Posted by Marshall on December 31, 2008 |
Link It
TechCrunch reported today the Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising) with a plug for Facebook that sounds like a movie (Facebook Rising). Having access to Comscore, I’m well aware of how effortless it is to pull such charts together, so here’s a few more.
If we discount “Blogger” which is not really a Social Network, but is Social Media - the reach of Facebook is going way up - close to 20% of all the audience for Social Media as defined by Comscore is on Facebook, according to the chart (I’m using WorldWide audience - not just US); MySpace seems hardly a contenter - and at any rate, all we’re talking about is MySpace.com* (sites) - and it must be a new entity that was created over the last month or two - the regular myspace.com entity doesn’t even show up on the top 10.
However, when you look at the total number of pages viewed per million - Facebook far outshines any other Social Networking property (see below) - again this is worldwide numbers.
However, were we to look at average length of visit - hardly any network I know of, shows up - which implies time spent on site might not be the answer to what makes a social network valuable and I almost have to wonder about the panel size and quality - again, these are worldwide numbers.
If anything, what Comscore is telling me, is to go out and look at these other Social Networks I never heard of like person.com, kaixin.com and fotostrana.ru.
Anyway, I want to wish everyone who reads my blog a Happy New Years in 2009!
Posted by Marshall on December 24, 2008 |
Link It
Canary In The Coalmine: NYT Sees First Decline In Online Ad Revenues
Posted using ShareThis
Note: I saw I can use “ShareThis” to post to my blog via Social Media - though it doesn’t really add anything more than the link back. More and more, I’m finding that my blogging is spilling into my Facebook Feeds and into Friendfeed - and I’m trying to bring that richness back to this blog - but so far, haven’t had much luck.
It seems none of the plugins I’ve found actually replicates my entire Facebook profile feed as a widget that I can put in the sidebar - Facebook Connect doesn’t seem to do that, either, at least, not yet.
Next year, I think we’ll see more and more blogging morphing into mini feeds, like what we’ve seen in Facebook, FriendFeed and even, the Google Search Wiki.
And mind you, for the New York Times to have declining online ad revenue just bespeaks to the overall weakness of the economy - advertisers are holding back, more and more on spending - partly because, people have less and less money left to buy anything.
With out that - money, liquidity, credit - whatever, the only thing left is advertising for Branding, or to inform of an event or service.
What’s surprising is the downturn in advertising at the New York Times wasn’t more.
BTW, an interesting side thread on more activity going into mini feeds and away from blogs - and dare I say - newspapers - Of Course There Is a Social Media Backlash Coming.
But, so what - maybe mainstream media will turn into one big social network next year (who knows)? My point being - if people are getting more involved in mini-feeds and micro blogging - maybe that’s because they suit us better - in some ways.
That’s what I’m grappling with too - I want to bring the richness of Facebook into my blog - but the functionality just isn’t there quite yet - and I read well over 200 feeds a day - and comment on a lot of it - and that stuff is going into my Facebook feed and into Friendfeed - but not here ….
…. wouldn’t it be nice if it could also be here and illuminate my blog posts?
Posted by Marshall on December 16, 2008 |
Link It
Thinking about conversations and Social Media; a lot of focus has been on “let’s have a conversation” or the “number of conversations” (and where they come from or who).
What about the definition of a conversation?
Has anyone in the Social Media space defined what a conversation is (never mind how it’s measured)?
In my Information Technology background, which has analogies for social media, in order to send a message and have it acknowledged, you have to communicate information in certain sequences and formats. For example, when you send data via TCP/IP you wait for a response, then the next set of data is sent. With UDP, you can send the message, but don’t check if anyone got it (your not waiting for an “ACK” from the message receiver). Fast forward to Blogs …When someone leaves a comment, is that comment really a conversation if no one responds to it? At most, it can signify a willingness to have a conversation when you leave a comment on someone’s blog or message board.
Sure, if I talk to myself, is that defined as a conversation? Maybe, but it so, is more a one way conversation.
Normally, unless a message stream is acknowledged, I would not think to call it a conversation, (unless taking to yourself is having a conversation) much as a system, communicating with itself, via a “loopback interface”) handles messaging.
There’s also the sense of a “listener” and “listening” inherit in the idea of what a conversation is.
So…I propose we count as conversations the number of instances of comments on a blog that are replied to (by the blogger or another reader).
Samething with Facebook; my news has a lot of content in it lately, but only a few responses from other Facebook friends to any single item-that’s a conversation, in my book.
I think the same approach can be applied much more broadly, like YouTube or Seesmic- your conversations are the number of responses that are responded to.
Once we can count conversations, we can examine their quality-that will be the subject of another post.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9ba83c80-65ad-451c-b623-caa01efce458)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ee2d9aa2-aba5-4956-83e3-79b88fee52e4)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=82030345-601e-4f24-807b-dba7bfb585aa)
