Ad agencies: 89% Facebook, 39% Twitter, 18% Google+

Summary: Advertising agencies say their clients are still choosing Facebook above all social networks. While Facebook has a huge lead ahead of all its competitors, Google+ is growing quickly.

Facebook continues its dominance in marketing campaigns. In Q4 2011, 89 percent of agencies said they plan to utilize the medium for their clients going forward. This is followed by 39 percent planning to use Twitter, 36 percent choosing YouTube, 21 percent picking LinkedIn, and 18 percent opting for Google+. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean the agencies will be using ads on these social networks: it just means they want to use the platforms to market for their clients, whether that be with ads, Facebook Pages, Google+ Pages, or other creative means.

The data comes from marketing firm Strata, which found the media buying industry reported impressive growth during Q4 2011. 81 percent expect their clients approach to advertising and marketing to either increase or stay the same, which is up 14 percent based on the same figures reported in Q3 2011. While business and client spending on advertising is expected to continue to increase in 2012, the survey noted that digital advertising was flat during the fourth quarter, but mobile is building momentum.

Agencies reported mobile advertising during the Q4 2011 was up 39 percent. The iPhone remains the top choice as reported by 83 percent of agencies surveyed, though Android continues to close the gap, up 32 percent over Q3 2011 and up 50 percent over the Q4 2010. Although the iPad is still third for mobile advertising, 76 percent say that with Apple and Amazon continuing to focus on building tablet content, there will be an increase in interest for advertising on the newer medium.

Here are some other findings from the survey:

• 42 percent say their 2012 political ad spend will be more than 2010.
• 46 percent say that during the political season they will advertise in alternative mediums to avoid competition by politicians (41 percent will compete with politicians for space).
• 49 percent said they project the first half of 2012 to be better than the last half of 2011 (46 percent also see business increasing compared to the same time last year).
• 4 percent say that it will be three to five years before there is a greater spend in digital than traditional media (that’s a 50 percent increase over 3Q 2011); but 38 percent still feel that shift will never happen.
• Android is the second most popular mobile advertising choice at 71 percent; iPad remains third (46 percent).
• For mobile advertising the top option is display (46 percent) followed by SMS (25 percent, but up 61 percent since 4Q 2010).
• 44 percent are somewhat interested in self-service inventory of digital assets.
• Only 4 percent said they are more focused on Print than they were a year ago.

“The key word for advertisers in 2012 is growth,” Strata CEO and President John Shelton said in a statement. “Agencies started to reap the benefits of balance sheets turned in their favor during the fourth quarter 2011, brokering a bright early 2012. The STRATA Survey shows that many advertisers are confident that their business and the economy will return to a strong period by midyear. That sentiment, coupled with strong numbers from the political race, provides an overall positive barometer for advertising in 2012.”

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Instant Gratification: Gaming and Social Media

Everybody wants instant gratification, don’t they? After all, if it only takes the drag of a thumb to update your variety of social networks then it would be foolish to simply relax. Dare to enjoy the moment and within minutes you’re left behind, out of date with the breaking news stories that millions of others have digested and are already deliberating. We are encouraged to maintain a constant connection without regarding its effects on not only the way we live, but also play videogames.

I think Facebook and Twitter are fantastic inventions; they allow for discussion with people you have never met while acting as an invaluable source of news, opinions, and references. Twitter is my Premier League goal-ticker on Saturday, and my videogaming discussion centre throughout the week. It’s this adaptability that draws its 465 million users back time after time, and is why the service is integral to many morning and bedtime routines.

i competes with online news through conciseness.

To combat this connectivity, print is looking to adapt to the speed at which we approach and absorb content. i, produced by The Independent, thrives on providing a concise national newspaper for twenty pence, and it’s circulation (423,000, September 2011) suggests that consumers have welcomed it into their lives. It conserves the print format and only uses it for what’s necessary, ensuring that there is still space for a daily newspaper in our smart-phone addled lives.

