Haven’t done one of these for months, but I have so much social media goodness in my inbox that I feel compelled to share…

October

Oct 15th – This press release from comScore basically notes that people who spend a lot of time on social networking sites also spend a lot of time electronics and entertainment sites. Of course we’re all desperately trying to connect the monetization dots in this space, but this pretty much seems like a no-brainer; people who use the Internet a lot, uh, use the Internet a lot.

Oct 9th – kind of a neat report from Ipsos Ideas, a short piece by Steve Levy, President of Market Research (Eastern Canada) for Ipsos Reid, called The Democratization of Media. You need a press subscription to access it, but I’ll quote a little fair use here, I really like how he lays it all out:

The idea of brand democratization is that the power of the people directs much of what happens to brands. What the public says about them is what they will become. Simply put, perception becomes reality.

If a company attempts to convey a message that is not supported by actual experience with the product, then the feedback will overwhelm the message and the audience will know the truth. On the flip side, if a brand experience supports or exceeds the message, then the audience will publicly praise the brand.

You go, girl!

Oct 4th – Nearly 40% of Canadian adults have visited a social networking site but only 29% have a profile, according to a new Ipsos Reid report called Online Socialization, Social Networking and Online Communities. So they’re mostly tourists, and frankly, if you’re not at least aware of social networking sites, you must live under a rock. I’m not sure that these high-level numbers indicate anything in particular, other than genuine curiosity. However, one figure that is quite significant is that 55% of all Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 have a personal profile on a least one site. That’s a lot of people spending some serious time engaging with these platforms.

Oct 2nd – Again concerns raised that social media may break the Internet (this time by the WSJ! OMG!). Not sure if there’s much to this, as has been previously pointed out to me.

September

Sept 17th – And I feel really badly about not blogging about this earlier, especially when nice Davida Carter took the time to send me the report ahead of it’s official release. Here’s a link to the whitepaper from Factiva called Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A Roundtable Discussion on Social Media Metrics and Measurement. I haven’t done more than skim it, but I hear it’s quite good 😉