Fring Launches New Social Networking for Mobile App

Fring haslaunched a new version of its social community and communication service that combines each contact’s separate online social communities into one, manageable profile on the users’ mobile phone.

Fring enables users to talk and chat with their Internet instant-message buddies on Skype, GTalk, Facebook, Twitter and last.fm, among other services, from one integrated, searchable fring contact list. 

The new fring version combines a user’s multiple IM contacts into one dynamic profile, which shows each friend’s current availability at a quick glance and enables interaction, all directly from this combined mobile profile.

As social networking becomes a more-popular mobile activity, we are likely to see mobile devices optimized for social networking, much as iPhones have popularized the notion of a "Web" phone or BlackBerry essentially created an "Email phone."

In fact, the notion of a "smart phone" should at some point stop being a meaningful end user category at all, replaced by a lead feature corresponding to a lead app. 

22 percent of Generation Y consumers are using Twitter

About 22 percent of Generation Y consumers are using Twitter, according to a new study by the Participatory Marketing Network, an organization that helps marketers transition from push and permission marketing to participatory marketing.

In February the largest age group on Twitter was the 35 to 49 age demographic, representing almost 42 percent of the site’s audience, according to Nielsen Online. So much for the general rule that the younger demographics drive most of the use for new technologies.

When asked about social network usage, however, 99 percent of this same group reports having an active profile on at least one social networking site.

The May 2009 survey of 200 PMN panel members and consumers between the ages of 18-24 also found growing use of mobile social networking.

About 38 percent of respondents have an iPhone or iPod Touch. Some 53 percent play games, 35 percent use entertainment apps and 31 percent use lifestyle apps.

About 28 percent say they use free financial apps while seven percent use paid financial apps.

http://thepmn.org/pressreleases/060109

Do You Actually Own Your Brand, When Social Networking is Growing?

Some day we are going to look back at this period and wonder "what were we thinking?" about how social networking is integrated with business processes. Consider "branding," the creation of a company image. These days, an actor can do so much. After that, users take over.

Recalling my management studies in grad school, is "leadership" something leaders do, or is it something "followers" give? That's leadership as distinct from bureaucratic management (I give an order and you follow it). Think of the normal military chain of command--that's management--and contrast it with combat leadership.

Managers must be obeyed because of their roles. Leaders are followed for different reasons.

Management is the sum total of all the efforts firms make to create and sustain a brand; brand leadership is the voluntary assent of consumers to agree with a firm's promise, or to give the brand a new promise.

What is clear is the serious attention enterprises now are giving to social networking and how to use it.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2009/05/social_networki.html

Video, Social Networking Top Online Growth

Online users have significantly shifted their interests over the past five years, say researchers at Nielsen Online. Where  portal-oriented browsing sites, such as shopping directories, guides and Internet tools or Web services used to be the top categories for user engagement, today the active Internet user tends to prefer sites that contain more specialized content.

There is a growing shift to more-fragmented usage, in other words, as well as more use of video and social sites. Video and social networking sites are the fastest-growing sites in 2009.

The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003, for example.  Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.

In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.

There also are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.

• In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73 percent.

In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/nielsen-online-global-lanscapefinal1.pdf

Mobile and Social Network Ad Revenue Hot Through 2014

Mobile and social networks are the hottest areas of online advertising growth, say researchers at Forrester Research.
The cumulative average growth rate for the six-year period from 2008 through 2014 is 17 percent, Forrester Researchers say. However, the growth rate for mobile advertising is much higher, at 27 percent per year, and the growth rate for social network advertising is 34 percent per year.
Click the image for a larger view.

60% of Twitter Users Do Not Return the Following Month

Twitter’s unique audience exploded over 100 percent in March 2009, meaning it likely has reached an inflection point of some sort. But there are issues: Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, says David Martin, Nielsen Online VP.

That means Twitter’s audience retention rate, the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is about 40 percent.

To put that in perspective, it is roughly the equivalent of turning over 100 percent of the user base every three months. Such a churn rate is unsustainable.

"It is clear that a retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to about a 10 percent reach figure," says Martin. "A high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite."

There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones, at some point.

When Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high, says Martin. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitter-quitters-post-roadblock-to-long-term-growth/

Video, Social Networking Changing the Web

The growing popularity of online social networking and video content is deepening web users’ engagement with the Internet and is causing a dramatic shift in the global online landscape, says the Nielsen Company.

Nielsen’s research shows that since 2003, the interests of the average online user have shifted significantly, evolving from use of “short-tail” portal-oriented browsing sites, such as shopping directories, guides and internet tools, to sites that contain more specialized “long-tail” content geared to specific and interactive user interests.

This change is manifested by the fact that video and social networking sites are the two fastest growing categories in 2009, and will necessitate new ways of thinking about online marketing, Nielsen says.

The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003. The unique audience for online video surpassed that of email in November 2007.

Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period. In the past year, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.

There also are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites, Nielsen says.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/socnets-web-video-radically-alter-online-behavior-8838/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink

Twitter Crosses the Chasm

There's a difference between early adopters and mass markets. That being the case, Twitter is crossing an adoption chasm.  Early adopters will look around for the next new thing, because it won't be so much fun now that "everybody" is discovering it.

But what also is likely to occur is that Twitter's usefulness now will grow, as the reason most people use tools is that they are useful. Twitter is now about to find its place as something so useful most people will find they want to use it.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=135899

Working Americans Use Social Networking; Not Much for Business, Yet

Of 10,000 working American’s surveyed by Compass Intelligence in late November 2008, nearly 60 percent said they were active on a social networking site, but most are not yet using social sites for business purposes.

The most popular site, according to research, is FaceBook, with nearly 35 percent of respondents being registered members of this site.

http://is.gd/hrUr

Twitter Usage Explodes in March

The number of visitors to Twitter.com jumped 131 percent in March to 9.3 million visitors, up from five million in February.

We call that an inflection point!

Social Networking Overtakes Email

Internet activity patterns are changing, according to Nielsen Online. In the past, email has been the "killer app" for Internet users. More recently, search replaced email.

These days, email has been eclipsed by search and social networking.

Two thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10 percent of all Internet activity time. "Member communities" have overtaken personal email to become the world’s fourth most popular online acivity after search, portals and PC software applications, Nielsen says.

The total amount spent online globally increased by 18 percent between December 2007 and December 2008. In the same period, however, the amount of time spent on member community sites rose by 63 percent to 45 billion minutes,  and on Facebook by a massive 566 percent, says Nielsen, growing from 3.1 billion minutes to 20.5 billion minutes.

"The staggering increase in the amount of time people are spending on these sites is changing the way people spend their time online and has ramifications for how people behave, share and interact within their normal daily lives," says Nielsen.

Consumer engagement within social networks has the potential to change the way consumers are targeted, not just through the digital medium, but through all forms of traditional media, Nielsen adds.

According to Nielsen Online, more people in the United States, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are using social networks and blogs than email. Where 85.9 percent of respondents say they use search, 65.1 percent say they use email.

In addition, time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at over three times the rate of overall Internet growth.

http://www.nielsen-online.com/pr/pr_090309.pdf

Search, Social Networking Both Slow

Retailers are fond of blaming sales slowness on "the weather." It might have been too warm when they were trying to sell coats, or too cold when they were trying to sell swim suits.

Sometimes the sluggishness is more protracted and worrisome, as some suspect might be behind Google's fourth-quarter revenue growth figures.

To be sure, growth has been decelerating for some time, as the law of large numbers kicks in: it just is mathematically harder to sustain high percentage growth off a large base, compared to a small base.

But some observers also detect a slowing of use by established social networkers as well as a slowing of new adherents. In part, that might be the law of large numbers starting to kick in as well. The other issue is how soon saturation is reached for the current generation of social networking sites.

Users with high interest joined early. Later users presumably have less intense interest. Something else might be happening as well. People discover over time which tools are really useful and which are less useful. As users experiment with the various sites, they probably are settling in to more established patterns of use. Instead of meandering among a number of sites, users will discover over time that one or two sites make the most sense, and will gradually cease using the others.

Saturation is an issue in every market.

Robust Enterprise Social Networking

If ChangeWave Research is correct, wikis, blogs and social networking are being adopted by corporations at an explosive rate.

