The latest Nielsen report’s “Global Faces and Networked Places” highlights social media as the global consumer phenomenon of 2008: two-thirds of the world’s internet population now visit a social network or a blogging site and social media accounts for 10% of the overall internet time. So much so that social media has now overtaken personal emails as the 4th more popular activity online.

In December 2008, out of every 11 minutes spent online globally, 1 minute was spent within social media (1 minute out of 6 in the UK!). And we’re not just talking about students sharing photos of their parties on Facebook. As social media is becoming more mainstream, the average age of users is also shifting: one third of the Facebook audience is now within the 35-49 years old bracket and one-fourth is over 40. It’s also nice to hear that although Germany arrived quite late to the social media party, they’re now catching up with their European counterparts – good timing for our German website!

As the time spent interacting in social media is growing, the share of time held by other sectors is diminishing and so is the effectiveness of traditional online advertising.

The report rightfully points out that:

Advertising must be a conversation rather than a push-model. The point that social networks members are co-creators of content [...] means advertising should be about participating in a relevant conversation with consumers rather than simply pushing ads on them. After all it is social media. Advertising shouldn’t be about interrupting or invading the social network, it should be part of this conversation.

A few weeks ago Chris introduced you to our fancy new headquarters, but today’s blog post is all about people!

We have a team of five-star account executives that you probably all discovered through our Flickr photostream already but I thought today was a good time as any to introduce them properly.

Ladies first… Melina just joined us last week from Sweden where she studies communications for new media at the Medieinstitutet in Stockholm. Melina previously worked in a PR-agency in Sweden and likes to study social psychology as a hobby. Melina would have loved to be a tattoo-artist but admits she can’t draw so she’ll happily stick to social media. As she loves England, it’s a good thing she’s working for us here in London!

Nicolas and Bertrand actually joined us in February but we were not sure you were ready for them yet. Obviously this day has come and you can now face the full Nicolas-Bertrand effect.

Nicolas has a BA from Paris-Dauphine University and is studying for his master in Management at Audencia Business School. Nicolas has an international background: he lived in Poland, France and in London and takes part in many students associations. He has been working with Peter on Skype.

Bertrand previously worked in an online marketing agency in Paris. Bertrand is passionate about music and shares his musical discoveries on his blog Sunday Mornings. If you want to listen to some brand new sounds, it’s the place to go! He has travelled a lot and worked throughout Europe including Iceland so he knows all about local delicacies like Kókómjólk. Bertrand has been working with me on Ford – This is Now.

So one final word. Despite what you could think of the picture Barack Obama is NOT our new account executive. Nicolas, Melina and Betrand are not convicts and they do not play in a film selected at Sundance 09 either.

Welcome to We Are Social!

It’s been a while since the last update on Twitter’s UK traffic, but today, Robin Goad at Hitwise released this graph:

He also had this to say:

UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased 6-fold since the start of the year and 32-fold over the last 12 months. Last week, Twitter was the 50th most visited website in the UK, and the 5th most popular social networking site. To put that figure in context, last week Twitter received more UK Internet visits than the Daily Mail, RightMove, MSN UK Search, Directgov, and all retail websites with the exception of eBay, Amazon UK, Play.com and Argos.

I should also add the usual caveat: the service is probably even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications were included, the numbers would be even higher.

I’ve not much more to add – Twitter’s meteoric rise continues (as does that of social media in general), brands need to take notice. Period.

Update: Neville Hobson covers comScore Media Metrix’s more recent release of worldwide traffic data for Twitter.

Over the last few years, social media has had a huge impact on my life. From discovering blogs to meeting a tremendous amount of very interesting people through social networking (to the extent of quitting my last job to work in social media!). And the two days at the Marketing 2.0 conference were no different to this – it was a chance to meet in real life the people I was already connected to through social media; hence the very late night with @luckthelady, @branislavperic, @digitalizer, @armano and @fredcavazza which Robin kindly pointed out on Wednesday morning…

Photo: Luck the Lady

The second day of the Marketing 2.0 started on with a very interesting talk about Micro Interactions by David Armano. Ever experienced a Micro Interaction? Micro Interactions can take various forms. For example, you say something about a brand online and turns out the brand was listening to you and, even better, they respond, and you’re amazed?! Yes, as you can see, this is one of the things we do with Skype and, as David Armano was pointing out, because people would rather talk to people than brands, Twitter is a way to offer an alternative to annoying automated customer services and interact as a human with individuals. Still according to David, this is where you see the concept of ‘brandividuals’ appearing – take Scott Monty for example: on Twitter, in addition to being ‘a husband, dad and generally a nice guy’, @ScottMonty is the human face of Ford; he’s a brandividual, the individual who enables a direct engagement with the Ford brand.

But back to ‘micro interactions’. In some ways, the following speaker, Stephen Eric from Crispin Porter + Bogusky also touched on the ‘micro interactions’ subject with the concept of small [micro] ideas: ‘start small, experiment, explore multiple ideas, find a momentum’. A very inspiring talk in this area of economic recession: Stephen insisted that ‘small ideas [micro ideas] take the pressure of big ideas’ and he illustrated this with the whole ‘King’ idea for Burger King: it was supposed to be a one off, the client approved it because it was a small idea. Nowadays, the King is a success which has even featured in video games.

Another very interesting talk was the one of Jeremy Dumont, Strategy Planning Manager at Pourquoi Tu Cours, about 2009 trends like the concepts of open identity (your life is public online), co-construction identity (your friends take part in your identity through comments), acting identity (you are what you do – Twitter, Facebook statuses), but also with a new sense of proximity with people like us (they’re not your friends, you might have never met them but you share something, a passion, a subject and you engage with them through online networks).

I have to say I very much like the concept of ‘Acting Identity’: ‘You Are What You Do’ is probably the way I will explain Twitter nowadays!

I have a feeling Sandrine’s report from day 2 of the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris may be a little late: