Online Events become a growing Trend

http://www.folden.info/emarketing/2013/04/25/online-events-become-a-growing-trend/

Internet Marketing Review April

http://www.folden.info/emarketing/2013/04/02/internet-marketing-review-april-4/

Internet Marketing Review March

http://www.folden.info/emarketing/2013/03/04/internet-marketing-review-march-4/

Internet Marketing Review February

http://www.folden.info/emarketing/2013/02/04/internet-marketing-review-february-4/

Live Monitoring Tool for LiveJournal Posts

A live monitoring tool for posts at the LiveJournal blogging and social media community has become introduced. The tool is called Aqua and has a cool flowing interface. The service is both a surf board and research tool. For professional research at the help section there are instructions available to set filters and the like.

New Study about Social Networking Trends

A new study about social networking has been released by Netpop Research. The results of this study do confirm a strong trend to social networking as the already mentioned study by Forrester Research does. There are some more findings in this study especially about shopping. The results do refer on on time spending. It has been found that there is less time with online entertainment and shopping to the advantage of social networking. The latter may wonder because of the shopping season. But there have always been shopping related statements, that people often spend time researching products at shopping sites and then spend their money offline. So the time shift probably is simply reasoned in social shopping sites with product comparisons and reviews.

The study concludes a need to rething advertising strategies and to be presented at social networking sites. There is an extract available at the following link with a presentation and further information on downloading the whole study:
93 Percent Growth in Social Networkers Reveals Need for New Approaches to Online Advertising

Success Story about Instructional Videos

In a press release 5min, a video sharing site for how to and instructional videos, has informed that they now are reaching 110 million monthly unique users. This vast number is facilitated by a network of syndication partner sites, which may syndicate content by a proprietary content syndication platform, the VideoSeed platform. The content in indexed with semantic data to assure most relevant content. 5min foresees a bright future for properly targeted user generated content in a similar way as it has been reported here.

OneRiot combines Social Search with Buzz Rankings

OneRiot is a new search engine, that has just been launched on 11th November and that claims to have 2 million members already. OneRiot is a search engine, that indexes the web. But the search results are based on a proprietary popularity ranking called the Pulse. The ranking of the search results is based on up to date popularity giving the results an aspect of a the live web search engine like SocialMention mentioned at social web research. The intention is to deliver most up to date information about queries.

The rankings at OneRiot are based on the behavior of the members and the exposure and popularity of web pages within the community. The popularity of sites or items becomes evaluated by members using a toolbar and communicating what pages or items have been bookmarked, visited or watched. There are a couple of tools for buzz research like indicators for the popularity of web pages at add ons.

Internet Video Trends and Movies

Here are some interesting internet video and video business trends in addition to the post emedia trends, where it has been mentioned that internet video becomes narrative elements.

At first there is a article confirming that internet video becomes favored to the disadvantage of tv viewing.
Web Video Chips Away at TV

The conclusion is a need for new content and at least this will be in part user generated content. A research from Gartner has found an increasing demand for Protail Video, a term describing semi professional content and similar to the term prosumer.
Gartner: Demand For 'Protail' Video On The Rise

The latter trend is followed by marketers looking for new advertising opportunities.
The Suits Are All About New Media

Opposite to this there seems to be some trouble in the range of professionally produced internet video formats like webisodes. The following article reports about lay offs, which might be reasoned in the weak economy. Personally I think that people are able to evaluate content and that there is a true favor for internet content just because of the success. The Gartner research is confirming this. At least it seems that the market of professionally produced internet video formats is not booming like social media.
Hyped Web Video Sector Starts to Hurt

The above context is difficult to match with the following. There are two further websites offering free content, movies and tv episodes, which one usually would describe as premium content. This is the german MSN Movies website and Crackle, a Sony property. I had already fun at Crackle by watching shorts. But in the context of the content business one may either think of a wise strategic step because of tough competition or one needs to question the value of professionally produced content. At all it seems that it will be most difficult to establish a business based on the paid content business model. Especially this might be due to the early hyped video on demand business model.
Sony Shapes Snappier Crackle

There are two other articles with future media trends. This concerns the use of the so called White Spaces. This is free part of the broadcasting signal, which either may be used for broadband internet connection or as a backchannel to realize interactive tv. Probably it will be used for both. Great news for new media enthusiasts. The second article is about an interactive tv pilot project in the US.
Google, Microsoft Win Big With FCC 'White Spaces' Ruling
LIN TV to Test Interactive Television

Social Web Research and Popularity Indexes

Business Thursday: Finding popular sources is a crucial mean of research to find and interact with influencers. Here are some new services to research the blogosphere, forums and the social web.

