29.01.2010 Ireland has the highest percentage of slow internet connections in Europe at 3.4pc and the fourth lowest percentage of connections higher than 5Mbps at 9.4pc, according to research.
Broadband lobby group IrelandOffline pointed to a survey released yesterday by Akami, a firm that delivers Windows patches to computers every month, which pointed out that the country has a higher rate of dial-up and mid-band 3G coverage than many other European nations.
“This is utterly unsurprising to us given the sheer number of Dialup and Midband 3G mobile connections in Ireland,” said IrelandOffline chairman Eamon Wallace.
“The leading countries in this survey all have wide-scale fibre deployed to the home, today.
“Irish people are more likely to be looking for that mystical Blue Light on their 3G dongles while up in the attic getting that urgent email out before they go to bed,” Wallace said.
Wallace said that second-tier countries with 20pc of their population already on fast speeds higher than 5Mbps all have plans to install fibre.
“Ireland cannot be accused of policy failure because we simply do not have a policy. It would be fairer to say we have a policy vacuum.
“Furthermore, there has been no improvement in our relative and absolute connection speeds since the previous quarterly survey was released.
“While we welcome the recent announcements of faster products from UPC and Eircom, these will have no effect on the speeds experienced across 80pc of the State, where ADSL2 and fast cable broadband are simply not available and shall not be available.
“Sadly there are no major plans to improve the deployment of fast 5Mbps-plus products beyond a few selected urban areas during 2010,” Wallace said.
By John Kennedy
Photo: Ireland has a higher rate of dial-up and mid-band 3G coverage than many other European nations, a survey released by Akami suggests
29.01.2010 Google’s John Herlihy speaks ahead of a major conference in March that will tackle such topics as creating a digital strategy; exploiting new technologies; and digitising your business model.
“We are about to be hit by the fifth big wave of computing, and that’s the mobile internet. Desktops could be pretty irrelevant in about three or four years’ time.”
That’s according to John Herlihy, vice-president of online sales and operations at Google. He was speaking about future trends ahead of the Digital Landscapes event that is to be held by UCD Smurfit School on 3 March in Dublin, as part of the school’s Growing Ireland series.
Herlihy and other speakers will examine how businesses can utilise technology, and in particular the online arena, to transform their business models and create growth. He is just one of an impressive line-up that includes Dr Chris Horn, Colm Long of Facebook, Eamonn Fallon of Daft.ie, Dylan Collins of Jolt Online, Dr John Breslin, co-founder of Boards.ie and Martin Murphy of HP. Eamon Ryan, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, will also speak at the event.
According to Herlihy, mobile is just one way in which the internet will continue to revolutionise the way businesses operate and go to market. “With over 1.5 billion people online worldwide, all connected, creating, communicating and searching for information, online business will be a key factor in the rebuilding of the Irish economy in the coming months.
“Businesses that focus more on online opportunities will have a greater chance of speeding up their growth and competing during the downturn,” he continued. “In truth, there are four million people here in Ireland and 6.3 billion on the planet. Businesses must focus their efforts on people outside of Ireland. Clearly online has got to be part of that strategy.”
Digital Landscapes takes place on Wednesday, 3 March, 2010, from 7.40am to 12.30pm at O’Reilly Hall, Belfield, UCD. For more information or to book, visit UCD's Growing Ireland website or phone 01 7168050.
Photo: John Herlihy, Google's vice-president of online sales and operations
by Jason Kincaid on January 28, 2010 This week, social networking site MyYearbook launched a revamped design, changing some key UI elements to better reflect the way people use the site. One of the more interesting points of the redesign isn’t its appearance though — it’s how it was actually put together. Rather than simply rolling out a new design, MyYearbook actually polled its userbase for suggestions, then drafted some mockups that users voted on. The result? Users favor the new design by a factor of over 3 to 1, without the kind of backlash other sites have seen from their redesigns.
The most obvious change to the site is the logo, which has gone from cartoony to something a little more professional (though it still has a couple of smiley faces). The navigation bar has also been simplified. CEO Geoff Cook says that over time MyYearBook had integrated a bunch of gaming menu options into the main navigation area, without doing much to differentiate the core features that actually make the site a social network. Now, they’ve been moved to a different section of the header.
This is actually only Phase I of a two-part change; soon MyYearBook will be modifying profile pages to more prominently feature Chatter streams. A Chatter stream looks visually similar to Facebook’s News Feed, but features a more heavy emphasis on meeting new people rather than only seeing content from your friends. The default Chatter feed displays recent content updates from other users in your vicinity (assuming you’ve told MyYearbook where you are), and there are tabs to see updates from just your friends.
Because MyYearBook is a social network, it obviously knows some key demographic information about each of its users. With that in hand, the site pulled together some interesting data analyzing exactly which members were in favor of the new design, and which ones weren’t. The conclusion? While the new design was favored over the new design by over 3 to 1 when averaged across all members polled, there was an obvious trend when age was taken into consideration: the older the user was, the more averse they were to the new design. That may not be especially surprising, but it’s interesting to see just how consistent the graph below is. http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/28/myyearbook-redesign/
BYZachary WilsonThu Jan 28, 2010 Be my friend, get a free bagel! That's the message Einstein Bros. Bagels is telling potential customers on Facebook, and, at least in visible numbers, it's paying off. The bagel-and-schmear giveaway started less than three full days ago, and already the bagel chain has increased its Facebook fan count from a measly 4,700 to a massive 336,000-plus. According to the company, this is the first instance of a Facebook advertiser providing a free offer though instant digital coupons. Is free the social media marketing campaign of the future?
Einstein Bros. is calling this the world's biggest bagel giveaway, and if its hundreds of thousands of new fans cash in for their $2.50 bagel--or $840,000 worth of would-be sales--it certainly will be. Numbers don't mean everything, though--how many times have you followed and retweeted a company on Twitter during a contest just to turn around and unfollow them when it ends? (I didn't win those Lady Gaga tickets, so bye bye @vcastmusic.)
One of the most interesting things about Einstein Bros.'s campaign is that it has an indefinite end date. "We are gauging customers in real time," the company told us over email this morning. "We're looking at not only the number of Einstein Bros. Bagels fans, but also the rate in which we continue to add them."
Einstein Bros. worked with Facebook to develop the campaign, innovating features like staggered coupon expiration dates to control traffic to the restaurants. The company has "done extensive homework to ensure that this promotion is a success."
A recent Nielsen survey showed that globally people spent an average of more than five and a half hours per month on social networking sites this past December, an 82% increase year-over-year. In December 2007, we were spending just over two hours per month, so in just two years we've more than doubled our social networking time. In the U.S., there was a 210% increase in total minutes spent on social networking and blog sites year-over-year. If the future is social media, then apparently the future is now.
