This is a guest post by RJ Bardsley, Vice President, Racepoint Group.
In a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, reporters Scott Thurm and Yukari Iwatani Kane explore the reality of how much data some of the most popular Android and iPhone apps actually share. The article starts off with a quick look at Pandora, the adorable, hugely popular music app. It turns out that Pandora shares demographic, location and personal details to eight different trackers.
I guess it’s naïve to say this is shocking – consumers in the North American market have given up a lot of privacy since the dawn of the Internet age in return for mobile and internet experiences that make our lives easier, more connected, more fun or just a little bit more interesting. The reality of apps sharing data is that it will enable marketers and content publishers to create a more personalized (and ergo a better?) experience for users. What does this mean? Well, basically it means that if you’re downloading and using a lot of apps, you’re choosing your own mobile “adventure” without even knowing it.
Today the “adventure” is still in its early phases. Your phone doesn’t change colors, tones and layouts based on what you chose to listen to on Pandora. But that scenario is not out of the realm of possibility. That’s the cool side of it. The uncool side of it is that you could say marketers are actually spying on consumers – especially when data is collected without notifying the user.
Where is the happy medium? People have been searching for that since machines first started collecting data. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) offers some guidance in a Code of Conduct. The MMA is a strong advocate of consumer privacy standards, but the organization is strictly voluntary and has no power to enforce anything. As a consumer, you could turn off almost all the applications and features that collect and send data from your phone, but then you’d be left with a pretty boring piece of plastic and glass.
Should mobile brands move cautiously where privacy is concerned? A survey of Wall Street Journal readers (an interactive part of the above-mentioned article) reveals that most consumers (66.5 percent) feel that apps should always tell users when they’re collecting data. That seems to indicate that having a privacy-friendly image for your app or device would be beneficial. That said, Pandora doesn’t seem to be suffering.
We all know the history. Michael Vick is an immensely talented football player that took the league by storm while a member of the Atlanta Falcons. Then he went to prison for dog fighting and has been trying to recover (personally and professionally) as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles.
This year Vick’s play has thrown him back into the spotlight, which means he’s back in the marketing world too. Woodbury Nissan in New Jersey recently hired Vick to star in a commercial for the dealership (video is below). The clip is actually pretty entertaining, but it has raised plenty of eyebrows since it’s the first major thing Vick has done since spending a 18 months in prison.
This brings us to the question, do you trust Michael Vick? Has he successfully rebounded from rock bottom to a point where he can now be a marketable brand that consumers will look up to and trust? Tiger Woods is already back in the advertising world, but his actions were more stupid then pure evil. It would be quite a transition for Vick, who will finish his second post-prison football season next month.
Note: On top of this all, Vick also made even more news this week when he announced that he would like to have another dog someday (he is currently prohibited from ever owning a dog by a federal judge).
One of my favorite Twitter friends, Annie Colbert, recently posted an awesome infographic on the state of the blog economy in 2010 (view the full infographic here). The image is bursting with insightful information about who blogs, why they write, how they promote their posts and how much cash they earn for doing so.
Among the more surprising stats: 65% of bloggers write as a hobby, while only 1% of bloggers write for a corporate blog or as their full time profession. Given the rise of corporate blogs this year, that number seems low.
The most shocking number was in regards to revenue. Self employed bloggers, on average, earn $122,222 in annual revenue from advertising on their blog! Chew on that.
The New York Times took a major positive step today in the integration between their print and digital properties by removing their Social Media Editor position. While this may sound backwards at first, it’s actually a sign that the NYT has adopted social media and is embracing today’s media world – just hear us out.
Over the past few years Jennifer Preston has been the NYT social media editor. In this position her most important responsibility was educating NYT reporters and editors on how they can use social media in their current roles. At this time, the NYT apparently feels it has successfully educated its employees and now wants to focus becoming one medium that combines print, digital and social. Simply put, the NYT understands that media organizations shouldn’t divide their print editions form their online, iPad and mobile subscriptions. It is all the same brand to consumers, and an aligned outlet with all of its properties functioning together successfully will be more powerful and useful for readers.
So while the NYT sees how important it is to have one overarching brand, it still needs to make sure its reporters are educated about the latest social media tools. Sure, they’re using Twitter and Facebook, but location-based social networks have exploded and it’s important that these new developments in social media and digital media won’t be overlooked. So while they don’t need a social media editor to do this, they do need social media education. But the way that the paper is approaching the collide of the print and digital world, it appears they are aware of where the media world is headed (and where it has been for a while now). We’ll take this as a positive sign.
