I could start off this week's digest by telling you how the first images of the Hudson River plane crash showed up on Flickr and Twitpic. Or how media outlets from NPR to CNN are going to use social media to make Inauguration Day the most accessible ever. But there is no longer a story to be told there... instead social media has become an integral part of how we tell stories.
What's Been Happening This Week
Social Networks Are Still Booming
Despite some of the negativity towards using networks for marketing in the close of 2008, social networking is still the #1 growth area in online marketing. Reason being, more and more people join every day and segments like the 18-24 range are seeing that 75% of all people online have at least one profile. While Twitter has yet to find its business model, they experienced 752% growth in 2008, being used for anything from citizen journalism to washing machine alerts.
New Features Launch
To celebrate their 8th birthday this week, Wikipedia has launched some new tech alliances including a structured search with Yahoo and Flickr integration. Twitter launched a friend suggestion tool, which reminds me of a less useful Mr. Tweet. Internet TV is back and bigger than ever, and YouTube is joining the fun with TV screen optimized services for the Wii and PS3. Facebook is making its markup language extensible so that custom tags (badges in Causes, songlists in iLike) can be shared across applications.
Social Media Doesn't Always "Get" Social Media
And just when a flurry of new features rolled out this week, some networks prove again that they don't always "get it". YouTube rolls out automatic video muting for videos that have copyrighted music, which might seem like a necessary compromise until you think of all the undesirable consequences. Next, Facebook kills the highly popular Whopper Sacrifice application just as it was gaining traction.
Marta Strickland
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Comments (4)
I totally agree with you on this post. Social media is something that simply can't be ignored. When news is first found out by Twitter than your TV station, you know there's a major shift happening in our culture.
I didn't know that Facebook sacrificed the Whopper Sacrifice app. I haven't been on FB since 6:00 this morning. That's one I actually did use and kept on my FB page... I thought that the concept was a little shady, but I'll confess -- I love Whoppers and went for it.
Now I'm wondering if I still get my free burger or not.
Posted on January 16, 2009 08:00
Since when was the internet not a part of "telling stories."
The Whopper Sacrifice app broadcasted when a user was unfriended, clearly violating Facebook guidelines. Why wouldn't Facebook pull this?
Posted on January 16, 2009 08:59
Since when was the internet not a part of "telling stories."
The Whopper Sacrifice app broadcasted when a user was unfriended, clearly violating Facebook guidelines. Why wouldn't Facebook pull this?
Posted on January 16, 2009 09:02
@Stacy
Agreed, which is why I'm excited to see so many traditional news outlets embracing rather than trying to compete with social media. I can't tell you how many mentions of "i-report" I heard on CNN yesterday. They really used it to tell the rich story of events.
@Matt
It's not entirely Facebook's fault, it's Burger King's fault as well... or maybe they knew well enough they were in violation. Still, it's disappointing to see one of the few innovative applications in recent months get caught up in guidelines.
Posted on January 16, 2009 09:26