Major social media sites are ramping up their user- and advertising-keeping features at a similar speed. A new feature currently testing on Facebook will allow advertisers to buy "cost per acquisition" ads, where the advertiser pays for users who click on the ad and then go on to make a purchase, as opposed to the current pay-per-click model popular Internet-wide. And over on Twitter, the new Local Trends feature that allows users to watch what's trending in their respective cities is making the site more and more targeted. Access to city-specific and ultra-targeted data is something advertisers could be very interested in.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are playing a part in reaching out to young people on Holocaust Memorial Day – but do they really have an impact? Posted byMercedes Bunz Wednesday 27 January 2010 11.23 GMTguardian.co.uk
"On 27 January 1945, on Saturday, at around 9am the first Russian soldier from a reconnaissance unit of the 100th Infantry Division appeared on the grounds of the prisoners' infirmary in Monowitz. The entire division arrived half an hour later," reads the status update on Facebook of the Auschwitz memorial page. More than 50 people so far have clicked to say they "like" this.
Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and to keep the memory alive, more and more organisations are turning to social media.
In the UK, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is taking a new approach. While a memorial ceremony will take place in London's Guildhall alongside hundreds of community events across the UK, the trust has also adapted the act of rememberance for the digital world.
The use of digital engagement to keep such memories alive is becoming more and more common, but it is also controversial: it is claimed that it might just be a simple way for users to ease their conscience. As digital critic Evgeny Morozov puts it, there is a danger that this form of activism makes you feel you are engaged when, for example, you join a "Feed Africa" group on Facebook, while you actually don't make a difference at all.
On the other hand, digital involvement is becoming increasingly important as the media landscape changes. So this form of activism could be a way to raise interest and pull in users, especially young people.
"The act signifies a commitment to helping build a safer, inclusive society where the differences between us are respected," says the trust. Within a week, more than 20,000 people have lit a candle on the website and thus gained more information about history and ongoing events.
"The majority of visitors to the Auschwitz memorial are students and other young people," said Auschwitz museum official Pawel Sawicki when the Facebook page was launched. "Our mission is not only to teach them about the history, but to be responsible in the world of today. We should find every possible way to reach out, so why shouldn't we use the same tool in that young people use to communicate?"
Did you know the United States Speedskating team has won 75 Olympic medals, making it the most successful U.S. winter Olympics sport?
But the global economic bear doesn’t take medal count into consideration, and last year the speedskating team was without a title sponsor when Dutch bank DSB went bankrupt. (Why a U.S. bank didn’t sponsor the U.S. team is a mystery to me).
Into the breech stepped comedian Stephen Colbert, whose Colbert Nation is now sponsoring the team (in a wacky case of real people sponsoring real people through the conduit of a fictional character). However, the sponsorship only runs through February’s Vancouver Olympics, after which the team will be sponsorless once more. Gold level sponsorship is $300,000 a year for four years, which seems like a pittance in the sponsorship industry?
With the assistance of their agency Flint Group, the U.S. Speedskating team is using social media to connect with a new generation of fans, making sponsorship more attractive to potential partners. (disclosure: Flint Group is a Convince & Convert client)
Facebook As Home Base
I’ve written before about the potential of using Facebook as your social media home base, and in this instance U.S. Speedskating is doing exactly that. Facebook is more interactive and easier to update than the U.S. Speedskating Web site, and with 3-4 posts per day, and many of them photos or videos, the team is keeping fans engaged on Facebook. Wisely, they are trying to tie into the Colbert program as much as possible, without shifting the focus away from the athletes. Their recent Facebook program of having fans send in photos of themselves wearing their Colbert Nation caps is an example of this integrated approach.
You’d like to see more fans of the page (~1,200 as I write this), but I suspect interest will pick up as the Olympics near, and the program matures (the entire social media effort is fewer than 30 days old). They are also posting on related Facebook pages, especially those devoted to broader Olympics coverage, to make sure speedskating fans know the new team page is out there. This is good tactic that is often overlooked. As long as you don’t get spammy, posting on other Facebook pages about your page is perfectly legitimate. Just remember to keep it relevant. If it feels to you like it might be a little over the line, it IS.
Shine the Light on Others, and It Shines Back on You
I also like the way the team is highlighting bloggers. Using a custom Facebook tab called “Featured Bloggers” they are promoting blogs devoted to skating that have covered the team (as well as Colbert’s blog). It’s a good example of using their social graph to boost the social graph of bloggers that cover them. Smart.
Listen and Engage
While Facebook is the core, the team is also interacting with fans (and potential fans) in the wild, with a social media listening program that used an Olympics ticket giveaway as a rationale for interacting. (if you donated to the team, you were entered to win tickets).
Agency personnel are also commenting on blogs, providing contextually appropriate links to the Facebook home base. Note that Flint Group is not pretending to BE U.S. Speedskating, but appropriately says in the blog comment that they are helping with social media. A best practice.
Telling Stories With Video
As you might expect, there are some intriguing stories surrounding the team, including Simon Cho who came to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant from Korea; Allison Baver, who shattered her leg in an accident last year; and of course Apolo Ohno, the most well-known U.S. speedskater, and Dancing with the Stars alum.
Most of these stories are being told via video, with a YouTube channel that’s cross-posted to Facebook. The team is trying to find the budget to send members of the Flint Group to Vancouver to live-blog and video blog the speedskating events, as well as produce live Facebook and Twitter updates.
Like Herding Cats Wearing Skates
The two biggest challenges seem to be not getting overwhelmed by Stephen Colbert, and operating a social media program where you have very little ability to manage the participants.
Corporate marketers, does this sound familiar?
The speedskating team has many strong personalities, almost all of whom have their own Web sites and social media outreach. Plus, creating social media content isn’t paramount in the minds of the athletes these days…something about having to train for the Olympics…
As with many companies where team members have their own personal brands, the U.S. Speedskating team has to work to integrate multiple outposts under an umbrella, while consistently making the case that supporting the team’s unified social efforts is as valuable as individual initiatives. The agency has built and distributed content creation guidelines to the skaters to help consistency.
So far, so good. While this integrated social media program doesn’t have a ton of eyeballs on it yet, I think they’re executing wisely.
LOS ANGELES, Jan 27 (Reuters) - College senior Alyssa Ravasio gave up MySpace on the day she got a Facebook account and never looked back. She has already lost interest in Twitter. But how does Facebook know it can keep her loyalty?
