The Power Of Social Media.Book becomes bestseller before it's published; still doesn't even have a publication date. "With out social media 'something like this would have been impossible even a few years ago'”

A Whim, A Book, And, Wow!

By REYHAN HARMANCI

Published: April 28, 2011

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When Adam Mansbach, author of “Angry Black White Boy” and “The End of the Jews,” posted on Facebook last June to “Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, ‘Go the — to Sleep,’ ” he was not serious. He was just tired: his then-2-year-old daughter, Vivien, refused to acknowledge bedtime.

Public Diplomacy Shifts to Social Media

Recently, I found this interesting article that America.gov, a major global public diplomacy website is shutting down. States Department that organized the portal decided that the portal is not as effective anymore. It decided to switch its efforts and information to social media. From now to distribute the information they will use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Is that a good decision? In my opinion some organization are blinded by today’s technological progress and development. Social media interaction can be very effective. However, not until it is used appropriate way. The State Department cannot forget that the aspects of social media is not anymore for sending information but also to engage the public and create relationship with the target audience. Without this concept in mind it is sure that its attempt could be a big failure. Many companies and organizations found out about it very fast by spending most of their promotion budget on social media while not forming a good SM strategy, which in consequence brought to a huge losses.(example: Pepsi Refresh Project) But let’s see what the future will bring for the State Department and its public diplomacy shift.

What do you think about this?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/Public_diplomacy_shifts_to_social_media.html#

The Royal Wedding Will (Also) Not Be Tweeted

While the internet has been a buzz about the upcoming Royal Wedding, the actual ceremony will not be tweeted by those attending. Thanks to a signal blocking technology that will be installed at Westminster Abbey that will disable cell phone use, no one attending the Royal Wedding will be able to send out Tweets, etc during the ceremonies. I guess we will just have to rely on the other millions of channels that will be...

(like the title reference to Malcom Gladwell's article? haha)

Twitter Hedge Funds?

As we all know, the power of social media is endless. However, its potential is being tapped into by many different institutions including the financial industry now. Recently, an investment firm set aside 100 million in capital towards a Twitter hedge fund, which would be solely used to monitor Twitter in order to collect data on where to invest.

They outline 3 main reasons for why the relationship between social media and trade is starting to take off, which all contain really interesting information.

• Today, computers make most trading decisions. Some estimate that between 46 and 73% of equity trading volumes in the U.S. are made by these high-frequency systems, which are designed to use computer speed and processing power to crunch massive amounts of data and seek small profits on enormous trading volume. A system that can reliably make a few cents per trade on hundreds of thousands of trades per day is quite valuable to a firm.
• Social networks have unique qualities that make them particularly well-suited for the machines that now dominate Wall Street. The sheer amount of content produced on social networks is enormous and continues to grow. The content production itself is a voluntary act. Even the ways with which social networks interact with one another –- the so-called semantic web -– make content production across multiple networks extremely quick. And of course most social media content is public at some level, especially when a carefully programmed algorithm is doing the searching.
• Other competitive advantages are going away. This growing enthusiasm for social content isn’t so much borne from newness as it is from necessity. As the BBC recently reported, the speed at which high-frequency trading can function is approaching its physical limitation. Speed is a competitive advantage for these platforms but it’s quickly becoming ubiquitous. If and when speed –- called “low-latency connectivity” -– is further commoditized, firms will require a new way to get a leg up on the competition.

Check out more here: http://mashable.com/2011/04/27/wall-street-social-media/

How much for a week without...

How much money would it take for you to give up Facebook for 1 week? That's basically what one study asked, and the results kind of surprised me. Why? Because Facebook ranked last, or least valuable for communication, behind email, texts, and voice calls.
How would you rank them? Do you think that will change as more people adopt Facebook's new email feature?

Social Media Policies

We have had some discussion in class about social media policies, notably the lack of such policies in organizations engaged in social media. Here is an interesting article that discusses important elements an organization should include when developing a compliant social media policy. The article also mentions that once a policy is in place, it should not be filed away and forgotten. The policy must be reviewed by all stakeholders on an ongoing basis in order to ensure appropriateness and effective implementation.

I find it interesting that someone can make an annual report of one's life filled with charts and graphs about the restaurants they had visited and the days they had traveled — just like the annual reports sent out by companies, but with personal details. Daytum.com makes software to help people tabulate whatever they do and turn it into a chart. Facebook users also have a tool for building graphs of personal information. It was built as an experiment by TouchGraph, a company based in New York City that specializes in visualization tools.

