The problem of humanity is crystallized within Greece. The country’s situation speaks as a lesson to the world. Those who provide solutions for Greece in various verticals WILL be leaders in providing solutions for the entire planet. The lessons learned here in the remainder of 2010 WILL be templates for the planet of the future. ~ Nathaniel Hansen

Popularity: unranked [?]

Despite Facebook privacy changes and serious cases of Twitter Fail Whale, social media use has increased astronomically since this time last year: During December 2009, global users spent an average of five hours on social networking sites, up from three hours in December 2008. That’s an 82% increase.

Nielsen just released a report on its blog detailing increased social media use, and the results are impressive, while not exactly shocking. Some highlights:

- Social networking sites are the most popular online destinations globally (based on the amount of time people spent there in December), with games and instant messaging coming in second and third, respectively. (Side note: As gaming becomes more popular on sites like Facebook, it will be interesting to see how this affects time spent.) (read more)

Popularity: 4% [?]

This year for the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have ads in the Super Bowl telecast. NoCindy Crawford, Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake. Instead it is redirecting the millions it has spent annually to the Internet. Pepsi has chosen to give away over $20 million in a social media play it is calling The Pepsi Refresh Project, debuting in 2010. …read more

Popularity: unranked [?]

For Big-Spending Consumer Brands, Has Scale Lost Its Power?

Small Players Like Method Leverage Digital, Social Media in Quest to Gain Share

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Have digital and social media leveled the marketing playing field so much that scale is losing its power? …read more

Popularity: 7% [?]

Check out Coke’s Expedition206! Wow!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Facebook’s Big Changes: Action Items for Marketers
Social-Media Site Streamlines Apps Before Fanning Across the Web

Facebook’s latest round of updates announced this week will affect everyone: marketers, developers, publishers, consumers and anyone else remotely connected to their site and platform. And some of the changes will especially impact marketers.

In a rare move for any company, Facebook not only announced what changes will take place, but it publicly offered a timeline for when it will happen. Of course, the timeline may shift, and some specifics have yet to be ironed out — I’ve found in consulting both with Facebook executives and analysts covering the announcements that, many of the details aren’t yet known and a number of important questions cannot yet be fully answered. However, marketers should still appreciate the wealth of information Facebook has provided on these changes, including a gallery of screen shots. …Read more

Popularity: 10% [?]

Companies and executives are finally beginning to really jump on the social media bandwagon, and that’s fantastic. However, for social media to fully work (for everyone), businesses and brands need to be able to evaluate the impact their social media use is having, both positive and negative. Measuring social media ROI isn’t impossible, but it can be difficult because many of the pieces that need to be evaluated are difficult to track. …read more

Popularity: 4% [?]

With the popularity of social media ever on the rise, it’s no surprise that industry experts are weighing in on SM trends for 2010.

Things to look for: Increased popularity in mobile and sharing functionality, tighter workplace regulations on employee profiles and a continuation in companies looking for cost-effective ways to serve their customers through access to online support – further proof that companies are looking to social media for cost-savings and optimal monetization.

Read on for David Armano’s full article on the Harvard Business blog Six Social Media Trends for 2010.

Popularity: 4% [?]

http://bit.ly/huffington_post_facebook_accelerate

The BBC is attempting to embrace social media by appointing a social media editor in its newsroom and redesigning its website. As the September traffic figures for US political blogging site Huffington Post reveal, the strategy is clearly a wise one. In short: embracing social media boosts traffic.

The figures speak for themselves: after the Huffington Post launched a Social News site with Facebook Connect in the middle of August, comScore credited the site with 6,825,000 unique users in September. That is up impressive 50% year on year, and slightly overtaking the Washington Post website. According to the Nielsen’s September report, the Huffington Post is at 9.47 million unique users, compared with the BBC’s 7.2 million.

When Staci D Kramer from paidContent got a chance to interview the Huffington Post CEO, Eric Hippeau, he revealed some more details: Facebook referral traffic is up 48% since the launch and accounted for 3.5 million visits, so 15% of all the comments now come from Facebook. And according to the Huffington Post’s internal statistics, those numbers continue to build. … read more

Popularity: 1% [?]

Social media has been in full swing this week, from Google Wave to Susan Boyle. Both Google and Microsoft decided to launch new products, while the social media starlet Boyle sang her heart out on the finale of Britainís Got Talent. There has been no shortage of social media buzz.
[More]

Popularity: 2% [?]

