SXSW chat about Google+

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100078
Really interesting interview at this address about Google+ from a senior vice President of Google Vic Gundotra, at sxsw

MBA ONLINE: A Case Study in Socail Media Demographics

Facebook

845 million active users
43% male
57% female

Age
0-24 14%
25-34 18%
35-44 22%
45+ 46%

Twitter

127 million active users
41% male
59% female

Age
0-24 19%
25-34 23%
35-44 25%
45+ 33%

Google+
90 Million active users
71% male
29& female

Age
0-24 50%
25-34 28%
35-44 11%
45+ 11%

Pinterest
21 million Unique VisitorS
18% male
82% female

Age
0-24 10%
25-34 26%
35-44 29%
45+ 35%

CONTENT AND MOTION: Some more infographics

CONTENT AND MOTION: Pineterst

see the original

WALL BLOG: 50% of people feel overwhelmed by brand messages on social media

Toluna C&M Social Media Marketing Best Practise Guide

View more presentations from Content and Motion

by Polly Becker, posted on 12 March, 2012
See original

Summary:
1. Traditional media isn’t dead
2. People are overwhelmed by too much brand activity at times
3. But they’re very much on board with brands being part of their social media life
4. Success lies in smart, creative execution – and an understanding of why folks use social media in the first place
5. Sensible planning and expectation setting is key to delivering successful campaigns
6. A lack of sanity and charisma can and will be fatal

50% of people feel overwhelmed by brand messages on social media
* 75% of folks feel 1-2 brand messages a day is too much
But there’s also plenty to cheer about if you’re a brand marketing manager. For instance…
* 45% of people choose to interact with brands on social media channels
* of those folks 60% are happy to share brand messages and 27% like to share info about brand purchases

HBR BLOG: Pinterest as Free Market Research

here
GRANT MCCRACKEN 17th Feb 2012

Categories are interesting to anthropologists. They are the "buckets" into which we organize the world. More exactly, they are the buckets with which we read the world. We have a bucket called "bird." Inside that is a bucket called "Robin." As spring approaches, we see winged creatures on our lawn and the buckets leap to the ready. Robin! Bird! Spring! This is culture in action.

From this point of view, Pinterest is a treasure. It's a chance to see American culture as if from a glass-bottom boat. Yes, some of it is a little reductive. But sometimes what people stuff into the categories is a chance for us to see exactly what they mean. Pinterest is a little Rosetta Stone, a table of equivalencies. Oh, so that's what YOU mean by home. Here's what I mean. In a culture that flowers with an increasingly diverse variety, this is useful.

Pinterest founders Ben Silbermann, and Evan Sharp are mapping American culture. Mapping not just the categories but the movements of our culture.

For some time now, and certainly since Clay Shirky's great work, we have been on notice that the new digital technology makes new categories and new cultural order possible. Pinterest helps us build and share these categories and to specify what we mean in a medium more telling than language. And this makes Pinterest an observation platform from which to study a culture that becomes ever more liquid, responsive, crowd-sourced and generally speaking dynamic. And this potentially makes Pinterest a place to detect early changes and to get early warnings, a pretty useful thing as our culture accelerates.

There has been some regrettable chatter online that Phoebe Connelly characterizes as "hating on the ladies." Specifically, some appear to think that Pinterest is a consumer wish list for women. One hater goes so far as to suggest that Pinterest is for "women who wish they were still planning their wedding." This is sexist drivel and deserves the contempt Connelly shows for it. It misses much of what makes Pinterest exceptional and especially the way it can serve users as an opportunity for self-exploration/self-expression and the rest of us as a particularly rich view of a culture under construction.

MEMEBURN: Facebook to become ‘your personalised newspaper’ with Interest Lists

9th March 2012

Facebook has introduced a new product that it claims is “a whole new way to keep up with stuff you care about and tidy up your experience on Facebook”.
The new feature, called Interest Lists, is basically a way for you to tidy up your news feed into sections determined by you.
Facebook claims that doing so turns the social network into “your own personalised newspaper, with special sections—or feeds—for topics that matter to you”.
In fact, the company has taken this traditional news feel a step further by including sections like Business, Sports and Style.
You could also get a lot more personalised though and include stuff like “Tech News, Football Players, and Rock Journalists”.
The feature ranks the content from your lists such that only the top stories from each interest appear in your news feed. You can, however, “click through to read more posts,” Facebook claims.
In the next few weeks people will see an “Add Interests” link in their left-hand bookmarks. From there, they can subscribe to a pre-set interest list.

Hm! Sound anything like circles?