I personally think it is very helpful for a company to present the information and organization's activities in a form of a graph or a chart, but I don't see the value in presenting my personal life in a form of a chart..

Read full article here.

Watch Twitter Happen!

This video, which introduces the NYT's Project Cascade, is very intriguing for 2 reasons:

1) It shows people how messages are spread through the Twitterverse, or, "visualize sharing activity." (very interesting to watch)
2) I also think this will be the future of how people measure ROI - not monetary, but by actually looking at how far your message/article spread and through what connections.

The last big question is - what will these tools enable newspapers to do? How will it shape their online development? And how might it prompt them to change their Twitter strategies?

Social Media Resume

How to write an impressive social media resume:
1) Start by clearly identifying what your Social Media forte is.
2) Showcase your strengths and abilities.
3) Use your history summary, with numbers.
4) Let your presence be known.Your resume should connect the reader to every single social space you touch so they can see all of your work, profiles and influence easily and quickly.

Read the fill article here.

Tracking File in iPhones

Here is another article about the privacy and new technology. Apple iPhones and iPads record their locations in a hidden files, the report came from a technology conference in San Francisco said. A new hidden file periodically stores location data, apparently gleaned from nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi networks, along with the time. The data is stored on a person’s phone or iPad, but when the device is synced to a computer, the file is copied over to the hard drive, the programmers said. Looks like we need to think about privacy breach and security problems with any new device we are using

Farmville, Continued...

To continue the discussion about Farmville we had today in class. The New York Times wrote a piece about the popularity of Farmville a year and half ago.

I thought this part was the most interesting:

Of course, real-life farming is quite a bit messier and more dangerous than FarmVille (perhaps just one reason that FarmVille players outnumber actual farmers in the United States by more than 60 to 1). Yet some of the game’s biggest fans are farmers.

In Online Games, a Path to Young Consumers

This article in the New York Times, is about Internet advertising reaching young kids. Companies, like General Mills, often sell sugar cereals and junk food, and are using multimedia games, online quizzes and cellphone apps to build deep ties with young consumers.These tactics mix advertising and entertainment and cause concerns of children advocates.
While commercial advertising is prohibited during children's programs on TV, Internet ads can successfully reach young consumers. I think if the marketing is aimed at improving children's diets, it can be understandable,but it would be very hard to draw the line between "positive" and "negative ads".

Facebook on Campuses

This article by USA today features Facebook use on college campuses across the United States. Facebook use was measured by the amount of people that like its Facebook page. Harvard, is the only top 10 university among the 10 universities with most overall fans. The rest of the schools are large state Universities with huge athletic programs. The amount of fans on a page tells a lot about a University's brand. However, this is not a good measuring tool for measuring which colleges use Facebook the most.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/04/07/colleges-bring-campuses-to-facebook?PageNr=3

Spotflag

Spotflag is a social media platform that allows people to post announcements about parties, events, service meetings etc. You can search events by distance and event type. Others use Spotflag to check in at a location throughout campus. This platform was tested at American University and has had positive responses. However, it seems as if this platform is really taking pieces of other social media sites. It will be interesting to see if a site like this can survive in the clutter of the social media world without offering anything new.

www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/blog/social-media-tool-places-campus-events-in-the-spotlight

#Liamisgale

So I am a huge fan and stalker of The Hunger Games which is this young adult book series now being adapted for the screen. Everyone should check it out. 

On social media related news, the series has a huge fan following. As the new stars of the film have been announced, one blog called The Hob decided to have a Twitter viewing party. They had their followers turn on Liam Helmsworth's movie The Last Song (terrible, I know) at the same time and discuss him, how he is going to fit the roles and basic feelings about the movie.

When searching their #Liamisgale, I found that they had 362 tweets! I would consider that a pretty big success for a same blog viewing party. What do you all think? Is this the wave of the future?

Politics & Social Media

Thought this was an interesting combo given we will be viewing "The Social Network" later today...Zuckerberg/Facebook/Obama.

