Pew research released new statistics today on Americans addictions to social networks as of December 2012, with surprising revelations. 15% of Adult U.S. Internet users now use Pinterest – which is practically identical to the 16% who use Twitter – which has experienced massive growth among white, female users, who use the network in large part for fashion-based research. So although Twitter grabs more headlines for its communicatory potential, in the U.S. the usage data is nearly the same. As well, there is no longer a minority gap in social media use, as almost twice as many African Americans use Twitter as Caucasians. But most importantly, not using social media has become a financially elite phenomenon, as well-educated wealthy Americans who find privacy policies troublesome or think that Facebook is too mainstream are turning away from the social network. In other words, not using social media is, now, a product of more education rather than a lack of access. Ultimately, 2/3 of all American Adults utilize social networks on the whole, with the vast majority on Facebook.
Tag: twitter
Twitter To Rank Tweets
Twitter will, beginning late this month, assign rankings to tweets across the interface. To start with, the social media service will assign designations of “none,” “low,” and “medium” to the metadata of tweets in an attempt to help developers more selectively curate the sea of status updates. A “High” rating should roll out a few weeks after the initial rankings testing, and will ideally correspond to the “Top Tweets” results that you would find by searching a hashtag, which in its current form indicates a very high level of engagement with the tweet. The ultimate goal is to make Twitter’s streaming more customizable and targeted for developers looking to tweak applications for brands and companies, allowing a higher level of analysis and interaction with the platform.
Chute Live Real-World Photo Aggregator Launches Today
Chute, a startup that helps publishers and brands incorporate photos and media, submitted by users and social media, within their websites, is now expanding its functionality to include real-world locations through a feature called Chute Live. This entails pulling photos from social media and putting them onto screens installed in spaces anywhere the hiring company might want – for example the Cosmopolitan Hotel launched a “Pop Up Wedding Chapel” that aggregates photos from Twitter the #PopUpChapel hashtag. Customers can build their own applications to do similar aggregation efforts, and Chute is already incorporated into the House of Blues and the NBA All-Star game.
American Express Upgrades Sync For Twitter
American Express has upgraded its Sync program to work with Twitter, so that Cardholders can now purchase items by using a hashtag. The first item for sale will be a $25 American Express gift card which can be had for $15 if you tweet #BuyAmexGiftCard25. Other initial offers will include a Kindle Fire, an Xbox controller, an Xbox 360, and an Xbox Live subscription. If the consumer chooses to buy the item via hashtag, @AmexSync will reply with a confirmation hashtag to confirm the purchase. If the user confirms, the item will be shipped, for free, to their home within two days. Amex isn’t the first company to sync purchasing with Twitter, however, as in 2012 a startup named Chirpify linked with PayPal to allow users to buy and sell on twitter using handles. But Amex’s expansion represents the largest move into “T-Commerce” yet, and every hashtag yields more promotion and brand endorsement over social media.
Twitter Charges $200,000 For Promoted Tweets
Promoted Trends on Twitter continue to charge more and more money, and according to a Report by AllThingsD they now charge $200,000 a day. Clocking in at more than twice the original price of $80,000 a day in 2010, Twitter clearly understands that it has a market for the Trends, which were used by both Obama and Romney in the past election, as well as Coke, Disney, and Hyundai in the past year. Purchased hashtags are placed at the top of the trending topics list, and users who click the hashtag see a tweet from the company who purchased it. Other options beyond the Promoted Trend include promoted Tweets and Accounts, which have also proven effective as marketing strategies, but according to Twitter’s data Promoted Trends have a much higher degree of engagement than any other form of advertisement on the site. If, and it’s a big if given the hefty pricetag, Twitter can sell this advertising slot every day, they could generate up to $70 million in revenue just through this method alone. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could in the very near future as social media marketing continues to thrive.
