Who Is Using What In Social Media?

Some interesting findings from a recent Pew Research survey.  Five key revelations:

1. Facebook remains that most preferred site although its growth has slowed quite dramtically.
2.  Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn saw significant increases over the past year in the proportion of online adults who now use their sites
3. Men now use Twitter more than women.  The reverse was true in 2013.
4. More women (77%) than Men (66%) use Facebook
5. While LinkedIn is showing strong growth more than 60% use it infrequently

Related articles

• Pew: Facebook User Growth Slowed As Others Gained, But Still Has Most Engaged Users
• Pinterest Passes Twitter in Popularity

Picture This

If you thought your Facebook posts that contained an image were working more effectively than the common 'garden' text-only variety, then you are probably right.

As the chart above from Dan Zarrella clearly demonstrates, posts with photos perform far better when it comes to engagement.Wwhereas text posts have been on a constant decline these past four years.

And if you have gone to all trouble of producing a video to entice a response you might want to think again, as they too are nowhere near as effective as photos.

Dan's earlier analysis of 'Selfies' also gives some pointers as to what types of image attract people most.  For example, cool colour such as blues and greens elicit more 'Likes' than warmer colours.  Great news if your are a martian!

A little bit of self promotion using the tag #pretty also seems to help as does #NoFilter.

Time to get out the camera!

Related articles

• [Infographic] The Science of Selfies | Dan Zarrella

State of Social Media - Infographic

Today's Comic - Deleting Facebook

I Know What I 'Like', Or Do I?

Somewhere in the steamy streets of Dhaka an earnest posse of veiled women and young men are busily becoming admirers of a bevvy of stars and businesses around the world.

They are employees of what are euphemistically termed 'click farms'; a sort of agricultural production line of fake 'Likes' that pepper Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

In the good old days we had automated bots that did this job and social media companies such as Google waged a war to counter the automated trend.  To a certain extent they won the battle, but the fake brigade still smelt money and re-focused  their operations on human keyboard-tappers instead.

While the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, is a recognised hub for click farms so are other places such as Cairo and Indonesia.  It is no coincidence that these centres are located in countries where workers get paid a pittance.

The Guardian reports:
"For the workers, though, it is miserable work, sitting at screens in dingy rooms facing a blank wall, with windows covered by bars, and sometimes working through the night. For that, they could have to generate 1,000 likes or follow 1,000 people on Twitter to earn a single US dollar."

Another dubious example is Shareyt, whose owner Sharaf al-Nomani, told the same newspaper that: "around 30% or 40% of the clicks will come from Bangladesh". The Guardian equated this statistic to 25,000 people in Dhaka repetitively punching their computer keyboards, hour after hour, to enhance the visibility of a client's product or service.

But these sweatshop conditions doesn't seem to deter well known clients; some of which may surprise you.

For example, the USA State Department recently had its knuckles rapped for spending US$630,000  to boost its Facebook fan following.  Most of these new fans came from Cairo, which given the current political sensitivities has an aura of the absurd.

There is nothing covert about click farm companies and the 'Likes' they generate are quite genuine, in the sense that a human being created the action.  Take a company such as WeSellLikes.com. Its domain name choice is clearly not attempting to mask its activities.  If I was so inclined I could buy 10,000 'real worldwide likes' for less than $US100.

Practical yes, ethical...barely. So why do businesses indulge in such activities?.  

The greatest motivation is fear. Fear that their enterprise will look pathetic with its 200 genuine Facebook Likes compared to Competitor X down the road who has 10,000. A common belief is that customer perception of their brand might be adversely affected by such a discrepancy in numbers.

While there may be an element of truth in this assumption (according to  research 31% will check out reviews, ratings, likes and followers before buying), buying 1 million twitter followers from an Indonesian web entrepreneur for $US600 for your farmhouse cheese brand, isn't necessarily going to solve your online marketing woes.  

Customers are becoming increasingly aware of the ruse and the more savvy they become, the less effective these click farms buy-ins will be.

But one business often begets another. Click Auditors are the new breed, with London's Status People being one such service provider. They assist companies to block out the fakes for as little as $US5.50 per month.

The real trouble for a business begins when you start to believe your own marketing hype and strategically plan based on false social media analysis. I would like to say that such folly does not exist but regrettably it does.

Of course this being a genuine blog post I would welcome genuine 'Likes' and 'Followers' - although it is highly doubtful that Mr Sharaf al-Nomani, will do so personally.

