Category Archives: Twitter

Correlation Between Traveling and Happiness via Twitter

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Researchers at the University of Vermont have been studying the relationship between the happiness level of people on Twitter compared to how far they have traveled from their primary locations.

With continued advancement in technology and the amount of personal and emotional information people share via online mediums today, experts can now study human behavior by looking at the sentiment that is expressed via social media. Not only are people providing information about how they are currently feeling, but their location in the world are almost always given as well. Putting all of this together allows researchers to come to a conclusion on how people feel based on where they are.

Photo Credit: epSos.de

Photo Credit: epSos.de

“Expressed happiness increases logarithmically with distance from an individual’s average location,” was the ultimate result of the study done by these experts. The research found concluded that people tweet most often from work and home and when they are further away from these locations, most often traveling, they are happier in their tweets.

While this may be a stretch and might not be the most accurate way to measure how happy people are, it is an interesting subject to consider. Are people happier when they are traveling? Do they express their true happiness on social media or do they just want to seem this way to their follows? Its hard to tell but most of us can agree, traveling to the beach compared to sitting in a cubicle would make the average person happier, even on Twitter.

Reference: Mashable: Twitter Happiness Soars as People Travel Further From Home

 

Politics of the Future: Digital and Social Media

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What if President Obama held press conferences not in the White House, but on Google Hangout? What if he answered questions asked by the American people, rather than the news correspondents? Earlier this month India’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram did just that. The minister participated in a live video conference that lasted hour, but the conference sparked conversations that lasted quite longer (e.g. #askthefm).

“People have been calling this era of computers, the Internet, and telecommunications the ‘information age’ … What we’re really in now is the empowerment age…This power is shifting…to a new paradigm of power that is democratically distributed and shared by all of us.” - Joe Trippi, author of Revolution Will Not be Televised

President Obama's current Facebook banner.

President Obama’s current Facebook banner.

Today everyone and everything is going social. Barack Obama and Fançois Hollande are on Facebook, and even The White House, the WTO, and the United Nations tweet.Digital media has become a new form of infrastructure. The United Kingdom offers virtual tours of Parliament buildings. The EU website has an Audiovisual Newsroom. Online presence is a public expectation.

The virtual world has a very real influence.The last two years proved digital and social media’s power to mobilize entire nations (i.e. revolutions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria). Minister Chidambaram’s conference is further evidence of a growing desire to not only pay attention to the man (or woman) behind the curtain, but to eliminate the curtain altogether.

 

#SXSW Takes Over Social Media on a Global Scale

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With all the hype of SXSW this year, its no wonder that social media was booming with the latest news on anything and everything that was going on during the festivals and conferences in Austin this year.

For those that don’t know about SXSW, it is an annual set of festivals, musical shows, and interactive conferences held in Austin, Texas. Started in 1987, the event has grown in popularity every year.

Photo By:

Photo By: Fsse

 

According to an article by Mashable, there were over 1 million tweets in 19 different languages sent across the world. The event has been known to bring together hundreds of cultures, all joining each other to celebrate an interest in music, film, and interactive media. In total, 205 different countries were represented at this years SXSW, which explains its popularity internationally. While the US had a major lead on interaction (71%), it is still incredible to see countries and languages that are usually off the radar, like Romanian or Indonesian for example, still creating conversation.

This amazing digital interaction between people across the globe shows how much social media impacts cultures from all corners of the world. Even though we are limited by geographic location and language, we can all come together for events such as SXSW through an online medium. Social media has taken over control, it is the main interaction for people to talk about anything and everything. SXSW is just one example of how an amazing time can be captured and displayed across the world to millions of people.

Social Media Scandals, Scams and Security Updates

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Brands got a rude awakening this week. Turns out, social media is not as secure as the Defense Department. Or even a pre-school, really.

“Twitter has a problem: While the social network is trying to woo brands and advertising money to its platform, companies’ Twitter accounts keep getting hacked.” – CNN Money

 

Twitter Hack

Photo by: Photo Giddy

The Twitter “leak fiasco” started back in 2009, when personal accounts of Twitter employees were hacked. With an increasing number of accounts and services related to Twitter it became very difficult to manage the huge amount of data. Therefore, the system without an extra security features appeared to be fragile and easy to break into. It was Fox News’ twitter account next. The portal with more than 2 million followers was hacked in 2011 and, therefore, assassinated.

