Top brands focus on social media
Marketing has a feature looking at the top 100 online advertisers in the UK, but as they point out “the significant investment in social-media monitoring remains hidden from view”. They go on to point out that research from the American Marketing Association has found that social media will account for 9.8% of US marketing budgets this year, and will rise to 18.1% over the next five years. Seeing clear empirical evidence of how big brands are using social media effectively will doubtless cause a snowball effect, and drive greater investment in social across the board.

This is backed up by the latest research from eMarketer, with companies are becoming more comfortable on social networks, with 84% involved in at least one of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs, and 25% active on all four. It’s interesting to see the regional variations in how different companies are using Facebook:

The biggest growth can be seen on Twitter, with 12% more companies active compared to last year, and this has in turn led to greater listening and responding, again with some interesting regional differences:

Engaged Facebook fans are worth more
The trend towards greater engagement across all social media platforms suggests big brands believe it is a worthwhile investment – and quite right too, with new research from Syncapse finding that those who tweet, like, and share details of new marketing campaigns, are worth $22.93 to a brand in earned media.

And recent research from Millward Brown, in partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers has found that the most successful Facebook pages aren’t necessarily those with the most fans. Using a FanIndex rating, which measures engagement, it found that the more brands put in to their fan pages, the more they get out in terms of brand response. Among the fan pages studied, as a general rule the brands that posted more frequently generally achieved higher attitudinal ratings and were more lively communities.

Top Facebook markets by percentage reach
The data is out for February 2011, and it might make surprising viewing for some – the market with the highest Facebook reach (amongst the country’s internet users), was the Philippines, with 93%.

Still room for social networks to grow
Adele Gritten of YouGov wrote an interesting piece for NMA this week about how there’s still room for plenty of growth for the big social networks – pointing out how 49% of the over-55 demographic on Facebook has joined within the last two years.

Clearly, there’s still room for growth at both ends of the spectrum, but marketers may well be more interested in older demographics: according to research from Forrester, despite 12-17 year olds being the most active demographic on Facebook in terms of site visits, only 6% of them are interested in liking a brand, half the figure for those aged 18-24; this suggests that resources can be better spent on older demographics.

20,000 children banned from Facebook everyday day
Meanwhile, Mozelle Thompson, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, has revealed that 20,000 children under 13 get banned from the site every day for lying about their age, with over seven million children blocked from the site each year.

Facebook tests out real-time advertising
For a long time, Facebook has delivered targeted adverts based on historic wall posts and status updates, but they’ve now gone one better: they’re testing out real-time targeted ads, so if you say you fancy a pizza, it might suggest you like the Pizza Hut page for a discount (hypothetically). They’re currently testing this out with 1% of the userbase – around six million people – but it looks an excellent way for them to add to their ad revenues.

The ramification of this move are enormous – most obviously, in terms of more refinement in targeted advertising.

New Facebook Questions format
The old Facebook Questions was something of a niche product, but its now been over-hauled to help it become an integral part of day-to-day use of Facebook. The old product had a market penetration of 0.05%, so clearly, the take-up on Questions can only improve (which it seems to have done) but while the new format may seem to focus on opinions rather than facts, Facebook hope it will draw on the wisdom of crowds.

LinkedIn hits 100 million users
LinkedIn proudly announced last week that the site now had over 100 million members – and with the site adding a million members a week at the moment, and with growth rates increasing, it seems the only way is up.

MySpace loses 10 million users in a month
The news is less good at MySpace, where the decline only seems to be getting steeper – according to ComScore, the site went from 73 million users in January to 63 million in February, a staggering ten million drop. It really does seem like MySpace is in an irrevocable decline, which is a bit of a shame.

Coca-Cola invests in social media in the UK
The Grocer has reported that Coca-Cola cut its ad spend by 6.8% in 2010 and invested in social media.

Saab become social
An Australian Saab enthusiast, Steven Wade has managed the impressive feat of landing a job at the company in their social media team, solely through his Saab-loving blog. What’s more interesting are the comments from Saab chair Victor Muller about his hiring:

It is a given that you have played a key role in saving Saab last year by mobilizing tens of thousands of enthusiasts to rally in support of the company. You have single-handedly proven the importance social media has nowadays in situations like the one Saab went through. You became one of my most powerful allies in those trying times which now are fortunately behind us

Hiring Wade is designed to bring the company closer to its customers, and with his love of the cars, he seems perfectly designed to do the job. As such, we give Saab 9.5 out of 10 for the whole story.

