You’ll either love it or hate it, but you cannot get away without an opinion. Though it’s in beta phase, Pinterest has amassed millions of users and is undoubtedly the hottest startup of 2012. Unlike majority of websites that rely on coverage from blogs and Hacker News community to gain early-adopters, Pinterest relied on housewives and word-of-mouth to spread their word, and while the site is different in its own way, the basic rules of social media still apply. To put its growth into perspective, here are the latest stats from Lemon.ly: 1. Pinterest has crossed 10 million users. 2. Used [...]
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How do you buy or sell something on Twitter? There are currently two ways: Either you manually sift through the tweets, get in touch with a seller or a potential buyer, and then, exchange additional details required to complete the transaction; or you depend on sites like Tazaar that make the same process a tad easier. Meet Chirpify that’s launched today. Chirpify allows anybody with a Paypal account to buy, sell, transact and raise money on Twitter. It also handles person-to-person payments and donations in addition to retail sales platform. Customers needn’t leave the site to perform transactions — all they got [...]
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Facebook has hit the ceiling and reaching that billion figure may take longer than expected. The fact was even mentioned in the company’s SEC filing and analysts are predicting the golden days are behind the company. But some of the reports, which I personally find ridiculous, suggest the site is on the decline. The news has set cat among the pigeons and potential investors are now wary of buying the stock. Many are contending Facebook is now less exciting, and the argument is fair if you look at what the company has been doing lately. Timeline appears to be the biggest sore [...]
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The biggest challenge for any social media marketer out there is to decide when and what to share on social networks. Marketers often have to rely on their gut or on surveys to come up with a predetermined timing. Most of these surveys though have a very small sample size and do not take into consideration the sheer size and diversity of either Facebook or Twitter. But the fact is, sharing at the right moment has its obvious benefits — users are far more receptive and the posts often generate higher engagement levels. But above all, sharing the right kind [...]
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After its rapid rise to the top, Facebook next challenge is to monetize its mobile platform. Barring Facebook Credits, the company does not gain anything from its mobile app as its main source of revenue — advertisements — is not served on the platform. But news reports suggests things are about to change soon. But First…Mobile Traffic Is Growing According to StatCounter’s latest released data, global Internet usage through mobile devices, not including tablets, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year. In 2009, mobile traffic accounted 0.7% of overall web traffic, which has now risen [...]
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The Airline industry has always been ahead in social media, with companies now using Twitter and Facebook to interact with customers, offer discounts to frequent fliers and handle customer queries on an everyday basis. But KLM has ventured beyond the basic definitions of social media usage and is now allowing fliers an opportunity to connect Facebook and Linkedin profiles to find a perfect seatmate for their next trip. This is how it works: You go their site, select ‘Seating’ tab and click ‘Meet & Seat’ on the right, Log in to your Facebook or LinkedIn account and then select the profile [...]
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What better way to learn Social media marketing than meet the people who are captaining a company’s social media efforts — and so, as a part of this initiative to meet the people who have deep understanding of the industry and have spent a considerable amount of their time on the subject, I interviewed Ben Fowler over the email to really understand how he handles social media and the learning he’s acquired over the years. He was kind enough to take some time off and answer the questions I put forward to him. If you like this post, do share it with [...]
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This is perhaps one of the biggest social media fail stories ever recorded. McDonalds has managed to embarrass itself on Twitter after its latest Twitter campaign went horribly wrong. The company’s social media director, Rick Wion told PaidContent that as part of their Promoted tweet ad-campaign, the company switched from #MeetTheFarmers to #McDStories in their tweet, soon after which few detractors hijacked the hashtag and started tweeting tales about animal cruelty. Users soon added additional topics like unemployment and stomach problems. The company’s problem was compounded by the fact that nothing much could have been done as the very nature of Twitter allowed free [...]
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Guest Post By Stephanie Kopf Europe’s relationship with Facebook has been strained of late. The social platform has been facing criticism from both politicians and users regarding its privacy policy and using of personal data. And now it’s on: a team of students from Vienna, Austria is pushing for more transparency and user control from the social networking website. Chances are that you are on Facebook. And maybe recently or a while ago you vented to a friend about something in a message. Then you cooled down and deleted it. No use clogging up your inbox. So how would you [...]
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If you haven’t read it already, Facebook has partnered with brands allowing them to host applications for you to use on your Timeline. You can grab some of your favorite apps from the market and add them to your Timeline. Last year, in its f8 conference, Facebook announced Open Graph and introduced the concept of frictionless sharing. Since then, many apps have been built on this platform that can send your trail of activity back to Facebook. Facebook uses this information to display your activity to your friends in the form of “Alan read XYZ” or “Alan listened to XYZ”, eliminating the [...]
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