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Archivi mensili: luglio 2010
The Social Habit: Who Uses Social Media and How
By PAM DYER
Edison Research just released its latest report on social network usage. The study compares the behavior and demographics of frequent users of social media to those of the population at large. The data is based on a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,753 Americans (including 371 mobile phone interviews) ages 12+ conducted in February, 2010.
Here are the principal findings from the report:
1. With both usage of social networks and the frequency of that usage increasing dramatically, we are truly witnessing a sea change in how mainstream consumers communicate.
2. Though social networking is rapidly becoming more common throughout the wider population, it is still most popular among the young; students are especially overrepresented.
3. Women are bigger social media users than men.
4. The biggest social networkers are, unsurprisingly, more likely to be big Internet users and early-adopters of new gadgets. But they still think the mobile phone is the technology that has had the biggest impact on their lives.
5. Frequent social networkers are also more likely to update their status on those networks — i.e., create content online — which has implications for word-of-mouth marketing and search.
6. Not only are frequent social networkers posting more status updates, they are also more likely to follow brands/companies than the average social media user — which makes identifying and appealing to those with the “social habit” crucial for brands.
7. Mobile access to social media is almost certainly a significant contributor to frequency of usage.
8. The data for frequent social networkers’ usage of podcasts, online video, and online audio supports the assumption that a significant amount of content is being consumed on-demand, potentially at the point where such content is shared.
9. Americans with “the social habit” are watching significantly less traditional television, but potentially consuming (and sharing) more “video” through alternative means.
Social Media From A to Z: A Glossary
di Pam Dyer
The social media landscape is changing quickly, and it’s filled with terms that are strange to those who aren’t familiar with it. But never fear! Here’s a quick guide to some of the terms you may encounter. This list will constantly evolve — please add other terms in the comments below and I’ll be happy to incorporate them.
A
Application Programing Interface (API): An API is a documented interface that allows one software application to to interact with another application. An example of this is the Twitter API.
Atom: Web feeds are used by the blogging community to share recent entries’ headlines, full text, and even attached multimedia files. These providers allow other Web sites to incorporate the blog’s “syndicated” headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds under various usage agreements. Atom and other Web syndication formats like RSS are now used for many purposes, including journalism, marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications. Atom also provides a standard way to export an entire blog, or parts of it, for backup or for importing into other blogging systems.
Avatar: An Avatar is an image or username that represents a person online within forums and social networks.
B
BackType: BackType is a social media analytics company that helps companies measure their social engagement. The service began as a blog comment search engine.
Bit.ly: Bit.ly is a popular free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Use it to condense long URLs and make them easier to share on social networks like Twitter.
Blip.TV: Blip.TV is a online video sharing site. It offers both a free and a paid platform for individuals and companies who want to host an online video show.
Blog: Blog is a word that was created from the two words “Web log”. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Blogger: Blogger is a free blogging platform owned by Google that allows individuals and companies to host and publish a blog.
Blog Talk Radio: Blog Talk Radio is a free Web application that allows users to host live online radio shows.
BoardReader: BoardReader is a free search engine that allows users to search for keywords only in posts and titles of online forums.
Box.net: Box.net enables users to organize and view all of their content online in a familiar file and folder structure. Possibilities include sharing content with direct links to files and folders, turning any folder into a public Web page in one click, and creating widgets to share files on a company Web page or blog.
Boxee: Boxee is a social video application that enables users to watch online videos on their TVs and computers. Users can share and watch videos from a variety of online sources for free.
C
Chat: Chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but traditionally describes one-to-one communication through a text-based chat client commonly called an instant messaging application.
Collecta: Collecta is a real-time search engine that includes results from from blogs, microblogs, news feeds, and photo sharing services as they are published.
Collective Intelligence: Collective Intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision-making in social networks.
Comment: A comment is a response that is often provided as an answer of reaction to a blog post or message on a social network. Comments are a primary form of two-way communication on the social Web.
Compete: Compete is a Web-based application that offers users and businesses Web analytics and enables people to compare and contrast the statistics for different Web sites over time.
Craigslist: Craigslist is a popular online commerce site in which users sell a variety of goods and services to other users. The reduction of classified advertising in newspapers across the United States has been attributed to Craigslist.
Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. It provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, etc.
Crowdsourcing: A combination of the words crowd and outsourcing, it refers to asking a question via social media and collecting answers from your various communities and users. The term has become popular with businesses, authors, and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled byWeb 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals
D
Delicious: Delicious is a free online bookmarking service that lets users save Web site addresses publicly and privately online so that they can be accessed from any device connected to the Internet and shared with friends.