Reference:

• How low-paid workers at 'click farms' create appearance of online popularity - The Guardian
• 4 Ways Click Farms Screw Your Business  - Inc
• Click farms are the new sweatshops - The Washington Post
• Selling social media clicks becomes big business - San Jose Mercury News
• 1000 fake followers for US$10 - NZ Herald
• State Department bureau spent $630,000 on Facebook 'likes' - Washington Examiner

Bieber or the 'Beeb'?

Ever despaired at emulating the follower feats of Justin Bieber and his ilk?  Perhaps you should not worry too much that your Twitter follower count is considerably lower than his.

As the chart above demonstrates, even the US President isn't immune from the curse of  fake follower.  A quick review of these most popular twitter accounts shows that only a small percentage of followers could be termed 'real' and actively engaged.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Bieber's recent vocal offering  to his besotted fans is titled "All Bad"?.  His real twitter followers number 9.36 million instead of the often promoted 46.8m.

It doesn't get much better for the current leader on the twitter charts, Katy Perry.  Her real and engaged twitter fan base is only 3.33 million.  Poor old Barack Obama suffers a similar percentage fate which may or may not be a reflection on the incumbent.  He has a mere 2.6 million followers hanging on his every tweeted word.

But what of a major corporations, instead of the usual raft of personalities and politicians?  

The  BBC is one media organisation that has truly embraced social media in all its forms.  While the following of their various account varies, some like BBC Sport are doing rather well.  At time of writing they have 3378, 428 engaged followers.  The most preferred hour for their followers to visit is between 4 and 5 pm in the late afternoon, UK time and 60% of them are male with only 6% definitely identified as female.

So when it comes to veracity of your followers all that glitters is not necessarily gold.  Why not check your own following using this tool?

Related articles

• Katy Perry Surges Past Justin Bieber to Become Twitter's Most Popular
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No Wonder There Are More Than One Million Victims Of Cyber Crime Daily

The worry about crime used to be if you had had your wallet stolen; or did you just leave it in a 'safe place' and have forgotten where that 'safe place' was?

You put your valuables in a safe with the local bank, or if you could afford it and wanted to take the risk, within the home.  In many ways this approach has changed over time and in others it has not.

We are still very trusting when it comes to matters financial but if the recent report from Norton is to be believed, perhaps we shouldn't be so blasé.  They surveyed more than 13,000 online adults aged between 18 and 64, from 24 countries.

The results showed that Baby Boomers were less susceptible to cyber-crime than the later Millennials and the highest number of cyber-crime victims were to be found in Russia (85%), China (77%) and South Africa (73%).

Cyber crime victims were more likely to be male (64%) than female(58%) which is probably a reflection of testosterone-fuelled impulses!

Source: 2013 Norton Report

With an estimated $US113 billion of cyber crime taking place over a year, the situation is likely to get worse with an increasing move away from desktops to mobile devices.  The survey revealed that almost half of respondents leave security concerns behind when they hit the street. They don't use basic precautions such as password protection, security software of any kind, or backup their important files.

Here's another sobering revelation; 57% aren't even aware that security solutions for mobile devices even exist!

No wonder then that there are more than one million victims of cyber crime daily. With the lines blurring between home personal life and work there are increased security concerns for business as well. One in five respondents admitted sharing work information with friends and family.  

36% reported that their company had no policy in place when it came to the use of mobile device for work and 27% of all adults admitted they had lost their mobile phones or had them stolen.  So considering these results, how secure is your business data?

Other points of interest to those concerned with online security include:

• 41% of online adults surveyed have been victims of hacking, malware, scams, viruses, fraud and theft in the past year
• Half (50%) have been victims of either cyber crime and/or 'negative situations' over the same period.  This includes being bullied or stalked online, or receiving nude images from perfect strangers.

When it comes to social media people appear to be just as lax, if not more so. 39% didn't bother to log out after a social media session and a quarter actually share their social media log-in details and passwords with others. Somewhat surprisingly then considering the slack attitude portrayed, only 12% of the sample admitted that someone else had hacked into their social media account and pretended to be them.

We've grown very attached to our mobile devices but have largely forgotten the Internet security risks and the security protocols that we rigorously applied to our desk top systems.  

Given all of the above, perhaps it is now time to think far more seriously about how we can personally fight cyber crime by being more diligent; especially if we are wedded to our smartphone or tablet.

Related articles

• Cyber crimes costs UK businesses average of £3m per year

I Share Therefore I Am

This video presents a hypothesis that I don't entirely agree with, but does touch on the sociological implications of social media at the expense of "real" relationships.