Courting Foursquare at the Sony Ericsson Open
Sony Ericsson have a strong relationship both with Foursquare and with tennis, and they’ve brought the two together at this year’s Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. Users who earn the Xperia Tennis Fan badge by checking in at the Tennis Hotspot venue will receive a discount on tickets to matches, and the opportunity to meet the players through press conferences and player autograph sessions. What an ace idea…

Warner Bros expands Facebook film renting service
Warner Bros today announced that they were adding new films to their Facebook rental service – with Harry Potter and Inception now on offer.

How journalism has turned social
While George Osborne was delivering the budget last week, the BBC tried to make its coverage more social by creating their own dedicated hashtag relating to the Budget – #BBCBudget. What was particularly interesting was when they promoted the hashtag on air, usage clearly rose. But more than this, because viewers were choosing to use the hashtag, when the BBC wanted to make their coverage more social, they could draw on these opinions easily.

This relates to the discussion about broadcasters and newspapers taking up live-blogging – although they clearly bring in a lot of hits, the minute-by-minute updates do have problems: most notably, that the facts of the story get buried in earlier updates and the actual ‘story’ is lost amidst analysis and counter-arguments. Clearly live-blogging is here to stay, but it will be interesting to see how media companies adapt to deal with these problems.

SXSW Film – dominated by bloggers
It was fascinating to read Catherine Shoard’s account of SXSW Film and how well bloggers were treated – it looks like we’re reaching a tipping point in the film industry, where people realise that big bloggers are the true opinion formers.

Shirky and Gladwell fight it out over the power of social media
In an interesting discussion about the power of social media, Clay Shirky and Malcolm Gladwell have been going at it hammer and tongs. While the full article is worth a read, one particular quote from Shirky stands out above the rest of it: “the effect of the Internet on traditional businesses is less about altering internal practices than about altering the competitive landscape: clothing firms now have to compete with Zappos, bookstores with Amazon, newspapers with Craigslist”.

UK agencies ranked by social media influence
In a story which warmed our heart, we were glad to see we’re ranked fourth amongst UK agencies for social media influence. On that note, make sure to tweet and share this post!

Americans of all ages turn to the Internet to get their news
A recent study from the Pew Research Center shows that the Internet is the main source of news for 41% of American adults, surpassing newspapers and getting closer and closer to the power of television as a news source. This data confirms a trend that has been visible for at least ten years – that more and more adults turn to the Internet for both national and international news.

But what’s particularly interesting – and new – is that the research shows that in 2010, the 18-29 demographic used the internet as its main source for catching up on the news, ahead of TV:

 
Corporate Blogs are still relevant
A survey covered by eMarketer shows that nearly a quarter of Fortune 1,000 companies have a corporate blog. The survey examined the reasons these companies maintain blogs:

MySpace to limit their international operations
Things aren’t exactly rosy for MySpace at present. The company, which was acquired by News Corporation in 2005 for US$580 million, is set to limit its international operations by announcing a major restructure, according to The Telegraph.

After layoffs that took place a few months ago, MySpace’s international presence extends simply to offices in London, Berlin and Sydney with roughly 150 employees combined. But with this evening’s news that much of the London office will close – leaving just a ‘skeleton’ staff – it’s clear that they’re not really backing the relaunch of the site; indeed, what’s far from clear is what the future of MySpace actually holds.

LinkedIn to go public in 2011?
According to Reuters, the social networking site LinkedIn plans to go public in 2011, although a spokesman for the company said “an IPO is just one of many tactics that we could consider” in the future.

However, news from Silicon Alley Insider doesn’t bode well – they claim that LinkedIn’s ads are not working at all well for marketers, with examples of ads with an average cost per click of $14.89 and very small conversion rates.

Facebook’s revenue figures and 750 million photos over NY weekend
This has been one of the stories of the week. Is Facebook valued too high or even too low? There are opinions across the spectrum, but what is clear is that its business is generating huge revenues. According to documents distributed by Goldman Sachs, Facebook generated $1.2 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2010 and is expected to keep growing in the next fiscal year.

Talking of years, this one started well for Mark Zuckerberg and co, with almost 750 million photos being uploaded to the site over the New Year’s weekend.