Digg: Digg is a social news Web site that allows members to submit and vote for articles. Articles with the most votes appear on the homepage of the site and subsequently are seen by the largest portion of the site’s membership as well as other visitors.
Disqus Comments: Disqus Comments is a comment system and moderation tool for a Web site or blog. It enables next-gen community management and social Web integrations to any site on any platform.
DocStoc: DocStoc is an online sharing service for documents. Users can view, upload, share and sell documents.
E
Eventbrite: Eventbrite provides online event management and ticketing services. EventBrite is integrated with Facebook, so users can also promote their events there to drive more visits to their event page and sell more tickets. The service is free to use if your event is free; if you sell tickets to your event, there is a small fee per ticket.
F
Facebook: Facebook is a social networking Web site. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 500 million users.
Flash Mob: A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via social media, viral e-mails, or phone.
Flickr: Flickr is a social network centered around online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, and other methods.
Forum: Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dial-up bulletin board system.
Foursquare: Foursquare is a location-based social networking Web site, software for mobile devices, and also a game. Users “check-in” at venues using a mobile Web site, text messaging, or a device-specific application — they’re then awarded points and sometimes “badges.”
FriendFeed: FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking Web sites, social bookmarking sites, blogs, and micro-blogging sites, as well as any other type of RSS/Atom feed. It’s possible to use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share, as well as originate new posts/discussions/comments with friends.
G
Google Buzz: Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool from Google, designed to integrate into the company’s Web-based e-mail program, Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages, and comments organized in “conversations” and visible in the user’s inbox.
Google Documents: Google Documents is a group of Web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations, and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online, and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.
Google Wave: Google Wave is a collaboration tool developed by Google as a next-generation solution to e-mail communication. A “wave” is a live, shared space on the Web where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
Gowalla: Gowalla is a social network in which friends share their locations and connect with others in close proximity to each other.
Groundswell: Groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. The bestselling book of the same name is based on analysis by Forrester Research, and includes practical, data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies like blogs, social networks, and YouTube.
H
Hashtag: Because Twitter provided no easy way to group tweets or add extra data, the Twitter community came up with their own way: hashtags. A hashtag is similar to other Web tags — it helps add tweets to a category. Hashtags have the ‘hash’ or ‘pound’ symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #socialmedia, #marketing, #hashtag.
hi5: hi5 is a social network focused on the youth market. It’s a social entertainment destination, with a focus on delivering a fun and entertainment-driven social experience online to users around the world.
HootSuite: HootSuite is a Web-based Twitter client for individuals and organizations. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and view metrics, and teams can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, and other social networks via Web, desktop, and mobile platforms. It helps organizations use the social Web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels.
I
IntenseDebate Comments: IntenseDebate is a third-party commenting system for blogs. Custom integration with your blogging admin panel makes moderation easy. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and FriendFeed integrations enrich reader experience.
Instant Messaging: Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling.
J
Joomla: Joomla is an open source content management system (CMS) which enables users to build Web sites and online applications. Many aspects, including its ease of use and extensibility, have made Joomla popular.
K
Kyte: Kyte is an online and mobile video application that provides video hosting and stream for both recorded and live video feeds.
L
Lifecasting: Lifecasting is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media. Typically, lifecasting is transmitted through the Internet and can involvethe use of wearable technology.
Like: A “Like” is an action that can be made by a Facebook user. Instead of writing a comment for a message or a status update, a Facebook user can click the “Like” button as a quick way to show approval and share the message.
Link Building: Link building is an aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) in which Web site owners develop strategies to generate links to their site from other Web sites in hopes of improving their search engine ranking. Blogging has emerged as a popular method of link building.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. LinkedIn had more than 70 million registered users in more than 200 countries.
Lurker: A lurker is a person who reads online discussions on a message board, newsgroup, social network, or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates in the discussion.
M
Mashable: Founded in 2005, Mashable is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology, and Web culture. With more than 25 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific news site reporting breaking web news, providing analysis of trends, reviewing new Web sites and services, and offering social media resources and guides.
Mashup: A content mashup contains multiple types of media drawn from pre-existing sources to create a new work. Digital mashups allow individuals or businesses to create new content by combining multiple online content sources.
MySpace: MySpace is a social networking Web site owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006, but it was overtaken by its primary competitor, Facebook, in April 2008.
N
News Reader: A news reader enables users to aggregate articles from multiple Web sites into one place usingRSS or Atom feeds. The purpose of these aggregators is to allow for a faster and more efficient consumption of information.
Newsvine: Newsvine is a social news site similar to Digg in which users submit and vote for stories to be shared and read by other members of the community.