There is little doubt that there are those who hide behind online persona rather than facing the trials and tribulations of the 'real world'. But equally there are others who use social media to advantage; expanding their already formed networks and staying in touch with old friends.

Credit: Keisuke Jinushi

Some sad cases who have very few friends have to pretend that they do, to keep up with the small circle that they actually have.  

Not that I am recommending taking this course of action to the extremes of the Japanese photographer (right), who faked a romantic attachment by using Instagram, a smartphone and dollop of nail polish!

A sad lad maybe but I guess he was really just making a point.  See his full account here and turn on Google's translation if you can't read Japanese.

Apparently overuse of Facebook can be totally depressing.  A study by  the University of Michigan over a two week period resulted in Facebook participants  experiencing a darkening of mood the more they browsed the social medium.  The sample of 82 college-aged volunteers was large enough to get a reasonable result.  As media has reported, this is the core demographic among Facebook's nearly 700 million active daily users.

University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross said: “Loneliness predicted Facebook use, and loneliness also predicted how bad people felt. But the effect of Facebook on how people felt was independent of loneliness.”

So what may you well ask is causing this sinking feeling after excessive exposure to Facebook? 

According to The Economist the University of Michigan study didn't really address the differences between socialising on Facebook and socialising in person.  The paper  suggests the answer to social media depression is  one of green-eyed envy.

"An earlier investigation, conducted by social scientists at Humboldt University and Darmstadt’s Technical University, both in Germany, may have found the root cause. These researchers found that the most common emotion aroused by using Facebook is envy. Endlessly comparing themselves with peers who have doctored their photographs, amplified their achievements and plagiarised their bons mots can leave Facebook’s users more than a little green-eyed. Real-life encounters, by contrast, are more WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)".

One wonders if reading blogs on a regular basis has the same effect?  I suspect not, but to play it safe I will think twice about promoting this post on Facebook - it might be too depressing to contemplate!

Related articles

• Facebook Is Bad For You: Get A Life!
• Facebook use 'undermines well-being'

Chew Controlled Gaming Is In Your Face

When I gave up smoking some thirty plus years ago I resorted to the less than edifying habit of chewing gum to satisfy my oral craving.  The thing about chewing gum is that the first couple minutes provide a sugar hit and a mouthful of flavour.  After that the sensation is one of masticating on old tennis balls.

Manufacturers of the stuff would now have you believe that health hygiene for the mouth is improved by chewing their product;  not that this cuts much ice in Singapore where the stuff is thankfully banned.

What might you well ask has all of this got to do with anything digital?

Well the short answer is that there now a game called Gumulon which encourage you to chew the future. I kid you not.


Using facial recognition technology you participate in this action game simply by chewing at various speeds which changes the character moves. They even claim that if you record your chewing and then play it backwards, you will discover the identity of your future tag-team partner. i.e. chew more gum to win.

Chew controlled gaming is an innovative piece of marketing from Mondelēz International's Stride Gum, who are using social media to promote their product to the age demographic that uses it most; and that is not ex-smokers.

Thomas Adams of New York received his first chewing gum machine patent in 1871 and in 1899 joined with others to form American Chicle Company which at that time controlled 85% of the chewing gum business in the USA. The sap of the large, tropical, American sapodilla tree was called a chicle and it is this that was used to create the gum base.

Though a series of amalgamations and takeovers the company eventually ended up as part of the Cadbury stable and it was they who introduced Stride Gum in 2006, before being swallowed up themselves three years ago by Kraft Foods Inc.  Mondelēz International (a.k.a. Kraft), is an interesting food conglomerate in its own right and owns many other brands that were established over a century ago, such as Pascalls and Nabisco.

Related articles

• Better focus by chewing gum
• Stress Relief: Five Cheap and Easy Ways to Relax
• Kraft Foods rebrands as Mondelēz International

The New Conversation Prism

Get the large version here.

Getting Your Smart Phone Fix

It comes as no surprise to learn that smartphone addiction is a very real thing, albeit a pleasant one for most in the 18-24 year old demographic.

According a new survey conducted by IDC in conjunction with Facebook, our interaction with each other through our smart phones starts almost as soon as our eyes open in the morning. Within the first 15 minutes of waking up 4 out of 5 smartphone owners are checking their phones.

The focus of the study was to understand how smartphone owners use their phones over the course of a day and the week, with an emphasis on social and communication applications and services.

Smartphones have become woven into the fabric of everyday life.  In the USA where the study of 7,400 people was conducted, half of the country's total population use a smartphone and this figure is projected to rise to 67.8% of the population by 2017.  That's 222.4 million interconnected people.

