This vids been doing the rounds of the net for the past couple of days. There are some amazing facts and figures that should make any social media skeptic change their mind. Having watched a similar video about Internet usage with the same music (I can’t find it now) It feels a bit cliche but nevertheless the figures are incredible.

http://techfluff.tv

Social-Media-Campaign - Gary Hayes

According to the Nielsen Company, the total minutes spent on social networking sites has jumped 83 percent every year. Total minutes spent on Facebook catapulted almost 700 percent (to 13.9 billion) in April 2009, compared with 1.7 billion minutes for the same period last year. Facebook ranks as the No. 1 social networking site, followed by MySpace, Blogger, Tagged, Twitter, MyYearbook, LiveJournal, LinkedIn, SlashKey and Gaia Online

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There are hundreds of thousands of ways you can use social media.

Facebook… Twitter… Vimeo… YouTube… LinkedIN… SmallerIndiana… Plaxo…
They go on and on and on and on and on.
The tools are becoming universal. They are becoming secondary. The learning curve is dissapearing.
continues @ http://kylelacy.com/i-dont-care-if-you-are-on-facebook-and-twitter/

Twazzup, which just launched this morning, tries to bridge the gap between Twitter‘s real-time search and a more traditional search engine. While Twitter’s real-time search is great for keeping an eye on current developments, it is not a great tool for seeing which links about a given topic are currently popular. On Twazzup, you can follow a real-time stream of updates including a certain keyword on the left, while the right sidebar shows the top tweets and a list of the top tweeted stories about this topic, as well as related photos from twitpic.

Continues @ http://www.readwriteweb.com

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Here’s what happened when Chris Savage, the chief executive of Wistia.com, searched for the phrase “private video sharing” on Twitter, a social networking site. One post he found read, “A teacher requested a private ‘video sharing’ Web site so that specialists can observe student behavior—can anyone refer one?”

That got Savage’s attention. He e-mailed back: “Still looking for a private video sharing site?”

Minutes later came the reply: “YES! It’s the first request for one—thought I’d hit up my tweets before [I] go digging.”

Savage: “Cool. You may want to check out Wistia.com. Full disclosure, I’m the CEO; -)”

Continues @ http://www.businessweek.com

It seems that for many, this thing or shall I say buzzword we call social media has become strictly a numbers game. He who has the most followers wins. We are seeing this time and time again,  on Twitter, Facebook and so forth. It’s at a point where it’s out of control, I feel. The true value of social media or conversational media has been lost for some, including myself.

The power of one-on-one relationships has been lost:

It’s been lost due to the popularity game of who can acquire the most followers on any given network. Take Twitter for instance, while it’s clearly gone mainstream, it’s also the number one haven for drive by spammers.  The service is riddled with marketers attempting to make a quick buck.  When I mean marketers, I don’t mean responsible corporations who are  using Twitter for customer outreach.

I’m a list builder, look at me!

Then you have the mass list builder crowd. These people follow anyone and everyone just to build a massive following. These people make no attempt to have a conversation or get to know the people they are following. They simply create lists. I don’t see the purpose of this. What’s the point of saying I have 10,000 followers on Twitter? In the real world it means absolutely nothing, these are not bragging rights to be proud of.  Again, I’m strictly referring to the list builder crowd, not anyone else.

Continues @ http://michaelfruchter.com

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