O
Orkut: Orkut is a social networking Web site that is owned and operated by Google. It’s named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited Web sites in India and Brazil.
P
Pandora: Pandora is a social online radio station that allows users to create stations based on their favorite artists and types of music.
Permalink: A permalink is an address or URL of a particular post within a blog or Web site.
Podcast: A podcast, or non-streamed webcast, is a series of digital media files, either audio or video, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed.
Posterous: Posterous is a blogging and content syndication platform that allows users to post content from any computer or mobile device by sending an e-mail.
PostRank: PostRank monitors and collects social engagement data related to content around the Web. It helps publishers understand which type of content promotes sharing on the social Web.
Q
Qik: Qik is an online video streaming service that lets users to stream video live from their mobile phones to the Web.
Quantcast: Quantcast provides Web site traffic data and demographics. It is primarily used by online advertisers looking to target specific audiences.
R
Real-Time Search: Real-time search is the concept of searching for and finding information online as it is produced. Advancements in search technology coupled with the growing use of social media enable online activities to be queried as they occur, whereas a traditional Web search crawls and indexes Web pages periodically and returns results based on relevance to the search query.
Reddit: Reddit is a social news site similar to Digg and Newsvine. It’s built upon a community of users who share and comment on stories.
RSS: RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works — such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video — in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “Web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored Web sites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator“, which can be Web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.
S
Scribd: Scribd turns document formats such as PDF, Word, and PowerPoint into a Web document for viewing and sharing online.
Second Life: Second Life is an online virtual world. Users are called “residents” and they interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade virtual property and services with one another, and travel throughout the world.
Seesmic: Seesmic is a social software application site offering Seesmic Desktop, an Adobe Air application that integrates multiple Twitter accounts and your Facebook account and Facebook pages. Seesmic also offers a browser-based client for Twitter, a native Windows desktop client, and clients for mobile phones.
Sentiment: In the context of social media, sentiment refers to the attitude of user comments related to a brand online. There has been an explosion of free and paid social media monitoring tools that measure sentiment, including TweetMeme, HootSuite, and PostRank, to name a few.
SlideShare: SlideShare is an online social network for sharing presentations and documents. Users can favorite and embed presentations, as well as share them on other social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
Skype: Skype is a free program that enables text, audio, and video chats between users. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages, and share files with other Skype users. Users can also purchase plans to receive phone calls through their Skype account.
Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis, or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service.
Social Media Monitoring: Social media monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to social media mentions related to a business or brand.
Social Mention: Social Mention is a free social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the Web into a single stream of information.
StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is a free Web browser extension which acts as an intelligent browsing tool for discovering and sharing Web sites.
T
Tag Cloud: A tag cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, typically used to describe the content of Web sites.
Technorati: Technorati is a popular blog search engine that also provides categories and authority rankings for blogs.
TweetDeck: TweetDeck is an application that connects users with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
Tweetup: A Tweetup is an organized or impromptu gathering of people that use Twitter.
Twitter: Twitter is a platform that allows users to share 140-character-long messages publicly. User can “follow” each other as a way of subscribing to each others’ messages. Additionally, users can use the @username command to direct a message towards another Twitter user.
Twitter Search: Twitter Search is a search engine operated by Twitter to search for Twitter messages and users in real time.
Tumblr: Tumblr lets users share content in the form of a blog. Users can post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, or email.
TypePad: TypePad is a free and paid blogging platform similar to Blogger. It allows users to host and publish their own blogs.
U
Unconference: An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.
Ustream: Ustream is the leading live interactive broadcast platform that enables anyone with an Internet connection and a camera to engage their audience in a meaningful, immediate way. Unlike previous webcasting technology, Ustream uses a one-to-many model, which means that the user can broadcast to an audience of unlimited size.
V
Video Blog: A video blog (or vlog) is a blog the produces regular video content often around the same theme on a daily or weekly basis. An example of a successful video blog is Wine Library TV.
Viddler: Viddler is a popular video sharing site similar to YouTube and Vimeo in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others.
Vimeo: Vimeo is a popular video sharing service in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others. Vimeo user videos are often more artistic and the service does not allow commercial video content.
Viral Marketing: Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes.
W
Web 2.0: Web 2.0 is commonly associated with Web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the Web. A Web 2.0 site (e.g. Facebook) enables its users to interact with each other as contributors to the site’s content, in contrast to Web sites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information
Web Analytics: Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.
Webcast: A webcast is a media file distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webcasting is “broadcasting” over the Internet.
Webinar: A webinar is used to conduct live meetings, training, or presentations via the Internet. It is typically one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, such as in a webcast. A webinar can be collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter.
