Posts by InsightsDigital

Thanks Jay for bringing this up. The fascinating aspect of it is that it is a form of digital surveillance rather than pledging "I am a Follower" since you never know who will access your account and make assumptions from it.

Thanks for sharing this. Yes, I do believe that though these online communities do foster a sense of "community" it also have made lives more transparent. My biggest concern is that there could be "researchers" out there who are using such updates for non-benevolent means. If I was a parent, I would be very vigilant on this little privacy setting because it could make a big difference.

Thanks all for your feedback and insights. It seems Wordpress is a true winner.

I read on the Forrester Blog that it found in its recent survey that:

• Young singles and couples are the most connected.
• Young families are heavy tech users, especially for shared experiences.
• Older families are straddling different worlds.
• Older singles and couples use technology more surgically.

This is very interesting but true. http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2009/09/new-benchmark-data-is-here.html

What do you think?

Smartphones have increased the ways people are connected. Thus, it is very easy to integrate Facebook, TweetDeck, and other applications to your phones. I have FB on my blackberry but I dont follow tweets. I used to but not anymore since I was getting tweets all day on my cell so I stopped. What about you? How connected are you to your online communities on your cell?

We all know that Twitter and Facebook allows for some level of privacy in regards to your tweets and updates. Some users just make it very public while others make their updates very private and for the eyes of selected few. Thus, there was a concern that search engines, especially Google, will index these "private thoughts" as well. Mashable reported it will not. But my thought is - nothing is "private" in social media so this issue can indeed be a possibility.

Nielsen found that 18% of online visitors (at least from their sample) use social media as a discovery tool aka as research tool. I know I do it. It is a way to find "hidden gems".
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/social-media-the-next-great-gateway-for-content-discovery/
So what do you think? I am very big into finding so much wealth and gems in user generated content. It is a great way of conducting preliminary qualitative research.

In this digital age where tweeting and updating your Facebook page is such a common place behavior, one major concern for me is online reputation management. The information you put online can come back and bite you. Most people may not realize this. HR folks facebook potential employees and now that social media communities have integration partnership with major search engines, this issue becomes more threatening. Imagine - you just had a job interview and tweet about how "great" your interview went and hope never to see them again. Imagine if the HR or even the person you interviewed with saw the tweet. Just a thought.

Yes, it actually becomes a public health hazard, especially in the days of H1N1 flu virus. I just hope other brands dont follow suit.

Well, 140 characters limitation for twitter reminds me of the ancient days of the telegram. It had to be succinct and straight forward. But you know what it was lost? The ability to make it fuzzy - make it sticky - which blogs have been able to create. Thus, it becomes more of a financial ticker stream.

Myspace was the "it" community until Facebook came around. Facebook cant be on its pedestal forever. So I like your question. I could assume the online community would build on Facebook engagement as well as have a gmail like interface or capability. So the site becomes really integrated with your daily needs.

Online identity validation is becoming increasingly important in today's connected society. Thus, I strongly vote for such move. I think there is OpenID which had some momentum some time ago but I have not heard much about it these days. Now, it is "Facebook Connect".

Your client is not the only one. Twitter is seen as a fast, useful, free platform that allows businesses to engage quickly with their customer. The issue is that not everyone Twitters. Period. As a business client, I may not be able to tweet if my company as a fire wall or a policy against visiting twitter using work computers. Thus, if the customer service is solely through twitter, I am concerned.

As companies are realizing that their employees are indeed spending time on social media, both at work, and off work, creating corporate social media policy is actually a good idea. It greats a foundation for at least some form of structure. Nowadays, when colleagues meet someone at a professional setting, instead of saying, "Let me Linked her up... it is now.. Let me Facebook her". So even this shift on the type of social media communities necessitates a form of policy, especially if done during work hours.

This is really cool. It is a dashboard of sorts which feeds from a combination of raw data, but it makes it look live "live" data. I can see the business applications for such dashboard on internal and external business related sites.