The brief history of the Internet is littered with the ghosts of Websites that people have abandoned in their relentless pursuit of something newer, faster, better and cooler.
Tech-savvy Ravasio, a 21-year-old UCLA student designing her undergraduate degree around the Internet's impact on society and communication, is irked by changes privately owned Facebook has made.
But for now, she says, Facebook is keeping her allegiance because of a concept called "technological lock-in." In other words, the site has become an essential part of her life.
"I think Facebook is the most valuable Internet commodity in existence, more so than Google, because they are positioning themselves to be our online identity via Facebook connect," Ravasio said.
"It's your real name, it's your real friends, and assuming they manage to navigate the privacy quagmire, they're poised to become your universal login," she said. "I would almost argue that Facebook is the new mobile phone. It's the new thing you need to keep in touch, almost a requirement of modern social life."
THE QWERTY KEYBOARD
Technological lock-in is the idea that the more a society adopts a certain technology, the more unlikely users are to switch. Its the reason why the QWERTY keyboard layout, devised for typewriters in the 1870s, is still the standard despite the development of several more logical configurations.
And Facebook, which has more than 100 million users in the United States and 350 million worldwide, appears to have nearly achieved technological lock-in, according to web marketing research company Comscore.com.
In December, for example, Facebook recorded nearly 112 million unique visitors in the United States, compared to 57 million for MySpace and 20 million for Twitter, according to Comscore.
Users also spent much longer on Facebook, averaging 246.9 minutes in December, compared to 112.7 minutes on MySpace and 24.3 minutes on Twitter.
"It's something that feeds on itself," Comscore director Andrew Lipsman said. "The more people who come into the network, the more connected they become to each other and there actually becomes a greater cost to leaving the network."
"At some point it becomes a critical mass," he said. "It becomes so strong that its difficult to unlock and I think Facebook has reached that point."
Skeptics might say that the same argument could have been made for MySpace just a few years ago, when it reigned supreme among social networking sites to the extent that few American teens would be caught dead without an account.
'THEIR GAME TO LOSE'
But those who study web trends say that MySpace, while wildly popular, never quite reached the worldwide domination of Facebook, which then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg started in his dorm room in 2004.
Facebook initially limited membership to Harvard, then universities, a move that heightened the draw for teens. And once Facebook opened registration to anyone in 2006, it was flooded with members between the ages of 25 to 45.
Tim Groeling, a professor of communication studies at UCLA, said that because it was possible to sign up for Facebook without dumping MySpace, many young people had accounts on both sites until the center of gravity slowly shifted to Facebook.
"MySpace wasn't focused as much on the social networking aspect, which they seem to enjoy. It wasn't quite the tight-knit social machine that Facebook seems to be," he said.
"Facebook has a certain amount of lock-in that's going to be hard for people to get past," Groeling said. "It's possible it could happen, but it has to overcome a high threshold of user cost. It's their game to lose at this point."
Ravasio says that, technological lock-in aside, Facebook could potentially lose her if it keeps annoying her, as it did when it abruptly changed a default privacy setting so that members' pictures were public.
"All these (Internet) companies saying they'll figure out how to monetize later seem to be forgetting that 'monetizing' has historically always meant a degradation of user experience quality," she said.
28.01.2010 WiMax wireless broadband technology has the potential to provide internet access to entire cities and other large areas, the Telecommunications and Internet Federation said yesterday.
“WiMax offers a high-speed broadband alternative for Irish businesses and consumers,” TIF director Tommy McCabe said.
“At present, WiMax can provide broadband speeds of 2Mbps up to 8Mbps, a high quality of service and is available on mobile, portable and fixed-end user equipment.
“However, it must be noted that fibre, cable and satellite will be necessary where larger bandwidth or greater distances are required,” McCabe added.
ComReg spectrum development manager Kevin Kennedy said that radio spectrum is an important national resource that supports a wide range of services, including mobile communications and wireless broadband, such as WiMax.
“The effective management and efficient use of this natural resource can lead to further competition and innovation to the benefit of consumers. WiMax uses frequencies between 3.4Ghz and 3.8Ghz and is an example of efficient use of licensed spectrum,” Kennedy said.
Peter Hendrick, Airspeed technical director, said WiMax is a proven technology with the ability to deliver a premium service level agreement to business and residential customers.
“Wi-Max is very suited to applications requiring a symmetrical broadband service,” Hendrick said.
David Boundy, research manager Intel Labs Europe, added: “As a major driver in the support and development of WiMax, Intel has designed embedded WiMax solutions for a variety of mobile devices, supporting the future of high-speed broadband on-the-go.”
27.01.2010 Ireland’s largest telecoms operator, Eircom, has launched a 24Mbps residential broadband service that from today it says will be available to more than 550,000 homes.
The product, which offers download speeds of up to 24Mbps and upload speeds of 768kbps, is available to more than 550,000 wholesale and retail customers across the country.
The 24Mbps DSL service is ideal for downloading high-definition films, large files or gaming online, Eircom said.
Eircom customers who purchase Eircom Home Turbo will benefit from an increased download allowance of 75GB per month. Eircom Home Turbo is available to both new and existing Eircom broadband customers for €47.99 (including VAT) per month.
“Offering 24Mbps underlines how investment in Eircom’s next-generation network has delivered much faster broadband speeds across the country as demand for these products grows,” Paul Donovan, the CEO of Eircom, explained.
“This is an important first step as the company moves to offer new innovative broadband products that will offer greater speed and capacity for new and existing wholesale and retail customers,” Donovan said.
Earlier this month, Singapore Technologies Telemedia’s (ST Telemedia) acquisition of a controlling interest in Eircom in a €140-million cash and shares deal was finalised.
On Sunday January 31, 2010, the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards will air live on CBS. Mashable founder Pete Cashmore will be at the ceremony (lucky dog!) but even for those of us watching at home, the Recording Academy has taken great strides to make this year’s ceremony more interactive and fan-centric than ever before.
The Academy has also embraced social media for the 2010 Grammys, big time. We had a chance to talk to the RA about the move toward social media, the challenges associated with the transition and the response from the fans, artists and other Academy members.
Why Social Media, Why Now
The Recording Academy — which was founded in 1957 and is dedicated to improving the quality of life and the cultural condition for music and the people who make it — is your typical well established organization that is reticent to change. For instance, an award for Best Rap Album wasn’t even added to the Grammy ceremony until 1996 (a Best Rap Performance award was first issued in 1989, the Academy’s first official recognition of the genre). If it can take that long to fully recognize one of the most popular music genres (Best Rap Song wasn’t awarded until 2004), you can imagine how difficult it would be for the organization to embrace social media.