Twitter starts 2011 with a new record
That’s right. Even though we are only 10 days into 2011, Twitter has already started making headlines and breaking records that seemed unbreakable. As published on the Twitter Blog a few days ago, minutes after midnight in Japan on January 1st the company set a new record with 6,939 Tweets sent per second.

This is partly because of the huge growth in mobile for the company – Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed at CES that 40% of all tweets come from mobile devices, up from 20-25% a year ago.

To see how Twitter was affected by the New Year, just look at Twitter’s visualisation of how it was slowly brought in around the world.

Why is Quora growing so fast?
Quora, the Q&A service created by Facebook’s former CTO, was founded in June 2009. But it wasn’t until recently that it started gaining traction in the online world and making the rounds of Twitter and several very important blogs. So, why did it take the site more than a year to become “popular” as it doubled its normal activity in the month of December?

Sysomos tried to address this by pointing out the associated spike in social media mentions (especially on Twitter), but also confirming the importance of TechCrunch in the site’s growth.

In spite of the huge number of new registrations, at We Are Social the jury is still out on Quora – with some finding it useless, a point epitomised by this satirical site.

Citibank goes to Twitter
Banks, over the years, have been reluctant to get involved in social media. But at least Citibank has decided to give it a try and start responding to those not happy with their service on Twitter. The man behind the account? None other than Frank Eliason, the who ran the famous @Comcastcares account.

‘Foursquare’ your meal and win a dinner for two
Remember the new photo support that was added to Foursquare in recent weeks? Well, Olive Valley, a restaurant in Brooklyn, has seen an opportunity and has started the first foursquare-based photo contest. Customers are encouraged to take photos of their meals and share them via Foursquare’s check-in system. The best ones that are submitted will win a dinner for two.

Ryan Babel charged for Twitter post
In what is to our knowledge a first, Ryan Babel has been charged by the FA for posting a mocked-up picture of referee Howard Webb in a Man United shirt on Twitter, following Liverpool’s defeat to Man United in the FA Cup 3rd round. This was in spite of later removing the post from Twitter. But it’s hard to sympathise with Babel when it was his dive which meant Arsenal were eliminated from the Champions League in 2008. What’s the Dutch for ‘what goes around, comes around’?

Where did all the spam go?
According to the BBC, spam e-mail levels have been falling dramatically since August, and especially since December.

There is no certain explanation for this unusual situation, but experts agree that this does not mean spam is over – spammers might well simply be targeting new services, such as Twitter and Facebook…

Social media helps drive purchases by 10x
Recent research reveals that customers visiting an online store via social media are 10x more like to by something than other users: “whereas 7% of all visitors to an online store make a purchase, a significantly higher 71% of visitors initiated via social media will click their way to the transaction section.” The study showed that while many online stores are good at attracting visitors, a small amount will be converted to customers. But “reassurance from a positive review” and “social media marketing” can be highly effective in closing sales.

Sorrell questions commercialisation of social web
WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell likened social media to letter writing at one of the closing sessions of the 57th Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, and said that it could be “polluted” by attempts to monetise it. On the same panel, Keith Weed, the global chief marketing officer of Unilever, likened social media instead to the modern day equivalent of a pub or bar chat, and that social networking sites “will and they must” find ways to monetise their offerings.

…companies like ours can develop with companies like Facebook or Microsoft. So I think ‘yes’, they will monetise. How they do it, I think [Sorrell is], right they have to be clever.

Facebook commits to UK support
King Mark Zuckerberg was in London last week at the first official London Facebook Developers’ Garage event, and he committed to increasing support for UK brands and content providers. Zuckerberg also “stressed the importance of the UK to the company, and highlighted personalisation and its virtual currency Facebook Credits as key themes for the year ahead.”

Statistics update reveals that more than one million websites are using Facebook’s platform
Facebook has updated their official Statistics page, and announced in the process that more than one million websites have integrated with its developer platform, up from about 80,000 websites.

This difference is due, in a large part, to Facebook’s launch of the Like Box and other social plugins in late April; the company said this week that more than 300,000 sites have already implemented the plugins, and the number appear to still be climbing.

Elsewhere, it was reported in a study by Experian Simmons that half of US web users visit Facebook each month.