Widget: A widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or text box. Widgets are used on both Web sites and blogs.
Wiki: A wiki is a Web site that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages via a Web browser, enabling collaboration between users.
Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a free, Web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 15 million articles (over 3.3 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.
WordPress: WordPress is a content management system and contains blog publishing tools that allow users to host and publish blogs. This blog runs on WordPress and uses the Thesis theme.
X
Y
Yammer: Yammer is a business communication tool that operates as an internal Twitter-like messaging system for employees within an organization. It provides real-time communication and reduces the need for e-mail.
Yelp: Yelp is a social network and local search Web site that provides users with a platform to review, rate, and discuss local businesses. Over 31 million people access Yelp each month, putting it in the top 150 U.S. Internet websites.
YouTube: YouTube is a video-sharing Web site where users can upload, share, and view videos. It is the largest video sharing site in the world.
Z
Zoho: Zoho is a suite of online Web applications geared towards business productivity and collaboration.
Zooomr: Zooomr is a online photo sharing service similar to Flickr.
Europe’s Facebook Growth Moved East in June 2010
di Chris Morrison
[Editor’s Note: The data cited in this article is excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook’s business and growth around the world. Visit Inside Facebook Gold to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]
Growth for Facebook’s top countries in Europe dipped sharply in June of 2010, giving several eastern European countries that rarely break into the monthly top 10 a chance to show off their progress.
Germany, a central European country that has lagged its neighbors directly to the west, lead the pack with 403,860 new monthly active users. That equates to 4.2 percent growth for the month, which isn’t stellar. But the important detail here is that Germany’s growth has been fairly steady of late, instead of moving in fits and starts as it did earlier this year and last. Italy, also, is steady from May.
Surprisingly, Romania comes in third, with 253,360 new users — almost 20 percent growth for the country, in which only a third of the population is online at all, according to World Bank figures. Romania was also logging high growth earlier this year, then dropped off. But even moving in fits and spurts, it’s fast approaching 10 percent penetration.
Hungary, also, managed to claw its way up the rankings in June, along with Russia, which was actually shedding Facebook users for several months. There’s no telling whether Russia will continue growing or slip again — with under a single percentage point of penetration, Facebook is definitely not yet part of the Russian way of life, unlike a site like the Facebook doppelganger Vkontakte.
The rest of the European countries that saw decent growth in June aren’t remarkable this month, unless for their relatively lower rate of growth in June as compared to May. France, for instance, dropped from 1.4 million new MAU to 163,500 in June, while Turkey, which has been a reliable grower, isn’t present at all, having actually dropped a few thousand users. Such changes in growth from month to month are typical, though, and nothing to worry about yet.
Here’s the top 10 chart:
Greater Europe now has some 152 million members on Facebook, making up about a third of the social network’s total userbase. Its growth rate in June was 0.7 percent, leading to a total penetration of 23.5 percent.
Full data on Facebook’s audience growth throughout Europe and in countries around the world is presented in the July 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor report, available through Inside Facebook Gold. An Inside Facebook Gold membership also includes data on language growth, audience demographics by country, and user behavior stats for the Facebook business ecosystem. To learn more about the membership, please visitInside Facebook Gold.
10 domande e risposte sul marketing in Facebook
Di Davide
Brillante iniziativa di HubSpot che ha raccolto le dieci domande più ricorrenti ricevute nel webinar “The Science of Facebook Marketing“, le ha sottoposte al proprio team di esperti e ha pubblicato le risposte. Eccole qui!
1. Qual è il modo migliore per incoraggiare le interazioni sulla propria pagina?
Creare contenuti nuovi ed unici. Poca promozione e tante idee: è questa, per Mashable, la strada da seguire. I vostri visitatori non inizieranno mai a discutere di un argomento trito e ritrito.
2. Facebook etiquette: quanto spesso bisognerebbe rispondere ai fans?
Il più spesso possibile. Qui lo slogan vincente è “stay in touch”. I vostri seguaci hanno un problema o fanno delle osservazioni? Rispondete. Sarà dispendioso dal punto di vista del tempo, ma la vostra reputazione e le review ne risentiranno positivamente.
3. Una pagina è più efficace se abbina le immagini alle parole?
Certo, la grafica è importante. Un consiglio a questo proposito: lasciate gli utenti taggare le vostre foto.
4. Quanto spesso si dovrebbe postare su Facebook contenuti del proprio sito?
Fatelo anche sistematicamente se il vostro sito non è eccessivamente orientato sulla promozione di prodotti. Altrimenti, astenetevi. Anche in questo caso, conta molto il contenuto.
