Brand Campaigns Drive Most Social Media Following

Nice insight... Cheers Brian. Via eMarketer

OCTOBER 18, 2010
Three-quarters of Facebook fans have signed up with pages after invitations or ads from brands

Research on social media users who follow brands has shown marketers the importance of offering deals and discounts on Facebook fan pages as well as the nature of brand following as a form of self-expression, through which advocates can show support for a company they love. But what triggers Facebook users to “like” a brand is typically some form of outreach.

Most commonly, that outreach comes from the brand itself. Three-quarters of Facebook users worldwide who had “liked” a brand told DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research in September 2010 that they had been spurred to do so by an invitation or advertising from the brand they followed. More than half had also followed a brand based on an invitation from a friend. Many of those invitations are likely a secondary form of brand outreach as well, as marketers encourage current followers to become brand advocates on their behalf.

Only about half of all Facebook brand fans ended up following brands after their own research, making action by marketers critical in building up a following on social sites even though most users already know and like the brands they become fans of.

The effort brands must put into amassing fans doesn’t stop there, of course. While the top reason former fans gave for unsubscribing from Facebook pages was waning interest in the brand, complaints about the information offered on fan pages were also a major factor. Posting too often or posting uninteresting information, taken together, turned off nearly half of respondents.

“Unsubscribers, at 36%, are something to watch out for. And though the majority of fans now unsubscribe by deleting a brand from their friends list, brands, when trying to measure the value of their community, are going to need to be more mindful of those who just hide the brand's message in their newsfeed," said Catherine Lautier, director of business intelligence at DDB, in a statement.

Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.

Check out today’s other article, “Online Video Big Draw on Health Sites for Marketers and Consumers.”

Boomers -- Yes, Boomers -- Spend the Most on Tech

Nice piece from Adage revealing the real age of the technophiles amongst us

Due to Broad Demographic Grouping Problems, Biggest Misconception About Group Is That They're All the Same

by Beth Snyder Bulik
Published: October 11, 2010

YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- Marilynn Mobley has a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a netbook for travel, an Android smartphone and just last week she bought an iPad. She time shifts all her TV viewing using DVRs and enjoys watching Blu-ray movies at home. She's also 63 years old.

Tech Use

"The misconception that boomers do not appreciate tech crosses all generations. I've heard it from fellow baby boomers who say, 'Wow, you're so into technology,' and on down to 20-year-olds who are also surprised," said Ms. Mobley, a strategic counselor for Edelman in its Boomer Insights Generation Group.

However, she's not nearly as unusual as the media portrays. Boomers are almost as likely as Gen X and Gen Y to own computers, access the internet daily, own mobile phones, DVRs, digital cameras and GPS systems. And while boomers do trail in areas such as early adoption of new devices and services, many of those generation gaps are closing.

"It's actually a myth that baby boomers aren't into technology. They represent 25% of the population, but they consume 40% [in total dollars spent] of it," said Patricia McDonough, senior VP-analysis at Nielsen Co.

In fact, spending on technology is one area where boomers are ahead of their younger counterparts. The 46- to 64-year-old group now spends more money on technology than any other demographic, according to Forrester Research's annual benchmark tech study. That includes monthly telecom fees, gadget and device spending, and overall online purchases. They averaged around $650 spent in online shopping vs. Gen X ($581) and Gen Y ($429) over a three-month period.

And adoption rates of the tech areas where they do lag are soaring. In 2000, baby boomers made up 28% of the internet population and accounted for just 24% of the traffic on a typical day, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project data. But by 2010, those percentages had climbed to 34% of the internet population and 32% of all traffic. Ten years ago, only a quarter of boomers went online every day; in 2010 that number jumped to 70%.

Among 50- to 64-year-olds, social-media usage grew by 88% from April 2009 to May 2010, up from 25% to 47% of all users in that age group, according to Pew Internet. And one in five of them now use social media every day, up from one in 10 last year.

Along with the timeless youth platitude that "old people just don't get it," the misconceptions about boomers and technology incompetence may also be a demographic grouping problem.

The age range in many market-research surveys and studies, for instance, often puts the oldest demographic group at 50 and older. However, Robert DiLallo, director of Grandparent Marketing Group, New York, said that designation is too broad.

"People who are 65 and older were at the tail end of their careers when the real tech revolution began and did not get introduced to the internet that way," he said. "I'm 60 years old, but I'm no more like a 70-year-old in my tech use than I am an 18-year-old."

THE FACE OF TECH CONSUMPTION: Edelman strategic counselor Marilynn Mobley

Forrester's research, for instance, found that among seniors ages 66 and older only 67% owned cellphones. However, 84% of young boomers ages 45 to 54 and 80% of older boomers ages 55 to 64 owned cellphones.

Boomers also use their phones for more than calling, vs. seniors. According to Deloitte's annual media research, 66% of boomers send text messages, trailing Gen X-ers at 80% and millennials at 88%, but way ahead of the 28% of matures (64-plus) who text. Another 37% of boomers have accessed the internet by phone, just behind Gen X at 42% and millennials at 55%, but again ahead of matures at 20%.

