April 30th, 2008 by Chrystie
Morgan Stanley has just revealed last month’s Internet Trends Report which has some very intriguing statistics regarding Social Networking sites.
Here are some of the highlights from the 72 page document:
- 6 out of the TOP 10 Most visited sites on the Internet ARE Social Networking sites. YouTube, Facebook, Hi5, Live.com, MySpace and Wikipedia all made the list.
- 5 out of the 6 didn’t even make the list in 2005. Within 3 years our internet experience has been drastically changed by the introduction of social media, networking and sharing sites.
- in 2008 YouTube has surpassed Google and Yahoo in number of Page Views
- Facebook has grown by 305% - largely in part to it’s ’stickiness’, open application platform, and recent open invitation strategy.
- Top 5 Facebook Applications are: Superwall, Top Friends, FunWall, SuperPoke and Movies.
- Top 5 Searches according to Google Zeitegist: iPhone, Badoo, Facebook, Daily Motion & Webkinz.
- Amazon.com is still the Largest Online Retailer
- Internet Advertising spend is up 26% making it the biggest advertising mover.
- 80% of Internet Users deem the internet as an important source of information, where as radio and newspaper only received 63% importance.
View the full Morgan Stanley Internet Trend Report:
April 23rd, 2008 by Chrystie
Last week, I wrote a blog post about Twitter, the fast growing microblogging platform that allows users to blog 140 character ‘tweets’ to their closest friends, followers and yes, even strangers. Twitter, although, originally created to keep up with what your friends are up to, has quickly become an easy way for companies to monitor their reputation online.
Zappos.com, one of the largest online shoe merchants, known for its outstanding customer service and amazingly large selection of shoes (personal experience) has recently taken to Twitter. They have set up a Twitter feed page on their site which follows online mentions about the company and ‘tweets’ made by their employees.
Zappos.com has been the online sweetheart of many bloggers. With amazing customer service stories like, I Heart Zappos, this one and one more, it’s hard to NOT love them. Zappos.com did not set out to win over bloggers, they set out to win over their customers…and some of them just so happened to be bloggers. With one flower bouquet, Zappos.com managed to win over thousands of bloggers and fans. According to Yahoo Site Explorerr the “I Heart Zappos” post currently has close to 2,000 inbound links! Talk about free publicity!
As a company committed to customer service, it is a smart move for Zappos to embrace Twitter. Following their company’s brand online will help them pro-actively remedy any negative mentions online and humanize the company by following their employee’s tweets.
October 25th, 2007 by Fred
While it’s no $6 billion deal, the $240 million stake Microsoft has just purchase in FaceBook puts an astonishing $15 billion valuation on what was until very recently little more than a college hang-out. However, Microsoft is ready to bet big money on the future of internet advertising, and where innovation is limited, they have big money to spend.
Online ads are a big part of the deal, with Microsoft becoming exclusive provider of all advertising through the site, and while it’s unlikely that their $240 million will return a profit through the site, it does firmly ensconce Microsoft in the Web 2.0 world and clearly shows that these sites aren’t just a “fad” anymore.
Obviously, the big players are interested in getting involved in the big money at stake in online ads and Microsoft is not willing to be left behind. The question now is how worthwhile this online advertising will be in the long run and how many ad systems will be tested and broken, and budgets spent, before the online ad machine is as well-oiled as those in other media.
September 17th, 2007 by Fred
It’s no news that major corporations are pushing hard to develop a positive image using social networking channels — see the McDonald’s Quality Correspondence Campaign or the backfired Wal-Mart blogging foray — and neither is it news that companies aren’t afraid to use legal recourse to protect their interests… Napster, anyone? But an interesting article about a VW Subpoena to YouTube that appeared in Wired this morning shows a different mix of the two forces: a company taking legal action to protect its copyrighted material, which just so happens to be a piece of negative PR.
Basically, the video in contention is a spoof of a recent VW Golf commercial with some rather unflattering Nazi-themed overtones. Volkswagen filed a subpoena and is now looking to get the user’s identity from YouTube, who complies with the law but alerts users of the filing to give them a chance to respond. While this sort of thing is almost a daily occurrence with file-sharing networks, legal action with social media sites is a relatively new beast, and Wired wonders how dedicated social media sites will be to protecting the identities of their users as more cases like this appear.
As I touched on a couple of weeks ago, the web has a funny way of making temporal comments permanent, and biting those who post things against their better judgment. With major companies taking assertive (and certainly not unreasonable) motions to protect their copyright (and brand), users should really be aware that they’re playing in the real world when they post anything online. At the same time, social media sharing sites should do their best to protect their users — within limits — from themselves.
