DATE: March 6, 2009 This memo analyzes the activity of social media on the web, for the purpose of encouraging businesses and the public to use social media. Data considered include population statistics (including demographics), web traffic base on unique visitors, year growth rate, time per person, search term, tweets, and buzz volume. Additionally, special emphasis is given on the rise of popular social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. What is Social Media? The internet was invented in the 1990s and nobody who of predicted how the web turned out today. When the internet began, everyone tried to make a profit from this new type of media. However, to their surprise, it did not work and the dot com boom bubble burst around year 2000. After, users learned they needed to approach the internet a different way. The term Web 2.0 was born to describe open, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Now nine years later Web 2.0 is dyeing, at least as a buzzword, according to Google Trend. Web 2.0 is just passed the explosive growth stage and now it’s mainstream. What evolved out of Web 2.0 is social media. Social media is taking over the web. Google Trends data suggest that 2008 saw the term Web 2.0 drop consistently while social media is rising slowly to take over its place. Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of social media in the last 12 months.
Social Media Web 2.0
Social media is a shift in how people discover, read, and share news, information, and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to
connect in the online world to form relationships for personal and business. Businesses also refer to social media as. - Wikipedia Different from Traditional Media Social media are distinct from tradition media, such as newspapers, television, and film. While social media is a cheap tool that enables any individual to publish or access information, traditional media generally, require financial capital to publish information. However, both traditional and social media technologies provide scale and allow anyone to reach a global audience. The different in social media Generally available to anyone at little or no cost Anyone can operate the means of production Responses, comments, or editing can be capable of virtually instantaneous User not highly accountable for their publishing activities Free from conflicts of interest
The different in traditional media Typically owned privately or by government Requires specialized skills and training Can be long (days, weeks, or even months) Once created cannot be altered Accountable to society for the content quality
What is Twitter? Twitter is a "micro-blogging" service where users can send short, instant status updates to their friends via e-mail and mobile phone. Even they have not monetized all their traffic, twitter is exploding with popularity. They do have $57 million of venture capitalists to play around with. Twitter’s mission is simply to provide a useful, robust service and let the dollars follow later. Today twitter is the fastest-growing social networking site, and if you are in business, take note. Twitter injects authenticity and believability into a brand. Twitter enables companies to engage in online conversations about products, services, and problems. It brings back the human element to all digital interaction Not even viruses are safe from social media. In the age of Twitter, anyone can be a journalist. Since twitter is instantaneous, it is usually first on the scene like major natural disasters. Twitter is quickly changing the way our entire news
system operates, from journalist to users, and blurring the lines in between. The new age of the individual, this truly empowers smart talented people.
Twitter Gender
43% 57%
males females
News broadcasters like CNN's Rick Sanchez have actually incorporated twitter into their live broadcasts, and it seems like just about every other journalist these days has a presence on twitter. The hysteria over the latest news of swine flu is spreading … well, like a virus. As you can see in the chart below, buzz volume of blog discussion about “Swine Flu” were five times more popular than Susan Boyle from Britain Got Talent, peanut butter and salmonella scare put together. Nielsen said tweets were at 10,000 per hour, up from an average of a few thousand earlier in March 2009. Google trends saw a great spike in swine flu in Hawaii where, Pearl City is the most concern about it. This is also a correlation with the buzz volume on the web, which is the snowball effect that Twitter can have on a given subject.
Twitter user mostly young males.
A study released from Nielsen Mobile is the world's largest provider of consumer research to the mobile media market. Nielsen Mobile, illustrated a comparative analysis of the user demographics and market penetration of Twitter, the leading free mobile community, and Predicto, the largest paid mobile community. Nielsen Mobile shows twitter has a higher male demographics of 57percent compared to 43percent for Predicto. Predicto has a much higher age group of 68 percent of user are the 35+ age group versus 49 percent of Twitter .