Grandparent Marketing Group research notes that the boomer generation and millennials are strikingly similar demographic groups. Both number around 80 million and both grew up in some of the U.S.'s most prosperous eras ('50s/'60s and the '90s).

So it should be no surprise that boomers' internet behavior is more similar to millennials, according to Pew research. Both groups overwhelmingly use email (91% of boomers/94% of millennials), search engines (88%/89%), research health information (78%/85%), get news (74%/83%) and check out online ratings (30%/31%).

The key for marketers to reach boomers is not to dismiss technology as irrelevant to them, but rather to figure out what technology they prefer.

"Which platforms resonate with which demographic?" said Ed Moran, Deloitte director of insights and innovation. "Take gaming for example. For male mature users aged 60 to 75, the PC is the preferred platform, while for the under-15 age group, it's consoles or the iPhone."

Ms. Mobley concurred: "I think the biggest difference in the way boomers use technology vs. the younger generations is that we tend to see it as a way to get something done -- whether that's something at work or staying in touch with friends and family. Gen X and especially Gen Y just see it as a part of life."

Mobile Myths Debunked

Nice summary from Adage on the 'real' status of the mobile phone world

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Blackberry Is Not Dead, Steve Jobs Isn't King of Handsets, and Other Conventional Wisdom You Should Reconsider

by Kathryn Koegel
Published: September 13, 2010

Mobile is a confusing marketing space, and we're in the midst of a hype cycle perhaps equaled only by the dot-com frenzy of years past. And whenever there's hype, misconceptions aren't far behind. Here's a look at four of them -- and a reminder why you shouldn't believe everything the soothsayers say.

[Excerpted from "What You Need to Know About Mobile Marketing," a recent Ad Age Insights report.]

It's not an all-Apple world ... and it never will be
There seems to be an app for just about everything at this point (with more than 250,000 available, and counting). And while Apple seems to have a lock on the app market, in fact it represents just a small part of the U.S. mobile market, according to ComScore. Gartner, which tracks phone shipments rather than usage, pegs Apple's 2009 U.S. market share at 5%. The iPhone is a game-changing phone, however, as its interface is the one that managed to alter consumer behavior irrevocably; as a result, it has enjoyed the greatest interest from developers.

Source: comScore custom survey, November 2009

The iPhone audience is a distinctive one. It is youngish (but not too young; consumers under the age of 24 are not likely to be able to afford an iPhone, or to be locked into a long-term AT&T contract). And it is made up of early adopters, those who influence the purchases of others and who are a marketer's dream. If Apple's exclusive contract with AT&T is done with this year, as has been reported, and a Verizon version hits the market, there is no telling how much Apple's penetration will spike. Until that happens, there are other platforms marketers must pay attention to.

Blackberry is not dead
Research in Motion's BlackBerry is still a significant presence in the market and will continue to be, especially in the business world. The BlackBerry is supported by most Windows-based concerns. For marketers looking to reach the business audience, high-net-worth individuals and a slightly older demo than the iPhone, targeting through the BlackBerry is a smart (nay, essential) move. The BlackBerry challenge has been that, with the mass of devices having a trackball rather than a touchscreen, it's simply not as interactive an interface, and can make it difficult to even locate apps. BlackBerry has plans to introduce a new browser.

Consumers love Google, and now, to ride the wave of that affinity, the company has rolled out Android. Research on future phone purchases from ComScore and ChangeWave indicates T-Mobile's ads touting its 3G capabilities -- plus the fact that not all consumers want a contract with AT&T, and that the Android is a close-enough facsimile to the iPhone -- suggests we are at the dawn of a phone war that stands to benefit all consumers, as it likely will lead to better service and pricing [see chart 16, pull from page 14 in white paper].

Microsoft ceded its early dominance in the smartphone market to RIM and BlackBerry, but this fall it is launching Windows 7 for mobile. Reports from the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, where the system made its debut, were positive.

Not all people do all things on all phones: market accordingly
At this point in the evolution of mobile as a marketing medium, the number of consumers who perform activities such as downloading apps or looking at the mobile web or WAP (wireless access protocol) is relatively low; comScore estimates that 34% of those with cellphones consume some sort of mobile media (WAP or apps), 31% use SMS (but do not consume any media via the phone) and 35% use phones only for making calls. This is changing rapidly, however, along with the adoption of smartphones. What people do on their phones is predictive by age and gender. The younger a consumer is, the more likely he or she is to personalize his or her phone, or purchase a ringtone or wacky screensaver. The older, more business-oriented consumer, however, is more likely to have an unlimited data plan and, thus, to use the phone for web access. Guys are more likely to listen to music and purchase games on their phones. [see chart 17, pull from page 15 in white paper].

RIM's market share and the demographics of mobile media activities

"People need to stop looking at mobile consumer activity across modalities -- browsing, apps, and SMS/MMS -- and think that one form will predominate while others go away. More importantly, marketers need to stop wishing for this to happen. While it might be easier to exist in a world where mobile consumers only used apps, the reality is that SMS and browser-based activity will continue to reach audiences that apps cannot and, in the case of SMS, be a more effective medium to drive response," Evan Neufeld, VP-marketing, GroundTruth, said.