ChangeWave Research recently surveyed 2,081 companies and found 24 percent already using social software, while eight percent say they will start using it within a year. Wikis apparently are used by 20 percent of respondents, blogs by 18 percent, social networking by 15 percent, says Joshua Levine, ChangeWave researcher.

While current users find wikis to be most useful, future adopters think blogs (26 percent) and social networks (21 percent) will be most beneficial.

About 39 percent report their company is very or somewhat willing to use Web 2.0 social software for business purposes.

Current users say they use social networking to improve internal employee collaboration as well as to increase internal efficiency and productivity.

Users who say their firms will be adopting social networking also agree about the merits of internal communications, but also are more focused on using the tools to
improve external customer service and support, increase brand awareness and loyalty
and drive sales of products and services.

Ubiquitous Online Communications

If you needed any reminding, email and instant messaging now is quite widespread in North America, Japan and Europe, as broadband penetration also has become a typical experience. Use of social networking sites still has a ways to go, except in Canada, where usage seems unusually high.

Teens: Social Media, Not Email

Some 93 percent of teens use the Internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction. Those of you around children and teens know that much of their social life is programmed and scheduled. To a greater extent than used to be the case, their lives are restricted for safety reasons. Social networking is a substitute for "hanging out" in the physical world with friends.

Despite the important of email for adults as a major mode of personal and professional communication, it is not a particularly important part of the teen communications pattern.

Only 14 percent of all teens report sending emails to their friends every day, making it the least popular form of daily social communication on the list researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project found.

Even among highly-connected teens who have access to multiple communication modes, just 22 percent say they send email to their friends daily.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64 percent of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57 percent of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.

About 39 percent of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33 percent in 2004.

About 33 percent create or work on Web pages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 at 32 percent.

Some 28 percent have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19 percent in 2004. About 27 percent maintain their own personal Web page, up from 22 percent in 2004.

About 26 percent remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19 percent in 2004.

The percentage of those ages 12-17 who said “yes” to at least one of those five content-creation activities is 64 percent of online teens, or 59 percent of all teens.

It isn't rocket science to suggest that social networking is a fundamental trend, not a fad, as some seem to think.

Broadband Changes Just About Everything

Broadband might not change everything, but it changes an awful lot for communications and content service and application providers. For starters, broadband drives a tripling of user time spent online, says Nate Elliott, Jupiter Research senior analyst. That means users already spend more time online than with print media.

To the extent that service and application providers support their business models by advertising revenue, that means more revenue for Web sites and applications, less for print vehicles.

Where a typical user might spend three hours a week with print media, users in western Europe routinely spend four hours a week online. But there’s a huge difference. About two thirds of users who are 65 or older spend more than five hours a week with print media. Users between 15 and 24 are more than 400 percent less likely to do so.

By some recent measures, user involvement with content sites has eclipsed use of the Internet for communications. At least, that’s what the Online Publishers Association says.

Jupiter analysts say that does not mean “news” is dead, or that newspapers are necessarily dead, yet. News is the top type of online content, and users are 300 percent more likely to consume news than sports or video content. And rates of consumption of print haven’t changed in four years, Jupiter says.

Without a doubt, online video consumption is getting to be quite mainstream. Last year, 22 percent of Americans and 11 percent of Europeans reported watching video regularly, with 18 percent of French respondents saying they do so regularly, says Jupiter.

Overall, the video audience has doubled since 2003, and Jupiter estimates viewership will double again by 2011.

But something might have happened over the last year. A recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project found that 57 percent of all Internet users, and 57 percent of users between 30 and 49, have watched online video. In the oldest age demographic, 39 percent have watched an online video.

Possibly 10 to 18 percent of older users report watching video every day, the Pew research finds.

About a quarter of younger users between 15 and 24 say they watch online video regularly and are more than 12 times more likely to watch video as users who are 55 or older. That doesn’t necessarily mean those viewers have substituted online video for legacy TV, though, as reported TV watching hasn’t changed.

The intensity of involvement might be questionable, however. About 27 percent of users say they regularly multitask, using multiple media at once.

And while some surveys suggest communication activities are decreasing, Jupiter researchers say users “spend most of their online time communicating.” Compared to dial-up users, broadband users are 57 percent more likely to use email regularly, 147 percent more likely to use instant messaging regularly and are 125 percent more likely to blog.