Social media introduces an entire paradigm shift into how the Academy can both connect with music lovers and with how its message is consumed and presented. That said, the Academy is aware that the paradigm shift is happening, not just to the industry, but to our culture as a whole. In order to stay relevant and connected, the Academy would have to embrace this new way of communicating. I spoke with Evan Greene, the Chief Marketing Officer of the Recording Academy about how the Grammys are embracing social media this year and how and why that decision was made.
Evan told me that the Academy established a social media task force in 2008 and did a lot of outreach in 2009, basically assessing the climate, the places where the fans were spending their time, and evaluating the decision to jump in full force. Evan made it very clear that the Academy didn’t want to just haphazardly get involved, if the organization was going to do social media, it was going to do it correctly.
Biggest Challenges
When I asked Evan what the most challenging aspect of adopting a social media strategy was, he told me that it was making the decision to actually embrace social media at all. He explained that the Academy has always tried to manage and keep very careful control over its message and brand. By embracing social media, that means giving up that control. Because while the Academy can connect directly with fans, fans can also connect back. That means accepting criticism and engaging in a discussion in a public way, something that just isn’t the norm for the Academy.
I was struck by just how common this fear is, not just with older and more established brands, but even with smaller and newer companies. Social media does inherently mean that you are giving up the ability to centrally control the message. However, what is interesting is that the companies that embrace and accept that grain of truth are usually those that are most successful with social media.
After making the decision to fully engage, Grammy.com was completely rebuilt and official presences were made on Twitter (@theGrammys), Facebook () and YouTube (). Interaction and fan-generated content from these platforms and others all contributed to what has become the centerpiece for the Grammys 2010 campaign: We’re All Fans.
We’re All Fans
Fans are the core of popular music. And unlike industry executives (and sometimes even the artists themselves), fans are often the first to embrace new technologies and social networks to share and remix content by their favorites artists. So with that in mind, TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency of record for the Grammy awards, created a multi-format multimedia campaign related to Grammy-nominated artists, curated entirely from fan-generated content.
If you visit WereAllFans.com, you’ll see portraits of some of the nominated artists composed entirely of real-time content from Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. The content is refreshed and fed in and users can click on aspects of the content to view or play it back all on the page. It’s a pretty cool way to show stuff off.
Also cool is the television campaign for We’re All Fans. Comprised of YouTube performances that real fans made covering the nominated artist’s song. Not only is it a cool visualization of the campaign, but for the fans that made those videos themselves, it must be amazing to see something you made and created airing on CBS and on the Internet for the whole world to see. To be clear, these weren’t performances done specifically for an advertising spot, this was a clip composed of stuff that real fans made just because they’re fans and they wanted to share their respective talents on YouTube.
The first spot was for Lady Gaga, who has an extremely active social media following.
After less than three weeks it has gathered more than 1.1 million views and is currently the 19th most viewed video in the music category for the month of January on YouTube.
Artist Feedback
At this point, most major music artists are embracing social media to some extent, be it Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or personal blogs. Connecting directly with fans is extremely valuable, especially in an area like music that is such an inherently collective experience. To that end, the artists themselves have taken the lead on some of the promotions for the campaign.
Lady Gaga tweeted a link to her “We’re All Fans” video as soon as it went live (a day before it first aired on CBS) and embedded it on both her official website and her YouTube channel. Likewise, Beyoncehas also embedded her spot on her official website.
Fan Feedback
Fans, especially those featured in some of the TV spots, have responded really positively to the campaign — as you would expect. However, an interesting component to the We’re All Fans website is the FanBuzz Visualizer.
The visualizer (embedded at the right) is powered by Visible Technologies and it is a real-time visualization of fan activity across the web. Basically the widget (which is interactive — feel free to play with it and move it around) searches various social channels for comments, conversations and mentions of Grammy-nominated artists. This is then aggregated and you can see who has the most mentions within a certain window or overall.
Real-time visualizations are still new enough to be unique in and of itself, but what we find really interesting is that the information is available and shareable. For observers, this is insight into the online popularity of some of the nominated artists, for fans, it might be a way to push engagement.
The Awards
The Grammy Awards themselves will not be broadcast online (that’s a decision that is as much in the hands of CBS as it is The Recording Academy), but the Academy is making a conscious effort to keep fans engaged online before and during the show.
For 72-hours before the Grammy Awards air on CBS, Grammy.com will be streaming live performances on its website that are ancillary to the awards themselves. Plus, the now almost normative tradition of online red-carpet streamings will take place. During the Awards themselves, Grammy.com will feature backstage interviews with winning artists, which is pretty cool. Even if Grammy isn’t ready to embrace online streaming of the award ceremony, they are at least aware that fans are likely to be online Tweeting or posting to Facebook during the broadcast. That’s a start.
The Future
When I asked Evan about the Academy’s plans for the future, he made it clear that social media is something the RA intends to continue to invest in. Internally the organization has been pleased with the results of the campaign and of the actual consequences of embracing social media. Fears about not being able to control the message seem to be largely assuaged when caution is thrown to the wind and engagement actually takes place.
True engagement is a major component of any successful social media endeavor. If the Recording Academy continues to embrace the shifting realities and engage with fans, the net result just might be that viewers and fans take a more active interest in the Grammy Awards.
What do you think about how established organizations are embracing social media? What do you think of the “We’re All Fans” campaign? Let us know!
On Sunday January 31, 2010, the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards will air live on CBS. Mashable founder Pete Cashmore will be at the ceremony (lucky dog!) but even for those of us watching at home, the Recording Academy has taken great strides to make this year’s ceremony more interactive and fan-centric than ever before.
The Academy has also embraced social media for the 2010 Grammys, big time. We had a chance to talk to the RA about the move toward social media, the challenges associated with the transition and the response from the fans, artists and other Academy members.
Why Social Media, Why Now
The Recording Academy — which was founded in 1957 and is dedicated to improving the quality of life and the cultural condition for music and the people who make it — is your typical well established organization that is reticent to change. For instance, an award for Best Rap Album wasn’t even added to the Grammy ceremony until 1996 (a Best Rap Performance award was first issued in 1989, the Academy’s first official recognition of the genre). If it can take that long to fully recognize one of the most popular music genres (Best Rap Song wasn’t awarded until 2004), you can imagine how difficult it would be for the organization to embrace social media.
Social media introduces an entire paradigm shift into how the Academy can both connect with music lovers and with how its message is consumed and presented. That said, the Academy is aware that the paradigm shift is happening, not just to the industry, but to our culture as a whole. In order to stay relevant and connected, the Academy would have to embrace this new way of communicating. I spoke with Evan Greene, the Chief Marketing Officer of the Recording Academy about how the Grammys are embracing social media this year and how and why that decision was made.
