Social Media and The Return of the Customer Relationship
Check out Kevin’s presentation on ‘Social Media and The Return of the Customer Relationship‘ from yesterday’s SDMMA Market Trends Seminar. Thanks for having me Kev!
Archive for the ‘Search’ Category.
Top Ten iPhone Apps
The Top Ten iPhone Apps
1. Pandora – How wants to listen to the same songs all day?
2. FaceBook – If you are on it.
3. Mint – If you care about your money!
4. Bump – If you like other iPhone users.
5. LinkedIn – If you are in business.
6. UrbanSpoon – If you eat out.
7. Fandango – If you go to the movies.
8. Amazon – If you shop online.
9. Wikipedia – I you like to know stuff.
10. Camera+ – If you like to edit your pictures.
Other lists:
Sorry, games do not qualify as apps to me. Get a wii if you like games or get a life for that matter 
World Map of Social Media turns FaceBook blue
The social media world keeps turning blue with the exception of Eastern Europe and the Eastern parts of South America. This makes FaceBook the only startup that actually (almost) achieved world dominance since it launched on February 4th, 2004 – only six years ago! And didn’t we all go for world dominance at one point or the other?
Map created using Google Insights for Search. Unlike Google Trends, Google Insights for Search provides a visual representation of regional interest on a country’s map. It displays top searches and rising searches that may help with keyword research. Results can be narrowed down with categories that are displayed for each search terms.
Poll: Will FaceBook rule the World? Vote here.
Zuckerberg donates $3.5 Billion to Charity
FaceBook founder Mark Zuckerberg is at age 26 (!) one of the world’s youngest billionaires, but he iss not keeping it all for himself. By signing on to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s initiative called the “Giving Pledge,” Zuckerberg agreed to give most of his wealth to charity. Mark also donated an undisclosed amount to the open social network project Diaspora as well as $100 million to Newark Public Schools. He spoke about the Newark donation on the Oprah show , explaining his dedication to help fix the public school system.
The Giving Pledge, however, is a completely different ball game. Along with 57 other multi-millionaire and billionaire families and individuals, including Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Carl Icahn, by signing the pledge Mark Zuckerberg promised to give more than half of his wealth to charity, either during his lifetime or after his death.
“People wait until late in their career to give back. But why wait when there is so much to be done? With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts,” said Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement.
According to Forbes’ estimate, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $6.9 billion, which makes him the 35th most wealthy Americans. Although many consider him to be the world’s youngest billionaire, he recently lost that title to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who is only eight days younger than him and whose worth is currently estimated at $1.4 billion.
Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.
As of July 2010 Facebook has more than 500 million active users, Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic
year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade “best-of” list, saying, “How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers’ birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?” Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors.
The Need for Social Media Monitoring
Companies that still rely on old media reporting tools are unable to react to potential damages to the brand in a timely fashion. This might be most prominently showcased by online consumer reactions to brands which quickly became viral. According to some observers, this damages do not only have a long term negative impact on the brand itself but might also be able to significantly effect a company’s valuation.
You have probably seen it. But by the way of a short summary: Dave Carroll had his Taylor guitar destroyed by the United Airlines’ passenger baggage handlers during a flight in 2009. United repeatedly declined to reimburse the musician for the damage. So he wrote a song decrying their customer service and their brand. After releasing the song on YouTube the video promptly went viral before the airline could react. By the time of this writing the ‘United Breaks Guitars’ video has been aired by most mayor TV stations and was watched more than 9.6 Million times on YouTube alone.
The damage to United’s brand was undeniable. According to some columnist the mishap actually cost United $180 million, or 10 percent of its market cap (The Times, July 22nd 2009): “..within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 per cent, costing shareholders $180 million.”
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