So when not the subject of movies or at the receiving end of the ire of Facebook members, Mark Zuckerberg is making news hosting high ranking members of the White House ... foremost, President Obama...and other politicians and celebrities. This past Wednesday at Facebook headquarters in Palo, Alto, California, Zuckerberg conducted a town hall meeting with the President, which was streamed live on Facebook. Some referred to it as Obama 3.0, the beginning of the President’s bid for re-election in 2012 by harnessing the power of social media just as he did for the 2008 election campaign. The President made reference to this power when he talked about how there is nothing we cannot solve if we put the same energy and imagination into the political process as we put into Facebook. Social media has been an effective communication tool for the President thus far. It will be interesting to follow the President’s use of social media in the political arena over the next year as he pursues his re-election bid.

Amazon EC2 goes down, taking with it Reddit, Foursquare and Quora

Cloud computing issues bring down Social media sites Reddit, Foursquare, Quora and others due to Amazon Web Services suffering network latency and connectivity errors yesterday.

For those of you that don't know, including me, Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network. In the traditional model of computing, both data and software are fully contained on the user's computer; in cloud computing, the user's computer may contain almost no software or data (perhaps a minimal operating system and web browseronly), serving as little more than a display terminal for processes occurring on a network of computers far away.

Quora even has a fun ‘down’ message: “We’d point fingers, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without EC2.” And a funny YouTube video.

One of the sites that was down includes xtranormal, it has been down since yesterday. It's strange how we have come to expect for these sites to work all the time and when they don't it's a real disappointment. If a site is down to resolve issues and for maintenance, is it acceptable to you? Would you return to the site?

Access the full article here.

Find out how your Favorite Brands are doing on Social Media - Do you agree with the results?

So do you wanna know how your brands are doing on Social Media? Just use the Digital IQ Index created by NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway.

Digital IQ is defined as the benchmark for online competence.

The Methodology = Evaluating (Brand site 40% + Digital Marketing 20% + SEO 20% + Social Media 20%)

The Results? Take a look at the Top 5 Below, do you Agree?

1 REI Apparel

2 IKEA Home Furnishings

3 Threadless E-tailer

4 Coach Shoes & Leather goods

5 A|X Armani Exc hange Apparel

Download full report here.

How Premium Fashion Brands Are Maximizing Their Social Media ROI

This article is quite interesting and very applicable to my Capstone "The Democratization of Luxury Fashion Brands in Social Media". The article argues how, as a result of the new digital media, the luxury and premium fashion market is changing the way they connect with their consumers, sell their products, and changing their production cycle.

I was wondering what people thought about this given that the luxury fashion industry has usually been elite, autocratic, and secretive even when it came to their fashion collections; with social media, will they become more democratic and will their brands flourish as a result?

Tweeting out of Deportation

We've all heard how social media has played a role in the Middle East protests but what about in youth deportation cases?

A group called the Dreamers brings people together to rally support for youths facing deportation. Twitter is able to bring the issue into the public realm and gain support for individual cases that are remotely scattered around the country. By drawing mass support for these cases, they make it into the popular media and groups combine efforts to stop the youths from getting deported.

What do you think about this group? Do you think it will continue to be effective?

Court Casses on Twitter

Beause of the decline in court reporting in recent years the Birmingham Magistrates' Court have been put on Twitter by West Midlands Police. This new technique got received very well by the public.

Their final tweet from court was: "Morning court session finished, hope today's court tweeting has been interesting. Watch this space for more court tweeting soon."

That for sure will make it easy for the public to understand how court works and how effective it is.

What do you think.
Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-13127533

Marketers Plan to Increase Social Media Spending

According to a poll from Effie Worldwide and Mashable 70% of marketers and advertising agency executives said they would increase their social media by more than 10% this year. The poll also found that the primary goal of social media would be to increase the number of Facebook likes. More money in the social media budgets should lead to more social media jobs.

Read more about the poll here: http://mashable.com/2011/04/19/marketers-social-media-spend/

Tina Fey staying away from Twitterdom

According to her interview with Craig Ferguson, Tina Fey stated that she refuses to go on Twitter for two reasons. The first being that she would become too involved in it but the more important reason being that it would give away too much of her humor. I thought the second reason to be particularly interesting. Do comedians lose some of their interest outside of Twitter because they are giving away too much? Maybe that's why I incessantly watch 30 Rock or Baby Mama over and over again. I can get my Tina Fey fix which if she was on Twitter I wouldn't need to watch her actual live stuff. I would just follow her life there.

Is this a smart move or do you think that she should just give in?

We need more Facebook Likes!