Evan told me that the Academy established a social media task force in 2008 and did a lot of outreach in 2009, basically assessing the climate, the places where the fans were spending their time, and evaluating the decision to jump in full force. Evan made it very clear that the Academy didn’t want to just haphazardly get involved, if the organization was going to do social media, it was going to do it correctly.
Biggest Challenges
When I asked Evan what the most challenging aspect of adopting a social media strategy was, he told me that it was making the decision to actually embrace social media at all. He explained that the Academy has always tried to manage and keep very careful control over its message and brand. By embracing social media, that means giving up that control. Because while the Academy can connect directly with fans, fans can also connect back. That means accepting criticism and engaging in a discussion in a public way, something that just isn’t the norm for the Academy.
I was struck by just how common this fear is, not just with older and more established brands, but even with smaller and newer companies. Social media does inherently mean that you are giving up the ability to centrally control the message. However, what is interesting is that the companies that embrace and accept that grain of truth are usually those that are most successful with social media.
After making the decision to fully engage, Grammy.com was completely rebuilt and official presences were made on Twitter (@theGrammys), Facebook () and YouTube (). Interaction and fan-generated content from these platforms and others all contributed to what has become the centerpiece for the Grammys 2010 campaign: We’re All Fans.
We’re All Fans
Fans are the core of popular music. And unlike industry executives (and sometimes even the artists themselves), fans are often the first to embrace new technologies and social networks to share and remix content by their favorites artists. So with that in mind, TBWA\Chiat\Day, the agency of record for the Grammy awards, created a multi-format multimedia campaign related to Grammy-nominated artists, curated entirely from fan-generated content.
If you visit WereAllFans.com, you’ll see portraits of some of the nominated artists composed entirely of real-time content from Twitter (), Flickr (), Facebook and YouTube. The content is refreshed and fed in and users can click on aspects of the content to view or play it back all on the page. It’s a pretty cool way to show stuff off.
Also cool is the television campaign for We’re All Fans. Comprised of YouTube performances that real fans made covering the nominated artist’s song. Not only is it a cool visualization of the campaign, but for the fans that made those videos themselves, it must be amazing to see something you made and created airing on CBS and on the Internet for the whole world to see. To be clear, these weren’t performances done specifically for an advertising spot, this was a clip composed of stuff that real fans made just because they’re fans and they wanted to share their respective talents on YouTube.
The first spot was for Lady Gaga, who has an extremely active social media following, check it out:
After less than three weeks it has gathered more than 1.1 million views and is currently the 19th most viewed video in the music category for the month of January on YouTube.
Artist Feedback
At this point, most major music artists are embracing social media to some extent, be it Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (), or personal blogs. Connecting directly with fans is extremely valuable, especially in an area like music that is such an inherently collective experience. To that end, the artists themselves have taken the lead on some of the promotions for the campaign.
Lady Gaga tweeted a link to her “We’re All Fans” video as soon as it went live (a day before it first aired on CBS) and embedded it on both her official website and her YouTube channel. Likewise, Beyonce () has also embedded her spot on her official website.
Fan Feedback
Fans, especially those featured in some of the TV spots, have responded really positively to the campaign — as you would expect. However, an interesting component to the We’re All Fans website is the FanBuzz Visualizer.
The visualizer (embedded at the right) is powered by Visible Technologies and it is a real-time visualization of fan activity across the web. Basically the widget (which is interactive — feel free to play with it and move it around) searches various social channels for comments, conversations and mentions of Grammy-nominated artists. This is then aggregated and you can see who has the most mentions within a certain window or overall.
Real-time visualizations are still new enough to be unique in and of itself, but what we find really interesting is that the information is available and shareable. For observers, this is insight into the online popularity of some of the nominated artists, for fans, it might be a way to push engagement.
The Awards
The Grammy Awards themselves will not be broadcast online (that’s a decision that is as much in the hands of CBS as it is The Recording Academy), but the Academy is making a conscious effort to keep fans engaged online before and during the show.
For 72-hours before the Grammy Awards air on CBS, Grammy.com will be streaming live performances on its website that are ancillary to the awards themselves. Plus, the now almost normative tradition of online red-carpet streamings will take place. During the Awards () themselves, Grammy.com will feature backstage interviews with winning artists, which is pretty cool. Even if Grammy isn’t ready to embrace online streaming of the award ceremony, they are at least aware that fans are likely to be online Tweeting or posting to Facebook during the broadcast. That’s a start.
The Future
When I asked Evan about the Academy’s plans for the future, he made it clear that social media is something the RA intends to continue to invest in. Internally the organization has been pleased with the results of the campaign and of the actual consequences of embracing social media. Fears about not being able to control the message seem to be largely assuaged when caution is thrown to the wind and engagement actually takes place.
True engagement is a major component of any successful social media endeavor. If the Recording Academy continues to embrace the shifting realities and engage with fans, the net result just might be that viewers and fans take a more active interest in the Grammy Awards.
What do you think about how established organizations are embracing social media? What do you think of the “We’re All Fans” campaign? Let us know!
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, says the site will undergo a major redesign later this year to better embrace the real-time web
By Claudine Beaumont, Technology Editor Published: 8:45AM GMT 22 Jan 2010
Rose said that the new version of Digg, which will go live in the next few months, would represent the biggest change in the site's history.
"We're making some drastic changes, but they're much-needed drastic changes," he told The Telegraph. "People are going to be shocked at some of the directions we're taking. You have to be comfortable with completely tearing down and throwing away a bunch of ideas."
He said that the placement of the navigation bar and Digg button would change, as would the emphasis placed on photos. "When you see the new design, you're going to go, 'Wow, this is not the same site'."
Digg, which was launched in 2004, is a social news service designed to help web users discover and share content from around the internet. Digg members submit links to stories, and the user community votes on how interesting those stories are by "digging" the articles they like, and "burying" those they don't. The site attracts more than 35 million unique users per month, and many news websites and blogs feature Digg buttons to allow readers to easily share articles they've enjoyed.
The revamped site will also focus much more on real-time information and recommended content, said Rose, with an emphasis on what friends and tastemakers within a user's social graph are consuming.
"It will really be more about what people within one or two degrees of separation are up to – what they're consuming and enjoying," said Rose.
"We've realised there's so much more happening around the web – people are 'touching' pieces of content that they care about, and sharing it with their friends. We want to embrace all these different channels – Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, email – in which people are touching content.