We’ve all heard it before: teenagers don’t use Twitter. Is it because they don’t find it useful? Or do they just not have time for it? To help us understand how teens feel about Twitter and other social networks, Michael Moore-Jones, a sixteen-year-old technology and business enthusiast that’s involved in involved in numerous startups was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. Michael lives in New Zealand and blogs regularly at mmoorejones.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @mmoorejones.
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RaceTalk: As you noted in your article on ReadWriteWeb, teenagers aren’t big Twitter adopters. You wrote about some of the major reasons for this (i.e.: they use social media to extend real-life relationships online), but how much of a factor do you think time is? Do teens have the time for another social networks, especially since all of their friends are already on Facebook?
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Michael Moore-Jones: I think if teens had a use for Twitter, they would use it regardless of time. With the amount of time that we spend on Facebook, it wouldn’t be hard to siphon off a bit of that time into using Twitter (I do it myself). So no, time isn’t one of the main factors that means teens don’t tweet. If Twitter offered teens something, they’d find the time.
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RaceTalk: Teens are a very unique group in that they’ve grown up with social media, rather than being introduced to it (like today’s working generations). As teens get older and begin to enter the real-world do you think their attitude towards Twitter will change?
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MMJ: Good question – I think that’s exactly the point my post on RWW was leading to. While it may seem as though once teens enter the working world and realize the value that Twitter offers they may start using it, I believe there is a weird mentality amongst teens about Twitter that means they will never adopt it. In researching the reasons why teens don’t tweet, I asked numerous teens at my school “Do you use Twitter? What do you think of it?”. The response I got was usually a laugh, followed by something along the lines of “Are you kidding me? Twitter is so lame”. A couple of people even said “Isn’t Twitter for little kids?” I think that when the vast majority of a generation shares that view of a web product or service, they won’t adopt it even if they move into a position where it does solve a problem for them. It could even be to do with the branding of Twitter – fluffy blue logo and little birds. Teens don’t like using something that seems immature and young, even if it is useful (part of wanting to be older and grow up). So no, I believe that my generation will never adopt Twitter en-masse, even when we move into the real-world.
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RaceTalk: Location-based check in applications like Foursquare and Gowalla have caught a lot momentum during the past year. Are teens interested in these types of networks or are they more likely to use Facebook Places?
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MMJ: With location-based services, teenagers are currently using them less than older generations for the reason that they are still mainly for early adopters (Facebook Places is changing this, but not yet). Here in New Zealand Facebook Places hasn’t been rolled out yet so I can’t comment on its usage amongst teenagers, but I do know that Foursquare and Gowalla have not been adopted in a hurry (and the vast majority of teenagers not involved in the tech industry in some way would not have heard of them yet). At the same time (at least in New Zealand and Spain, where I’ve lived in the past couple of years) smartphones are still not ubiquitous amongst teenagers, so many teenagers wouldn’t have the ability to use these services even if they wanted to. Once all teens have smartphones, I believe they will start using a location based service other than Facebook Places (because they want to share their location, but not have it pop up in everyone’s news feed everywhere they go). Heck, the full reasons for that is another entire post so I’ll leave it at that and explain in the comments if people want to know a bit more.
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RaceTalk: Of all methods of communication (Facebook messages, IM, email, text, etc.) what do teens generally prefer, and how will this affect communication 10 years from now?
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MMJ: Teens will use a medium of communication that suits the content of the conversation (I touched on this in the RWW post, too). So, if teens aren’t at home but want to check up on a plan for later, they’ll send a text. If they are organizing going to the movies with a big group of people, they’ll send out a Facebook message to everyone invited. If they’re at home on a computer and want to be talking to a few people, they’ll use Facebook chat because it’s easier to type than it is to text. There are reasons for using each medium of communication, and which one teens choose to use actually says a lot about what the content of the conversation will be. I believe that the new Facebook Messages is the future, but it could go one of two ways – either all teens will adopt it and it will become the norm, or they won’t like it because it doesn’t allow to the same extent the understanding of the medium of communication being used. It’ll be interesting to watch, but I think at the least Facebook Messages is a great step in the right direction. On another note, once smartphones become the norm amongst teenagers, I believe texting will die and teens will start using instant messaging applications more (such as Blackberry Messenger, or Whatsapp Messenger). It’s instantaneous, and allows a conversation to happen more than with text messaging. Anyway, we’ll see how these predictions play out!
