"Embedded Tweets display photos, videos, article summaries and other content shared in a Tweet, just like you see on twitter.com," Twitter said in a blog post. "You can also view retweet and favorite counts to better understand engagement, and we've made some tweaks to the design so that embedded Tweets are easier to read."
Todd Pollak, industry director of retail at Google, summarized what he calls the first "Nonline holiday shopping season" in a blog post. "In short, the shopper's journey looks less like a funnel and more like a flight map, and the lines between online and offline shopping experiences are blurring," he noted.
gotta agree, this is cool stuff. now everybody who jumps through a few "I'm not a scammer" hoops can leverage their quality video work...and get some verifiable roi. brand new news, although everyone will have it tonight or tomorrow. check out the reelseo writeup for more. h/t to mark traphagen
So everyone rejoice, it's here! You can now link within videos to do just about everything now: send people to other videos, send people to a featured video, send people to the merch store, and send people to your website. This interactive video thing is awesome, and it increases the power of what you can do with YouTube videos.
An ads API is like steroids for an ad platform. Consider Facebook. The social network in 2009 began letting a few companies access its ads API and brought even more on board in 2010, when advertising revenue grew 145 percent to $1.87 billion. The following year Facebook officially released the ads API, which would open it up to more developers who would be able to manage and run more ads for marketers. Facebook closed 2011 with $3.15 billion in ad revenue; it already has $2.95 billion in ad revenue over the first three quarters of 2012. Obviously the ads API isn’t the only reason Facebook has seen such a steep rise in ad revenue—hitting a billion users and increasing ad rates certainly helped—but the API definitely catalyzed that growth.
a post about LinkedIn's new Endorsements feature I wrote on my btrandolph.com blog has been getting a lot of comments in a LinkedIn group, but that's just the tip of the iceberg for changes. LinkedIn recently made huse enhancements to functionality and formatting for brand pages, and now that comes to personal profiles, too. Check out the full article in Adweek for deets.
LinkedIn is revamping its core profile pages.
Starting Tuesday (Oct. 16) the company's 175 million users will see a host of new tools and user options on their Linkedin profile pages, part of an overhaul CEO Jeff Weiner described as “one of the biggest changes to a LinkedIn pillar product in the company’s history,” during an event at its Moutain View, Calif., headquarters.
The changes to Linkedin's profiles include several new photo, biography and editing options. But overall, the biggest difference in profile pages are a series of new features Linkedin hopes will encourage users to share a whole lot more content via the networking site.
like the musical artists it helped fans to celebrate, myspace seized fame as an early icon of social media. users found and shared with like-minded peers. new and established bands found a new channel for releasing music and communicating with their fan base. then, it faded away. sure, the audience was fickle. sure the site made missteps and lost its focus. and now, with fresh investors and poster comeback wannabe justin timberlake leading the way, myspace is launching its bid to get back in the spotlight.
if you haven't seen the teaser video for the relaunch, here it is:
The new Myspace from Myspace on Vimeo.
I'm a music fan. but I'm an older one, so I missed the myspace bus the last time round, other than occasionally finding a cool richard buckner track there or something. this writeup was triggered by a post in one of my facebook groups that was itself a reposting on an article on the culture-ist: "will myspace bring sexy back to the social media stage?" despite the lameass title - social media has been and remains all about the sexy - the article does a good job highlighting the goods and the bads of the as yet un-relaunched relaunch. here is an excerpt describing two cool features of the new myspace:
Like Facebook, there’s a “friend” button attached to an artist, but unlike Facebook, Myspace isn’t built on exclusivity. When you “friend” an artist there’s no awkward wait time when you angst about whether or not your invitation’s going to be accepted or not. Connections are automatically established at the click of a button. There’s less of a fluctuating social hierarchy. Once you’ve connected to your favorite artist, you’re able to keep track of their updates in case they put out new songs or are about to embark on a world tour, but the really cool part is you’ll also get to keep track of what your favorite artist is listening to. So, the next time you’re listening to a track and your friend asks you, “Who is this new folksy band?” You can nonchalantly say something along the lines of, “Oh this? This is ________. Rihanna introduced me to them.”
One feature that has been getting a lot of press attention (and it’s easy to see why) is the opportunity and possibility for fans to see their profile publicized on their favorite artist’s page as a #1 fan, which not only gives them bragging rights, but also a chance to be recognized by one of their favorite artists; it’s very similar to getting retweeted by your favorite celebrity. These personalized touches and virtual interactions might make Myspace a prominent platform among the social media landscape.
I was the first to comment on the posted article on linkedin:
the 'new' myspace looks like a combination of pinterest and facebook. they have one big advantage - a database of users from back in the day. that is diminished somewhat by the age of their prinary demo - young ppl tend to cycle email addresses as they progress. can they recapture the music crowd? I think maybe if they partner with some big players and every soundcloud out there and function as a distribution hub for other social channels so casual users don't need to GO to myspace to benefit.
I'm one of those users, so I did get the announcement and that prompted me to look at the press coverage, and I will certainly try out the service when it goes live. so friend me or something.
the wsj contends that comscore's numbers put instagram ahead of twitter in the race for advertisers' dollars:
Here’s why the “daily user” metric matters: It’s a measurement of how many users (roughly) check the app every single day. That’s important for selling advertisements, because the more engaged a user is, the more likely they are to click on an ad.
Basically, better engagement typically leads to better monetization.
congrats to instagram on their impressive adoption growth. however, I question the implication that this means instagram is further along the road to monetization. the article actually throws up a red flag in stating the TOTAL number of twitter users is much higher due to desktop users and acknowledging that instagram is only on mobile. but the point is just left hanging. left in the editing room was the conclusion that if only 60% of twitter use is on mobile, the total count should be nearly 70% higher!
the other question relates to the nature of engagement on the two services. the findings show that instagram beat twitter out in the average amount of time spent using the app. first, I would eliminate the minority obsessive users of each by looking at median time. then, I would want to see the median time spent on each app per visit. - I use instagram mostly to check in and rarely browse others' pics. I would suggest that twitter has a much better shot at driving actual conversion for advertisers since the ads will be integrated in the use process (reading streams, participation in conversations) rather than an interruption of the use process.
One of the platform’s standout features is its competitor comparison tool. That is, it can track what your company’s performance looks like versus competitors on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even the iPhone App Store, Android app store (Google Play) and Facebook’s App Center. “In some senses, Ohtootay is compete.com for social media and mobile apps,” Mark explains. “And we believe that angels, VCs and social media managers that are armed with this kind of data will be way more effective decision makers than their peers who only navel-gaze at their own data in isolation,” he says.
Example
George creates a Google+ Page for his company, Happy Burgers. He also creates an AdWords campaign, some ads, and then a social extension by linking his Google+ Page to his campaign. When 32 people +1 one of his ads, Happy Burgers' page will receive 32 new +1's. Alternatively, if George connects his AdWords campaign to his Google+ Page after it already had 32 +1's, all of his ads can now have these +1's as social annotations.