A sense of being 'connected' was the primary motivation and sentiment experienced by respondents. Talking on the phone (43%), texting/messaging (49%) and direct messaging via Facebook(40%) were the services that drove the highest levels of connectedness across the largest number of people.

Friday to Sunday had the highest levels of engagement and the ease of being able to slip a smartphone into one's pocket was also a major factor.

The average daily time spent communicating on smartphone was 132 minutes and only 16% of that time was actually spent on phone calls. 84% spent their time texting, sending and receiving email and engaging through social media.

Facebook who co-sponsored the survey will no doubt be heartened to learn that 70% of respondents use Facebook on their phone and of this group, 61% use it each day.

82% read their Facebook news feed while 49% responded or posted comments on friends’ updates.  Interestingly, playing games on Facebook was not a dominant activity with only 16% showing this preference, while 7% used Facebook to find apps that interest them.

The survey found that Facebook dominates the total time spent on social and communications activities (on a smartphone),  making up 1 out of every 4 minutes.

One final word on Smartphone addiction; 63% of smartphone owners keep their phone with them for all but an hour of their waking day. And of course, many also use their phone as their alarm clock the next morning!

The full report can be viewed here.

Related articles

• 5 Steps for Kicking Your Smartphone Addiction (at Work) | CareerBliss
• Australia becoming smartphone addicted: report

Twittering On In A Flash (Of Light)

We are a chatty lot! Social media demonstrates a basic human need; the desire to communicate with others.

TweetPing

And if you ever doubted have active Twitter is a global communication tool, have a look at TweetPing (above), the brainchild of Franck Ernewein, a French web designer.

Every time a tweet is made somewhere in the world Tweetping gives of a light flash, superimposed on a map of the Earth.

But the site provides more details than a simple visual reference.  Activity by continent is detailed in the bottom section of the design -  the total number of tweets, total number of words, characters and the last #hashtags and @mentions.

Here is one hour of the Twitterverse in action presented in just five minutes


There are other excellent alternatives to the above. Frog Design's "A World Of Tweets" also presents data on a map showing where people are tweeting at from the past hour. A region's heatmap gets "hotter" depending on the activity.

A World Of Tweets

Tweereal's animation on the map features only those tweets containing geo-tags (coordinates)

Tweereal

So is Twitter the collective consciousness of the 'Net as some pundits suppose? It must be coming close to be reaching this status as one in eight people in the world tweet, albeit that the range of content followed is often confined to relatives, celebrities and a few chosen brands.

Patrick Meier of National Geographic quotes Hillary Clinton as saying in 2010, that social media is the new nervous system of our plant.  Certainly if you throw in other social media maps such as these for Flickr, FourSquare and Facebook you get a better overview of global activity, but is activity enough to gauge the prevailing mood.

For this you really need to add a layer of sentiment analysis. The Global Twitter Heartbeat Project is heading in this direction. Here is their Hurricane Sandy Tweetbeat.

Related articles

• Will researchers ever be able to wrap their arms around Twitter?
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Demographics of Social Media Users

The Demographics of Social Media Users — 2012 | Infographics

In A Buying Mood - Pinterest Vs Facebook

If you are selling something and planning to use social media to do so, does Facebook or Pinterest offer the best chance of delivering what you want?

New research from Bizrate Insights has found that 69% of consumers who have visited Pinterest discovered something they then purchased or wanted to purchase.  This compares to only 40% for Facebook.

Large version

Even more compelling was the finding that 70% of consumers use Pinterest to get inspired about things to buy and 67% use this social media platform to keep track of things they like.

You may use Facebook more to maintain friendships, but Pinterest is clearly out in front when it comes to selling. Both are sites which online consumers use to connect with people who have similar styles and interests. Pinterest though is more often used as a destination for shopping inspiration, tracking, and product discovery.

It also seems that brand building is better on Pinterest than on Facebook.  Bizrate reports that:

"A greater percent (55%) of Pinterest users have engaged with retailers and brands via Pinterest, compared to the percent of Facebook users that engage retailers or brands on Facebook (48%).  But how customers engage differs for each of the two platforms.  Pinterest users are more likely to be “Creators”: adding and sharing retailer/brand related content, while Facebook users are more likely to be “Participators”: interacting with promotional activities developed by retailers and brands."

Large version

The reach of Facebook still blitzes Pinterest but awareness of the latter is trending upwards rapidly.  36% of online consumers had heard of Pinterest in March but by August this figure had risen to 46%.

