of new features or social application were creates. From games to music and photo sharing tools, which turbo charged the site.  But users were complaining about the privacy settings that were visible to all.

In 2008 Facebook adds privacy controls to ‘friends’ lists, launches Chat and Facebook Connect. In

2009 it introduced the “Like” feature and acquired FriendFeed.  By the end of the year Facebook had 350 million users.

2010 – Facebook Places was launched and Messages arrived in an attempt to expand from a social network into a full-fledged communications system. E mails, text messaging and chat through a single point is what Facebook was after. Time magazine names Mark Zuckerberg “Person of the Year” and the movie debuted.

At the beginning of 2011 – Facebook is valued at $50 billion, when it raises 500 million from Goldman-Sacks and a Russian investor.

Facebook policies, more than those of any other company, are the ones to define standards for privacy in the internet age.

Many companies tried to buy Facebook and were met with a tough refusal. In 2006 Yahoo tried to buy the company for $1 billion. The company earned $335 million on 1.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2010, but that is only a rumor, Zuckerberg keeps those numbers close to the vest.

Facebook built its lead not only through savvy design but also by rapid deployment of features that increased the site’s appeal. And indeed as statistics shows, 88% of people around the world are aware of Facebook.

As for active users,  males make 46% of Facebook users, and it is spread almost evenly between age groups; 11% of the users are 13-17 olds, 29% are 18-25, 23% between the ages of 26-34, 18% 35-44 and 12% between 45 and 54. It is also spread evenly between levels of education.

This goes to show that the success of Facebook lies in the fact that it reaches all ages and all nationalities. Their constant innovation and additions in the form of apps and programs is what keeps the company ahead of the game.

Well established companies have been using Facebook in different and interesting ways; As a promotion tool; a campaign by Gap for a giveaway of 10,000 pair of jeans was announced only on Facebook. The pants were gone as soon as the stores opened. Calvin Klein regularly announces sales and posts coupons. As of Nov. 15 they have 332,521 ‘friends’.

As for brand engagement – Taco Bell is responsive to fan comments and has generated strong positive feedback when it posts promotions. Zara, the clothing chain, has 1,581,000 fans; Target has 588,300 fans and engages its audience with votes about charitable donations. MTV has 1,146,737 fans and engages its audience with a fast moving page and consistent fan engagement. So does Pizza Hut with its over 1 million fans.

With so many active users Facebook has established a new way of communication, a new way of maintaining relationships and a new way in advertising. The company still turns down offers to buy them and plan, as the speculation goes, to go public in 2012.

 

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Social Brand Visibility: OldDogg.com

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Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a company called Netscape. Founded in 1994, it was a US computer services company known for its web browser.  Netscape was once dominant in usage share, had some interesting and vital improvements, like JavaScript that enables users to see the result of coding. Unfortunately it lost the war to Internet Explorer, in what is called The First Browser War.

Netscape became a subsidiary of AOL after the giant purchased the company in 2007. It was acquired as a bargaining chip, people believed, against Microsoft, trying to show the big company they can spread their wings and be less dependent on web browsing.

AOL later filed a law suit against Microsoft which was settled out of court with Microsoft paying $750 million to AOL. A month later Netscape was disbanded. What was left of Netscape evolved into Propeller.com, a Social Media aggregator, similar to another social network, Digg.com.  In both cases, users submit stories and members can vote them up or down. The most ‘liked’ stories make the front page. It also enables other users to comment on the story and create a conversation chain.

Unfortunately Propeller did not live up to its promise and failed to attract enough following.  In 2010 this massage was posted on their site:

“As of October 2010, Propeller will no longer be active. To the loyal users of this site, we extend our thanks. Keep talking about the news that matters most to you, and share it with your friends, both online and off. Team Propeller”.

But one man’s misfortune can be another man’s gain, if you can read the map correctly and the stars are aligned:

Digg.com came out with a disliked Version 4 at the beginning of October, which created a user revolt. Users really did not like the new version. Propeller was gone, leaving more users looking for a new platform.

BigDogg.com was launched. The site got 27,000 votes and 1,500 comments in just 25 days. Former Digg.com users are now top users of OldDogg.com.

OldDogg.com was created by a 27 year old graduate student from the UK, after a Twitter conversation. It took him 4 hours to put it all together and upload it, and it went live. 20 hours later the site had an active user base.

It basically works the same as Propeller did; users submit links to stories, images and videos from all around the net. The links are voted up or down by popular voice and communication between users in available in the form of comments and conversations.

This sets the stage to the biggest competition: Digg.com or Olddogg.com?

Looking at both home pages you’ll find that the new guy – the Old Dogg – is much more user friendly and more visually appealing. The stories are well defined and easy to read.

Its audience tends to be those of childless men, with a moderate to high income, who are browsing from home.

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Social Brand Visibility: Ning

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Ning is another kind of social network. Subscribing to the network allows user create their own social networks around specific interest, with their own design, choice of features and members database. The central idea is that anyone can create his own social network.

Founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, the site went public in October 2005. In 2007 Ning.com raised $44 million in venture capital, and an additional $60 million a year later.

Ning labels itself as a place where content intersects with conversations to inspire action. Every social network created through Ning comes with social integration tools, community features, design tools and monetization solutions which are ready for use.

It can create a virtual office for supporters and volunteers and empower citizens to become organizers, raise money, or mobilize votes.

Ning’s categories include: politics, entertainment, consumer brands, small business, non-profit organization and education, among others. The site connects about 80 million people around the world talking about the things they are most passionate about.

The biggest competitors to Ning are Facebook, MySpace and other social media platforms. Unlike Facebook, for example, which gives its users a template of how the site should look, Ning has no templates and allows the users freedom to create the look and feel of their site just as they want it to be. It also provides all the analytics and data they might need. This is especially important for businesses.

Since April 2010 there has been a change in Ning.com. The site which was up till then a free service had ceased being free and is now a fully paid site. It has three levels of paid services with different features, viral tools and different levels of customer support.

In June 2010 Ning was recognized as one of the hottest Silicon Valley Companies. In October of that year it launched Ning Everywhere and has mobile apps monetized and integrated with cloud services in a matter of a few clicks.

Most of the traffic for Ning comes from the US (39.2%) followed, with a big dip by India (5.7%) and the UK (4.2%). Most of the users are between the ages of 35-44 with the next age group, 45-54, closely behind. The majority of the users are women, with no children, using the site from work.

The word NING in Chinese means “peace”.

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