Twitter makes it easier to find friends and colleagues, Facebook ‘blocks’ Twitter friend finder
Last week Twitter announced that it was making it easier to find friends on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn, by improving their Find Friends section and tweaking their LinkedIn and Facebook applications.

The Tweets application by LinkedIn allows users to see which of your LinkedIn connections are on Twitter and follow the ones you choose right from the app. Meanwhile the Facebook app was meant to show which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter, but this was blocked by Facebook disallowing people to see which of their friends on the social network also have Twitter accounts.

A whole new way of experiencing LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups received their first major overhaul since August 2008, which is one of many that are expected in the coming months. In addition to improving the look and feel and ease of use of groups, LinkedIn has also:

• Made it easier to receive email updates from select group members
• Made it possible to vote up or down content and discussions
• Introduced a way to highlight the most active members/contributors to a group

We expect that these changes could go a long way to changing the way that users interact in groups for the better.

Foursquare hits 1.7 million users, and the threat from spammers looms
Foursquare announced that it had passed the 1.7 million user mark, after having added 100,000 in a mere 10 days. At that rate, the location-based service should hit 2 million users before August.

But with growing popularity, comes a greater threat from spammers. The Next Web notes that while spam is still a minor problem, it is becoming more prevalent as people ‘innovate’ by changing their profile name to a company name in order to raise awareness atop local leaderboards, or by leaving advertising messages as ‘tips’.

Foursquare, Starbucks need better blend of offers
When Starbucks and Foursquare announced their joint loyalty program last month in the US, it generated quite a bit of positive publicity. The offer, $1 discount on Frappuccinos to the mayors of individual Starbucks stores, has since come under criticism from Forrester analyst Augie Ray who laid out five reasons that it has become both ‘noisy and bothersome’, and potentially damaging in the long term.  Fair play to Starbucks for being amongst the first to implement a nationwide Foursquare promotion, but there are certainly some lessons to be learned with respect to offering better targeted and easier to redeem Foursquare offers.

Virgin America Offers Free Flights to Twitter Influencers
Virgin America has partnered with Klout, an analytics service that tracks users’ influence on Twitter, to offer free flights (plus tax) to influencers in Toronto:

The offer includes free round-trip airfare (Wi-Fi included) between Toronto and San Francisco (SFO) or Los Angeles (LAX) between June 23 and August 23. Those who received invitations for the offer — whether or not they decide to accept the flight that comes with it — were also invited to Virgin America’s Toronto Launch Event on June 29.

Interestingly, ‘influencers’ who have been offered the free flight aren’t require to blog or Tweet about the experience, though Klout has requested that users who do accept the offer and chose to write something,  disclose the promotion. Handing out free flights to those with Twitter ‘influence’ is not without its critics however, and some question the validity of ranking people based on an algorithm alone.

JD Sports campaign turns 900,000 visitors into 180,000 sign-ups
A recent campaign for the JD Sports-owned fashion label Bank managed to generate 900,000 unique users and 180,000 sign ups for a competition to become the face of Bank and model the Autumn/Winter 2010 range.

It used Facebook Open Graph – only two clicks to connect with a site and then sending info that they’d signed up or voted for someone into the user’s Facebook profile, which meant that their friends (on average 150 people) also saw it.

LOFT ansers the Facebook call for ‘real women’
Meanwhile, LOFT, a US fashion retailer, received interaction of an entirely different nature on its Facebook Fan Page. The company  posted images to Facebook of a tall, blonde model wearing the brand’s new silk cargo pants, and received a number of complaints that the trousers were not universally flatterig unless you’re a “stick like model”. LOFT quickly responded to calls for ‘real women in photos’ the next day by posting pictures of its own staff – ranged from size 2 to 12, and from 5′3″ to 5′10″ – posing in the cargo pants. In so doing they managed to turn things around, address the negative sentiment head-one and show that they were indeed ‘listening’ to their customers.

Digg redesign takes the fight to Twitter, Facebook
Digg has also recently announced a redesign, and “aims to directly challenge Twitter and Facebook by redefining the way Diggers share, view, and submit content.” Chief among the changes, are the ability to follow friends, publishers, and “taste-makers”; as well as  view content shared/promoted by their friends.

The idea seems to be that Digg will become much more of a true social networking site, but still based around links and news so as to cut out miscellaneous status updates so common to Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, it will now be easier to submit stories to the site, as well as become easier for Top News to spread amongst friends.