BoardsMD.com is a research tool for boards and forums. They have an own ranking system called the Health Score. This ranking system counts the number of members of forums, the amount of posts and the activity by scoring discussions. There are a lot of tools available to find and match forums related to topics and to find most active forums. Furthermore there are several monitoting tools, email alerts to stay informed about particular boards and at the website there are rankings about various topics. Last but not least board owners may become listed at the directory.

TopOfBlogs is a blog ranking service using own metrics and integrates third party metrics, which makes it a meta tool for blog research. They are counting pageviews and feed subscribers. Integrated third party services are Google PageRank, Alexa Ranking and Technorati Ranks. Blogger may list their weblog at the directory.

DiggTop shows top rated stories and media at Digg. It is a desktop tool to gather information and for monitoring.

SocialMention is both a search engine and research tool. It monitors and searches the social web in real time and by this it is showing up to date search results. The search engine is able to find various kind of media and posts. It searches blogs, bookmarks, news, videos and even comments and microblogging services.

You will find further related popularity indexes and social media research tools by the link Social Media Research.

Business and Start Up Valuation Services and Tools

Some new services with information about start ups have been launched. These may either offer information about launch time or more insights into the business with information about collaboration, merger and financial valuation.

Watching the start up market is done by FirstEntrant.com. It is a social networking site monitoring which company has entered the market first. The site has lists about several vertical social media ranges like social bookmarking, business networking and video sharing sites. To watch start ups and new market entries in the range of social media and web apps there are two other interesting directories listing closed alpha and beta as well as fully launched services, Go2Web20.net and Simple Spark.

The PDEC KIT is a special online service to monitor the financial performance of companies financed by venture capital. There are particular reports available about social networking and online advertising companies. A more general business valuation service is available by BizBuySell, a marketplace to buy and sell companies.

Twitter Research Tools

Here is a choice of further Twitter tools for marketing and research. In general there is a trend to more professional marketing tools and analytics. This concerns the analysis of unfollowing and the influence of members as well as the value of posts.

Friends and Members

Just tweet it is a directory of Twitter users to find other like minded people.
tweetmeme shows communications.
TweetWheel is a research tool for relationships.
Twemes shows global tags and conversations.
Twinfluence analyses the influence of members.
TwitterLess informs about unfollowing.
Tweeple Twak, actually in private alpha, aims to analyse unfollowing.

Monitoring Tools

SocialTops.com is a popularity index for posted stories and topics. You need to click on Today's Top or somewhere else as no stories have been found at the homepage itself.
TweetBeep.com is a monitoring tool for topics and names.

Statistics

Tweetrush visualizes usage stats for Twitter and Twitter clients.
TwitGraph analyses user activity and visualizes topics by the frequency of words.
What's your Tweet worth evaluates the value of posts.

Last but not least there is a new blog dedicated to twittering: TwiTip

An Email Marketing Report with Fresh Metrics

A free email marketing report has been published by Mailer Mailer, a webbased email and newsletter marketing solution provider. The report covers industry sectors and key elements that influence email click and open rates. A key finding has been that emails now are opened sooner with about one third within the first two hours. Probably this is because a better and ongoing integration of internet tools into working processes. The report has analysed "over 350 million emails in 21 different industries from the first six months of 2008".

Email Marketing Metrics Report

Some amazing eMedia Trends

At the end of very month I do some basic research for the update of FOLDEN.INFO and I have found some really interesting articles and trends, that are most related to the topics here at emediablogger. This concerns interactive video and is even related to the former post about machinima, interactive films made within virtual reality or games.

At the first article there is an expert opinion that there is not only a shift toward video consumption at the internet, but that there is evolving a new kind of media format. This new format is described as storytelling by video. Whereas there is no example mentioned, I do think about the latest movements of converging various forms of internet media into new kinds of services. Exemplary I do think about interactive video services like the new YouTube feature to link videos or Seesmic, which is for video conversations enabled by follower functions that are usually available at microblogging services. Last but not least there are the live video services, that are beloved here. You will find this statement at the end of the following article.

Online Video Market Evolves, Begins Morphing Into New 'Storytelling' Device

The second case, that is related to new narrative forms of video, are alternative reality games. At these kind of games there is a given and designed playground with a story and some characters. But the story and the game evolves by the engagement of users, who are solving tasks and contribute to the story. This happens as well in the real world as online by using all means that seem to be suitable. At the article especially the usage of internet video is mentioned and the possibilities for marketing. Here is a wikipedia definition of alternate reality games.

Industry Watch: Games Break Loose

Last but not least two articles about an interactive tv advertising pilot project and the emerging social media space.