Smartphones are not likely to ever penetrate the entire market
Just as there are people out there with analog TVs with those funky converter boxes, some people just want to use their phones to talk and will not ever be incented to pay fees for data. Some people simply do not want e-mail and media whenever, wherever. Due to behavior displayed by younger consumers, the group described here will likely concentrate in older demos. Smartphone adoption may be somewhat analogous to the digital video recorder. While the TV industry worried that DVRs would achieve much larger penetration in a short period, in truth, DVR usage stalled out at around 30% of TV households in 2009, according to Nielsen. Not everyone wants to pay for the service, and not everyone, clearly, desires that much control over their media.

It's not as complicated as it sounds
Not all types of mobile marketing apply to all companies, and the "crawl, walk, run" principle should be employed with mobile. Pick the discipline that most relates to your product category and start there. For some content providers and retailers, it may be optimizing their sites for mobile (a surprising number of companies have not yet done this). For retailers with successful email programs, it may be developing an SMS program to appeal to the legions of "textirati" who prefer SMS to e-mail. For any marketer using print, TV or outdoor, activation programs can extend the effectiveness of their campaigns by helping to generate opt-in lists or hand-raising customers. Whatever you do, don't just develop a one-platform app and assume that you've got mobile covered.

Teens - love the web, but not blogging or twitter

Couple different articles on the PEW Research's latest look at online teens. My out take - most people are consumers, rather than creators (hence the blog stats levelling out) and they still want all the content that sits outside the social web, but they want to be able to choose when and where they get it i.e. mobile, social site integration, etc. And twitter... well to me it just feels a little too restrictive, and one sided, for what teenagers what from digital interaction. Thoughts?

First the Guardian's POV:
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Teens prefer reading news online to Twitter

While most teenagers reject Twitter and blogging, 62% of them like to read their news online, US research reveals

Will the next generation read news reports? It looks like it. Some 62% of US internet users aged 12 to 17 are going online for news and political information or find out about current events, said a study conducted by the Pew Research Center published yesterday. During special events such as general elections news consumption rose to 77%.

This is indeed an impressive number, even more so if you compare it with the 73% of teens who use social networking websites or the 89% of boys and 70% of girls who report they have a game console.

It also stands up well compared with the 72% of adult internet users who get their news online, a number that has held fairly constant since 2002 according to Pew. In general, it says the use of online news has increased dramatically since its first analysis, in 2000, when it found just 35% of online adults were reading political news online.

As was expected in all age groups educational attainment and income are positively correlated with getting news online: 81% of college educated internet users get their news online, a figure that drops to 59% with a lower education.

Blogging isn't mainstream, social networking is

Blogging, on the other hand, may become more and more of a side issue. In fact, among all the content creating activities the decline in blogging among teens and young adults is striking as it looks like the youth may be exchanging "macro-blogging" for microblogging with status updates. Since 2006 blogging among teens has dropped from 28% to 14% and among young adults (aged 18 to 29) by 24% to 15%. Some 11% of those aged 30 and over now maintain a personal blog, and 14% of them maintain a personal website.

According to the research, 26% of adults post comments online, a while 30% share online content. Teens on the other hand are enthusiastic online commenters within the social networks. A massive 86% of social networking teens post comments to a friend's page or wall on a social network site and 83% post comments on friends' photos posted to an online social network.

They don't really like to use Twitter, though. While 19% of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short status updates and view those of others, only 8% of 12- to 17-year-olds do so.

Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updates as a third of 18- to 29-year-olds post or read status updates, and they are also the only age group which prefers to use laptop computers to desktop computers.

Mobile internet access is becoming more important

However, the study found out that access to the internet is changing in general. Teens and adults no longer access the internet solely from a computer or laptop but now go online via portable devices such as mobile phones or game consoles as mobile access to the internet becomes more and more important.

And finally some more background figures: 75% of teens and 93% of adults aged 18 to 29 now have a mobile phone. Some 93% of teens aged 12 to 17 go online, as do 93% of young adults aged 18 to 29, and even an impressive 74% of all adults aged 18 and older. Among them, Facebook is currently the most commonly‐used online social network as 73% of online adults have a Facebook profile. More than half of them say they have two or more different profiles.

So what do these figures say, apart from the fact that teenagers obviously like to read the news?

Conclusion

Mobile access to the internet is on the rise, and the reading of news on the platform is likely to follow this development. Offerings such as the New York Times's Times People or the HuffingtonFacebook are likely to become more common to encourage young people to share articles and debate with their friends. Post's deep integration of

That might be a reason why social networking sites such as Facebook are taking over from blogging – as it appears that blogging has levelled out at a figure of about 15% of internet users.

Pew Internet drew data from a survey conducted in the second half of 2009 among 800 young people aged between 12 and 17, and compared these figures with previous research.


