All posts in “social networks”

Facebook IPO: Will Zuck Need to Eat His Words?

May 16, 2012 / Comments Off on Facebook IPO: Will Zuck Need to Eat His Words? / Posted in: Blog, News, Personal Opinion

Patrick Gladney is the Director of Research and Insights at SMG. Follow @pgladney

This week represents a coming out party of sorts for the gorilla of social networks, Facebook. Any day now, the Facebook IPO means that people will be able to own a piece of the company rather than just “Like” it. So how will Facebook fare once it is traded on the open market? Will the merciless scrutiny of Wall Street and public investors alter the trajectory of a channel with a (projected) larger market cap than Disney, News Corp or CBS? I wonder, particularly when one reads the 16 words from a letter Mark Zuckerberg wrote, included in Facebook’s IPO filing:

“Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Perhaps Zuck is looking to mimic Google’s famous  “informal” corporate mantra “Don’t be evil” in choosing such an altruistic social mission statement. But Facebook consistently gets in trouble with privacy watchdogs, intent on protecting consumer data. So much so, that one might easily believe that money making trumps services at Facebook. Or perhaps those services relate to the needs of advertisers, instead of ordinary members?

Regardless, I find it interesting that a business the size of Facebook downplays the significance of making money, almost as if it’s a dirty practice.  Businesses are built to make money, and I am sure that investors will see this as the priority. Investing in the business to improve the service offering makes sense in the early stages, but my guess is that Wall Street will want Facebook to grow up. As the old saying goes, “if you want to run with the big dogs…”

What do you think Facebook’s real priorities are?

A quick look at Social Media in China

September 7, 2011 / 1 Comment / Posted in: Blog

Working at SMG has given me the opportunity to learn from some of the best people in the western social media industry. Luckily, my Chinese background also allows me to experience and observe the difference between western social networks and their Chinese counterparts. And now,  I feel like it is time to share my unique experience.

I put together a simple deck hoping to give you a quick overview of the Chinese social media landscape, as well as the two biggest social platforms in China – Renren.com (the Facebook of China) and Sina Weibo (a microblog).

Some highlights:

  • China is the biggest Internet nation in the world with nearly 5-billion netizens.
  • Social media is now the fastest growing and hottest topic in China’s IT and business worlds. As some of the major western social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are blocked behind the Great Firewall of China, local IT giants battle for the ever expanding social space in China.
  • As China rapidly becomes the most important global market, more and more foreign businesses are starting to explore marketing opportunities online.
  • Chinese social networks provide many innovative features for marketers and advertisers. For example, Sina Weibo, the biggest microblog in China, offers corporate account to companies with more customizable features on their profile page and advertising opportunities. The NBA has an official Sina Weibo account with over 5-million followers (about 3-million more than its followers on Twitter);  A-list celebrity  Tom Cruise‘s Weibo account has almost 3-million followers; Even Bill Gates is on it!

Please view the complete PPT deck for more interesting insights, I hope it will give you some inspiration 🙂

Social Media in China

Social Media Roundup for August 26th, 2011

August 26, 2011 / Comments Off on Social Media Roundup for August 26th, 2011 / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

August is certainly not a quiet month in the tech and social media worlds. This week was a busy one. On the 24th, Steve Jobs, again, successfully announced his latest “mind-blowing” product called “iQuit”… but I think everyone has already seen this news in their feeds and across the front pages, so we won’t spend too much time on that subject!

On the social network front, Facebook and Twitter both made announcements this week.

Lets take a look at Facebook first:

Facebook has made some significant changes to its privacy settings. Users now can now share to specific people or groups, essentially increasing user control over who see what.

Privacy

They also updated their location services. In addition to the existing Places check-ins, users can now add location information to wall posts and photos.

Facebook Location

From allfacebook.com

Here’s a list of the major improvements.

  • The privacy settings are moving toward individual post windows and profiles.
  • Users are gaining the ability to approve tags of themselves in others’ posts and photos.
  • All tags will include an attribution of the person who did the tagging.
  • Places no longer require physical check-ins, so people can add locations to posts, even from the desktop.
  • You don’t need to be friends with someone to tag them in a post or photo.
  • You don’t have to like a brand to tag it in a post or photo.
  • Facebook has changed the word “everyone” to “public” in privacy settings, for clarity.
  • You can customize privacy, or visibility of information, on a post-by-post basis.
  • Users can edit the visibility of individual bits of content anytime after they post.
  • The changes don’t affect mobile users, at least not for now.

Speaking of Twitter:

Twitter has begun its new photo sharing feature to its users. The new photo service allows users to attach photos with their tweets, which could pretty much replace the similar functions provided by 3rd party vendors such as TwitPic over the past years. It means that users can now generate richer content on Twitter than merely text. But on the other hand, the new function makes Twitter feeds resemble a Facebook wall post, which has always allowed users to share many types of media content.

Twitter photo

Are we forgetting about Google+?