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RaceTalk: Moving forward do you think teens would prefer to communicate visually rather than through text (i.e.: receiving picture notifications from a business running a sale rather than text notifications)? How will this affect the way businesses (especially consumer-facing companies) operate?
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MMJ: Another fantastic question. I believe communication through text will always have a place because it serves so many different purposes, but I definitely do think that a lot of communication will move to be done visually. Something that is already occurring is that we’ll see people video calling rather than just calling, and this could work as an analogy for what is to happen with other mediums of communication. I definitely think that with the rise of the smartphone for the masses people will begin to use images a lot more regularly and freely – so we will see people just sending a photo of where they are rather than describing it in text. But again, it all depends on what teenagers are trying to communicate. Relating to your question about how businesses will need to change the way they operate, I don’t think they’ll need to change a great deal in the next few years. Most advertising done online (plus traditional media advertising) includes a visual aspect. Text message advertising in its current state doesn’t work because its been shown that teenagers don’t respond to marketing messages sent via text message, so we could see a rise of mobile advertising of images being sent rather than just text. This will also be very interesting to watch, and we’ll just see what happens.
A lot has happened in 2010, and we’ll be looking at some of the year’s best tech and social media developments in the coming weeks. But first, here is look back at the entire year that was through the eyes of Google.
(Yes, there are some shameless plugs for Google’s products, but it’s a great video).
A new report has been published, which reveals that just 8 percent of Internet users are on Twitter. Furthermore, 21 percent of Twitter users report that they never check for material posted by other people. For a social network that’s attracted so much attention, it is surprising how few people actually use the service.
While Twitter can be very influential among the groups of people that actually use it, this report reveals how Twitter doesn’t have nearly the reach that Facebook has, which has over 500+ million. What’s also interesting is how many Twitter users don’t actually use the service to see material posted by other people. In fact, 19 percent of Twitter users use the service to post personal updates, which are often more self-focused instead of tweets that engage other users.
Based on this research (and other charts available in this report) it is clear that the majority of Twitter noise is being made by a shockingly small amount of users. Does this make Twitter unworthy of our attention? Not at all.
Twitter has approximately 200 million users and is very influential among people who use it regularly. Furthermore, it has huge mind share, which is evident through its prime placement on businesses’ advertisements and websites. And when it comes to customer service, contacting a company on Twitter has proven to be very successful.
But think about it for a second – just 8 percent of all Internet users. It’s a bit of a reality check.
In November Asics launched a pretty cool tech campaign during the New York City Marathon. During a marathon every runner wears a chip on their shoe, which was first used to see when runners started and finished the race, to get their exact time. Then it was used at certain checkpoints throughout the race to make sure people don’t cheat (Rosie Ruiz). Now, they’re being used for encouragement.
Asics recorded pictures, videos and messages from family and friends, and used the chip to display these messages on huge screens as runners passed by during the marathon. The video, while a bit of an advertisement, explains it really well and it worth watching.
In today’s world content creation has never been more important. But we’re not just talking about bylines – it’s time to develop content that drives engagement and interest. Carolyn Zambrello, an account executive at Racepoint, has some tips on how businesses can take the next step in developing content.
“The Foursquare integration has two key components. First, Gowalla now lets you broadcast your check ins on not only its app, but Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook Places and Foursquare as well. Gowalla even lets you earn Foursquare badges and Facebook Deals through the iPhone app. As an added bonus, Gowalla also pulls in Foursquare Tips whenever you check in.”
This begs the question, why not just use Foursquare? Parr goes on to explain his theory on Foursquare’s reaction:
“Gowalla did not work with Foursquare on this integration; it was all done through the API. That leaves the real possibility that Foursquare could throw a big wrench into Gowalla’s plans by blocking its rival’s use of the API. The threat posed by Gowalla 3 is real; that alone could force Foursquare’s hand in the name of competition. It would also create a firestorm of controversy.”
In order to succeed in the market, Gowalla will have to differentiate itself from Foursquare and other mobile check in applications (like Facebook Places), encouraging the user to exclusively check in with their application.
Perhaps, Gowalla feels this integration will allow users to broadcast one check in across multiple apps, with just one touch to the Gowalla mobile app. If that’s the Gowalla game plan, it’s pure genius.