And now from Mashable
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Teens Just Don’t Blog or Tweet [STATS]

*/

A new study published today by Pew Internet finds that teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the prominent exception of Twitter.

Pew’s Report surveyed 2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens to get a reading of how they use the Internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they use the most.

Some of the data will surprise you.

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The Internet’s Everywhere

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Here’s a no-brainer: Young adults use the web far more than older adults. In its study, Pew found that 93% of teens and young adults go online, compared to only 38% of adults over 65 years of age. It surprises us that 7% of 12-29 year olds still don’t browse the web, but some just don’t have or can’t afford access.

Among those teens going online, 63% say they go online at least once a day, with older teens more likely to go online than younger teens.

Most are connecting with high-speed connections as well. Seventy-six percent of families with teenage children have broadband connections, while 10% still use dial-up, 8% have no computer and 4% have a computer but no Internet access. For comparison, 49% of families used dial-up in 2004.

The Internet’s getting faster and more accessible. As computer prices drop and Internet access becomes more readily available, we should see these Internet usage numbers continue to rise.

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The Laptop Is More Popular than the Desktop

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In terms of gadgets, more teenagers have cell phones (76%) than a computer (69%). More than half of 12 year olds own a mobile phone, while a rather impressive 83% of teenagers carry a cell phone in their pockets. That number only rises with age — a full 93% of 18-29 year olds own a cell phone.

The mobile trend even continues into the computing realm: Laptops have overtaken the desktop for those under 30. Sixty-sex percent of adults 18-29 own a laptop, while 53% own a desktop. Other interesting trends: Males are more likely to own a cell phone, income dramatically affects computer ownership but not cell phone ownership, and race is a non-factor when it comes to the percentage of adults using cell phones.

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Teens Just Don’t Blog. Or Tweet.

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As you might have guessed, Pew found that teens are avid social networkers: 73% of 12-17 year olds, in fact. They are posting pictures, commenting on status updates and sending IMs.

What they aren’t doing much of, though, is blogging and tweeting.

Pew’s study finds that blogging has dramatically decreased in popularity with the younger crowed since 2006, where 28% of teens reported that they were bloggers. Now that number has dropped to just 14%. Interestingly enough, lower income households (under $50,000) report more blogging than higher income ones. With Facebook (), Twitter () and other social tools to keep your friends updated about your life, blogging just isn’t as necessary.

Perhaps we shouldn’t include Twitter in that list of social media tools teens use, though. As we’ve reported on multiple occasions, teens don’t tweet, and Pew’s numbers don’t disagree with that assertion:

Yes, only 8% of teens use Twitter, remarkably small when compared to most social networks. Only one in 10 high schoolers use Twitter. Among this small group though, the girls are more likely to be microblogging: 13% of 14-17 year old girls reported using the service.

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Conclusions: Teens Aren’t Heavy Content Creators

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First, it’s important to note that most of this data was taken from September 2009. A lot changes in social media in a five-month period.

With that said, though, the trends seem clear: Teens love to be online, but they’re not terribly interested in writing blog posts or maintaining a stream of tweets. Creating content takes time and energy that they’d rather exert on Facebook, texting, YouTube () or other online activities. And of course, they have school and friends.

Let’s face it: Teenagers haven’t had the time to build up expertise, life experiences or a career that would merit content creation. Without that expertise, fewer people are inclined to listen to what they have to say, and without that knowledge, teenagers have less to talk about.

As my colleague Barb Dybwad also brings up, a teenager’s social circle is far smaller and more closely defined than an adult’s network. Perhaps this is why more closed networks like Facebook are more appealing to teenagers than Twitter, which is a completely public experience. Blogging was a more intimate experience a few years back, which could also explain why more teens have abandoned personal blogs over the last few years.

Combined, it means that Twitter just might not be for the average teenager. Let us know what you think in the comments.

10 New Brand Metrics for FMCG

Nice post from Happily Misunderstood about some new thoughts on rationalising the irrational.

10 New Brand Metrics for FMCG

Posted in Brands by Tim on January 18, 2010

One of my previous posts, ‘Measuring the Irrational’, covered the theoretical implications of accepting that people are essentially irrational beings and that brands are irrational constructs. The following brand measures have been developed as a practical next step, they are largely new in approach, but do incorporate metrics that are already in existence. I have to confess, that 2 of the 10 metrics are not new at all, but work to compliment the other 8.

The following metrics have been conceived for a generic FMCG brand looking to gain (or re-gain) iconic status. A familiar, but tough, brief.

The brand in the mind

I believe that the difference between the subjective impressions of a brand can be compared with objectives ones to indicate brand strength in the consumer’s mind. By creating indexes of subjective vs. objective measures, and assessing them vs. competitors over time, we can measure and track the intangible power of a brand in the consumer’s mind.