During the last week, scary news about major brands being hacked came out and now we are all waiting what’s going to happen next. Jeep and Burger King’s Twitter accounts have been broken into.

Social media is by far the best one-on-one experience you can give your customers – no other media allows brands the opportunity to directly communicate with their customers in any sort of efficient manner. But brands seem to have forgotten they didn’t build the social platforms they prize but rather tuned-in to a conversation already in progress. Despite the recent Twitter security update, social platforms are not reinforced with the secrecy and security ad agencies offer that brands have taken for granted for so long.

Marketers should keep in mind the nature of the beast. Social media is a technology meant to gain its own momentum thanks to its viral nature, the same type of draw that lures hackers. Short of social media platforms completely revamping the structure of their site, marketers need to be hyper-mindful of their own security. In case of breach, social media marketing agencies should have a plan in and always remember to maintain a sense of humor and camaraderie in the aftermath of security failures – even with competitors.

— Co-written by Elena Nadtochiy & Ashlie Forchione

Twitter vs. Instagram: A War on Pictures

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By now most of you have heard of the ongoing feud between Instagram and Twitter, but incase you haven’t been keeping up I’ll break it down for you. It all started this spring:

April 
Facebook makes offer to purchase Instagram for $1 billion.

August
On the 14th the Office of Fair Trading approves the deal, while the Federal Trade Commission closes their investigation concerning the deal on the 22nd.

September
The deal between Instagram and Facebook officially closes on the 6th and Instagram surpasses Twitter in daily active mobile users.

November
Twitter, who attempted to purchase Instagram, announces they will be releasing their own range of photo filters in the coming months.

Now, just last week Instagram photos on Twitter were appearing oddly cropped and yesterday Instagram photos have completely disappeared, though, they can still be viewed through the URL of the original tweet. Obviously many social media users are starting to express their frustration, but it will be interesting to see how users respond in the coming months after Twitter releases their photo filters. Will people begin to choose one network over the other and how will the digital agency respond to the change?

2012: Social Media’s Lacking Role on Black Friday

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With many shops opening as early as 8 p.m. this past Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday did not have its same traditional role, as waking up at dire hours of the morning to get the best deals for one’s holiday needs. Online shopping goes away from this traditional Black Friday role, as well, but this past Thanksgiving and Black Friday online sales were both up significantly  at 17 % and 21%.

Having many retailers marketing on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter now, one would assume traffic from such sites would have aided to these high numbers, but in reality this year traffic to retail pages via their social media sites was down sharply. Traffic via social media sites was down by 35% from last year. Looking for instance at Twitter, which drove zero traffic to retail sites as opposed to 0.02%  last year. This does not look too optimistic especially with growing user-bases on both Twitter and Facebook. These numbers need to get better; social media marketing agencies have their work cut out for them if social media sites are going to be a means of getting to users and the users in return acting on it.

Be Approved & Be Known Online

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Due to social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter. Users feel more comfortable to get free everything from free music, news, and communication with celebrities. Well what is also a plus about social media sites is you can get approval by your followers and friends, even if it is not in real time. Sometimes telling a joke does not get the laughs you want when you are hanging out with friends, but when you post it online it creates an uproar. Jeff Bercovici of Forbes Magazine calls this ‘virtuebragging’. People lately have been doing it with Hurricane Sandy and the Presidential Election, but you can do it about anything from a funny joke to a silly picture to share information you think is interesting and simultaneously get approval. This is a great positive about social media sites since you can influence others to see your ideas.

Social media agencies can definitely use this tactic to get the word about their clients in creative ways. ‘Virtuebragging’ definitely can go viral and get a message out, which is great tool personally and professionally. It can engage friends and it can engage one’s clients.

Have you heard of Threadlife?

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Threadlife is the newest mobile video sharing app to hit the scene, created by former Zappos CEO Nick Swimurn and creative guru Ken Martin. Surprisingly, there is still a void in social media for practical mobile video sharing. Apps such as Viddy and Socialcam have tried to fill it, but neither have been able to take off in a big way.  Swimurn and Martin are hoping for Threadlife becomes the Twitter or Instagram of video sharing.