5. Creare ed utilizzare gruppi garantisce valore aggiunto?
Sì, aiuta a costruire ed affermare la vostra reputazione specie se si tratta di gruppi che approfondiscono settori specifici in cui vi dimostrate esperti.
6. Quali sono i più fulgidi esempi di Facebook pages?
Starbucks e Coca-Cola dimorano stabilmente nella top ten delle pagine più seguite e più efficaci.
7. Le compagnie B2B sono più difficili da promuovere?
Facebook è certamente un veicolo primario per il settore B2C, ma la strada per far fiorire anche il B2B – secondo Mashable – esiste ed è “far diventare Facebook un’industria di risorse”.
8. Come usare ed ottimizzare le Facebook Ads in una campagna?
La chiave è lavorare sul proprio target e rendere le Ads mirate. Costano poco e possono essere molto produttive.
9. Meglio indirizzare la gente verso Facebook o verso il proprio sito?
La destinazione finale dei vostri visitatori è indifferente. E’ fondamentale, piuttosto, che ovunque essi vadano a finire trovino meccanismi di call-to-action semplici ed incoraggianti. La familiarizzazione tra i clienti e i vostri servizi è decisiva.
10. La presenza di una compagnia su Facebook dev’essere individuale o collettiva?
Compatibilmente con le risorse di cui disponete, è consigliabile distribuire i compiti tra numerosi membri del vostro team. Ciò renderà la vostra comunicazione più varia e amplierà il vostro serbatoio di idee.
Gigya Releases Stats On Social ID Use, Talks About Facebook’s News Feed
di Josh Constine
Gigya, a company that has transformed from widget-maker to social media optimization service, has released a new infographic detailing which social IDs people use most frequently to login to different types of Gigya-optimized websites. Facebook leads with 46% of Gigya logins across all sites, and was also the top social ID for entertainment and business to business sites.
However, Facebook trails Twitter for news site logins with 25% to the microblogging network’s 45%. One should not draw conclusions from this data since there’s no explanation of methodology or notes on the quantity or percentage of total users that employ social IDs. Yet, interestingly, it seems to show ties between certain social communities and content types.
We spoke with Gigya CEO David Yovanno to get some more context about what’s happening in the Social ID ecosphere. He explained that as social becomes a larger source of referral traffic, sites will need to optimize for it in the same way that they have for search in the past. Yovanno says a major thing they’ve learned from their data is that “in different content environments people choose different platforms to connect through.” For instance, “in retail users may be less social during the checkout phase, preferring Google and Yahoo!, whereas for entertainment, which is more chatty, they choose Facebook”.
A key finding of Gigya’s data analysis is the prevalence of Twitter as a social ID on the news sites Gigya powers such as Reuters. We believe this might be due to Twitter’s interest-focus being more conducive to news sharing than Facebook’s geography-focused network, and update frequency norms permitting more posts per day on Twitter than Facebook. Yovanno said Gigya isn’t sure but they are very interested in learning the root of this trend, and have hired an outside research firm to analyze the subject.
They’ve also found that inclusive but curated social login options produce the best results. If your site needs email addresses, you might want to downplay LinkedIn and Twitter social IDs which don’t provide that. By making the login buttons for platforms which provide data a site wants as prominent as possible, designers can corral users to their advantage. Then by adding a “More” button which reveals all the other platforms, including international ones, they can be sure to have a social ID login option for everyone.
Lastly, Yovanno revealed that the type of API that a third-party site uses to let users share to Facebook influences content’s “EdgeRank,” the algorithm that determines what content appears in the news feed. He said that referral traffic for links shared through the outdated REST API was approximately 1/3 of that for content shared through a client-side API. EdgeRank favors client-side API content because its news feed publishing permission request is more explicit than that of the REST API where it’s easier to trick users into sharing. This news should incentivize anyone still using the REST API to upgrade. If sites want to drive leads, increase conversions, and get the best EdgeRank for shared content, they must be concerned with on-site social optimization, social ID login design, and which API they’re using.
Ecco la mappa per salire sul treno del Social Media Marketing
Le conseguenze del Like: riflessioni su Graph API e Open Graph Protocol
Di Vincos
Facebook ha annunciato la volontà di mappare la rete in un modo nuovo. La rete attualmente descritta da Google è una ragnatela di pagine, Facebook vorrebbe riuscire a disegnare le connessioni tra persone (al momento oltre 400 milioni) ed “oggetti sociali” (contenuti condivisi come pagine, video, foto, news) creando un universo di significati ricercabili.