1. Perceived Quality

Numerous studies and meta-analysis have linked financial success of a brand to perceived brand quality, but how can we measure this and what is it in relation to? From psychological experiments to ‘the Pepsi challenge’, there are plenty of examples of brand effect on subjective experience, e.g. taste. By comparing blind and branded taste test scores, one can create a ‘brand quality index, which measures the extent to which the brand enhances (BQI>1), or detracts >

2. Good Will

Comparing perceived relative price difference to actual relative price difference will provide an index that indicates how much the brand is valued above what is normally paid for it. This is not a measure of price elasticity, it can be used to give a positive (PRPI>1) or negative >

3. Brand Fame (popularity)

Brand ‘fame’ or popularity has been established as both a profitable communications strategy, but also a reliable indicator of a brand’s financial success. Asking consumers ‘how many people out of 10 do you think use this product’ establishes a consumer perception of popularity. This can be compared to actual popularity (penetration used as proxy) to give a ‘brand fame index’. The brand fame index will measure the extent to which the brand is more (BFI>1) or less >

The brand in the market

What we say, think and do can sometimes be completely different, behavioural measures are needed to provide an accurate picture of how a brand effects consumer behaviour. Again, all measures should be assessed over time and compared with competitors.

4. Purchase Behaviour

Purchase behaviour (frequency, weight and penetration, the latter being most important) can provide an important indication of brand’s financial success or weaknesses. However, past purchase behaviour does not always predict future success. Claimed purchase intent alone is subject to a different kind of problem, it tends to be a measure of past behaviour, rather than a predictor of future behaviour. By comparing claimed, with actual behaviour, we not only understand how people are currently buying, we also gain an indicator of the direction purchase behaviour is moving in.

5. Devotion

Loyal customers may buy the brand ‘most of the time’, but the really devoted ones will only ever buy the brand, even if this means foregoing the category we’re out of stock. The Devotion Index will give an indication of the number of buyers who are well and truly bonded to our brand.

6. Share of branded goods

The recession in the UK has seen the branded FMCG goods sector decrease as value seeking consumers down trade to own label products. This means that substitution now occurs across categories as consumers seek limit branded purchases in an effort to reduce the total shopping bill. The total value share of the brand’s products as a proportion of all branded FMCG purchases will give us an indication of the overall strength of the brand that will not be effected by recessionary factors.

The brand at the bank

7. Price Elasticity

The extent to which sales rise or fall given a 1% price increase, when compared to competitor brands this measure can provide a powerful indicator of band strength that is directly linked to financial success.

8. Campaign Efficiency

Movements in share of market (SOM) are directly correlated with movements in share of voice (SOV) at a category level. This allows us to make market share predictions given our media spend. However, strong brands enjoy greater campaign efficiency, i.e. they exceed the predicted SOM growth given SOV. The Campaign Efficiency Index gives a proxy for the strength of the brand based on more than expected movements in SOM given our SOV.

9. Brand Valuation

Discounted Cash Flow

The objective of building a sting brand is to increase its profitability. The long term health of the brand will therefore be measured by its long term contribution to the bottom line. This will be assessed using the discounted cash flow (DCF) method.

Iconic Status

10. Getting into Mark’s and Spencer’s

Marks & Spencer is to break with 85 years of tradition by stocking brands other than those with an M&S label. Although the distribution gains achieved by meeting this objective will not significantly impact upon business in the same way that distribution in the main supermarkets might, meeting this objective will confirm the brand has claimed (or reclaimed) its iconic crown.

This can be downloaded as a document, with references, here.

Tagged with: Brand Measurement, brand metrics, FMCG, Tim Jones Ogilvy, Tim Jones planner

5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2009

Thanks Flowing Data - For my money and what i'm sensing from clients, 2010 is going be the year for data in OZ.

Cheers and have a great xmas & new year everyone. I'm off on holiday!

By Nathan / Dec 16, 2009 to Visualization / 15 comments

It was a huge year for data. There's no denying it. Data is about to explode.

Applications sprung up left and right that help you understand your data - your Web traffic, your finances, and your life. There are now online marketplaces that sell data as files or via API. Data.gov launched to provide the public with usable, machine-readable data on a national scale. State and local governments followed, and data availability expands every day.

At the same time, there are now tons of tools that you can use to visualize your data. It's not just Excel anymore, and a lot of it is browser-based. Some of the tools even have aesthetics to boot.

It's exciting times for data, indeed.

Data has been declared sexy, and the rise of the data scientist is here.

With all the new projects this year, it was hard to filter down to the best, but here they are: two honorable mentions and the five best data visualization projects of 2009. Visualizations were chosen based on analysis, aesthetics, and most importantly, how well they told their story (or how well they let you tell yours).

Honorable Mention: MTV VMA Tweet Tracker

The MTV VMA Tweet Tracker, a glorified bubble chart from Stamen Design and Radian6, showed the buzz on Twitter over the MTV VMAs. As I watched iJustine talk about the visualization on television, pointing out highlights in the bubbles and tags, I thought, "Visualization sure has branched out." Plus, the explosion of Kanye West's face on my computer screen was hilarious.