What makes Threadlife different from previous attempts is the three second video limit, called stitches. Users create three second videos and “stitch” them together to create a video montage, called threads. Because the stitches are short and sweet the videos don’t become drawn-out and viewers are less likely to lose interest. Also, instead of profile pictures, the app requires three-second profile videos. In the future, the Threadlife team plans to include tagging and location-specific information.

Only time will tell if Threadlife will take off with mobile users, but I can already see the potential the social media agency could take advantage of. How do you see Threadlife faring against previous mobile video sharing apps? Do you see yourself using it?

Twitter’s Makeover: A New Look for Business Profiles

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Twitter recently introduced a feature for business’s called a header image. The concept is similar to a Facebook cover photo. I’m happy that Twitter implemented the idea. I’m a visual person, so I prefer pictures and videos more than text. Its not that I did not like the previous Facebook and Twitter layouts, but I think this style is more appealing to the eye. This photo is great for a business using Twitter for marketing because consumers can learn what the company does almost instantly when viewing a photo. An attractive photo can even reel in potential customers.

 

 

In addition to the new header image, Twitter has also enabled a bio section that’s similar to LinkedIn company profiles where you write a brief description about yourself. In other words, “Who are you and what is your position?”. Well, it does not have to be that stern, but can be a creatively carved description about yourself.

You can now also pin the most important content from your updates. For example, I can pin the pictures and updates from LA2M since I love it so much. The best part is that the Android and iOS apps have also been updated to work hand in hand with Twitter 3.4.

It will be interesting to see how Twitter’s new image will affect social media marketing and interesting to see how businesses will use the new features to promote their brands in creative and interactive ways.

To learn how to create a header image check out this helpful PDF from Twitter: https://business.twitter.com/pdfs/ProfilePage_onesheet.pdf

The Summer Olympics: Being Reshaped by Social Media

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What’s the first thing I did when I found out one of the University of Michigan’s own Samuel Mikulak made the US Olympic gymnastics team? Added him on Facebook of course! The 2012 Olympics are being named by some as the “first social Games”. There’s no doubt that social media drives conversation and newl, and it’s only grown more influential in the past four years. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will likely play an exceptional role in how information is distributed from London, and how the conversation is driven throughout the Games.

So what’s the difference between this year’s games and the summer Olympics before it? Four years–and that’s an eternity in Interntet time! Social media has truly exploded, as well as general web use. In 2008, there were approximately 1.5 billion internet users globally, and that number has swelled to 2.3 billion users this year. That’s one third of the the worlds total population!

For more of an idea on just how and why social media will reshape the Olympics as compared to 2008, we’ll take a look at the top 3 social media networks out there, and see just how much 4 years has changed them.

FACEBOOK

2008: Facebook reached 100 million users, and passed Myspace in popularity (Wow, was 4 years ago really that long ago..?!) The chat feature was also introduced this year, while simultaneously taking over AIM and other chat sites with it’s convenience.

Today: Facebook claims more than 900 million users–that’s a growth of 900% in a mere 4 years! The network’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, becomes a global celebrity, while Facebook becomes a publicly traded company.

TWITTER

2008: This was a year of explosive growth, and they finished the year with 6 million users, and 300,000 tweets a day.

Today: The network now has 500 million users, who collectively send more than 400 million tweets every day! News breaks on the network regularly, and it’s a prime marketing channel for many athletes. Likely London 2012 conversation among media and fans will take place on this network as well.

YOUTUBE

2008: By fall of this year, users were uploading 10 hours of video/minute. This site emerged as the “it” site for video sharing, and had been bought by Google in 2006, which just increased it’s popularity. They also launched their mobile site this year.

Today: It’s no doubt that the most memorable Olympic moments will go viral on this network the moment they are aired on television. The company receives over 800 million unique vistis per month, and those visitors watch over 3 billion hours of video per month, while also uploading 72 hours of video/minute. The growth here is truly iconic.

So what?

After looking at the top three social media sites, one may wonder what that has to do with the Summer Olympics. Well-everything! This summer, expect to receive the latest Olympic news not from your favorite TV reporter, but instead from a social media network just as soon as it happens. The moments of this years Olympics will live on as was never possible before thanks to social media.

Who knows what the Summer 2016 Olympics will bring, but for now, enjoy all of the convenience and fun social media has to offer, because it’s events like this where it really matters!