Given how much we've talked about selecting the best social media platform to reach your target audience, this study is a little frightening. Most major marketers are going to increase their advertising budgets for social media (11.9% vs. the 13% they spend on television).
But what is the most common goal for all of that extra spending? Getting more Facebook likes, of course. I think this shows that even big-name companies are still struggling to figure out how to effectively use social media. They see companies like Old Spice create an effective campaign that both fits the medium and reaches the target (and beyond), but they don't know how to do that for their brand safely - so they rely on Facebook fans.
This study also mentions the #2 most important goal is "increase our presence on mobile."
I think all of this indicates most companies still aren't comfortable with social media, but at least the PR/marketing departments are getting bigger budgets to work with. Do you think we'll see more companies moving beyond Facebook fan pages anytime soon, or do you think companies will stay in this safety zone?

Is Social Media Killing TV?

Social media isn't killing anything, least of all TV.

In fact, after years of declines in live tune-in, Twitter, Facebook and some mobile startups appear to be luring audiences back to appointment TV. While DVRs unglued us from TV schedules, the desire to tap into the tweets, posts and check-ins in real time may just bring us back.

"If you look at the tweets about a TV show, a huge proportion come from when the show is airing live, not an hour later," said Robin Sloan, who works with Twitter's media-partnership team. During awards shows such as the Oscars and Grammys, Twitter has seen viewers complain that those events aren't aired live on both coasts. To appease U.S. fans forced to swear off the internet for a month to save from British tweeters' "Doctor Who" spoilers, the BBC decided to air the In fact, after years of declines in live tune-in, Twitter, Facebook and some mobile startups appear to be luring audiences back to appointment TV. While DVRs unglued us from TV schedules, the desire to tap into the tweets, posts and check-ins in real time may just bring us back.

http://adage.com/article/digital/social-media-killing-tv/227028/

Twitter in Talks to Buy TweetDeck

Twitter is in negotiations to purchase TweetDeck for $50 million according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. The company is U.K. based and only has about 15 employees. TweetDeck has not revealed how many people actually use TweetDeck. The talks are coming right after CNN reported that social media company UberMedia was attempting to build a Twitter competitor. Ubermedia has already acquired Twitter client Echofon and Twidroyd. Whether or not Twitter has a solid place in the future of micro-blogging remains to be seen as more competitors grasp for the outlying Twitter supporting systems.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/18/twitter-tweet-deck/

Mobile shopping

I just came across an article discussing how mobile shopping has failed to take off. The problem, it seems, is that retailers' mobile sites are so difficult to use. It just goes to show how important it is to put the time in and not just assume a new technology will automatically equate to a windfall for your business without any effort on your part. People's time is as valuable to them as their money, and they aren't about to waste it just to get to your product(s). In my opinion, the goal should be to make it so easy for them, it doesn't feel like it requires any effort at all (case in point: iTunes).

Warning: This article is from the New York Times and will count toward your 20-story limit. In fact, after I clicked on it, I got a notice letting me know it was my last free article for the month, so tomorrow I'll get to find out how annoying the newly implemented paywall really is.

Chatroulette Privacy Issues Revealed

Although we haven't really discussed the briefly popular Chatroulette, this article does touch on some of the privacy issues that are continually brought up in class. Did anyone else see this hilarious Chatroulette SNAFU that TechCrunch covered? Unreal....check out the highlighted portions of the article!

Facebook Ad Stats thus far - 14 clicks, 18,000+ impressions

Money Network

This graphic is a good illustration for my previous post !

Founders Now Take the Money and Maintain Control

the NEW YORK Times published last week an article which describes how the economical and technological context, a shift in attitudes and a swell in resources (today there is a lot of free computing services on the net), a new conception of the founders' roles ...Etc. create a very positive context for entrepreneurs around the internet and the social networks.

"Branded Entertainment Efforts"

This Mashable article looks at a hybrid of commercials and entertainment: branded entertainment videos. These aren't necessarily viral videos, but they're definitely produced in order to create as much social media buzz as possible, and the companies have spikes in brand awareness to prove it.

What I'm left wondering is what will happen to traditional television commercials as we see more material like this which can be distributed via channels that reach a specific audience (like YouTube and funnyordie.com). These can't be on-air yet because some of the material is inappropriate, but do you think they will be eventually?

What the heck is branded entertainment?