Honorable Mention: Crisis of Credit Visualized

We all know there were major problems going on with banks and credit this year, but it's a safe bet that most didn't quite know why. Jonathan Jarvis attempted to explain with his thesis project, Crisis of Credit Visualized. It isn't perfect, and it doesn't explain every detail, but it does explain a lot.

5. Photosynth

Photosynth, by Microsoft Live Labs, smartly strings photos together to create something of a browsable 3-D environment. It was actually released last year. I don't think it was really put to good use until this year though. With the inauguration of President Barack Obama, a historic event people won't soon forget, MSNBC used Photosynth to provide a view of the inaugural stands.

4. The Jobless Rate for People Like You

Unemployment rate was another important and recurring topic this year, and there were a lot of visualizations - maps, bar charts, and graphics - that showed it. None did it better than Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, and Kevin Quealy of The New York Times. In The Jobless Rate for People Like You, we were able to see the changes over time and filter down to different demographics. Transitions and browsability were top notch.

3. OpenStreetMap: A Year of Edits

OpenStreetMap: A Year of Edits showed all the changes to OpenStreetMap data in 2008. The visualization itself, by ITO, is beautiful, and what the animated map represents - a worldwide effort in providing an accurate geographic data source - is even more amazing.

2. Protovis

Protovis, from the Stanford visualization guys Mike Bostock and Jeffrey Heer, is a "graphical approach to visualization." More importantly, it uses Javascript and SVG for web-native visualizations, which is where things are headed with, uh, visualization on the Web. True, there are plenty of Javascript libraries that let you make basic graphs, but none are nearly this advanced, and true, Protovis doesn't work in all browsers, but if you're reading this, you're probably smart enough to be on a modern browser, unless you're locked into Internet Explorer at work.

1. On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces

On the Origin of Species, by Ben Fry, shows the changes to Charles Darwins' theory of evolution over time. I think a lot of you missed this one, because I posted it on Labor Day, but nevertheless, it's an elegant visual. It's a simple concept executed really well. Origin shows the full growing (and shrinking) text as little blocks with an emphasis on the evolution of Darwin's ideas. They were 20 years in the making.

Origins is actually an offshoot of a much larger project yet to be released (if ever), according to Fry, so I'm of course really looking forward to seeing the rest.

There you have it. It's the top five visualizations of 2009. There was a lot of great stuff churned out this year, and no doubt next year will be even better.

Back to you - what do you think was the best visualization of the year? Leave your picks in the comments below.

Open Source Government: San Francisco City App Store

Now this is how to appraoch government and data. Thanks again psfk...

October 1, 2009

The City of San Francisco recently opened DataSF.org, a website to help improve government transparency, and increase citizen access to city data. One project that has spawned from this initiative is an app showcase which collects the many locally focused applications being created from this new open data.

Some of the apps include:

Crimespotting – San Francisco Crimespotting is an interactive map of crimes in San Francisco and a tool for understanding crime in cities.

EveryBlock – EveryBlock publishes a news feed for every city block in San Francisco. Enter your street address, neighborhood or ZIP code, and the site shows you recent nearby mainstream/blog news coverage, police calls, building permits, restaurant inspections and much more — updated throughout the day, every day.

CleanScores – CleanScores is bringing you the health inspection scores of restaurants around San Francisco.
EcoFinder – EcoFinder for iPhone and iPod Touch helps you find out where to recycle and properly dispose of just about everything. You select the material you need to recycle or dispose of, and the EcoFinder will show you the relevant businesses and services closest to you.

Routesy San Francisco – Routesy will help you find your way around the Bay Area’s top transit systems — San Francisco Muni and BART — in real time. Simply choose the line you want to ride, and Routesy will show you the closest stop or station, along with real-time prediction data to make sure you make it on time.

[via Mashable]

Losing To The Social Web: Visualized

Interesting post from Digital Buzz Blog. I guess my only real argument against this 'everything going social' idea is that just as we've all foreseen the death of TV and print, the reality is that these media, just like websites and microsites, have roles that they will continue to fill for the near future at least, even though these roles may well change. To my mind, there is never a single answer and smart use of digital will involve multiple presences and activities that cater to the myriad of ways people want to find, absorb, engage and share information. Marketing via content, utility and distributed services... hell yes, but don't rely on me wanting to check out your products in public while i hang out with my friends.
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A brands website has been the single biggest ”online” focus for 99% of businesses over the last 10 years apart from banner campaigns and microsites here and there, but with the evolution of social media growing at unheard of rates (Twitter is up over 3500% alone this year, while Facebook increased over 700% to finally overtake MySpace and then turned them to dust!) businesses really need to think about what’s happening to their website traffic…

I recently read a great post on Supercollider by Geoff Northcott (via Martina on Adverblog) that talked about the end of the destination web, along with adage, we are social and adweek about how the times are fading for websites and microsites are dead – Geoff posted a few good Google trends graphs, so I thought I might take that a little further, find a few additional graphs and look at why and where this traffic is going…

What you’ll notice from the graphs below (you can see them here) is that some of the biggest brands, websites and portals are loosing unique visitors hand over fist for the last 3 years. Doesn’t make sense right? More and more people are connecting online, brands are spending bucket loads of cash on digital campaigns, so website traffic should be the complete opposite? (note. the graph below with out a heading is the BBC.co.uk)

So with such dramatic declines in website traffic and rapidly increasing numbers of Internet connected people, where is all that traffic going? The Social Web – the emerging networks where everyone is connected, everything is relevant, and everything can be shared with a single click and browsed, summarized or bookmarked with ease…

There are 2 key reasons why website traffic is declining.