Il problema di fondo delle mappature rimane sempre lo stesso: nel momento in cui descrivo, limito, chiudo l’orizzonte della percezione del reale (ciò che non è nella mappa non è). Accade con le ricerche fatte su Google e accadrà con quelle che faremo nel grafo promosso da Facebook.
Nell’immediato la cosa da tenere a mente è cheFacebook non abita più solo su facebook.com. Il “pulsante like” è un avamposto di FB su tutti i siti del “web aperto” che lo implementano. Ma quali sono le conseguenze del like? Appunto qui alcune considerazioni:
– La piattaforma sta evolvendo, provando ad uscire dal giardino recintato, che avrebbe rischiato di determinarne la fine, e lo fa cercando “di dare ai suoi utenti validi motivi per uscire da FB” (come dice mafe), riassunti nella promessa di un esperienza di navigazione più personalizzata, di siti “umanizzati” dalle raccomandazioni dei nostri amici
– Per spingere gli utenti verso questa nuova esperienza (al momento implementata compiutamente solo da Docs.com, Pandora e Yelp)Zuckerberg ha forzato la mano ed ha impostato la cosiddetta “personalizzazione istantanea” di default. Per modificarla basta andare qui o seguire le indicazioni di Dario.
– La promozione di Open Graph Protocol ha l’effetto dirompente e positivo di spingere gli altri player verso il web semantico. Ilprotocollo in questione è un set di meta dati licenziati sotto open license agreement in modo che altri creatori di piattaforme possano adottarlo e distribuirlo. Ma coloro che ne criticano l’apertura hanno subito iniziato a costruire un modello alternativo chiamato “Open Like“. In proposito Siegler eObasanjo.
– La prospettiva che più spaventa è quella di affidare ad un unico soggetto la raccolta delle nostre preferenze/interazioni in giro per la rete, unita all’impossibilità di avere il pieno controllo sul proprio grafo sociale (al momento non posso scaricarlo, ma posso solo accedere ad alcune parti dello stesso usando le Graph API, come le informazioni pubbliche sul mio profilo http://graph.facebook.com/vincenzo.cosenza oppure i miei statushttp://graph.facebook.com/550086503/feed).
I banner? Solo se creativi e interattivi!
di Daniele Montemale
La comunicazione online via banner è una delle prime ad essere apparsa da quando internet aveva una velocità tale da caricare immagini. Nonostante questo tipo di pubblicità abbia un costo di distribuzione molto alto e poco remunerativo è tuttora oggi la strategia più utilizzata anche grazie a Google e al suo AdSense.
Da una ricerca del 2009 risulta però che le pubblicità banner sono tra le ultime ad avere consenso e credibilità tra gli utenti. Le campagne banner richiedono una strategia con budget molto alti e spesso il binomio costi/benifici non dà i risultati sperati. Nonostante la palese evidenza ed i trend negativi delle campagne banner, l’Italia è l’unico paese dove si investe maggiormente sul banner. Nella maggior parte dei paesi questo tipo di comunicazione sta lentamente lasciando terreno a strategie più interattive, a marketing non convenzionale o “semplicemente” alla creazione di relazioni tra utenti e brand o servizi attraverso i social network.
La pubblicità, se così ancora si può chiamare, ha sempre più la funzione di relazionare e di far interagire. L’interattività e l’esperienza sono due fattori ormai necessari in una comunicazione online ma non devono sfociare, come spesso accade, nell’invasione visiva dell’utente/spettatore; lo spam diventa quindi non solo la mail del viagra o il pop up non desiderato ma anche un banner invasivo che invade le pagine negli spazi e nei colori.
Un’azione di questo genere coinvolge negativamente il brand, ma anche il sito ospitante che non è capace di gestire i propri spazi e che anzi viene visto come un “venduto” al brand cui lascia decidere gli spazi da occupare con la propria comunicazione. Ma il bad mouth su internet non si lascia attendere; i grandi brand e periodici fanno da cassa di risonanza al buzz negativo e la rapidità con cui la notizia si propaga aumenta inesorabilmente (vedi qui e qui). Certo, ci sono anche gli utenti che accettano la vendita di tali spazi incondizionatamente da come vengono poi proposti dal momento in cui le notizie sono gratuite. Ma c’è modo e modo di comunicare.
Come si può allora comunicare attraverso i banner senza rimanere nell’anonimato nella pagina in cui si viene ospitati, riuscendo ad essere ricordati dall’utente ed a non essere considerati spam?
Una delle soluzioni a questo problema può essere l’uso dell’Augmented Reality, la tecnologia che fa comunicare il mondo analogico con quello digitale. Di seguito riporto due esempi di successo di questa tecnologia applicata ai banner.