Meanwhile, a rumour has been spreading, in part by Digg founder Kevin Rose, that Google is readying ‘Google Me’, a social service intended to go head-to-head with Facebook.

FourWhere now combines Gowalla, Yelp and Foursquare
FourWhere, free service developed by Toronto-based social media monitoring and analytics company Sysomos, now integrates information from the three leading location-based services: Gowalla, Yelp and Foursquare.

If you’re not familiar with Fourwhere, it integrates data from Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp, and displays it using Google Maps API in order to provided users with “ an easy way to discover places and comments for thousands of restaurants, bars, cafes, stores, tourist attractions and other venues.”

It’s time for We Are Social’s Monday Mashup, our pick of some of the web’s finest social media developments.

PleaseRobMe.com reveals dangers of social networks
If you’re a heavy user of Foursquare and Twitter, you might want to take notice of PleaseRobMe.com. The website made the headlines by highlighting in real-time the whereabouts of people who checked in on Foursquare and shared their location on the web via Twitter. The goal of the three Dutch developers who set up the site was to highlight the dangers of publicly telling others your location on the Internet because it “ leaves one place you’re definitely not… home.”

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

Facebook become America’s second most popular website, beating Yahoo!
Compete.com revealed that Facebook had surpassed Yahoo as America’s second most popular website.  Facebook drew nearly 134 Million unique visitors in January 2010, compared to Yahoo’s 132 Million visitors.

While traffic figures are important, the blog notes that the real story is around user engagement and on this front Facebook wins hands down:

Check out how monthly Attention (time spent on Facebook.com as a percentage of all time spent online each month) ramps over the past year for Facebook, while both Yahoo and Google show a decrease. In January, 11.6% of all time spent online was spent on Facebook (compared to 4.25% for Yahoo and 4.1% for Google).

The recent launch of Google Buzz is no doubt aimed at eating into the amount of time that users spend on Facebook, but time will tell if Google can be successful here.

MySpace real-time search goes live on Google
MySpace announced on their blog that Google search now picks up publicly available updates from MySpace users in real-time.

… when you search for anything on Google, as part of your search results you will see live updates from MySpace users, including news, photos, and blog posts that they have chosen to publically publish. Further, all of these updates will be ranked to reflect the freshest, most relevant results, making it easier to find the latest information on anything you’re searching for on Google, including the music and artists you enjoy most.

MySpace now joins Twitter as one of the services that are now live in Google’s real-time search, announced last year.

Outlook gets social with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace
Microsoft announced a number of major developments for Outlook, including a public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook and partnerships with both Facebook and MySpace. The highlights of LinkedIn for Outlook include:

• The ability to connect to your LinkedIn account directly from within your Inbox, and add connections
• The ability to view status updates and photos from connections next to an e-mail message they have sent
• The ability to receive automatic updates to Outlook contact information directly from LinkedIn
• The ability to synchronise mobile contact information with information from LinkedIn

Meanwhile, the Facebook and MySpace partnerships for Outlook 2010 will enable users to more easily connect co-workers and colleagues, as well as friends and family within their Outlook Inbox.

The LinkedIn public beta is available now, and Facebook for Outlook and MySpace for Outlook will be available later this year as the official release of Office 2010 approaches.

Happy New Year! Time for the first Monday Mashup of the new decade. Here we go.

‘Best Job’ winner stung by jellyfish
Loosely translated, the German word ‘schadenfreude’ describes the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

Which brings me to the news that the winner of Australia’s “Best Job in the World” contest has survived a sting from a potentially deadly jellyfish just days before the end of his dream stint on the Great Barrier Reef.

You may recall that Ben Southall beat over 34,000 competitors to land the six-month job as “caretaker” of Hamilton Island, Australia where he published the Island Caretaker Blog. The campaign gained international notoriety and bagged a number of awards, including two top awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this summer.

Twitalyzer 2.0 Launched
This weekend Twitalyzer shed its BETA status and officially opened the application to the public. This application allows you to analyse an account in detail, and also provides access to a dashboard, which “provides access to great new Twitalyzer features including tracking for multiple accounts, Google Analytics integration, user tagging and segmentation tools.” If you want to get the most out of the app then download and read the Twitalyzer Handbook, a 50 page user’s guide to the application.