1. Social Networks (obviously) are growing and most people prefer to hang out there instead of searching the big brands websites for content to interact with. Your friends on Facebook and Twitter share what you’re already interested in. Everything is relevant and you don’t have to leave to get the best content from 10 of your favourite brands / websites.
2. Off-Site Content Distribution is rapidly growing, I’m talking RSS Feeds, Twitter, YouTube Channels, Facebook Fan pages and so on… All the best brands and websites now actively push their content (the same stuff you use to get from their website and still want to access) to as many various “off-site” sources and platforms as possible.So naturally this removes unique visitors from their main sites, channeling them into a maze of various networks, feeds and tweets…Oh, and ofcourse, widgets/apps – we’ve only just seen the start of these.

Over the next few years, brands will need to re-structure they way they deliver experiences to their customers online (the best ones are already doing it), and that means delivering unique content to anywhere customers want to experience it.

Maybe that’s the latest offers by RSS feeds, new product demos by YouTube, campaigns by iPhone apps, online shopping via widgets in facebook or branding exercises by seeding stopmotion viral videos (they seem to be all the rage!)?

The fact is, agencies and brands will need to work out how to deliver the relevant content, branding and experiences they are currently achieving on their own websites, into highly competitive social networks, feeds, apps and widgets, where every “campaign” or “offer” has to be groundbreaking just to get noticed… and then there was tracking…!

I don’t think websites & microsites are dead yet. There are still years and years of usefulness ahead for them, we’ll just need to come up with better ways to connect them and their content into the social lives of customers online…

Facebook Now Tracking Gross National Happiness; Continues Hoarding Data

Thanks Mashable for this on Facebook's latest data fun... and greed

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / October 5, 2009 1:09 PM / 12 Comments

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Facebook announced this afternoon that it is tracking what it calls its version of Gross National Happiness, based on an analysis of the positive and negative words people use when updating their Facebook status. It's very interesting to see how people feel about various world events that Facebook has cross referenced - US users are more happy on Thanksgiving than on Christmas, for example.

The new index is interesting, but it's also a frustrating example of just how much value Facebook is withholding by not allowing everyone access to the anonymous, aggregated activity and conversation of more than 300 million people.

Almost a year ago we wrote about how a widely discussed Facebook Sentiment Engine could be a huge asset. That theoretical possibility held at least as much potential as the very real Google data about most popular searches minute-by-minute during the last Presidential debates.

One best-case scenario we imagined looked like this:

Think of the non-commercial, public interest kind of data that could be acquired. When the economic stimulus plan of 2009 was first announced on national television - what was the reaction of people in their mid twenties who lived in the Mid West of the US? Was that collective reaction substantially different from the reaction of self-identified queer people of color living in the North East US? How did the public reaction to the proposed plan change one hour, one day or one week after the announcement? This is all very interesting and potentially valuable data that could be, for the first time in history, available in near real time. Just by listening to what people are talking about in status updates and comments.

Unfortunately, that's not what Facebook has given us. It's almost a year later and all we get is a hands-off graph showing that people were sad when Heath Ledger died and were happy on National Holidays. What a tragic loss of public access to a valuable resource that we ourselves are creating.

If the movement to make social networking a distributed, decentralized phenomenon ends up succeeding and capturing these kinds of benefits of scale - we're going to look back at this point in history and think it's absurd that one company kept so much important knowledge from society at large.

Map Out Government Data With DataMashe

On a roll here with some great stuff from the past few weeks on PSFK. Thanks again for highlighting the great work being done with http://www.data.gov/ & http://www.datamasher.org/

Earlier this year, we wrote about the creation of Data.gov, a site that allows access to a large amount of US government data. DataMasher is a tool that takes these vast quantities of information and allows you to whittle it down into simpler terms, offering an easy way to get hard data on certain topics without any intrusive media spin.

You can visualize and compare data state by state in various combinations (in map or list form), and contribute to the site by adding your own data sets and rating other users mash-ups.

[via Information Aesthetics]

Nudographics

Coke did this so well in Europe, but puma have sexed it up pretty nicely.

Models strip down for a bare market - http://theindex.puma.com/
By Edmund Tadros | NEWS.com.au | September 24, 2009 09:37am

These models strip as the share market goes down / Supplied

Not sure why, but he spends the entire market day playing with his barbell / Supplied

• New iPhone app animates market movements
• Features male and female models stripping
• Sponsored by a Sportswear company

UNDER normal circumstances the daily movement of the share market might only hold the interest of investors.