Virgin Media have also recognised our increased need for speed by recently announcing that it will be boosting its top broadband package to 120Mb, and doubling the speeds of over four million customers. The former allows a music album to be downloaded in approximately 4.4 seconds, and a high-definition movie in roughly five minutes.

Waiting – the definition of which has seemingly been forgotten – is no longer acceptable outside of public services, so what does this instantaneity mean for our videogaming habits?

We have witnessed the growth of Apple in the portable gaming sector, and apps such as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope suit our evolving society much more fittingly than titles such as Skyrim, which demand hours to achieve completion. However, the dragon-slaying RPG shifted 3.4 million units within two days, suggesting that we still have the ability to devote ourselves to an experience that may not be able to provide the satisfaction of a finale for weeks.

It’s difficult to see that being the case forever, though. The combination of modern life and instant gratification asks the infamous question; what came first? Our need for small shots of satisfaction could be a result of our busy lives, meaning that we naturally invest our spare time in things that take minimal effort but exude maximum gain. Alternatively, we may have become so fearful of being left behind by the Internet that our mindsets don’t allow us time to relax.

Only a crystal ball is able to pour some light over the future of videogames and how they will continue to meet the ever-increasing demands of the modern consumer. Smaller titles, like smartphone games, need minutes for a close to continuous reward, whereas full retail titles need hours for the profit of a climax, and this fundamental logic has the potential to change the way in which studios approach development.

Is Skyrim "instant" enough for modern society?

Hopefully we’ll see that there is no harm in disconnecting and being left behind if it enables us to relax. Videogames thrive on immersion and if you are tweeting throughout playing them you’re not allowing yourself to be whisked away into a fantastical world where anything is possible. The same can be said for all forms of social networking; our perceived need to maintain an online presence is having a detrimental effect on our videogaming experiences.

Have you checked a social network since you began reading this? If you answer positively then you have proved my point. We are becoming unable to live without something new, whether it is in the form of a Tweet, Facebook status, or purchase. We complain when we are sold short games, but it could be the way forward to ensure the survival of the studios that make them.

We don’t need to subject ourselves to an onslaught of immediate content to satisfy ourselves. By switching off and devoting our time to a singular entertainment form – without the so often stressful distractions of modern life – we are enhancing the time we spend in front of our consoles. They may not provide the instant gratification that we have become accustomed to, but reach the final credits immersed, and you’ll begin to question the satisfaction that you gained from tweeting in the first place.

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Facebook More Addictive Than Cigarettes, Study Says

Forget the Marlboro Reds and whiskey, what you’re developing the biggest dependency on might not be chemical at all: it’s social media. According to a study from ChicagoUniversity, texting and checking Facebook and Twitter come in just below sex and sleep on impossible to resist urges.

Subjects 18-85 were given blackberries and sent out into the wild, and then the researchers messaged them to see if they were feeling urges to check social media: they found that almost all the time, they were experiencing a powerful desire. Of course, the constant Blackberry interaction with reserachers seems to have become a sort of social media of its own.

“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” lead researcher Wilhelm Hofmann, told The Guardian. But according to the paper, checking these devices is as much about the desire to work as it is to relax.

“Resisting the desire to work was likewise prone to fail. In contrast, people were relatively successful at resisting sports inclinations, sexual urges, and spending impulses, which seems surprising given the salience in modern culture of disastrous failures to control sexual impulses and urges to spend money.”

It’s a feeling we’re all familiar with — that we’ll just sign on, check Facebook, check Twitter, see what’s there. The little buildup of tension when the loading screen starts to go, the little release when it jumps and the page loads. It’s a quick, easy fix unlikely to give you liver disease or lung cancer, one of the reasons that the addiction may be so much more pervasive than traditionally harmful pastimes.

“With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time,” said Hoffman.

There’s also the argument to be made that social media is just as harmful, forcing someone to recede from the world and into a safe little bubble of status updates and tweets, where human beings aren’t troublesome animals but easily compartmentalized profiles. But it’s a little easier to make the harm argument with cigarettes.

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Graffiti artist David Choe set for Facebook windfall

A US graffiti artist who painted Facebook's offices is set to become a multi-millionaire when the social network begins trading as a public company.