Thanks for sharing this story. Many clients are not as convinced on the success of social media campaign. Your story proves that at the end of the game, it is the results that help make a campaign a success or a bomb.

I agree with you Marketing Rob. I was equally as lost. :-(

This situation is a fine example of "growing too big for your birtches".

Thanks for sharing that link. Perhaps I am being Devil's advocate, but this up a concern about privacy. It seems that now a days, users forget how precious their privacy can be. Thus, with their updates being in "live" mode, their employers can track them if the user is not "working". What do you think?

Since these search engines use different algorithms, even if Google and Bing/Yahoo both have parnterships with these major social media communities, I predict results will be slightly different enough to warrant both search engines to be used. What do you think?

From a social media research perspective, such wealth of user generated content provides lots of opportunities for Brands and PR agencies to dig through the data and find some "hidden gems" in regards to consumer insights, trends, and competitive intelligence.

Thanks for sharing this link. I was cracking up. Since this is a social media campaign, imagine if users also post "pictures" and "audio/video" of their experience. This could mean bring advertising or buzz as media people call it, but it sure will be lots of "crap" as well. :-)

I have used both Google Trend and Google Analytics. Google Trends helps the researcher understand from a macro perspective - what are the global trends but nothing specific. Think of it as your free version of HitWise. Meanwhile Google Analytics is a robust tool to tell you about your site's visitor behavior. Think of it as an amp up verion of AWStats.

To be honest, I dont think this class will be no different than reading the blogs of these experts, keeping up with various sites like CNET and Mashable, and best of all, you save the money! The "experts" will probably regurgitate the same information from their blogs.

I personally did not associate tags with hashtags but it makes perfect sense. Tags are a modern day post-it on digital content.

We all know that any lead helps with this economy. Online job boards are full of job seekers who are really looking. But I read on a site about how social media has helped job seekers find jobs. There are many job related twitter accounts and also other karma related job seekers helping other job seekers accounts there as well. So if you found a lead or helped someone else find a lead using social media, please share your story.

As we all know DaniWeb has a new look and feel and I like it. It also allows users to include tags on post and responses. From a SEO perspective, tagging helps content be crawled by engines. But how many of us actually tag content outside this site?

I read on a blog about how RSS may be out. I dont know about you but I actually subscribe to many blogs and I look forward to reading or at least glancing my Google Reader's headlines. Yes, I dont have time for all the feeds but I do scan and read the compelling ones. What about you?

If you have not heard yet, there was a study coproduced by Comscore and Group M about social media and paid search.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20703026/The-Influenced-Social-Media-Search-and-the-Interplay-of-Consideration-and-Consumption

Above is the 6 page link.

Basically it found that social media increases visitors consumption on context, experience, and increases click through rate.

As internet marketers, we need to measure the stickiness value and engagmenet level of visitors to a site. Thus, many companies have used Google Analytics in the past few years since it is FREE. But there were other companies who preferred to still use paid tools like WebTrends, Omniture, and Coremetrics to mention a few. Thus, I found it interested that on the Forrester blog it mentioned:

"The merits of free are compelling.Web analytics tools, 66% would consider displacing them with a free alternative. While the primary driver for this consideration is cost, 60% of enterprises are more likely to consider a free tool now because of recent improvements in free solutions. Additionally, 52% are enticed by free tools because they allow enterprises to invest more in the people necessary to drive insight rather than the technology used to collect and analyze data."

So what do you think? I personally liked Visual Science before it got gobbled by Omniture.

I actually would like to mention - serendipity and chaos, especially in cases where a patient is looking for personal stories of other patients encountering the same treatment or condition and there are other patients who already shared their journey.