Burger King
Per promuovere il proprio burger in offerta ad un dollaro, BK ha creato una semplice quanto efficace applicazione in Augmented Reality. Attivando la webcam del proprio computer su uno spazio banner comprato da BK all’interno di alcuni grandi siti americani, l’utente poteva mostrare una banconota da un dollaro di fronte alla cam ed immediatamente gli appariva un burger in 3D sulla banconota. La banconota faceva quindi da mark vale a dire un oggetto analogico che viene letto da una tecnologia digitale. L’equazione che ne usciva era perfetta: 1$ = 1 panino. Un’esperienza semplice ed interattiva e una informazione interessante da condividere con i propri amici.
AT&T
In occasione dei mondiali di calcio, la compagnia telefonica leader negli Stati Uniti ha creato grazie all’agenzia Zugara un banner game in pop up sul sito sportivo leader americano ESPN in Augmented Reality. Attivando la webcam dell’utente, il banner portava direttamente l’utente all’interno del gioco. Un giocatore virtuale che crossava all’interno del campo da gioco dove a tirare in porta di testa era lo stesso utente attraverso la sua immagine nella webcam. Cinque tiri, nessuna comunicazione o promozione in particolare da parte della compagnia telefonica. Solo una forte crescita di brand awarness da parte dell’utente. Anche questo banner grazie alla novità tecnologica e alla sua interattività sarà sicuramente condiviso dall’utente con la sua rete di contatti.
Conclusioni? Se proprio volete spendere i vostri soldi o quelli dei vostri clienti attraverso dei banner… fateli creativi, interattivi e possibilmente sociali.
Daniele Montemale aka Viralavatar
Privacy su Facebook
Di RAFFAELLA MENICHINI
NEW YORK – Mark Zuckerberg dice che i teen ager di oggi non si curano della privacy? Bè, il padrone di Facebook nelle sue recenti dichiarazioni a Repubblica 1 ha voluto esagerare, o comunque manipolare a suo vantaggio la coscienza tecnologica di una generazione, un fenomeno pieno di sfumature che i social network come il suo stanno plasmando di giorno in giorno. “Non è affatto vero che i ragazzi di oggi non si curano della privacy, in realtà ne sono ossessionati – spiega il professore James Grimmelmann a un gruppo di giornalisti europei arrivati a New York proprio per discutere di privacy su internet – La differenza con le generazioni precedenti è che la loro privacy è più sociale e relazionale, magari meno preoccupata delle intrusioni del governo e più di quelle di genitori e insegnanti”. I ragazzi, spiega questo professore-ragazzino di Giurisprudenza presso la New York Law School, in realtà “fanno continue valutazioni di cosa nascondere e cosa rendere pubblico, soppesando i benefici dello sharing e i costi della perdita di privacy”. “Creano finti profili, finti nomi, finte età e tante piccole bugie per proteggersi da occhi indiscreti. Quando si torna da una festa, ormai la prima cosa da fare è andare a ‘untaggare’ – ovvero togliere le targhette identificative da tutte le foto pubblicate da chi era a quella festa. Ed è normale che ti arrivi un invito a un ‘no camera party’ o ‘no cellulare party: c’è consapevolezza assoluta dei rischi e ci si attrezza per evitarli”.
E se in Europa sembriamo così ossessionati dalla regolamentazione dei social network, da Oltreoceano arriva ancora una volta una lezione di pragmatismo: il concetto di privacy si assottiglia nel momento in cui decidi di avere più di dieci amici sul social network. Quel che la legge può e deve fare è dare una “cornice” di regole che si approssimi il più possibile alle soluzioni tecniche disponibili in modo da coniugare la libera scelta dei singoli con una catapulta di informazioni potenzialmente inarrestabile come le community sul web.
Il problema non è solo Facebook. Molte delle incomprensioni tra Usa ed Europa, spiega Lisa Sotto, socio dello studio legale Hunton and Williams che fa consulenza sulla privacy per le maggiori multinazionali americane, derivano da una diversa concezione della privacy in sé: “diritto umano inalienabile” per gli europei – che hanno vissuto epoche buie di dittature che si intromettevano brutalmente nella loro vita privata – contro un atteggiamento forse più “laico” degli Usa: “Qui non temiamo l’uso dei dati come da voi, non esiste una legge onnicomprensiva di rispetto della privacy ma molte leggi settoriali che vengono applicate in modo efficace”. Del resto per decenni il diritto alla privacy è stato sintetizzato con la definizione del quarto emendamento data da un giudice della Corte Suprema negli anni ’20, Louis Brandeis: “E’ il diritto a essere lasciati in pace”. E molto si capisce se pensiamo che la casella sul “trattamento dei dati” – che noi troviamo in fondo a tutti i nostri contratti e transazioni come possibilità di “opt-in”, ovvero come un’autorizzazione attiva al trattamento dei dati, nei contratti americani è invece un “opt-out”: bisogna espressamente chiedere che i propri dati “non” siano trattati. Il problema, semplicemente, non si pone: “I consumatori americani non sono molto attenti al trattamento di loro dati nelle trattative, e non c’è mai stata pressione per avere norme di protezione della privacy”, spiega il professor Edward Janger, della Brooklyn Law School. Differente la questione sulla “sicurezza” dei dati, soprattutto nel sistema di credito: “Lì i rischi di perdita dei dati comportano rischi di perdite finanziarie significative” e l’interesse ha creto regole stringenti.