"In the next version of Digg you'll see stories being presented to you in a more real-time nature, especially stories that your friends have touched. It will not be just about Digg.com, but also embracing all the content that your friends touch on other websites. It's about being that place where people say, 'I'm going to take a look at Digg because it provides me insight into what's trending, what's popular, what's hot from all over these different places where people exchange information'."
Here are 5 ways you can tap into the increasingly social nature of video:
1. Post videos to your Facebook profile
This is the slam-dunk, no-brainer way to make video a social experience. The number of videos viewed on Facebook is up an astounding 1800% this year. Due to this tremendous growth, Facebook has become the third most popular video viewing destination online.
U.S. users are already spending an average of 5 ½ hours per month on Facebook, so there’s serious potential that your network of friends or fans will browse your posted videos at some point during their frequent visits. The comment function is also very user-friendly on Facebook; and because all users are already signed in, there is very little obstruction to people making comments about the video you posted and beginning a snowballing conversation.
The same goes for MySpace. However, video viewing has been stagnant there, and overall usage has slumped—so if you’ve only got time to share video actively on one profile, Facebook is the ticket.
2. Be active on YouTube
In the past minute, 20 hours of video content were uploaded to YouTube. That means there is something for everyone on the site, and there are bound to be hundreds of video clips on topics you’re passionate about.
Create a YouTube account and start adding videos to your profile. Find users with similar interests, share your common-themed videos, and use YouTube’s friend feature to develop your social connections.
If you have a webcam, you can record video responses to individual YouTube clips, creating a high level of interactivity. You can also embed those videos on your blog or Facebook to engage across platforms. More than 1 million people have already added the YouTube Video Box application to their Facebook page to enable direct embedding of YouTube content on their profiles.
Here’s an example of a YouTube video box for the movie Avatar.
3. Join live-streaming sites
An example of the programming you can watch live with other users on Justin.tv
Video lets people share thoughts and opinions in real time in a way that static images and text simply cannot replicate.
Sites like Justin.tv and UStream show thousands of live broadcasts daily, including conversations on interesting topics and musical performances.
Most of the live feeds allow for live chat during the live streaming video presentations, as well.
Some frequent contributors to these sites have regularly scheduled times they appear so that a community of fans can gather to discuss the video as it’s shown.
4. Use the video functions on social aggregators
Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and most other social aggregators have great video functions that let you share video with the community. Once videos are uploaded, you can comment and vote on individual videos you found interesting or humorous.
Digg also lets you share any video you find on the site through many other social networks. All you have to do is click on one of the social network icons underneath a video and you instantly share it with your other communities.
And finally…
5. Shoot your own video blog
This last tip to make online video social is not for everyone, but video blogging (vlogging) is easier than ever. Popular blog platforms like Tumblr and Wordpress and video sites like YouTube and Viddler have simplified the upload and sharing process. Video is a more engaging medium than text or photos, and sharing via a video blog adds nuance to your ideas and opinions.
As the prevalence of mobile devices with video capture increases, shooting video of yourself at the moment you get inspired will only become easier. Flip Cameras are also rapidly increasing in popularity, and at their low price of $149, it doesn’t take a large investment anymore to start making videos and sharing them with your online communities.
You can also interview other people who share your interests, like the interviews with social media practitioners that Michael Stelzner has done here at SocialMediaExaminer.com.
January 13th 2010 - DIGICEL GROUP DONATES US$ 5 MILLION FOR URGENT RELIEF EFFORTS IN HAITI Wednesday 13th January 2010 – Kingston, Jamaica:
Digicel Group, the largest mobile company in the Caribbean and fastest growing mobile company in Central America, is donating US$5 million in cash to support the urgent relief efforts needed following the widespread devastation caused by the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti yesterday. Digicel’s donation will be made to the NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) who are spearheading the relief efforts.With the impact of the earthquake resulting in considerable casualties and catastrophic damage to homes, buildings and infrastructure, Digicel is appealing to people and Governments across the world to support the people of Haiti in this their time of need. Digicel is also sending in a team of people to Haiti early on Wednesday to assist in whatever way possible with the relief efforts and to assess the impact on its communications infrastructure which incurred damage but is operational.Digicel is one of the largest companies in Haiti having launched its mobile services in 2006 – and as the largest foreign direct investor in Haiti today, Digicel is proud to serve over two million customers in Haiti and to be a part of the fabric of Haitian society. Colm Delves, Group CEO of Digicel, comments; “We are deeply upset and concerned at the news of the earthquake in Haiti and want to do whatever we can to support the desperately needed relief efforts. We hope that governments around the world will also support the people of Haiti and immediately provide much needed aid to assist with the huge recovery efforts that are now needed.“The people of Haiti welcomed us and made us their own when we launched there in 2007 and we are determined to be there for them in their time of need. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti and we would like to assure them that Digicel stands ready to assist in whatever way we can at this difficult time.”
