I was horrified to read UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron was considering blocking social media networks because of their role in the UK riots. Blaming social networks for the speed and ease of communications, and blocking them, is the digital equivalent of shooting the messenger. Twitter’s position of “tweets must flow” is the central tenet of its network. Twitter doesn’t censor individual tweeter’s content, and that’s its power as a channel. For British politicians to block or attempt to censor social channels they are exhibiting the same traits as Egyptian’s totalitarian regime.
social networking
Social Personas: implications for social marketers
Social Media Club Sydney’s sponsored event Social Personas: How different is the social media you from the real you? probably achieved the aims that the research set out to do, which was to cause people to question the “acceptable” behaviours related to authenticity versus superficiality in social media in Generation Y. The other speakers, demographer and historian Bernard Salt, and researcher Dr Rebecca Huntley focused on Facebook and the reported, self described superficiality in Generation Y behaviour’s particularly on Facebook.
My presentation was intended as a bit of a tongue in cheek thought starter, rather than fighting the superficiality and behavioural traits, maybe marketers should just play up to it?
Australian Election 2010 – social media match fitness
The 2010 Australian Election is going to be an interesting one for social media analysis, because for the first time we will see to be able to see whether social sentiment is going to have an impact on how people vote. I started looking at this on Friday 16 July, the day before the election was called, and left Alterian SM2 monitoring tool looking at the same keywords over the weekend which included the day of the election announcement.
This analysis is from 1 to 18 July and includes mainstream media as well as strictly “social” media channels. Twitter has by far the largest volume of mentions for both parties.
Mobile phones are changing the way we use social media
This infographic confirms what we already know: global access to social sites and networks via mobile phones is growing at a rate even higher than the uptake of smart phones . My favourite statistics from this:
* People who use Facebook on their phones are twice as active than non-mobile users.
* Growth in mobile access to Facebook grew by 112% year on year whereas Twitter access via mobile grew 347%
Introducing the authors of Age of Conversation 3
I am very excited to be part of a new book, Age of Conversation 3: It’s time to get busy!. It’s going to be a physical book, available directly from Amazon and other online book stores. The new cover, was designed by Chris Wilson. And the website, was designed and built by my friend, Craig Wilson and the hard working team at Sticky Advertising. The editors, Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan have done an amazing job pulling it together
Australians increasing social media use is led by Facebook
Nielsen reports today via Nielsen’s 2010 Social Media Report, that there are now 9 million Australians interacting on regularly on social networking sites with Facebook dominating – more than 83% of social networkers naming Facebook as their main social networking platform, up from 72% in 2008 and 34% in 2007.
Overall, Facebook is Australia’s most popular social network with 75% of online Australians having ever visited, and via time spent per month (more than 8 hours per month which is seven and a half more hours than its closest rival site YouTube)