Alla fine, quello che davvero paga, è il “brand risk”: “Nessuna azienda se la sente di rischiare la propria reputazione di fronte ai consumatori per una diffusione non autorizzata di dati”, spiega Sotto.
Ma un problema privacy si sta affacciando, ed è particolarmente sentito dalla nuova amministrazione, spiega Susan Crawford, docente di Legge in Michigan e fino al 2009 assistente di Barack Obama per le politiche tecnologiche e dell’innovazione: “Le leggi settoriali sulla privacy e le competenze della Federal Trade Commission che persegue una linea molto aggressiva di applicazione delle leggi fanno sì che gli Usa garantiscano una protezione della privacy molto efficace”. La parola chiave è “velocità di reazione”: verranno premiate le aziende che più rapidamente si rendono conto di aver creato un “buco” di privacy e vi pongono rimedio. Questo è tanto più valido per le internet company, dove più spesso si verifica una “differenza tra quello che le persone vogliono condividere e quello che l’azienda fa dei dati”, spiega Crawford che però avverte: “Tutti devono comunque essere liberi di caricare e riprodurre liberamente quello che vogliono”. Con l’eccezione del materiale coperto da copyright, il primo emendamento – la libertà di espressione – governa anche il web. E su questo terreno la sintonia tra le due sponde dell’Atlantico sembra ancor meno scontata. Prendiamo la discussa sentenza del tribunale di Milano contro Google, reo di non aver ritirato – se non dopo una denuncia – il video degli atti di bullismo contro un bambino disabile. “In quel caso io mi sentirei di difendere Google – spiega Grimmelmann – Non è possibile sapere in tempo reale tutto quello che viene caricato”. La piattaforma, rincara Crawford, “non può essere legalmente responsabile per i contenuti”. E’ anche possibile però. prevede Grimmelmann, che “aziende tecnologicamente sofisticate come Facebook e Google possano mettere a punto piattaforme diverse, più o meno regolamentate, a seconda delle leggi dell’area dove operano”, mettendosi così al riparo dai rischi.
Ma allora dove disegnare il confine tra la protezione della privacy delle persone e il loro diritto all’espressione e allo “sharing”? E soprattutto, come renderlo legalmente costrittivo? Grimmelmann, forte del suo passato di programmatore per Microsoft, propone un modello modulare. Innanzi tutto, obbligare le piattaforme a regole più chiare: anche gli utenti che si ritengono più “avvertiti” non riusciranno mai a sapere fino in fondo come e quanto quel che mettono sul proprio profilo si diffonderà. Occorre però anche che le informazioni condivise vengano considerate nel contesto del social network: una campagna di donne per la lotta contro il cancro al seno si basava sulla pubblicazione del colore del proprio reggiseno. Questa informazione, se usata fuori dal contesto di Facebook ad esempio come semplice commento da parte di un datore di lavoro, sarebbe causa di molestia. L’informazione era “disegnata per il contesto sociale di Facebook: quel che è accettabile in un contesto diventa una violazione di privacy in un altro”. Dunque, più informazione e consapevolezza del contesto. Infine, una tecnologia che limiti i danni: “Facebook è socialmente pericolosa”, dice Grimmelmann. “Ma la gente ha bisogno di strumenti che a volte sono anche pericolosi”: così come nel caso di un qualsiasi strumento, sta all’azienda disegnarlo in modo che si evitino i pericoli inutili e pubblicare istruzioni dettagliate per il suo uso. Al consumatore, specialmente se giovane, si riserva un “percorso di formazione” pieno di possibili incidenti: “Tra trent’anni forse tutti i candidati alla Casa Bianca avranno un passato su Facebook pieno di cose imbarazzanti e compromettenti – conclude Grimmelmann – e allora speriamo che ci sia una moratoria, e che nessuno ritenga il passato sui social network poi così importante”.
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