More than 10 percent of European users visit social networks regularly and more than 40 percent visit such sites daily. In the U.S. market, use of social networking sites is spreading to older age groups. About 35 percent of social network users are between the ages of 35 and 54.

The thing about social networks is that they are in many ways substitutes for other activities such as email, instant messaging, texting, calling or entertainment sites and applications.

And while most new online activities are disproportionately engaged in by younger users, just about every new type of activity is being adopted by older users as well.

Build For Your Kids, Not Your Father

A recent survey by CIO Insight suggests chief information officers use (or think they ought to say they use) Internet video, wikis, blogs, really simple syndication, podcasts and social networking. Twitter and Second Life don't get nearly the same levels of use.

Linked In is Like Email; Facebook is Like IM

I've never been a fan of LinkedIn (I'm not a "head hunter," and it undoubtedly is a useful tool for people who do that for a living). It might be a nice utility for updating contact information for a small subset of the people you actually know and communicate with. Beyond that I've never had occasion to use it.

Facebook seems like a better version of LinkedIn, though. I was able to get my son's new address when he went back to NYU without using LinkedIn. To be sure, the information wasn't pushed to me. I had to go view his Facebook page. But I got what I needed without emailing or calling.

So why is LinkedIn like email? It's a tool "older" people use for work. Why is Facebook like IM? It's a tool "younger" people (and increasing numbers of "not so young") use to keep up with other people they actually care about. In some important ways, IM also is a "richer" experience, as Facebook is.

Facebook, MySpace, Friendster Loyalty

Researchers at Parks Associates say social networking users are not loyal, citing stats showing that nearly 40 percent of MySpace users keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook. Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is even lower, with more than 50 percent of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles.

These trends highlight a peculiar aspect of the market for social networking services, say Parks Associates researchers. Nearly half of all social networkers regularly use more than one site; one in six use three or more. The result is an increasingly interlinked environment tied together by links, widgets, and the users themselves.

I'm not sure I think this "lack of loyalty" is a problem. Communities aren't federated because the people you know are not all federated. It's just like IM systems. Not everybody uses the same client, so one is forced to use multiple clients, or a client that federates all the clients for you. Social networks are no different.

And of course smaller site users are on multiple sites. The problem with smaller sites is that no single smaller site has lots of people you want to stay in touch with as members. The point of registering with any smaller site is that somebody you might want to stay in touch with might join that particular site and not the others you are a member of.

Practical Anthropology at Swisscom and Microsoft

An anthropologist at Microsoft points out that when instant messaging and other social networking tools are taken away from people (especially people under the age of 35), productivity drops. That's an indication that social networking is becoming a key problem solving tool, not a "time waster" as many managers seem to believe. Swisscom Innovations anthropologist Stefana Broadbent points out that use of written channels, ranging from IM to text messaging to email is growing, while voice growth has slowed where text communications are possible.

Broadbent theorizes that written channels allow constant interplay and availability without creating an information overload. A person without online social tools averages about 20 contacts with whom they keep in touch. A person with online tools can maintain 70 or more contacts, she notes. She theorizes that IM, for example, is both fast and non-committal, allowing a wider circle of contacts without overload.

That's an interesting perspective as more people start to worry we all are too connected, too much of the time. Broadbent argues that people should not have to unplug. In fact, she rhetorically asks, "why would I want to unplug?"

And she questions the notion that most people actually are overloaded with communication requests. "Most people we interview get five emails a day," says Broadbent. "They are thrilled to get one more friend on Facebook, for example."

Though the common perception is that most people are overloaded with communications, Broadbent says that isn't true. "Not many people are overloaded," she says.

"I'm opposed to the notion of unplugging," Broadbent says. "I don't want to lose my social intelligence network." To Broadbent, "IM is like bringing your dog to work."

Though I don't see lots of evidence that "always connected" behavior is all that important to most people over the age of 40 or so, I am beginning to see how most of the social networking tools can increase knowledge diffusion and make possible a wider degree of casual monitoring of one's environment. I wouldn't say I find it as helpful as RSS. But part of the reason is that most of the people I normally want to interact with do not seem to be heavy social networkers.