I thought this was an interesting article from Mashable on an emerging advertising platform called "branded advertising." The idea is that by getting celebrities (mostly comedians) to write and perform skits that incorporate your company or product, you can "create social media chatter and skew the brands younger." As an added bonus, the piece contains ten hilarious but ridiculous examples of such branded advertising efforts. How effective do you think they are?

Twitter in Trouble?

Fortune Magazine wrote a piece in which it says that Twitter is in trouble. Among other things, the article points to slowed traffic to Twitter and declining numbers of active users, as well as trouble bringing in ad revenue and monetizing the platform. According to Fortune, the problems come from within.

The problem is a board and top executive team that don't always appear to have control of its wide-ranging cast of characters, including founders who have attained near-celebrity status (another co-founder, Biz Stone, is a regular on NPR, and earlier this year Dorsey was profiled in Vanity Fair), headstrong and divisive managers, and investors used to getting their way.

What do you think? Is Twitter in trouble? What do you think could be done to turn around some of these problems?

Governor Rick Scott's Word Cloud

Florida's new Governor, Rick Scott has been in office for 100 days and my local paper asked their Twitter and Facebook Followers to sum his first 100 days up into one word. The newspaper used a word cloud to assemble the words. I think it is safe to say he is not very well liked.


Read more here: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/apr/14/141130/gov-scotts-first-100-days-your-reaction-in-one-wor/

Word Clouds: http://www.wordle.net/

Social media infographic to the rescue

Paul Bove shared this infographic on Twitter this morning and I thought it was too useful not to repost here: a social media cheat sheet for CMOs. How cool is that?

Cool Infographic: The Winners & Losers of Social Networking

Check out this interesting infograph featuring information on users of different platforms and comparisons on who is winning and losing in social networks. Enjoy!

(I tried to add the image to the blog, but it was far too large. Just click the link)

Twitter Adds 70 New Locations in Trending Feature

Twitter users will now be able to track trends on more local levels as Twitter adds 70 more locations. New countries include Japan, South Africa, Santiago, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur. Now users in over 100 international locations can see what trends are #hashing around them.

It's too bad that Twitter didn't have the option for Japan prior to the earthquake since we have seen the ways that Twitter can assist people in more quickly accessing vital information during times of unrest. Perhaps Twitter should try to develop a State of Emergency feature that could send out tweets to users in regions following natural disasters to share information about where they can go for aid and assistance. Thoughts?

Bing vs. Google: The Fight Continues

After the lovely presentation on Bing presented in our class, I think we've all sparked an interest in Microsoft's search engine that is tackling the almighty internet giant Google. Recently, Bing Director Stefan Weitz argued that Google was not only a poor search engine, but was teaching people poor search habits.

Rather than asking search engines to know what they mean and entering queries in plain English, he argues, users have grown accustomed to talking to algorithms in a jumble of nouns and verbs that can read like nonsensical Mad Lib responses and lead to vague results.

Stefan Weitz stated, "A lot of us have grown up with Google over the last decade and that’s problematic when you want to advance the state of the art,” he said during an interview with the Huffington Post. “People today speak in pidgin English when they speak to a search engine… What people are not doing is challenging all engines to do more.”

To read more, check out the article in the Huffington Post

Pepsi and "Refresh Project"

Hey guys, do you remember when we talked about Pepsi and its Pepsi Refresh Project. Recently I read very interesting article that Pepsi sails actually went down after entering the project not up as they suppose too. Even though the project reached 4 million likes on Facebook and 600,000 followers on Twitter the social media plan did not bring the needed results. Pepsi put 50% of its branding budget in social media and it failed!!! They lost their #2 spot and the sales drastically went down. It is probably, as for now one of the biggest social media failures in history.
"Marketing at Pepsi should have never been about conversations or dialogue - it should have been about reminding consumers what Pepsi stands for and encouraging them to go buy it."

read more:
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion+++Analysis/Benefits+of+social+media+in+marketing+overstated/-/539548/1142082/-/item/1/-/sl2mm3/-/index.html

If you missed SLS...

If you missed the Social Learning Summit 2011, last weekend, here's a little recap highlighting the School of Communication!
There were a lot of great panels & panelists, but here's my #1 recommendation if you're on Twitter: follow @dcdebbie, @dcconcierge, and @citygirlblogs, all of who spoke on the TMI panel and had great suggestions for defining who you are and how much you share on social platforms. @dcconcierge suggested never tweeting (or posting, or blogging) when you're angry, and said she only blogs about places where she had positive experiences - and ignores the negative ones rather than write nasty reviews. I think this is a great policy and a good way to keep your blog or platform authentic but still interesting.
I know Delphine was there, and Prof. Kumar spoke on a panel, and you can check out the #SLS11 hashtag to see some great tidbits on social media in education, government, and more.