ABOUT DIGICEL GROUP: After eight years of operation, Digicel has 8.8 million customers across its Caribbean and Central American markets and is renowned for competitive rates, unbeatable coverage, superior customer care, a wide variety of products and services and state-of-the-art handsets. By offering innovative wireless services and community support, Digicel has become a leading brand in the Caribbean and has placed the region at the cutting-edge of wireless communications – the company is also a recent entrant to the Central American and Pacific markets.Digicel is incorporated in Bermuda and now has operations in 32 markets world-wide. Its Caribbean and Central American markets comprise Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, Bonaire, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Curacao, Dominica, El Salvador, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Panama, St Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Turks & Caicos. The Caribbean company also has coverage in St. Martin and St. Barths. Digicel Pacific comprises Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.In total, across its 32 markets, Digicel has 10.3 million subscribers.Digicel is the lead sponsor of Caribbean and Central American sports teams, including the West Indies Cricket Team and Special Olympics teams throughout the region. Digicel is also title sponsor of the Digicel Caribbean Championships and the Copa de Naciones Digicel, which are the Caribbean and Central American qualifiers to the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Specialist search-and-rescue teams from the US, Britain, Canada, France, Venezuela and Iceland were today scrambled to join the international relief effort in Haiti as charities launched urgent appeals following the devastating earthquake. President Obama said American military planes were flying over the area to assess the damage while emergency supplies were being sent and rescue teams were preparing for deployment. The US coast guard said it was sending cutters and aircraft close to Haiti to give humanitarian assistance. Last night a C-130 plane carrying part of the military assessment team landed in Haiti. A second C-130 was en route. The team is tasked with determining what resources are needed to respond to the disaster there. A British flight carrying doctors and firefighters, as well as 10 tonnes of rescue equipment, was the first plane to take off from Gatwick this afternoon once the airport had reopened after the snow. The units, from fire and rescue services in West Sussex, Kent, the West Midlands, Manchester, Lincolnshire and Lancashire, had been mustering at the airport since this morning. Douglas Alexander, the secretary of state for international development, told the Commons: "We have mobilised a UK fire and rescue service team of 64 people with dogs and heavy rescue equipment." Members of the UK's specialist rescue services are routinely deployed overseas, and many of those bound for Haiti are veterans of the Indonesian earthquake last October. In Geneva, UN officials said they expected to issue an international emergency appeal for funds and other assistance for Haiti as soon as the needs on the ground had been assessed. Germany was sending €1m (£900,000) in immediate aid. Its foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said: "I'm shocked by the dimensions of the earthquake disaster in Haiti." The Inter-American Development Bank said it would provide $200,000 (£120,000) in aid. The World Bank, which said its local offices were destroyed but most staff were safe, planned to send a team to help assess damage and plan a recovery. It announced $100m in emergency funding, while the UN pledged £10m. Charities launched appeals and began directing staff and supplies to Haiti as the charity umbrella group the Disasters Emergency Committee met to assess the situation. Save the Children said it had released £50,000 from its funds to help, while Oxfam said it had a 100-strong team working across the country and would be responding with public health, water and sanitation services to prevent the spread of waterborne disease. Penny Lawrence, Oxfam's international director, said: "More than 85% of people in Haiti already live in poverty. With major buildings destroyed it is likely that less well-constructed homes will be even more seriously affected. "This earthquake is grim news for the poor people of Haiti. We are calling for the generous support of the UK public to help us save lives." The medical services charity Merlin said it had launched a £250,000 emergency appeal and was mobilising a response team to fly to Haiti. Its response team co-ordinator, Paula Sansom, said: "This disaster has struck the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and the people of Haiti urgently need our help." ActionAid said it was also sending an emergency response team to Haiti with plans to help up to 20,000 people by delivering clean water, shelter and necessities such as blankets. The British Red Cross, which released £200,000 from its disaster fund, also launched an appeal. A spokesman said volunteers in Haiti were already assisting the injured and doing what they could in hospitals. "This has been a devastating earthquake on a scale not seen in this region for many years," said Pete Garratt, its disaster response manager. "The most urgent needs at this time are search and rescue, hospital care, emergency health support, clean water and shelter. Red Cross staff and volunteers are on the scene, and emergency stocks have been released within Haiti and from other warehouses in the region. However, the sheer scale of this disaster means much more will be needed." A spokeswoman said the Red Cross Red Crescent had supplies in position for 3,000 families, with supplies for thousands more in the nearby regional warehouse. The supplies consist of kitchen and personal hygiene kits, blankets, plastic sheeting for shelter and containers for storing drinking water. The charity said Vodafone had donated £25,000 to the British Red Cross Haiti earthquake appeal. Christian Aid also launched a £1m emergency appeal for victims. Dame Anne Owers, its chair, said: "This latest disaster is going to cause untold suffering and hardship, particularly in communities with very little to fall back on. There is an urgent need for emergency supplies, including food, shelter and medicine. In the longer term rebuilding is going to require massive international assistance."
An overnight success ten years in the making, social media is as transformative as it is evolutionary. At last, 2010 is expected to be the year that social media goes mainstream for business. In speaking with many executives and entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that the path towards new media enlightenment often hinges on corporate culture and specific marketplace conditions. Full social media integration often happens in stages — it’s an evolutionary process for companies and consumers alike.
Here are the ten most common stages that businesses experience as they travel the road to full social media integration.
Stage 1: Observe and Report
This is the entry point for businesses to better understand the behavior of an interactive marketplace.
Listening: Employ listening devices such as Google Alerts, Twitter Search, Radian6 (), and PR Newswire’s Social Media Metrics to track conversations and instances associated with key words.
Reporting: Distill existing social media conversations into an executive report. This early form of reporting is merely designed to provide decision makers with the information they’ll need for continued exploration of social media and its potential impact on business.
Stage 2: Setting the Stage + Dress Rehearsal
Once the initial intelligence is gathered, businesses will set the stage for social media participation. This is an interesting phase, as it often joins Stage 1 as a more comprehensive first step. Instead of researching the best ways to engage, many businesses create accounts across multiple social networks and publish content without a plan or purpose.
However, those businesses that conduct research will find a rewarding array of options and opportunities to target.
Presence: Create official presences across one or more social networks, usually Twitter () and possibly Facebook () (Fan Pages), YouTube (), and Flickr (). Early on, this is often experimental, and less about strategic engagement.
Analysis: Review activity for frequency (the rate of mentions), the state of sentiment allocation, traffic, as well as the size of connections (friends, followers, fans, etc.). Provide managers with a limited glimpse into the effects of presence and participation.
Stage 3: Socializing Media
The next stage in the evolution of a new media business is the proverbial step towards “joining the conversation.”
As companies take the stage, they will eventually pay attention to the reaction of the audience in order to respond and improve content, define future engagements, and humanize communication.
Conversation: Representative of an early form of participation, this stage usually evokes reactive engagement based on the nature of existing dialogue or mentions and also incorporates the proactive broadcasting of activity, events and announcements.
Rapid Response: Listen for potentially heated, viral, and emotional activity in order to extinguish a potential crisis or fan the flames of positive support.
Metrics: Document the aforementioned activity in order to demonstrate momentum. This is usually captured in the form of friends, fans, followers, conversations, sentiment, mentions, traffic, and reach.
Stage 4: Finding a Voice and a Sense of Purpose
This is a powerful milestone in the maturation of new media and business. By not only listening, but hearing and observing the responses and mannerisms of those who define our markets, we can surface pain points, source ideas, foster innovation, earn inspiration, learn, and feel a little empathy in order to integrate a sense of purpose into our socialized media programs.
Research: Review activity for public sentiment, including negative and neutral commentary. Observe trends in responses and ultimately behavior. This allows for a poignant understanding of where to concentrate activity, at what level, and with what voice across marketing, sales, service, and PR.
Strategic Visibility: Introduce relevance and focus. You don’t have to be everywhere in order to create presence, just in the places where you would be missed. Understanding that the social web is far more extensive than Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, brand managers search across the entire web to locate where influential dialogue transpires.
Relevance: “Chatter” or aimless broadcasting is not as effective as strategic communications and engagement. This stage reflects the exploration of goals, objectives, and value implementation. Companies begin to learn that exchange is based on trust and loyalty.
