Social Media Archive

Nice piece yesterday in the Sunday Times showing how the internet is no longer just the place for spotty male geeks to gather. Not that that stereotype is necessarily warranted, but check out how Libby  Purves referred to my blog a few months back!!!

The Pew Internet Project in the US recently found 35% of girls compared with 20% of boys have their own blogs, and 70% of girls aged 15-17 have embraced social networking and built their own page on Bebo or MySpace compared with 57% of boys.

Hitwise backed this up in in January, reporting that 55% of UK social networkers are women too.

The upshot of Kate Spicer and Abul Taher’s piece is summed up nicely by their main subject, a 12-year-old girl from Surrey who spends much of her time one her PC doing homework but also gossiping with friends on Bebo or Facebook.

When asked if she’d want a career in software development in order to create such experiences in the future she replied:

“Girls are creative, they are more into history, English and art – it’s the boys who are more into the techie things!”

Robin Goad from Hitwise and Tony Mooney from Experian Integrated Marketing have penned a great report which they’ve kindly let me let you download from here:

 “The Impact of Social Networking in the UK.”

The promotional blurb says:

“This White Paper looks in detail at the key social networking learnings from 2007, the trends that are most likely to play out in 2008, and the critical areas that brands need to consider when developing their social media marketing strategies.”

The report is in two sections. The first sets the scene outlining the landscape, and then follows up with some recommended strategies for 2008.

Interesting points to note:

Online email services were overtaken by social networking activity in the last quarter of 2007.

Social networking is not all about the KIDZ!

There’s also an interesting case study for brands about the British Legion which demonstrates how social apps can increase and enhance brand awareness.

So what does 2008 hold:

“Social networks will become the dominant channel for viral marketing campaigns.”

“Social networks will become the primary arena for highly targeted marketing and advertising campaigns.”

“Consumer power will manifest itself through social networks.”

All pretty bold statements that come with plenty of caveats, but food for thought nevertheless…

The Guardian reports this morning that MySpace have been developing an AdSense type of advertising offering called Hypertargeting and trialling it with 50 advertisers, some of whom have seen 300% rise in response rates for some campaigns.

Travis Katz – MySpace’s international MD says:

“For advertisers, it’s [delivering on] the promise that internet advertising has always been, and users, who have been involved in the testing, like targeted advertising better than generic ads. They don’t like untargeted ads because they feel more intrusive, whereas if ads are relevant and of interest to them they enjoy them.”

The issue of privacy comes up again here because the system is contextual and uses profile data in order to target the ads.

But as I wrote last week I’m not sure users mind so much if the ads they receive are relevant and there’s something in it for them.

Nice to see a publisher ploughing in dough and trying to come up with a system themselves. They’re talking about advertisers being able to drill down into over 100 different segments.

Another player is always good for the planning schedule, but there’s always a tiny danger when someone tries to go it alone, remember BidSmart?

Not sure BTLS had 110m users worldwide though 🙂