The reports data from September 2012 showed that 63% of online consumers had a Facebook account and only 15% had a Pinterest account.  Facebook is not sitting twiddling its thumbs when it comes to luring purchasers. They are testing a new feature, "collections", that lets users create wish lists of products by clicking on "want" or "collect" buttons.

PCWorld believes that the want button, if adopted permanently, could drive a lot of traffic to brands on Facebook and encourage impulse purchases.  They could be correct in this assumption and if it does it will have some serious implications for Pinterest.

But Pinterest is on the right growth projectory with a recent ComScore study putting it in the top 50 most-visited Web sites in the US for the first time, with 25 million unique visitors in the month. Ranked at 50th it still has  along way to catch Facebook which is ranked 4th in the same survey.

Related articles

• Pinterest drives more than window shopping
• Pinterest stats: does it really drive more sales than Facebook?

Why Your Brand Needs Facebook

Your Facebook site is the place that users like to interact with your brand, possibly even more so than your corporate web site.

Even though this survey from Lab42 has a small sample of 1,000 compared to the estimated 900 million Facebook users, its finding reinforce the need for a robust and well maintained Facebook page.

87% Like brands on Facebook and only 13% said they did not.  More importantly 82% felt that Facebook was great place to interact with brands and 35% of these folk felt that brands listened more to them on Facebook than elsewhere online.

Incentives remain the biggest motivation for people to follow brands on Facebook. Promotions, discounts and giveaways were the biggest motivation for 55% of respondents.  Printing off a coupon was the top way that people interact with a brand page on Facebook and 77% felt they had saved money by Liking a brand on Facebook.

Too many posts though will turn off your Followers and make them Unlike the brand page.

However the news is not all good as some products have an uphill battle to get Likes.  Adult novelty items, diet and weight loss products all are causes for embarrassment and the reason people are reticent about being associated with a brand that produces these.  Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Health and Wellness products rank third on the 'Like Embarrassment' scale.

On Pinterest

Gauri Sharma, the CEO of Lab42 says of the survey: "We feel these insights alone will spur brands to re-evaluate and question the effectiveness of marketing tactics directed at their Facebook consumers, as the findings directly challenge the notion that more likes equals more customer loyalty. For example, 46 percent have liked a brand that they have no intention of buying from, and of those, 52 percent liked a brand just to get a free item. Forty-six percent said they like brands even if they can’t afford the brand’s products.

While there’s no definitive answer of how every single brand should interact with their Facebook consumers to maximize the use of time, money and resources, we feel strongly that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface in truly understanding why consumers like specific brands and if their display of ‘loyalty’ on Facebook translates to a higher lifetime value."

A World Of Tweets

Frog Design have come up with a nifty, real-time visualization of geolocated tweets around the world.

A World of Tweets is all about playing with geography and bits of information. Simply put, A World of Tweets shows you where people are tweeting at from the past hour. The more tweets there are from a specific region, the "hotter" or redder it becomes.

A World Of Tweets

This continuous collection of Twitter statuses also allows for the presentation of other interesting visuals as well as statistical and historical data about the tweeting world we live in.

Through the activity of Twitter users it is possible to tailor a new map of the world that evolves during the day according to the time zones and the spreading of mobile technologies.

Going Down The 'Googla' - Bottom of the List For Sharing Stories

Google claims 170m Google+ users but other reports have said it is a ghost town, so what is the truth?

Findings released appear to confirm the latter – despite its large number of accounts the platform is bottom of the list of social network users’ favoured channels.

Social media agency Umpf analysed 100 random online entertainment, health, business, technology and general news stories and looked at how many times each story was shared by Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter users.

The findings show Twitter as the most active social network for sharing stories, followed by Facebook in second, LinkedIn third and Google+ last:

1. For every 100million users of Twitter, 197.3 people were likely to share an online story
2. For every 100million users of Facebook, 41.8 people were likely to share an online story
3. For every 100million users of LinkedIn, 15.2 people were likely to share an online story
4. For every 100million users of Google+, 6.0 people were likely to share an online story

Whilst Google+ is the second largest of the four in terms of official users*, and despite it arguably being the best placed of all four to succeed – it was created by Google post-Twitter, post-Facebook and post-LinkedIn, and designed to be the most socially-integrated network (“Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”) – it performs the worst.

Jon Priestley, of PR and Social Media agency Umpf, said: “Our findings clearly show a gulf between Google+ user numbers and their willingness to share online content, particularly when compared to rival platforms such as Facebook and Twitter".