Marketers think that social media in China cannot thrive, due to tighter controls. While the controls are tighter, one must realize that social media is infinitely more open than other media in China, and Sina has built a solid product integrating images, video, structured dialog, and longer tweets. As a result, Sina Weibo has become the media of choice that people flock to find or share information, and to voice or hear opinion.
New York is now home to the country’s fastest-growing and most exciting tech communities, with more and more entrepreneurs choosing to locate their start-ups here. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of New Yorkers working at digital media companies grew by 80%. New York is now number one in job growth in the $20 billion mobile app industry.
New York’s tech sector is bigger, more diverse and more innovative than ever. And it’s no accident. New York City has a deeper concentration of the tech industry’s most valuable assets – creativity and capital – than any place on earth. So do you think, will New York replace Silicon Valley?
On February 29th, Facebook revealed big plans for the mobile platform, including that the new Timeline format for brands will also be available on the mobile platform. The game changing updates mean that for users of other social media marketing platforms, the message for 2012 will be: we need to get ready for mobile.
Let’s recap the announcements Facebook made and what they mean for your brand:
Timeline for brands will also be functional in the mobile platform (but will be made available at an unspecified date in 2012)
Implications for brands: Where brands can currently launch mobile-optimized marketing campaigns that users can access from their smart devices, soon users will be able to experience the same exact workflow on their desktop as on their smart phone. The new Timeline format for brands, once available on the mobile network, will enable page managers to curate an identical experience for all users, regardless of how they’re accessing branded content on Facebook. This means a big impact on your brand’s reach, especially as we consider that nearly half of the active Facebook user population interacts with the network from their mobile device.
Sponsored Stories now appear in the mobile feed as well
Implications for brands: To date, there has been no advertising reach to any Facebook users on mobile devices. In light of the fact that approximately 450 million Facebook users interact with the network using a mobile device, this was an enormous opportunity lost to marketers— until now. Sponsored Story ad units are the only ones being released to mobile Timelines— this means that promoting these “organic word of mouth” advertising units will become a major part of every marketers mission.
In a sense, it’s a bit silly to call 2012 the Year of Mobile because every year since the release of Apple’s ill-fated Newton has been the Year of Mobile. We have always been moving toward computing devices that are smaller, faster, and cheaper. According to research by Morgan Stanley, the number of people who access the Internet primarily from mobile devices will surpass desktop users sometime in 2013.
