Here are all of the posts tagged ‘Postrank’.

We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #10

by Jordan Stone in News on 18 January 2010 at 17:01

Recruitment consultants find digital skills in short supply within PR industry
PR recruitment agency Major Players last week told PRWeek that there is a shortfall in candidates with a general understanding of social media. After analyzing a sample of 4,500 CVs from the past two years, only:

  • 6% referenced social media
  • 9% mentioned Twitter
  • 2% talked about blogging
  • 13% included ‘Facebook’ – although in some this was merely highlighted in the ‘interests’ section

This stands in fairly stark contrast to the current need for digital skills in the industry “with around 33 per cent of recruitment searches by employers being for digital and social media expertise, while a further 28 per cent require a general understanding of social media, generally in consumer roles.”

Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder
The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco recently, he suggested that the rise of social media reflected the changing attitudes of ordinary people online. Though a great number of people are choosing to share more information online, the degree to which ‘privacy is no longer a social norm’ is debatable.  Check out the full article in the Guardian, which sums up Facebook’s moves in recent to bring more information into the public domain, and the adverse reactions that followed.

Social Media and the Haiti crisis
Following last week’s tragic earthquake in Haiti, social media played a significant role in raising awareness and getting aid donations from individuals across the world. Below are a few impressive ways in which web and mobile technology have been deployed in the past week to bring the tragedy to light.

If you haven’t already done so, you can donate to relief efforts via UNICEF or the International Committee of the Red Cross.

PostRank Top Blogs of 2009
PostRank last week announced their list of the most engaged, most influential and ‘biggest mover and shaker’ blogs of the last year.

To create the list, they gathered and analyzed over 2 billion individual engagement activities on 20 social hubs, (e.g. Twitter, Digg, Delicious) and ranked 15,725 blogs in 491 topics. Check out the Top Blogs of 2009 here. Each topic contains a ranked list of blogs, along with each blog’s engagement profile and top posts for all of 2009.

Yelp takes on Foursquare with new iPhone check-ins
In the latest version of its iPhone App, Yelp has added the ability for users to “check-in” and share their location with friends, similar to what you can do on services like Foursquare. Unlike Foursquare though, users don’t compete to become the only mayor of a single location, but can become ‘regulars.’ We wonder whether removing the ‘game’ element will affect user uptake and the incentive to check in. That said, Yelp have an existing userbase of about 1.25 million people per month. Some key features include:

  • Friends can see a list of all of your check-ins
  • You can bring up a map of nearby check-ins
  • Post your check-ins on Twitter
  • Businesses can offer promotions and discounts to their regulars

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We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #3

by Jordan Stone in News on 23 November 2009 at 16:55

It’s time for We Are Social’s Monday Mashup, our pick of some of the web’s finest research, news and case studies.

CMOs: Consumers Are Connected. You Need To Be, Too
The prolific Jeremiah Owyang penned this article for Forbes magazine, as a guide for CMOs who are currently putting the finishing touches on their 2010 marketing strategies. Though most CMOs now recognise the need to put more resources behind social media, many more need some suggestions about how they might develop a solid strategy.  As such, Jeremiah assembled his thoughts under the following headings:

  • Social marketing affects all digital marketing channels
  • Customers don’t care what department you’re in
  • Technology is cheap, yet soft costs are high
  • Develop a pragmatic approach
  • Social marketing affects the whole organisation

Read on for more detail.

Losing To The Social Web: Visualized
If you like visuals, then read on. This post from Unmissable blog looks at the decline of the ‘destination web’ (a topic we’ve covered here in the past) and suggests that the sun is setting on branded websites and microsites as social media swallows up a greater proportion of traffic on the web.

Unmissable has assembled graphs for some of the biggest brands on the web – Dell, Adidas, BMW, Quicksilver, Sony – and what you’ll immediately notice is “ websites and portals have been loosing unique visitors hand over fist for the last 3 years.”

This stands in sharp contrast to the graphs assembled for social networks, which show traffic rising ever higher over the same period.

Off-site content distribution like RSS, and the fact that social networks have become far more relevant to consumers are cited as the main reasons branded websites are suffering. The lesson here is that agencies and brands need to work out how better connect with customers online, and deliver relevant content and experiences where they are spending a growing proportion of their time online: in social media.

Measuring Engagement of the Social Web: ‘07-’09
An interesting post from the Postrank blog, which looked at various measures of ‘engagement’ since 2007 and identified a few trends worth paying attention to for content publishers. In sum:

  • In absolute terms, more people are participating in the social web
  • Conversations and discussions about the content are increasingly happening off the publisher’s property, fuelled by the growth of the “share and like this phenomenon which is sweeping through Facebook, Twitter and dozens of other social hubs”
  • The widespread adoption of more pervasive communication tools like Facebook and Twitter is actually increasing the lifespan of a typical story, with engagement taking place over a longer period of time as the story gets passed around more widely

Twitter to launch paid-for corporate accounts this year
It been rumoured for some time and is perhaps one of the few ways in which Twitter could derive revenue, but at last Twitter has confirmed they are planning to launch ‘paid-for commercial accounts’, according to founder Biz Stone. Don’t panic though. What this actually means for brands and agencies who help them online is that Twitter will remain free for corporate and personal users, but would now offer companies additional paid-for services to help manage and analyse conversations online.

Bloggers strike back at Buscombe
Last week it was reported that Peta Buscombe, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, had ambitions to regulate bloggers. As one might imagine, it was not well received. Sunny Hundal, one-time winner of The Guardian’s blogger of the year award, has set out in detail why such regulation would be wholly incompatible with blogging practice. Read the letter in full.

Social networking sites criticised for failing to protect children

The head of a government body responsible for keeping children safe has criticised social networking sites for not doing enough to protect youngsters.

Whereas Bebo has recently introduced a “Ceop report” button for users to log abuse, no such mechanism currently exists on Facebook or Myspace. Here’s to hoping social networking sites follow Bebo’s lead in order to make the web a safer place for young people.

Other notable stories:

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