It’s no secret that social media has been blasting off like a rocket ship. Today, social media encompasses social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, mobile platforms, information sharing, online video, and far more. There are now thousands of professionals and companies that are deeply involved in the social media sphere.

Social Media marketing is estimated to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent for the next five years, according to Forrester Research’s Interactive Marketing Forecast – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums.

Forrester estimates that $716 million will be spent on the medium this year, growing to $3.1 billion in 2014. At that point, social media will be a bigger marketing channel than both email and mobile, but still just a fraction of the size of search or display advertising ($31.6B and $16.9B, respectively). (http://tinyurl.com/me2l8u)

More than 82 million people in the U.S. created content online during 2008, a number expected to grow to nearly 115 million by 2013 according to numbers released by eMarketer. The bulk of content creators are social networking users that post photos or links, but there’s also a quickly-growing number of people participating in more involved activities like blogging or uploading their own videos.

71 million people created content on social networks last year, while 21 million posted blogs, 15 million uploaded videos, and more than 11 million participated in virtual worlds.

According to a new study released by Aberdeen Group (published today by eMarketer), 63 percent of companies plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2009, despite the current weakness in the economy.

The world’s largest blog, Mashable, founded in 2005, focuses exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news.

With more than 6 million monthly page views, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.

News monitoring service VMS estimates that Twitter’s mentions in the media were worth $48 million over the past 30 days. That’s about 80 times more than Bing got in the last 30 days ($573,834); in fact, that’s more than Google gets, and Google is a verb, used everywhere on a daily basis.

The numbers are even more impressive if you look at impressions (when a person sees a mention of Twitter on Oprah, for example, that’s one impression) – Twitter received 2.73 billion impressions in the past month,

With an estimated $48 million worth of exposure in the media each month, Twitter’s homepage is undoubtedly being hit by the likes of Larry King, Oprah, and Ellen viewers.

A study was released last week by the Altimeter Group, run by former Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li, that analyzed the 100 most valuable brands (according to BusinessWeek/Interbrand) and how they engage across 11 different online social-media venues, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The study was billed as creating an “engagement database” and ranked Starbucks No. 1, followed by Dell and eBay, based on their breadth and depth of social engagement. Google, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Nike, Amazon, SAP and Yahoo/Intel (a tie) round out the top 10.

What was eye-popping was the correlation they made between social engagement and financial performance. There are a lot of factors that influence a company’s financial performance, which makes such a correlation questionable. But good use of social media could be seen as a proxy for an innovative culture, eagerness to engage with consumers and take risks, a net positive for any business.

The bigger takeaway from the research is in examining how these companies were able to build their social networks. They all innovated early, often and, sometimes, incrementally. Consider that:

■Dell and Starbucks were some of the earliest adopters of corporate crowd-sourcing. They launched ambitious sites on Salesforce.com’s platform in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

■Many embraced Twitter early and in innovative ways. EBay, for example, was the first to live-tweet earnings calls in 2008. Amazon started offering deals on Twitter back in 2007.

■Several were quick to build out robust communities that connect customers and employees. Microsoft, for example, launched its inventive Channel 9 platform for developers back in 2004. It followed up with similar sites for other key stakeholders.

■A few of these companies were among the first to let employees openly blog. “Microsofties” began blogging in the late 1990s. Yahoo and Google debuted corporate and product blogs in 2004.

Social capital goes to those who innovate early, often and with excellence—and repeat this process over and over. That is what the research spells out. (http://tinyurl.com/ldaerg)

According to Forbes, US companies love Twitter, and many of them have frequently updated Twitter accounts.

Translated, this means the following: US companies have PR and media experts who told their CEOs “You thought that blogging was stupid, and look where it’s at now. You don’t want to miss the Twitter train, because Twitter is the next blog.”

Brand sponsored social media campaigns are everywhere. From SeaWorld, Starbucks, and Dunkin’ Donuts, to Cadbury, A&E, and even Universal, it’s officially the hot trend to replace or supplement traditional marketing campaigns with social media.

Huggies, the maker of diapers, training pants, and other products for babies and young kids, has decided to jump on the social media bandwagon too, but by going straight to their target audience — moms — by way of the popular mommy social site, Circle of Moms. The mom-centric site is leveraging its partnerships with MindShare and AppsSavvy to fully integrate a Huggie’s branded experience within their site and Facebook app.

Popularity: 4% [?]