MPG, Navic Test Interactive Ads (TV)

Social media goes global

Of course there have been more noteworthy occurrences. If you like to have a look at my review of latest internet marketing and emedia trends, you may visit the monthly internet trend coverage at FOLDEN.INFO. To stay connected and to be informed about updates you may either subscribe to the full text newsletter or to the newsfeed, which links to the newsletter contains parts of it.

The Need for Social Media Engagement

Business Thursday: Social media sites and activities for social networking are now reported as mainstream according to the latest social media stats according to up to social media statistics Twitter is the fastest growing social media network and if Twitter itself has already become mainstream is the issue of a discussion. However, being in the tv news and being subject of a an article of the Wallstreet Journal is something significant and indicates the importance. This is a real and nice success story for a service, especially as mostly everyone who visited it for the first time has been wondering what it is about. It has been a place, where people are telling what and where they will eat.

The conclusion for marketers now is that social media has become the place to be. Whereas up for now the discussion was on how to become evolved and where, now the need to be represented is emphasized at marketing publications. This trend is a business opportunity for all participants. Up to date business opportunities have always been a part of the emediablogger weblog. Some recommendations to find relevant services are the tags business, social shopping and widgets.

New Widget Platform for Data MashUps

youcalc is a new widget platform that has a directory and a community with widget creation tools. It is a vertical widget platform dedicated to data. Data is supplied by youcalc, which is gathering information by data sources at the web. The data can be used for analysis and calculations and to generate data presentations and research. What is making the youcalc widgets advantageous in comparison with presentations is the feature of up to date information. Visitors who see a widget on a blog or website will always see information that is updated in real time.

Presentations from the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin

To those who are interested in the Web 2.0 Business here is a link to a lot of presentations from the event.

Social Networking is as popular as Email is

There are some up to date stats about social media usage available. Now about 75 % of internet users do connect with others by social networking. Additionally users do embrace other social media services like blogs to be informed, do use recommendations and reviews as well as video sharing sites. 75 % is an amazing large share and one may contemplate if social networking is replacing email in part. Email up for now has always been the number one internet activity. A couple of years ago it has been considered if newsfeeds would replace email. Newsfeeds today are used everywhere, but these are not interactive as email and social media are. But newsfeeds are an enabling technology for social networking and by this it seems that those considerations might become real.

The mentioned study, which I became aware of by an article at ReadWriteWeb, has been released by Forrester Research .

Report: Social Web Usage Tipped in 2008

Researching Popularity for Social Media Campaigns

Business Thursday: A successful campaign does always need a basic research where to start. For social media campaigns this means to find relevant publications or buzz at the live web and for shopping it might be recommendations. The second step will be to find the most popular places to be most effective. At the same being represented at popular services is a proven mean to publishers to become noticed.

To find relevant places there are two basic strategies. One may either research a topic at a vertical directory like blog directories or choose to start at the big social media sites by looking for opinion leaders based on their activity or the amount of followers and the like. The decision where to start depends on the issue of the campaign. Blog directories are an ideal way to research a topic. Particular topics may also be represented at large social media sites, but in general these do already target the mass market. Exemplary for the latter are new features offered lately like offering music to broad audiences. To start at large social media sites the motto is to become involved by making interesting offers e.g. by widgets.

Even while new social media technologies like lifestreaming and live applications become popular, weblogs do remain a basic mean. This is due e.g. for the popular lifestreaming service FriendFeed as I have found that there is no way to add a particular newsfeed to own lifestream profile. The newsfeed must either be collected from within a blog or become added by a third party service like Twitter.

So blogs are really a good way to start researching sources for a social media campaign and to find relevant sources. Furthermore opinion leading blogs do mostly refer to other important sources that may become a starting point for a campaign. blog directories as well as popularity indexes for social media research are available at FOLDEN.INFO.

Stickam starts Broadcasting Support for Smartphones

One of the pioneers of live webcam communities has started to offer a live video application for video broadcasting using smartphones. It is Stickam, one of the largest live video networks. The service is available to members and linked at the left of the Live Streams Page. This is an interesting case, as Stickam is much larger than other live video services.

Mashable has an article about the launch with a comparison chart with a couple of live video services. It seems that the estimation and description as a niche market made at the first article about live video is true. Nevertheless I think about this as an emerging trend, that will arise with broader adoption of mobile broadband services, better knowledge and broader dissemination of smartphones. Another newcomer, zaplive.tv, that is not mentioned at the chart already has reasonable viewing stats.

Stickam is coming up with another effort to make their service a success. They have launched pay per live, which is in invite only mode up to now. This service will pay people for live streams of events.