Social Media is the New Super Bowl: Pepsi Refresh and What It Means to Marketers
The big marketing news across the pond over the past couple of weeks was Pepsi’s decision to trade Super Bowl advertising for social media activity in 2010:

For the first time in 23 years–23 years!–the brand will not be purchasing a Super Bowl spot.  Instead, it is sinking $20M into a Social Media program called Pepsi Refresh. The Pepsi Refresh site will allow people to vote for worthwhile community projects, and Pepsi expects to sponsor thousands of local efforts via this program.

The Forrester Blog for Marketing Leadership Professionals unravels what it means for marketers, and considers the ramifications for the industry.  The post is worth a read, and Pepsi’s decision is worth following.

Tories ‘would pay £1m for public policy making website’
Tory frontbencher Jeremy Hunt last week told the BBC that the Conservatives would offer a £1m prize in a competition to develop a website that would allow large groups of people to help develop new policies.

If implemented, this would be a groundbreaking approach to create a platform to crowdsource public policy ideas. Although perhaps they could offer 10 prizes of 100k each for 10 different approaches – after all, that’s still a substantial reward for a lone developer, and how are you going to know what works until you put it in practice?

Wipe The Slate Clean For 2010, Commit Web 2.0 Suicide
If you are looking for an online detox, this is for you. Moddr, a New Media Lab in Rotterdam have developed The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine which effectively disconnects you from social networks completely:

Just put in your credentials for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or LinkedIn and it will delete all your friends and messages, and change your username, password, and photo so that you cannot log back in.

A light hearted video describes the benefits of committing Web 2.0 suicide, but this is probably not recommended for anyone working in this industry as this ‘will really delete your online presence and is irrevocable.’

You’ve been warned.

Update: Facebook blocks ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’
Oh dear…

Social networks are making people more likely to complain online
LexisNexis last week announced the results of a survey that should make brand managers / online marketers / customer service departments take notice:

• Just over half polled said that if they are unhappy with something they have bought or used they will complain about it online
• 60% of people have chosen not to buy or use a product or service after reading negative comments about them online
• 67% of complainants made online were ignored, leaving customers to act as detractors online

The lesson is that companies who fail to monitor their brand online are missing an important opportunity to turn unhappy customers around, or gain new ones if negative comments aren’t addressed.

PR community split over paying bloggers in PRWeek poll
A straw poll run on PR Week about whether it is acceptable to pay bloggers for favourable coverage divided the PR community last week. 57 per cent agreed that it was unethical to pay blogger, but “a significant minority (43 per cent) believed that it was acceptable for bloggers to accept such payments”. A surprising finding indeed, and Robin was quoted in the article responding:

The results of the PRWeek poll only show the naivety towards social media in the PR industry; they haven’t got their heads round it and aren’t set up for it.

ITV.com on social media and engagement
This interview with ITV’s social media manager Ben Ayers makes for an interesting read, as he discusses key platforms used by ITV to get closer to fans (notably Facebook and Twitter) and his views on future growth areas for social media in general. Listening to the opinions of fans and feeding this back into production is a core element of ITV’s online activity, as is working with a wide variety of stakeholders (web editors, operations teams, show producers) in order to maintain their social media presences.

The Battle of Big Thinking
Last week was Campaign and APG’s Battle of Big Thinking at the British Library, an annual event where leading strategists compete for the coveted ‘biggest thinker’ prize. We Are Social’s very own Sandrine Plasseraud was up against Jeremy Ettinghausen, digital publisher at Penguin and VCCP’s Amelia Torrode. In case you missed it, Gordon Macmillan, Haymarket’s social media & international editor, captured it all in his ‘live blog’ of the day.

Study: Inc. 500 CEOs Aggressively Use Social Media for Business
The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth conducted a study for the third year in a row, about the usage of social media among Inc. 500 companies. Respondents were asked about their usage and familiarity with six types of social media tools (blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, message boards, and wikis) and according to the study, social media usage has definitely grown in the last year:

• 91% of companies (compared to 77% in 2008) reported that they use at least one social media tool

Some other interesting finds:

• 44 percent of companies without a company blog say they plan to start one
• 34 percent of companies reported that they were using social media to communicate with vendors and suppliers

The key takeaway is that smaller organizations are innovating with social media marketing strategies, as there is more room to “for innovation because it requires less processes to adopt”.

