Twitter will not go mainstream

I use Twitter but I am in the minority. Twitter will not be the next Facebook. It is all hype.

Only 17% of Twitter users are active according to RJ Metrics. That would make the Australian active audience for Twitter around 136,000. 80% of Twitter users have made less than 10 updates.

Even the tech hungry teens don't like it. According to Pew Research 8% of internet users aged 12-17 use Twitter. This makes Twitter as common among teens as visiting a virtual world, and far less common than sending or receiving text messages as 66% of teens do, or going online for news and political information, done by 62% of online teens.

Twitter is not the next Facebook. According to Neilsen In October, Australian users spent 27.2 hours browsing online and 7.55 hours of the total was sucked up by Facebook whereas Twitter accounted for 17 minutes. Twitter's active Australian user base is the equivalent of less than 2% of Facebook's Australia audience.

When you hit a creative brick wall, use Facebook Search

Feeling dry on insights and territories for a creative brief? This is a good one to try, type related words into Facebook.

E.g Got a Phone provider as a client, type 'phone' into Search and look through the Pages. All these Pages have more than 500,000 fans.

The answers;

I Feel My Phone Vibrate When It Doesn't

I Use My Cell Phone To See In The Dark


When DRUNK, My phone should say, "Are you sure you want to send this text?"


I do random things when i talk on the phone like pace, spin in circles, etc

Trying to feel for your phone, and panicking when you can't feel it.

I have texted while lying down and dropped the phone on my face.

Specific one for Optus

Wait Bro are you on Optus

5 rising stars of the Australian Youtube scene

Here are five vloggers who have broken into the Top 20 most subscribed Australian Youtubers that you may not be familiar with.

1. Fagottron - Probably one of the most exciting Australian Youtubers, Fagottron has a unique way of mashing up films into songs. Amazeballs!


2. Mychoony - The male version of Community Channel.


3. The Black Year – This young band are going for the position of the next Short Stack


4. Emmalina - Vlogging every second day this 20s mum is talking about the first thing that pops into her mind.



5. DJ Ravine – Is arguably the most subscribed hardcore DJ on Youtube. A young dude who is killing it and found a nice little niche for himself.

Guest Post by Grace Gordon - Sportsgirl Fashion Blogger Outreach

Grace Gordon is the Marketing and Community Coordinator for Socialista Media Group which looks after the fashion social networking site 2Threads.

DISCLAIMER FROM THE "WRITER"

--this post was lifted directly from some pretty informal email banter between Julian and I, hence my ever-so-eloquent description and discussion of bloggers.

I’m not sure how it started/originated (it must have been a private call out to top Fash. Bloggers) but they have started a blogging game of ‘tag’/’it’ by tagging people who are ‘it’ to answer a few select questions. My 2 cents on why i think this is cool is................

A) They are giving the bloggers actual content that they can tweak and make unique which is awesome because as you know , bloggers run out of ideas and its good to have prompts like that.

B) They seem to have targeted a range of the very best, not just any old Australian fashion bloggers who have a high subscriber rate and/or attractive content which is likely to be reblogged and re-used and

C) If the exercise is purely to drive traffic back to the Sportsgirl site/get some sweet inbound links AND raise awareness of Sportsgirl site as not just a retailers website but an actual fashion/entertainment portal, then they have nailed it. I have looked at the site three times since this ‘tagging’ thing started. I am liking their site which in turn leaves me lusting after their product. (I just bought something off their online store)

Exhibit A- http://www.leflassh.com/2010/01/sportsgirl-tag.html - you’ll see she has tagged other bloggers, creating a viral effect if they respond.

Exhibit B- http://studdedhearts.blogspot.com/2010/01/sportsgirltag.html

Exhibit C - http://src783.blogspot.com/2010/01/sportsgirl-heart.html

3 important changes to Facebook

There have been some new amendments to Facebook that you may or may not be aware of.

Geolocate your status updates

Facebook now allows you to geolocate your status updates. This is a god sent for bands who want to target specific fans in the city they are touring in.

Impression Number

They are also telling you the level of interaction that are based on a loose number of impressions of the news item (Page Views, News Feeds or through a Fan Box Widget impression). I have crunched some numbers on the pages that I am Admin of and they range from a good interaction number of 1% to as low as 0.01%. What is everyone else getting?

Targetting Ad Units in real time
There is also a whisper that you will be able to start targeting people on words that they have in their status updates.

Campfire as an analogy for Social Media

Campfire bros

So I recently have been trying to come up with an analogy for social media. This idea of social media being like a campfire has really stuck for me. There are three things you need for a campfire, a campground, people and a fire.

These three things are similar to what makes up social media. For starters you need a platform for people to speak on e.g Facebook/Twitter (campground), you need members to populate this platform (people) and then something to talk about, a reason for being there (fire).

This also defines the three areas that brands can get involved, they can create the platform (Branded Community) – it can be as big as a whole website Pepsi refresh or jump on the back of another platform such as The Contender Page on Facebook.

They can be the members of the community (Customer Service) company can just listen to the conversations going down and then respond. e.g Big Pond Twitter account or Dell Hell

Lastly they can be the social glue (social idea) between two people, the reason they talk e.g iSpyLevis or Dove Inner Beauty.

Thoughts?

Do you know the name of this Facebook viral marketing method?

Status Updates and Wall Comments would be two ways that Word of Mouth are occurring on Facebook. What do you call all other types of message spreading that is occurring on the site.


Andrew Ranger and the Taboo Group have just recently launched a campaign for Where Is called Whereis the party, they got the word out there by tagging influential Melbournites in the promotional advertisement for the event.

Ikea used this same type of viral spreading but instead of them tagging they asked the punters to tag themselves in photos in the Ikea Furniture competition.