Twitter Age Group
Predicto Age Group
32% 49% 51% below 35 35+ 68% below 35 35+
Facebook is beating MySpace Facebook has grown from 100 million to 200 million users in less than 8 months. Facebook is growing rapidly then the relatively similar market share numbers year over year indicates. It is doing well in other countries while MySpace hardly seems to exist at all. I think it has to do with where Facebook is headed while MySpace is in the same place where it was created. Facebook is concentrating at API development, while MySpace does not seem like it’s trying. Facebook is now well over twice the size of MySpace. December 2008 MySpace and Facebook were the same size. MySpace is hanging on to a small lead over Facebook in America but trails badly in other countries. Facebook now has 91 million unique visitors versus MySpace’s 55 million. Facebook increase three folds, 60 million unique visitors, from last year while MySpace decrease more than 10 million unique visitors.
Unique Visitors Myspace vs Facebook
Millions 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Mar-08 May-08 Jul-08 Sep-08 Nov-08 Jan-09 Mar-09 myspace.com facebook.com
Twitter Rise 1382 percent Twitter itself is growing like a weed, its yearly growth rate 1,382 percent. Compared to Facebook growth rate, twitter grew 606 percent more. According to Nielsen, Twitter currently has 7 million unique monthly visitors. Still, it grew 76 percent just from February to March. All but MySpace has grown from last year, but if twitter keeps growing at this rate, it will have nearly 100 million visitors next year. Not only has its growth rate increase but its time per person increase 83percent from last year.
YOY Growth From Feb 08 to Feb 09
1600% 1400% 1200% 1000% 800% 600% 400% 200% 0% -200% Facebook Myspace.com LinkedIn Twitter.com Ning AOL Community
Unique Audience
Standing tall YouTube YouTube is the dominant provider of online video and first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. Nielsen’s analysis of online video viewing habits in. In total streams, the figure represents a nearly 9percent jump over the previous month, and 38.8percent increase over figures released for March 2008 YouTube, Hulu, and Yahoo! were the top three sites for streaming video. March shows that an estimated 130 million web users viewed more than 9.6 billion streams. YouTube still standing tall, with a market share of around 43 percent and about six billion videos viewed in March 2009. It is estimated that 15 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute. Its competitor, Hulu, is also growing fast. Nevertheless, in March alone, YouTube has grown almost two time Hulu's size. However, considering the fact that YouTube has about 89 million visitors per month (in March) and Hulu only has about 8 million, advertisers. YouTube is not merely a site for entertainment or for viewing content, but for business too.
Online Brands ranked b Video Streams for March 2009 U.S.
Thousands 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 -
Twitter accounts for businesses. Twitter, despite still not have monetize form their traffic, can be a great tool for corporation. Twitter can start charging corporation so it pushes the cost to business than to users. Several large companies, including Dell, Whole Foods, and JetBlue, have already set up corporate presences on Twitter to let customers know about special offers and even answer customer questions. In Dell's case, the company says it has made "well over" $500,000 in sales from sending special offers from its Dell Outlet store to its Twitter group, which it began in June 2007. How to use twitter Twitter is much more. It can be a: 1. Broadcast tool to send information to your network of your daily life, etc. 2. Promotion tool to share clickable URLs 3. Conversation tool to ask questions, join an existing conversation and contribute to the community. 4. Early warning system for breaking news seem to pop-up on 5. Subscribe to people, where else can you follow updates and insights from industry to celebrities. There are hundreds of interesting people to follow in Twitter. Twitter obviously has flaws:
1. It has not announced a business model yet and people are afraid its introduction will break the utility. 2. It is a huge time-waster, looking at the conversation feed and making sense of it all. 3. More than 60 per cent of Twitter users stop using the service within a month of joining, according to Nielsen Online research. 4. Unofficial news on twitter may lead people to make unwise decisions Companies should understand the new game of social media Social media is fundamentally changing how we connect to each other. The end of the industrial revolution is the shift of power from the organization to the individual. The new age is the age of the isolated and empowered individual. It is redefining how we relate to each other as humans and how we as humans relate to the organizations that serve us. People now deliberately seek meaningful connection, self-expression, and a relevant and receptive community Companies should focus on understanding what this means for their business to take advantage of the opportunities of social media. While companies cannot control the conversation, they can participate in it, help make it better, and co-create with the customers. Companies that want to succeed will need to take it further and tap into people's evolving needs, using the social media context as the new baseline. The future is the age in which the individuals become brands. We need technology to enable these brands, people with talents, on the network. Twitter is the beginning enabling technology