David Choe, who first spray-painted the walls of Facebook HQ in 2005, accepted shares in payment for his work.

Now the site is planning to float on the stock market, its thought his share could be worth around $200m (£126m).

Writing on his blog, Choe said he was the "highest paid decorator alive".

Although he had initially thought the idea of the social network was "ridiculous and pointless", the artist decided to take the stock option instead of cash "in the thousands of dollars" according to the New York Times.

Choe's payout could be worth more money than auction house Sotheby's attracted for its record-breaking $200.7m (£127m) sale in 2008 for a collection of work by Damien Hirst.

The Korean-American artist, 35, was first asked to paint erotic murals for Facebook's first office in Palo Alto, California, by the site's then-president, Sean Parker.

The site's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, later asked Choe to paint "tamer" art for its second office in 2007.

However art from the original headquarters was cut out from the walls and is on display at other Facebook offices around the world.

Choe - whose work can now be seen in galleries all over the world - is currently painting the site's new offices in Menlo Park, California.

The artist, who began spray-painting in his teens, created the cover art for Jay-Z and Linkin Park's multi-platinum album Collision Course in 2004.

In 2008, he also painted a portrait of the then-Senator Barack Obama - a picture that now hangs in the White House.

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Would You Pay For A Premium Facebook?

A Facebook "premium" service that you have to pay for and invasive targeted advertising are just two of the changes predicted for the social network as it goes public in the largest net company float ever.

With the paperwork for the initial public offering already lodged in the expected $5 billion capital raising, news.com.au asked Australian technology research company Telsyte what we could expect about the future of the tech giant.

Analyst Foad Fadaghi said the influence of investors and shareholders would inevitably change the way we use the social network.

Yes, there will be advertising

“The ads on Facebook may become more content driven or invasive.

“There may be more marketing or advertising related products or services that we see develop and come out as investors and shareholders look to make more money from the site.

“Traditionally social networking websites have had a lot of advertising imagery but haven’t been able to get the same high rates as the premium content sites, such as news. So those metrics will come under scrutiny.”

"Facebook Premium"

With so many people playing games and making purchases on the site, users could be offered a “Facebook Premium” subscription option.

“In the app space you will see a lot more in-app advertising, purchases and subscriptions.

“That whole ecosystem will keep growing. It already represents a significant portion of Facebook revenue, so that side of the business can definitely grow a lot more.

“The challenge is companies such Google+ will provide similar services, but are likely not to charge because they are less powerful in the social networking space.

“As long as there is competition, social networking sites will remain free to consumers.”

Better mobile apps

“In the future we can expect Facebook applications to further enhance the mobile site. For example, the current app on the iPad is not as good as the web-based platform.

“There may be more interactions between communities and governments, and businesses. Today Facebook is very much around individual contacts, but they are starting to get into the business. You may see that enhanced over time.

“Facebook has to make sure that it provides services that users are comfortable using, but will have to balance that with the wishes of its investors who will be looking to make money.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/02/would-pay-for-facebook-analyst-predicts-premium-option/?#ixzz1lFgzyAwE


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Plan social media strategy and resources, advises Hewlett-Packard

The trend for using social media to maximise events is growing, but corporates must have a strategy and adequate resources, Hewlett-Packard advised at C&IT's Corporate Forum.

Hewlett-Packard events manager Jane Culcheth Beard, speaking at a session entitled ‘Social media and technology – how to integrate into your events’, told delegates: "In December my team got together to discuss mobile apps. The year before, it was all about ‘where is social media going in events’. In a year, adoption and usage had skyrocketed. Everyone in the team is using it for their events."

The company used a mobile app for an event for the first time last year and saw 1,000 posts within the first day, she added, saying: "It was a revelation to me – people really want this."

Feedback

As well as building excitement beforehand, social media can also be a useful way to gather informal feedback during and after events, delegates heard.

"Post-event, a Linkedin group is great – you know who is on it, and they have really good discussions. You have got the opportunity of a week or two to keep in people’s minds what they heard at the event," said Culcheth Beard.

