Facebook has continued to push its Messenger apps for mobile after it announced a deal to bring free and discounted data access for the apps to customers of 18 operators across 14 countries. The deal is an aggressive but industry-backed one to offer an alternative to SMS and promote mobile data services for carriers. Continue reading:
Social media is on rise, everyday we become more engaged to our Facebook profiles, tweets and blog posts, or Instagram and Pinterest, visual social networking. We loved this game, it became a big part of our life, how we are sharing things through them. They provided us necessary platforms. If we have 140 characters to say something, we have Twitter there. Or, if you take a pic, you can share it on Instagram, pin it to your board and post it on your Facebook page.
Lets see what happened in 2012, which social platform rised and which one declined
Things are changing, the way we look for job, the way we interview and build our resumes. We are asked to be more social, in terms of more connected and open, so we must have our social resume with us. Continue reading:
PS: With Facebook’s new pillar, Graph Search, you can look for your future colleagues in your dream workplace.
As Facebook moves closer to Microsoft, Bing is becoming more like Facebook.
Microsoft’s search engine gained “five times more content” on Thursday, the company said, adding much more Facebook content to the “sidebar” on the right-hand side of Bing’s organic search results. Now, Facebook status updates, shared links, comments and photos will all be shown when a user performs a search, provided the user is logged in to Facebook.
Previously, Bing allowed users to ask their Facebook friends for responses to a query, such as the best restaurants in San Francisco. Now, those results will appear automatically, provided that a user’s friend network has actually discussed the topic. Photos will pop out, and queries such as “Notre Dame” will generate facts and figures on the cathedral, the university and your friends’ opinions. Continue reading…
Ex Googlers helped Facebook to launch Graph Search. Graph Search got its start in the spring of 2011, when Zuckerberg asked Lars Rasmussen to join him on a walk. Rasmussen, 44, had joined Facebook the previous year, an eyebrow-raising defector from Google. Rasmussen got a co-leader for his product: another former Googler named Tom Stocky, an MIT grad who had worked on various teams since joining Google in 2005. Continue reading…
It’s broken a number of records — overtaking Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ to become the most popular YouTube video of all time — but today it marks another impressive YouTube milestone: the first video to reach one billion views on YouTube.
The most popular YouTube video of all time!!!
The video has topped nearly every viral list it has been part of, becoming Google’s top trending video in its YouTube Rewind retrospective for 2012, leading the most-saved videos on Pocket and even saw Google Chairman Eric Schmidt performing the iconic dance.
Of the billion views, over a third of them originated from a mobile device (over 340 million), while Facebook contributed 45 million via links and YouTube embeds. There’s been over 4 million comments posted, more than 6 million likes (435,000 dislikes) and it has been favorited roughly 1.8 million times.
How much time do you spend on the web each day? If you live in North America, a new report says, probably a lot.
Canadian company Sandvine, in their global Internet Phenomena Report, confirmed that online data usage in North America has increased by 120% over the past year. Netflix makes up 33% of the traffic — a definite boost for the company since last year’s price hike angered many of its viewers.
Amazon makes up 1.8% of downstream traffic, the report says, with Hulu at 1.4% and HBO GO at 0.5%. In total, all audio and video streaming services account for 65% of traffic between 9:00 p.m. and midnight.
File sharing network BitTorrent takes up 16% of traffic — but, Sandvine predicts, real-time entertainment’s rising popularity will size it down to 10% overall by 2015.
Social media is pervasive in the U.S. and is becoming increasingly integrated into the entire media landscape. From a consumer point of view, people use social networks in a few primary ways:
Connection: Facebook is far and away the most popular social platform; as it’s grown over the last 8 years, Facebook has gone from connecting college classmates to being the central social network. Facebook’s wide reach means many people are becoming more selective about what they share, and have higher standards for what they consider relevant or interesting on the platform.
Nicheworks: More active social users are turning to what we call “nicheworks” that have a more specialized interest or functionality and smaller circle of sharing. Sometimes this means sharing similar information, but more in-depth or with a different audience (for example, professional information on LinkedIn). Other platforms, like Instagram or Pinterest, are focused more on image sharing where users upload and post content based on certain topics – like recipes, crafts, travel, or other hobbies and interests.
Discovery & Sharing: Twitter is the most open information platform and has become a cascade of data consisting of personal updates, news and politics, and TV. But it also tends to be the sharing platform of choice for users of nicheworks: when those users create or find something cool, they share it more broadly on Twitter. As Twitter has grown both as a “pure-play” social medium and as a distributor for many smaller networks’ updates, it’s become a microcosm of what’s happening across nearly all of social – and traditional – media.
What do consumers think about brands using social media to reach them? What challenges do brands face in the U.S. when using social media?
Consumers are tolerant of brands but tend to be somewhat transactional in terms of what they want in exchange for their “likes” – they want something back for their attention. Ultimately, almost no one voluntarily wants to interact with ads, so it’s up to brands to change their messaging strategies to offer something genuinely interactive and interesting. This also means brands must have a much stronger arsenal of content at the ready, and they need to be limber and experimental in how they deploy it.
Facebook announced that it will be kicking off an advertising campaign to promote its brand, specifically targeting 13 countries including Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, Spain, U.K., and the U.S. The campaign will appear in 12 different languages and will be housed on Facebook itself initially. You can watch it here : https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3802752155040
The social network said in a press release attached to the announcement that it wants to express “who we are and why we exist.” The campaign is the work of agency Wieden and Kennedy, Facebook’s existing agency of record, and the first video embedded below focuses primarily on chairs. Yes, the things you sit on.
The timing of this campaign’s launch, coming alongside the 1 billion user milestone, along with the countries it’s targeting initially, could indicate that Facebook wants to expand its brand presence in markets where it already has considerable penetration. The idea might be that additional outreach and marketing efforts can help it get past a potential growth plateau and reach even wider market saturation, possibly in less tech-savvy demographics. But the strategy seems initially aimed at existing users, so it could also be the case that this is an attempt to ramp up engagement and make Facebook users feel more connected and invested to the brand, and less likely to wander. Whatever the case, it’s a well-shot, well-edited video, and it’ll be interesting to see what else comes out of the promotional effort.