Vine Steps Out At Fashion Week
Vine is making a big impact at New York Fashion Week. Reporters, attendees, and socialites are all taking to the app and exploring new ways to share and report back on their experiences at the events. Though Instagram was universally embraced last year, Vine is currently far and away the in-vogue app of choice this season. The functionality of the app makes it very well suited to reporting on the proceedings: several media editors have been using the app to take and edit videos of multiple looks over the looped segment, giving viewers a unique perspective on the clothes in moving, living color. It provides viewers with a better conception of the clothes than Instagram, which obviously doesn’t capture movement. At the same time, using Instagram would require more time to edit multiple photographs of different models and looks, as opposed to Vine which can point and shoot a loop of many models simultaneously.
Beyond reporters, designers and retailers are utilizing the app to provide viewers with privileged views into the backstage. Some examples include designers showing video of modeling auditions to allow viewers to help pick the models, or showing the stages and rehearsals in progress. In all, it will be interesting to see how the fallout from this new-found use of the app shapes its future as a journalistic and social medium.
Pew Study Finds One In Five U.S. Internet Users Has Ditched Facebook, While 27% Of Current Users Plan To Reduce Time In 2013
Facebook currently has a stranglehold on the social networking habits of America: two thirds of those online in the US are on Facebook, as compared to only 20% on LinkedIn and 16% on Twitter. But today, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report titled Coming and going on Facebook that highlights a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction spreading through Facebook users.
Based on telephone surveys of 1,006 American adults, Pew found that one in five online adult Americans who do not currently use Facebook said that they have used it in the past, suggesting that they’ve given up on the service. They also found that two-thirds of current Facebook users said that in some time in the past they have taken a voluntary break from the site for several weeks or longer.
The (relative) bad news is that a relatively large proportion of users is evidently finding Facebook time-draining, boring or annoying enough to have given it up for weeks at a time — still, despite a sense of dissatisfaction, these people ended up going back for more. But the most worrying statistic is that 27% of current Facebook users say that, in the future, they plan to spend less time on the site, and just 3% said they want to spend more time there. This is all part
of the population struggling to come to terms with an increasingly social landscape, but these trends will be important to watch for advertisers and tech startups alike.
Despite Ad Controversy, GoDaddy Sees Biggest Sales Day In History
Although yesterday we reported
that GoDaddy.com’s Ad “Perfect Match” was almost universally panned
on Twitter, yesterday’s sales told a markedly different story. The company
reported that the Monday after the game was the biggest sales day in company
history; hosting sales jumped 45%, dot-com domain sales rose 40%, new mobile
customers increased by 35%, and 10,000 total customers were added yesterday
alone. So today, even though their strategy ran against the conventional wisdom
that social media success and engagement means better sales, it seems though
sheer visibility won out as new users flocked to the service.
Super Bowl Tweets 30% Ads
Last night there were precisely 20.9 million Super-Bowl related Tweets, and nearly 30% of those weren’t about the game – they were about the action between the snaps. In total, for every seven tweets about the game there were two about the ads, and the winner for most twitter action of the game was GoDaddy.com, who clocked in at 290,000 tweets – nearly six times as many as Audi, who came in last at about 50,000. However, just because they got more action on the social network doesn’t mean they were necessarily viewed positively: 80% of tweets that mentioned Audi were positive, while just 14% of GoDaddy.com’s mentions were similarly supportive. So although Audi pumped about $150 dollars into every mention on twitter – as compared to GoDaddy.com’s $25, Audi only paid about $1,500 per new follower, as compared to GoDaddy’s $6,500; indeed, Audi netted over 6,500 new followers last night while GoDaddy.com attracted just over 1,000.
So, it doesn’t necessarily pay to be the most mentioned Ad on Twitter. In the end, Taco Bell’s hashtag #livemas was the most mentioned, and they got the highest ROI from a twitter perspective. Success in terms of followers and positive social response ultimately won the night, not controversial advertising.
Oreo’s Winning Superbowl Tweet
A successful social media strategy relies on reacting to trends and staying nimble which is what made Oreo’s superbowl tweet a winner. Reacting to the blackout, Oreo promptly posted an ad with the slogan “you can still dunk in the dark”, resulting in 12,000 retweets. The key to their quick turnaround was having the creative agency and brand team in the same room on Sunday night.