Internet Security Holes

This article is about the attack at the Comodo group, which revealed some problems with the security of Web sites. I think that is related o the issues of privacy we discussed in class on Friday.

The encryption used by many Web sites to prevent eavesdropping on their interactions with visitors is not very secure. This technology is in use when Web addresses start with “https” (in which “s” stands for secure) and a closed lock icon appears on Web browsers. These sites rely on third-party organizations, like Comodo, to provide “certificates” that guarantee sites’ authenticity to Web browsers.

Facebook Opens Up Its Server and Data Center Designs

Facebook had designed stripped-down servers that were 38 percent more efficient and 24 percent cheaper than those sold by major server makers. He also said that Facebook’s new data center, which is in Prineville, Ore., is being cooled entirely with air, helping to reduce both its energy bills and carbon footprint. The data center is expected to open this month. Read this article for more information.

Social Media & Social Cause Marketing

Last class we found ourselves seated in the real world of PR agency work, brainstorming about how to get people to care about contributing money for a cause. The success of the campaign would not only benefit the charitable organization receiving the funds, it would also benefit (in terms of perception "profits") the for-profit companies linked to the campaign. While not a widespread marketing strategy, indications are that it is a marketing strategy on the rise. In a post yesterday by Arianna Huffington, she referred to a recent comment by Twitter’s president of global revenue, Adam Bain, that “humor, huge deals and humanity” are the three best ways to monetize a product. With social media, it is much easier for a company to identify what its customers care about. At the same time, a company must engage with its customers on social media, and it should do so in an authentic way. Doing so will give further credibility to its words and actions that speak to caring about something other than its brand. And as Jennifer Gilman of Weber Shandwick pointed out last week, “it must be in their DNA;” otherwise, no one will believe them.

App to Help People With Autism and Aphasia Communicate

There's a new iPhone App (soon to be Andriod, too) called MyVoice, which is specifically designed to help people with speech and communication disabilities (such as those with Autism or Aphasia, which inhibits their ability to speak, but not to understand or want to communicate). This short video is a great intro to how the app works. Basically, it allows people to save sentences, information, etc, into the app, so they can just select the information they want to share, and the app will read it out to whoever they are communicating with. It can also create words, phrases, conversations for you based on your location or based on an interest you share.

My mom works with Autistic young adults, and she specifically focuses on using technology to help them advocate for themselves and their needs. Usually, these kinds of communication systems are very expensive, hard to get, and not covered by insurance. This app is free (with some paid upgrades/expansions) so it's possible that this will help to make communication easier, and more accessible, to the people who need it. I thought this was a really interesting way to use mobile technology to make communicating with others easier for people with Autism and Aphasia.

Measuring Twitter Influence

This article from the New York Times touches on some of the things we've been talking about in class. It notes that your number of followers isn't the best way to measure how much influence a person or a brand actually has on Twitter, and that a person's (or brand's) influence is better measured by how often they are talked about and how much their Tweets and links, etc. are driving Twitter coversation. It goes on to list the Top 10 Most Influential People on Twitter, only one of whom (Kim Kardashian, of all people)is also one of the Top Ten People with the Most Followers on Twitter.

Facebook and Journalism

More and more I see actual new articles on my Facebook news feed instead of status updates or photo tags. This Tuesday, Facebook launched a Journalists on Facebook community page as part of their growing effort to combine the social media site with journalism. In a note Justin Osofsky, FB's Director of Media Partnerships, wrote that they hope the page will become, "an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories." The note also cites that the average media organization has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic. Do you think journalists will flock to Facebook to find stories, sources and readers? Will PR reps be pitching to journalists through this community?