Structure and resources

She advised delegates to put a structure in place for using social media, and "treat it like any other marketing tool".

However, effective use may require extra resources, delegates heard. HP Discover, which took place in Vienna last year for 7,100 delegates, had "a really big social media programme, for which we had resources, " she said.

"Pre and during the event you need resources – to do a good job you need someone just doing social media. It is not something you can do as an event manager as you won’t have time."

For apps, event planners were advised: "Shop around. App providers need customers, it is a new area and there is no pricing scale at the moment."

Culcheth Beard’s key advice for using social media to maximise events:

-       Think about what the event aims to achieve and who the target audience is

-       Plan how you can social media create "a buzz" before the event, and dialogue during and after the event

-       Be authentic – "Don’t get the marketing department to do a product development blog – it has to be genuine"

-       Plan ahead: "Give yourself enough time. We’d start planning 30 days out for a small event, for a big event it starts 12 months before with posting news, kicking off discussion forums etc."

-       Don’t forget to follow up post-event: "It is the easiest to forget and the most important, because the reason for doing the event in the first place is to get a dialogue going."

-       You can’t control social media – "I’ve got used to people having a moan – they are going to do it anyway, and you won’t know about it. This way, you’ve got a chance to respond."

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Letting brands integrate customer-generated content into social media campaigns

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has taken an initiative to build on the launch of ratings and reviews on its sites. The company has started including customer reviews and ratings on the Facebook page for its Westin brand.

The development emerged as Bazaarvoice and Buddy Media announced a partnership to help brands integrate online customer conversations in their social media campaigns.

Westin Hotels & Resorts is the first to use the joint offering on facebook.com/westin.

According to Buddy Media, this partnership, for the first time, brings together online reviews and social media presences.

The companies have created a new “sapplet,” or social application, which will allow brands to integrate their Bazaarvoice customer-generated content into their brand pages and social media campaigns powered by Buddy Media.

According to a posting on Buddy Media’s blog, the features include:

- Ability for brands to define the category of products or services to feature in their social presences.

- The most popular products and services, based on ratings, reviews, comments and shares, are promoted within the application.

- Users can share their experiences and the Bazaarvoice content with their friends across their online networks. Imagine a well-written review that was the deciding factor in a purchase you made. With this integration, your friends will now see this review everywhere.

- Fans clicking through content in the application are directed to individual product pages, which increases traffic to the brand’s sites. There are no dead-ends in social media; instead, everything is sharable and interconnected.

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The IM Conversation In Which 19 year Zuckerberg Decided To Build Facebook This Years $100 billion IPO In 2012

Later this week, Facebook will file documents with the SEC to announce its intention to go public. 

People close to the deal expect the company to be valued somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion when shares finally begin trading in late May.

Facebook is so valuable mainly because more than 850 million individuals use the product each month. Half that number come back every day. 

In hindsight, something so massive and valuable as Facebook can seem almost historically inevitable. 

But the truth is, Facebook's creation—and even its sustained development—was anything but a foregone conclusion.

We know this because back in college and in the year or so following, Mark Zuckerberg held lots of instant message conversations with friends and confidants about his plans for life and work. Due to a lawsuit or two, these instant messages were preserved.  We have viewed some of them.

In one of these conversations, a 19-year-old Zuckerberg confers, during the fall of 2003, with his best friend from high school, Adam D'Angelo—who would become Facebook CTO and later cofound Quora—about which project he should focus on: a "dating site" he was asked to build for some Harvard seniors, or "the Facebook thing." Zuckerberg and D'Angelo discuss what "the Facebook thing" should be like.

Zuckerberg: So you know how I'm making that dating site

Zuckerberg: I wonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing

Zuckerberg: Because they're probably going to be released around the same time

Zuckerberg: Unless I fuck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I told them I'd have it done.

D'Angelo: haha

Zuckerberg: Like I don't think people would sign up for the facebook thing if they knew it was for dating 

Zuckerberg: and I think people are skeptical about joining dating things too. 

