Tag Archives: social networks

Adobe Set to Launch SocialAnalytics October 20th

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Social Networks have become big for individuals, but perhaps even bigger for businesses.  Almost every company today has a presence on Facebook and Twitter, and if they don’t then they are looking at how to create one.  Many of those companies are also left wondering what all of it really means and what impact it’s having for them.  Web sites are old hat now – there are countless analytics programs to measure them, but social media can still be considered the wild west.

Today, word leaked out that Adobe will be showing off their new SocialAnalytics program for the first time tomorrow in Stockholm, Sweden at Munchen Bryggeriet.  SocialAnalytics is designed to let businesses know exactly what kind of impact their social media presence is having and what they can do to improve upon it.

“Adobe® SocialAnalytics is the first social media analytics solution to measure the impact of social media on business. It enables marketers to directly measure their social media efforts, and understand how conversations on social networks and online communities influence marketing performance. Using Adobe SocialAnalytics, marketers can manage their strategy and investments in social media based on measurable outcomes and in the context of broader, multichannel marketing efforts.”

This is very short notice, but Adobe’s Caroline Mildenborn provided this link to register for the event.  It’s a chance to see the software in-action for the first time and learn what it can really do and what kind of information it provides.

Code of Practice for Privacy Protection

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The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has published a pair of  guides about holding personal information online.  The first guide is a Code of Practice aimed at organisations, particularly, those that sell goods and services over the web and is to help them understand the data protection law and develop good practice.  The second is for individuals and is Protecting Your Personal Information Online.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is an independent body setup to promote and police the UK’s information legislation including the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

The new Code of Practice has several sections including how the law applies, how to operate internationally, individuals’ rights and pitfalls to avoid.  It also includes a number of special cases, e.g. when dealing with children.

The personal guide provides information on protecting your personal info and identity, online scams, cookies, browser settings and social networks.  Definitely worth a read, even if you are not UK-based.  It’s all good sensible stuff.

What’s been stirring the media is that for the first time the ICO has commented on “behavioural marketing”, i.e. adverts are tailored to your browsing activity.  There had been some debate about the legality of this but as long as its clear what is going on and the person can opt out, there’s no problem.  There’s more information on behavioural marketing here.

Regardless of whether you are in the UK or elsewhere or whether you are a supplier or a customer, it’s worth giving both guides a browse.

Twitter and Tweetie

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It has been a busy week for Twitter, not to mention a controversial one. First on Wednesday of last week Evan Williams, the chairman of Twitter announced that they had purchased Albeit the company that owns Tweetie. Tweetie is one of the most popular twitter clients on the Iphone. Then just a few days later, Twitter announced that they were going to start monetizing Twitter by introducing what they call promoted tweets. At first they will show up only if you are searching for a specific product . However, eventually they will become apart of the normal Twitter stream.

Evan Williams said they purchased Tweetie, because they wanted to alleviate user’s confusion, when the user looked for a twitter applications in the Itunes app store. While this maybe true I don’t believe it was the real reason they brought Tweetie.  I suspect that the announcement that they are placing promotional tweets within the Twitter stream is the real reason they purchased Tweetie. Promotional tweets will not roll out to third application until later and the revenue will be shared. Which meant without the purchase of Tweetie, and other apps for Blackberry and Android, Twitter’s only guaranteed revenue flow would have been the Twitter web site. If you look at a typical user’s stream most of them are coming from third party applications and mobile devices. Twitter needed to have an official app for all the major mobile devices including the Iphone, Blackberry and Android to widen where their revenue pool.   The interesting thing is will third party apps developers join forces with Twitter or go more toward paid ad free models and where does Apple fit into the equation.  I don’t have the answers to the questions, but I pretty sure things are going to be interesting in the app development community for the next couple of months.

Consumers, Brands and Social Networks

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If you are retailer and want to build your brand, social networks are where you need to be, says IDC in a new report.  According to it, Web 2.0 is creating opportunities for competitive advantage with the top 10 social networks having over 1.3 billion members.  Yes, there’s plenty of people who live on more than one network but that’s still a pretty big number.

IDC says, “Social networks, blogs, price comparison Web sites, and the likes can all be used by retailers of all kinds and sizes to attract and influence customers, to study demand patterns, to improve brand reputation, and, finally, to provide customer support.”  I’d certainly agreed with the latter – I think we’ve all heard the stories about certain companies responding to individuals who have tweeted about problems they’ve had with products.

It also notes that the social networks are a great source of information about customers and what they’re saying about products, whether it’s the retailer’s or a competitors.  For those of us in the space, this isn’t exactly news but for companies looking in and wanting to get value out of their investment, this is going to be important.

Obviously, it’s taking time but if the big consultancies are now able to produce reports with hard data regarding the benefits of social media, the money will start coming into the social / new media and out of traditional media.

The full report costs money but you can read the press release for free.