Stage 5: Turning Words Into Actions
Actions speak louder than words. Businesses must act. Once the door to social consciousness is opened, bring the spirit of your company through it to affect change.
Empathy: Social media personifies companies. It allows us to see who it is we’re hoping to reach, and what motivates them. Listening and observing is not enough. The ability to truly understand someone, their challenges, objectives, options, and experiences allows us to better connect with them.
Purpose: The shift from simple response to purposeful, strategic communication will be mutually beneficial. It is in this stage that we can truly produce captivating content and messages. In order to hold it, we have to give the audience something to believe in — something that moves them.
Stage 6: Humanizing the Brand and Defining the Experience
As Doc Searls says, “There is no market for messages.” Indeed. Through the internalization of sentiment, brands will relearn how to speak. No longer will we focus on controlling the message from conception to documentation to distribution. We lose control as our messages are introduced into the real world. Our story migrates from consumer to consumer. This chain forms a powerful connection that reveals true reactions, perception, and perspectives.
The conversations that bind us form a human algorithm that serves as the pulse of awareness, trustworthiness, and emotion.
The Humanization of the Brand: Once we truly understand the people who influence our markets, we need to establish a persona worthy of attention and affinity. A socialized version of a branding style guide is necessary.
Experience (): Our experience in dynamic social ecosystems teaches us that online activity must not only maintain a sense of purpose, it must also direct traffic and shape perceptions. We question our current online properties, landing pages, processes, and messages. We usually find that the existing architecture leads people from a very vibrant and interactive experience (social networks) to a static dead end (our web sites). As we attempt to redefine the experience of new customers, prospects and influencers, we essentially induce a brand makeover.
Stage 7: Community
Community is an investment in the cultivation and fusion of affinity, interaction, advocacy and loyalty. Learned earlier in the stages of new media adoption, community isn’t established with the creation of a social profile. Community is earned and fortified through shared experiences. It takes commitment. As Kathy Sierra once said, “Trying to replace ‘brand’ with ‘conversation’ does a disservice to both brands & conversations.”
Community Building/Recruitment: While we are building community through engagement in each of the previous stages, we will proactively reach out to ideal participants and potential ambassadors. We become social architects, and build the roads necessary to lead customers to a rich and rewarding network, full of valuable information and connections.
Stage 8: Social Darwinism
Listening and responding is only as effective as its ability to inspire transformation, improvement, and adaptation from the inside out. Survival does not hinge solely on a company’s social media strategy. The social element is but one part of an overall integrated strategy. It’s how we learn and adapt that ensures our place within the evolution of our markets.
Social Media as embraced in the earlier stages is not scalable. The introduction of new roles will beget the restructuring of teams and workflow, which will ultimately necessitate organizational transformation to support effective engagement, production, and the ongoing evolution towards ensuring brand and product relevance.
Adaptation: In order to truly compete for the future, artful listening, community building, and advocacy must align with an organization’s ability to adapt and improve its products, services, and policies. In order for any team to collaborate well externally, it must first foster collaboration within. It is this interdepartmental cooperative exchange that provides a means for which to pursue sincere engagement over time.
Organizational Transformation: The internal reorganization of teams and processes to support a formal Social Customer Relationship Management (sCRM) program will become imperative. As social media chases ubiquity, we learn that influence isn’t relegated to one department or function within an organization. Any department affected by external activity will eventually socialize. Therefore, an integrated and interconnected network of brand ambassadors must work internally to ensure that the brand is responding to constructive instances, by department. However, at the departmental and brand level, successful social media marketing will require governance and accountability. Organizational transformation will gravitate towards a top-down hierarchy of policy, education, and empowerment across the entire organization.
Stage 9: The Socialization of Business Processes
Multiple disciplines and departments will socialize, and the assembly or adaptation of infrastructure is required to streamline and manage social workflow.
Social CRM (sCRM): Scalability, resources, and efficiencies will require support, resulting in a modified or completely new infrastructure that either augments or resembles a CRM-like workflow. Combining technology, principles, philosophies and processes, sCRM establishes a value chain that fosters relationships within traditional business dynamics. As an organization evolves through engagement, sCRM will transform into SRM — the recognition that all people, not just customers, are equal. It represents a wider scope of active listening and participation across the full spectrum of influence.
Stage 10: Business Performance Metrics
Inevitably, we report to executives who may be uninterested in transparency or authenticity. Their goal, and job, is to steer the company toward greater profits. In order to measure the true effects of social media, we need the numbers behind the activity –- at every level.
While many experts argue that there is no need to measure social engagement (much the way that some companies don’t explicitly define the ROI of Superbowl ads or billboards), make no mistake: Social is measurable, and the process of mining data tied to our activity is extremely empowering. Our ambition to excel should be driven through the inclusion of business performance metrics, with or without an executive asking us to do so. It’s the difference between visibility and presence. And in the attention economy, presence is felt.
ROI: Without an understanding of the volume, locations, and nature of online interaction, the true impact of our digital footprint and its relationship to the bottom line of any business is impossible to assess. An immerssive view of our social media goals and objectives allows us to truly measure ROI. Stage 10 reveals the meaning and opportunity behind the numbers and allows us to identify opportunities for interaction, direction, and action.
Conclusion
There is a great distance between where we are today, and where we need to be. Our work in 2010 will be dedicated to narrowing the social chasm.
The thing about social media is that it’s always new, and as such, these stages represent a moment in time. They will continue to evolve and expand with new technologies and experiences.
In the end, social media is a privilege and a tool — one more opportunity to run a more meaningful and relevant business.
Hi I'm an arts management student and this blog is a collection of all the information I've gathered over the last few months that relates to new media technology in the arts. This includes interesting website, blogs, podcasts, videos and reports.
by 
This is the entry point for businesses to better understand the behavior of an interactive marketplace.
The next stage in the evolution of a new media business is the proverbial step towards “joining the conversation.” 
Actions speak louder than words. Businesses must act. Once the door to social consciousness is opened, bring the spirit of your company through it to affect change.
Community is an investment in the cultivation and fusion of affinity, interaction, advocacy and loyalty. Learned earlier in the stages of new media adoption, community isn’t established with the creation of a social profile. Community is earned and fortified through shared experiences. It takes commitment. As 
Listening and responding is only as effective as its ability to inspire transformation, improvement, and adaptation from the inside out. Survival does not hinge solely on a company’s social media strategy. The social element is but one part of an overall integrated strategy. It’s how we learn and adapt that ensures our place within the evolution of our markets.
Multiple disciplines and departments will socialize, and the assembly or adaptation of infrastructure is required to streamline and manage social workflow.