Last week at a Social Media Today Webinar, Our CEO Maggie Fox presented some of the latest stats of Google+ as it approaches its two-month birthday. Instead of going into detail on people’s reaction to functionally, I think it is better to let the numbers do the talking.

From singlegrain.com

  • 74% of Google+ users are male

Top 10 Occupations of Google+ users

  1. 10.05% Software Engineer
  2. 10.77% Designer
  3. 13.57% Developer
  4. 24.56% Engineer
  5. 4.88% Writer
  6. 4.23% Web Developer
  7. 3.67% Software Developer
  8. 3.05% Programmer
  9. 3.05% Photographer
  10. 2.79% Artist

Google+ has gained over 25 million registered users in about two months. But the question is, how many active users are there?  Or let me ask you this, when was the last time you checked your Google+ account and saw new feeds from anyone of your circles?

It is not hard to recognize that some of the latest changes Facebook and Twitter made align to the aesthetics of Google+.  So do people really need Google+ if other platforms are offering the exact same services? I think we are all still looking forward to see what Google will do next in the social space battle.

Social Media Statistics: TV, Multi-tasking, Online News and Your Brand's Friends, Fans & Followers

March 17, 2010 / 3 Comments / Posted in: Blog

Probably no one can make numbers look as cool as Sesame Street, but I’m about to give it a go in the name of Social Media. Here’s hoping these social media statistics make your next PowerPoint sing.

Couch Surfing, Channel Surfing and the Interweb

According to a recent survey by Nielsen, more people are surfing the web while they watch TV. Between 2009 and 2010 people who watched the Super Bowl while browsing the internet rose from 12.8% to 14.5% while Oscar viewers in the same time made a massive leap from 8.7% to 13.3% who watch and browse. What might surprise you are the sites that are keeping them hooked; Facebook (okay, not surprising) and Yahoo (Yahoo?). (via Fast Company)

Media Post reports people are also watching more TV online. A recent survey by Unicast found that of  planning to tune in to NCAA March Madness; 54% plan to watch the games online. An additional 10% plan to watch via mobile devices and 18% through social networks. The full study is available as a PDF. (via Mashable)

News is Not Dead

While the increase in Internet sourced news has created much dialogue around the death of the newspaper, news itself is not dead though traditional channels might be suffering. A Pew Internet study has found that 53% of all American adults get news online today- that is about 71% of all internet users. The interesting part is that only 35% are loyal to a particular source. The rest, seem to news graze using multiple sites and don’t rely on any one site in particular. Of the faithful, about 65% of them check in with their favourite news site at least once per day, yet only 19% of them said they would be willing to pay for online news. 82% said they would find another place to get their news instead. In other news, Yahoo News, Google News, AOL and Topix are the most commonly used online news sources. Not CNN, CBS or even <gasp> the New York Times. (via Web Search Guide)

Why Do They Become a Fan and What Does it Mean?

Ta-da! It turns out that Friends, Fans and Followers of your brand are more likely to support you at the cash register. According to a study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate more than 50% of Facebook Fans and 67% of Twitter followers feel more inclined to buy from brands they are social with online. But why do they socialize with you to begin with? The same study shows that 25% are hoping for discounts and deals while 18% want to show off how much they love you. <Aww>. (via eMarketer)

The Evolution of Comments

December 23, 2009 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Blog


I had a fascinating conversation with Khris Loux of Echo yesterday about the state of commenting in social media. We discussed how there is a lot less commenting on original blog posts these days and that much of the conversation around blog posts and other social objects is happening on various social networks. There may be a general tendency to respond via the medium you received the information rather than commenting on the original post. For example, if Dave sends out a tweet about a post and I have something to say about it, I find myself more likely to respond to Dave on Twitter then to the author on the original post.

To call Echo a comment platform is an oversimplification. It has the features one would expect from an outsourced comment service, like threading, spam-protection, moderation, content filters, etc.). However, the really interesting part is the social networking integration. Before speaking with Khrys, I  might have dismissed this integration as a “share this” button and not thought about it more. Echo captures and aggregates the publicly available conversation that occurs in response to the sharing means that content producers can easily collect the conversation about their work that happens elsewhere. It also collects ratings, diggs, trackbacks and likes, as well. The syndication of comments over social networks also has the benefit of distributing the link to the content via commenters friends/followers and thereby increasing the exposure with each comment or rating.

There is actually a social behaviour story here as well. When TechCrunchIT piloted the service they found that when they forced authentication via a social network before commenting was allowed, the quality of the comments increased considerably. This makes sense, since if my comment is going to be posted to my Facebook or Twitter stream for all my friends and colleagues to see, I will definitely craft my thoughts more carefully. This is a much better way of dissuading trolls as well.

I really like that Echo is tying these many distributed conversations back to the orignal content, which makes one aspect of monitoring social media a little more integrated and easier to manage.  The fact that it also helps to reduce comments from trolls and further distribute the content also makes it an important component of a social media syndication strategy.