But a Sportswear company - we won't mention their name or the product line they're trying to spruik - has come up with a way that will have many hoping for the ASX 200 share market index to slump.

The company has developed an iPhone application and a related website that has male and female models stripping as the Australian share market drops and putting clothes back on as the market index increase in value.

The data feed of the share market's movements are on a 15-minute delay and there is also the option to monitor the US share market Dow Jones industrial index and the German DAX share market index.

When the respective share market is closed, the models are shown sleeping.

And, for better or worse, no matter how much the share market tanks, the models don't go nude.

Social Media is Slowly Changing the Demographics of Political Engagement

Thanks again ReadWriteWeb for this post on social media's growing impact on the political lanscape

Traditionally, political participation has always been highly correlated with income and education. According to a new report (PDF), this is still holds true for those who participate in political activities online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, online users with a higher income are still far more likely to participate in political activities online than those with lower incomes. At the same time, though, the Pew study also sees some hints that new forms of civic engagement through social media services could soon change this pattern.

According to this report, 31% of all users on social networking sites engage in some activity "with a civic or political focus." Pew defines this category very broadly, though, and includes relatively simple activities like 'friending' a political candidate as an "activity with political focus." In total, about 10% of all internet users have used social networks for this kind of political activity.

A far more interesting statistic is that 15% of all Internet users have left comments on websites about political or social issues, or posted images or written blog posts related to politics or social issues. What is even more interesting, though not surprising, is that young adults between 18 and 29 are far more likely to use social networks as a venue for political and civic engagement than older users. These younger users who engage in political activity online are also far more likely to participate in politics offline.

Social Media Might Level the Playing Field

Social media is mostly the domain of younger Internet users and while young adults (18-24) are, as a group, less interested in political activities online, they are far more likely than any other group to use blogs and social networking sites to engage in political discussions. About 34% of young adults make political use of social networking sites and 34% post political material on the Internet.

Users under 35 represent 72% of those users who make political use of social networks. In addition, the income and education gap for those who engage in political activities on social networks is far less pronounced when compared to those who use other forums.

Will These Trends Continue?

What will be interesting to watch, the Pew study points out, is how these younger users will use these existing networks as they get older. It will also be interesting to see if these developments will mean that socio-economic status will become less of an indicator of civic engagement, or if these new technologies will create new barriers of entry for those with a lower income and education level.

Given that the US just experienced a highly contested election cycle and is in the middle of a heated debate about health care right now, we have to wonder, though, if these numbers will continue to hold true over the next few years or if they were just a blip on the radar.

How does the web see you?

Sweet visualisation project. Mine is below

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

http://personas.media.mit.edu/

How Ad Position Affects Conversion Rates

Thanks Online Media Daily for this post on banner location.

For marketers wondering how conversion rates change depending on where ads appear on Web pages, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian appears to have an answer.

Varian calls the problem "tricky," because Google ranks ads by bid times and ad quality, so ads in higher positions tend to have higher quality. These higher-quality ads tend to have higher conversion rates. He writes in a post on the AdWords blog that this means marketers may see a correlation between auction position and conversion rates.

Another fact that influences conversions: marketers increasing bids might see their average position move lower on the page. That's because when bids increase, ads appear in new auctions, and tend to work their way up from the bottom. This can push down the campaign's overall position, he writes.

"We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that -- on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad," Varian writes. "For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions."

An ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average, Varian writes. He explains that ads above search results convert within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

Didit VP Mark Simon says the New York company sees similar conversion rates occurring with its clients. "Not all traffic is converting traffic," he says. "The trick is to offer the creative and post-click experience that draws in the right searchers and drives them to convert, while also targeting the right market segment to convert on a given term."

Social media stats

Nothing new here, but a nice video summary of some of the more interesting social media stats. Thanks Digital Buzz Blog



By Eric Qualman from Socialnomics. This is another great visualisation of the latest social media statistics that always makes for a few minutes well spent watching! It provides a range of great stats like these…

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year have met via social media
• Facebook added 100 million users in 9 months
• If Facebook would be a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
• In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
• There are over 200.000.000 Blogs. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.

The Most Engaged Brands On The Web

Thanks Techcruch for this post on the work from Charlene Li

The Most Engaged Brands On The Web

57 Comments

by Erick Schonfeld on July 20, 2009

What big brands do the best job with social media? A new study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top 100 brands by social media engagement. You can find the report embedded below or on ENGAGEMENTdb, which was presumably created with Wetpaint’s site-creation software.

The study scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Starbucks scored the highest, with 127 points. The top ten brands are:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The report categorizes brands into one of four types, depending on how many social media channels they participate in. The most engaged are “mavens,” while the least engaged are “wallflowers” (McDonalds and BP are examples). The study claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. The “mavens” saw revenues grow an average of 18 percent over the past 12 months, while the Wallflowers saw revenues drop 6 percent. I really doubt that their level of social media engagement had anything to do with their revenue growth, it is just that the strongest brands are the most engaged.

Get the report here:
ENGAGEMENTdb: Most Engaged Brands On Social Media -