GOP and social media

As the 2012 elections gear up, GOP hopefuls are turning to social media. During the 2008 elections, the power of social media was harnessed by the Obama campaign in ways never before seen. Many analyst credit Obama's fundraising efforts and outreach through social media as one of the main reasons Obama was elected. Immediately after Obama announced his reelection campaign, Tim Pawlenty put out a youtube video. Still, GOP candidates have a long way to go. As of now, Obama has over 19 million facebook fans, while Pawlenty has about 81,000. It will be interesting to see how social media will be used during this election. New applications for social media and maybe new platforms will arise from this.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/05/gop-responds-to-obama/

68 Percent of Twitter Users "Dormant"

Huh. According to this Business Insider post, only 56 million users are Twitter are considered 'Active'. Anyone following more than 8 others is considered Active by Twitter.

There are 175 million total users on Twitter.

That's roughly 68 percent of users who are following less than 8 people, and are being followed by less than 10. Kinda raises some interesting questions about how much attention we should be paying to Twitter. Are our numbers inflated? Are our demographic numbers different from those that are Active versus those that aren't? This could be big for targeting campaigns in the future. 

Weber Shandwick keeps Army contract

Since we were just there, I thought it was cool to see that the Army (whose logo was pictured the the presentation) has opted to renew their $200M marketing budget with a group that includes Weber Shandwick. See the alert here.
Combining CSR and the Military? Now that's Army Strong.

How Brands Can Access an Instant Audience with Instagram

How Brands Can Access an Instant Audience with Instagram

A great post with examples from Starbucks and MTV using Instagram. Have any of you tried it yet? I have seen only one friend on Facebook use it thus far but will try it myself.

E-mail to Wendy and Trach's Tweet

Dear Wendy,

I would like to offer you an exclusive interview regarding the current and ongoing research Trach’s is performing to show that we are actively staying ahead of the curve on health concerns. Our customer’s health has and always will remain our top concern.

Since the company’s inception, Trach’s has operated by using environmentally conscious practices in our factories as well as corporate offices.

Along with an exclusive interview, I would like to offer you an online brochure that includes an overview of the candy making process, which will include photos. Also, our candy engineer would like to go through our ingredient list with you to explain what each ingredient means.

I will follow up with you Thursday, April 7th at 10 am to discuss the interview and answer any questions you may have.

Kind regards,

Candy Corn
Director of Communication
Trach’s Candy
candycorn@trachscandy.com

TWEET:

@Trach’s is committed to the health of its customers and is currently conducting independent research to ensure all of our ingredients are safe - stay tuned for updates. #trach’sresearch

Trader Joe's Blog Reponse

Dear Candy Confectioner and loyal readers,

We want to thank you for your continued coverage of the candy confectionery business. 

We would like you and all your readers to know that what we care about most is our candy consumers and connoisseurs. Upon hearing this news of a potential health issue, we began looking into the issue of food dyes and its affect on young children. Our customers have not reported any problems but due to recent health issues with companies like Juno's Candies (our competitor) we have begun clinical research to ensure the safety of the adults and children eating our 100 year old recipe. We appreciate your passion and continued support of our family owned company.

Please, feel free to comment and ask questions you may have. I'll be more than happy to answer them, and I want to make sure you all feel as safe with your children as I do with mine.

Sincerely,

George Trach

Trach's Candy

gtrach@trachcandy.com

Safe! For now

Here's a morning update on whether or not food coloring warrants a warning label:

"An expert advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that there was not enough scientific evidence linking artificial colors with hyperactivity to warrant a warning label or new restrictions on thousands of processed foods colored by chemicals."

I just found it interesting how this was playing out after our crisis simulation. Now go eat your Fruity Pebbles.

Crisis Blog Response

Team: Xavier, Liz, Marie, Kaitlin, Adam

Dear Candy Confectioner, Readers, & All Candy Lovers,

Our customers’ concerns are and always have been our biggest priority here at Trachs Candy, and we would like to take a moment to address the issues Candy Confectioner, and many of you, have voiced here. We appreciate your questions regarding the safety of our ingredients. At Trachs, we have used the same time-tested recipe, passed down from generation to generation for almost 100 years, and have always been committed to producing quality candy.

You can be assured that all of our products follow FDA regulations, and there have been no conclusive studies showing a link between food coloring and attention disorders. We remain committed to ensuring the safety of our products, and in collaboration with the FDA are launching further research to verify and ensure the safety of our products and our customers.

Once again, we appreciate you bringing your concerns to our attention. For updates on our cooperation with the FDA and insights from our CEO and food safety experts, please see our company blog at www.TrachsCandyCares.com. Please don’t hesitate to contact us on the blog with further questions and concerns.

Yours,
Trachs Candy