Zuckerberg: But the guy doing the dating thing is going to promote it pretty well. 

Zuckerberg: I wonder what the ideal solution is.

Zuckerberg: I think the Facebook thing by itself would draw many people, unless it were released at the same time as the dating thing. 

Zuckerberg: In which case both things would cancel each other out and nothing would win. Any ideas? Like is there a good way to consolidate the two. 

D'Angelo: We could make it into a whole network like a friendster. haha. Stanford has something like that internally

Zuckerberg: Well I was thinking of doing that for the facebook. The only thing that's different about theirs is that you like request dates with people or connections with the facebook you don't do that via the system. 

D'Angelo: Yeah

Zuckerberg: I also hate the fact that I'm doing it for other people haha. Like I hate working under other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have their thing ready and then be like "look yours isn't as good as this so if you want to join mine you can…otherwise I can help you with yours later." Or do you think that's too dick?

D'Angelo: I think you should just ditch them

Zuckerberg: The thing is they have a programmer who could finish their thing and they have money to pour into advertising and stuff. Oh wait I have money too. My friend who wants to sponsor this is head of the investment society. Apparently insider trading isn't illegal in Brazil so he's rich lol.

D'Angelo: lol

There are two historically significant notes about this conversation:

• It seems to be the moment when Zuckerberg decides not to work for somebody else, and to strike out on his own to build what would become Facebook.
• It's D'Angelo, not Zuckerberg, who seems to suggest "We could make it into a whole network like a friendster."

In the months following his conversation with D'Angelo, Zuckerberg—along with a little bit of help from some Harvard friends, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz—built Facebook (then called TheFacebook), and watched it grow very popular very quickly.

By the next summer, Zuckerberg and pals moved to California and began working on Facebook full-time. By late July, Facebook had almost reached 1 million users, just 7 months after launching.

But despite that early success, a surprising instant message conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and a confidant on July 26, 2004—about who will foot legal bills in the event that Facebook were ever to be sued—reveals that Facebook was not his main priority at the time.  

Confidant: Well you should recover the shares you need to recover legal fees.

Zuckerberg: I won't pay the legal fees

Zuckerberg: The company that buys us will haha 

Confidant: Cool hopefully that'll be soon so you can move on and just work on what you want to

Zuckerberg: Well it just needs to propel Wirehog 

Confidant: So you have gotten responses to your national recognition? 

Zuckerberg: Responses from whom?

Zuckerberg: Some more VCs. Still talking to Google and Friendster.

 What's enlightening about this conversation:

• Even as a million people found themselves addicted to Facebook, Zuckerberg wasn't sure yet that it would end up being worth his time. To him, Facebook "just need[ed] to propel Wirehog," which has since been described as a file-sharing service.

• How close Google came to owning Facebook—probably for a price approximately $99,990,000,000 lower than what Facebook will IPO for in just a few months.

Read more, article courtesy of: http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-the-im-conversation-in-which-19-year-old-zuckerberg-decided-to-build-facebook-this-years-100-billion-ipo-2012-1#ixzz1l8CBz0lu


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Facebook to be valued at £63.6bn

Social media giant Facebook is set to file for its initial public offering (IPO) today (February 1st) and is expected to be valued at $100 billion (£63.6 billion).

It is thought that the social network will file the papers for an IPO with regulators including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs later today.

The predicted value of the IPO varies between £3 billion as estimated by Reuters and £63.6 billion as stated by the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Facebook must file papers soon if it wants to put its shares on the stock market in May this year.

The social network is expected to put a ten per cent stake in the firm on the market, for between $7.5 billion (£4.6 billion) and $10 billion (£6.4 billion).

Commenting on the fact that the majority of Facebook's income will be derived from advertisers, WPP chief executive sir Martin Sorrell told the Guardian: "It certainly is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful branding medium. It is, however, a word of mouth or PR medium."

A recent study by Deloitte found that Facebook boosts the British economy by £2.2 billion a year and supports 35,200 jobs in the UK.

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