I read online that Google Wave is like the next best thing since wonder bread. I do know that only 100,000 invites were sent. So what do you think if you were one of the lucky ones? I have seen the video on youtube but other than that, I still cant judge.
http://searchenginewatch.com/3635254

I just read on a blog about how Fox News had a blogger and this blogger developed a strong following. The importance about this blogger was that the visitors to his blog also visited other pages of Fox site and this is what content publisher sites really desire - to increase the stickiness value of site visitors. But guess what? When the blogger was dismissed, the bloggers visitors did not return to the site. Thus, this brings up an important question - who owns the social media conversation when someone leaves a company?
http://searchenginewatch.com/3635256

I totally agree. That is why I recommend to some clients that just pick one or two social media tactics and then let it grow - not all social media is appropriate for all businesses. I cant see people subscribing to tweets about who is having their funerals. I think this is a very private and only shared if the family wants to share it.

My concern is: "What's next?" on government control of public communication. Could it be next - limitations on text behavior - just a thought.

Wow - this is scary. I really thought that on Facebook, only friends could poke you. Thus, this lawsuit represents a new realm of legal liability cases - liability for online behavior. I am afraid this type of lawsuits will cause a slippery slope. What do you think? What's next - being sued for sending a virtual gift?

I totally agree - from an ethical and from a SEO perspective. First of all, social media is about unique user generated content. Thus, if you just copy and paste, such behavior is not contributing unique content to the online community. Second, search engines dont like repeated content and your site will get penalized for it. Like it or not.

Thanks for sharing this story. A warning to all tweet and getting penalized for it. This is also a good warning for others to be careful of sharing certain type of news.

Very good observation. It all depends on how mena nd women prefer to communicate and how they communicate - perhaps its a DNA thing or it is a socially taught behavior. Regardless, this is evident on how people communicate and share, both online and offline.

We all know majority of businesses are jumping into social media. The question is: "When is it not appropriate to do so?" I personally dont recommend it for certain type of businesses like funerals, unless you are adding sending a gift. What do you think?

OK, I agree with you, Wordpress is the winner.

Thank you for sharing. In a way I am not surprised about DIGG since it does demonstrate the level of social connection on DIGG and Facebook which is not as strong on search engine Google. Why? That is not what the site is intended to do in the first place!!

Thanks for this important advisory notice. This is also a very real remainder to all to constantly change their login information. This is surely a real threat to our online identities.

Either on Facebook or on Second Life, one can spend alot of money by buying virtual gifts and necessity.
Whenever I want to send a birthday wish to a Facebook friend, the option of gifts come up but these "gifts" cost real money. I also know I used to spend money on buying virtual protection on Mob Wars. So what do you think about this? Zygna, maker of many of these online games on Facebook, have made millions just from selling virtual gifts. What do you think?

For the FTC to do this, it must have meant that they saw the urgency to do so from a consumer's perspective. This reminds me of the days when Nader would advocate for such legislation. I personally do believe that ethical bloggers should disclose but it is also a sign of good faith to not abuse the system or any system...

I think that now a days, people prefer to deal with ads than to pay.

HappyGeek, thanks for the giggles. Yes, I agree with you as well. That amount is nice chump change. :-)

Is it me or have I noticed that popular online communities have been down this week, like Google, YouTube, and of course Twitter. So what happens to the users who want to log on and face this roadblock? What to do next? Its like when the computers are down at work and people are idling around chatting instead. I remember back in the old days, there were no such things as computers nor Social networking sites and people used semi electric typewriters. Yes, this was early 90s!!

With the exception of Digg, all the major social networking sites had more women than men. I wonder why? Why do you think so? Personally, I know I have been on social networking sites since 1992 via Usenet and IRC. Yes, you might not have heard of these two, but this is way before Google came to the picture, kiddos.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/who-rules-the-social-web/

I just read on a blog about how Drew Carey started a bid $25k to buy his username on Twitter. Drew is willing to go up to 100k!!!

So what about the non-celebrities out there. Would you buy your name on Twitter if someone else already has this? What do you think about this?