LinkedIn hits 3 million members in the UK
Professional social networking site LinkedIn reached an important milestone last week, when it announced they’ve racked up 3 million members in the UK on the company’s blog.

We’ve watched the British professional community take to the site with the sort of industrious enthusiasm that typifies the way business is done in this country.

On that note, perhaps this is a good time to mention our LinkedIn group?

Twitter Declared Most Popular English Word of 2009
And last but not least, the Global Language Monitor, which tracks language trends, declared Twitter this year’s Most Popular Word in English… Enough said.

It’s time for We Are Social’s Monday Mashup, a quick round up of research, news and case studies that caught our eye over the last week and we thought were worth sharing. Here’s our pick of some of the web’s finest.

Crowdsourcing advertising – can it work?
A fine post by Amelia Torode about Peperami’s decision to crowdsource their latest interactive advertising campaign. It calls into question the monetary reward being offered, the inadvertent creative role that Idea Bounty has taken in vetting a manageable number of ideas for the client to chose from, and the implications for agencies:

Maybe it just troubles me as the logical conclusion of an initiative like this is that you don’t need agencies anymore, you simply crowdsource the creative ideas cheaply and then partner with production houses.

The post kicked off a lengthy discussion in the comments section, so get a cup of tea and start scrolling. It’s worth the read.

Trouble At Twitter: U.S. Visitors Down 8 Percent In October
Twitter’s explosive growth of 1271% from October 08 – October 09 was bound to slow down eventually, but recent numbers from comScore have demonstrated that last month “the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month”.

Twitter has been working furiously to make its website better by rolling out the new Retweet button, Lists, and Geolocation features. As Twitter loses ground in its home market (and Facebook keeps moving ‘further and further ahead’) the question is whether the new changes will be enough to reverse this downward trend?

LinkedIn works with Twitter, and vice versa
Last week LinkedIn and Twitter announced a partnership that allows your LinkedIn status to show up as a tweet when you set it, or for a tweet to also appear as your LinkedIn status.  The rationale? “Because when you’re trying to get something done, you want Twitter and LinkedIn to work together”.

In effect, the move is meant to save you time while you promote your professional identity across the web and cut out having to login on multiple platforms to share the same status/message.  And crucially, you can be selective about what appears in your LinkedIn profile i.e. you can set LinkedIn so that all your tweets appear, or only those with the hashtag #in.

SideWiki changes everything
If you haven’t been keeping up with Google’s SideWiki innovation, this post is a good place to start. PR guru Mark Borkowski considers the impact that SideWiki will have on reputation management and PR on the web.

Few people in PR, it seems, have considered the way that SideWiki will change the lives of beleaguered PR folk. In time, this tool will significantly change the way brands strategise, think and exist. SideWiki is going to challenge PR by providing the masses with the tool for the ultimate expression of people power, something uncontainable that will need constant monitoring.

A sweeping statement? Yes, but read on.

Did CoTweet just take Twitter’s business model, and future customers?
Twitter’s usefulness and exceptional growth are as legendary as its lack of revenue stream and business model. The key question here: “what happens if Twitter takes too long and third parties take over the market?”

CoTweet might be doing just that, and the startup has recently launched a paid for service to allow clients to “reach and engage customers using Twitter.” Econsultancy examines the diminishing market opportunity for Twitter, as 3rd parties like CoTweet develop direct commercial relationships with brands and advanced tools for them to manage their relationships online.

People open to marketing in social media
This is reassuring news for those who, say, work for social media agencies.

Performics conducted a survey of more than 3,000 U.S. consumers, which “comprised 100+ questions to determine how various segments of consumers use social networks in their daily lives, specifically in regard to finding out about different types of products and in relation to other media channels”.

The study found an immense opportunity for gaining customers and growing sales so long as marketers “communicate relevant messages in consumers’ language and on their terms”.

The Connected Brands Index
Last week iCrossing introduced the Connected Brands Index, some research out of the US designed to measure a brand’s effectiveness online “not just on their own properties, but also across search and social media”.

According to iCrossing, a successful online brand is made up of five key attributes – visibility, usefulness, usability, desirability, and engagement – which can be measured by looking at 65 different metrics.

This research does not tell you what the most connected brands on the web are, but looks at the top 10 global brands according to the Interbrand study and should serve as future reference for benchmarking. Download the full research here.