TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Qwiki Hits No. 1 On Google Trends ‘Hot Searches’ In The U.S..

The internet is now deeply embedded in group and organizational life in America, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Researchers found  75% of all American adults are active in some kind of voluntary group or organization and internet users are more likely than others to be active group participant, with participation highest among users of social networks.

According to the study 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. And social media users are even more likely to be active: 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter users are group participants.

This isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. Just in the past week, the dictator of Tunisia was  toppled by an uprising that started with a man who set himself on fire in protest to this rulers injustice, which was then recorded, posted, blogged about and spread like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, the Arab world is showing tremendous interest and concern in the event because they’re worried such uprisings, fueled by the social web, could spread to their nations.

What we’re witnessing is not just the power of social networks, it’s the power of Reeds Law , which describes the ability of large networks, particularly social networks, to scale exponentially, thereby serving has a conduit for almost instantaneous information transfer to the masses. Add mobile phones in this mix and you have a powerful channel for revolution. The established top-down command and control hierarchy’s in society are tremendously  threatened by this ability we now have to connect directly with one another…and they should be. Look what happened in Tunisia? This is not an isolated incident.

If the social web has the ability to impact governments and nations this way, what hope does a brand stand…other than to embrace change and become a part of the conversation?

I was particularly interested in Jay’s simple tutorial on how to create a Share of Voice report and the ready-to-go tools he made available to create a Share of Voice report. I intend to immediately incorporate this into our content marketing service delivery.

Thanks Jay for practicing what you preach. Another great example of how creating content creates fans that convert into customers.

Been meaning to post this for a couple weeks but the holidays just seem like such an appropriate time to blog about the ghost of social media past, present and future, don’t they. I thought this was a pretty compelling presentation by entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Mark Suster, presented at the Caltech MIT Enterprise Forum in October.

His presentation is a pithy take on where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re headed with the social web. His main takeaway, at least from my read, is that the rise of massive social networks such as Facebook and Twitter inevitably means that fragmentation is on it’s way. The social web is already starting to splinter into more vertically aligned interest groups (i.e. the Birds of a Feather” effect).

This fragmentation of the social web, he finally points out, is why Mark Zuckerberg remains paranoid (after all, where is AOL or even Yahoo! two titans of the early internet today?) and why right now is one of the greatest times since the last wave of digital innovation to work hard and innovate. Great, inspiring stuff.

SocialPastPresentFuture

Some insightful research from a research report by Altimeter Group, reported on Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang shows a pretty dramatic trend going on in the agency business right now. It appears boutique social media and content agencies are really taking some significant chunks of client’s business away from traditional digital shops. This is really no different than the general trend in the agency business as a whole, where clients shift entire budgets away from established agency players to smaller, more specialized practices.

At some point, the big shops become too lethargic and cumbersome to meet the increasingly specialized demands of clients in emerging communications channels and practices. Their staffs a bloated with overhead and people that provide the things clients don’t want to buy anymore. They are machines of marketing service. The big guys aren’t really market makers, after all, they’re market takers.

But, the problem is, success in the marketing services industry is shifting dramatically away from how well you are at being a bulk provider big, media-centric ideas and is now more about delivering innovative and compelling experiences that transcend communications channels. Marketing services is not so much a practice that starts with the client brief anymore…rather it starts by listening and observing your customers online behavior and interests, mining this for insights then creating your ideas and content based on what your audience tells you they’re already interested in. Marketing is now less about what you have to say and more about the user experience. And, it is a new breed of social boutique agencies that is winning over significant chunks of client business, away from more traditional digital agencies.

Altimeter identified why the smaller, more nimble firms are winning:

• They put business goals first, tools and technologies second
• They offer a specialized skill set in new media and social business traditional shops most likely don’t
• They offer change management within  the corporations. Traditional agencies layer social on top of existing campaigns
• They have a long-term or community-building vision versus a short-term,campaign-focused mentality
• They roll up their sleeves to assist with deeper customer engagement instead of relying on traditional advertising (a top spend item in social programs)
• Smaller, more agile teams with senior leadership that can respond and adapt to changes in the technology space
• Fundamentally are geared to measure differently around engagement and what that means…not just to line and bottom line measures.

Mobile Gaming

From the Wall Street Journal the top trends in mobile for the coming year. Here they are:

1. Tablets will take over the world
2. Android will take over the world
3. Apps will take over the world
4. 4G will take over the world…eventually
5. Parts for mobile handsets and networks will be in short supply
6. The attorneys will have a field day protecting turf via patent warfare
7. Security and privacy will be insecure and not so private
8. China will screw everyone
9. Your phone replaces your wallet/purse
10. Location, location, location…as in using your phone to broadcast yours to everyone and allowing marketers can know your location so they can bombard you with coupons, offers and other Minority Report-like advertising assaults.

It’s that time of year when famed Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker gives her annual state of the internet presentation. During this year’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Mary presented some eye-popping stats, including the state of mobile (Apple and Google () are winning), the most under-monetized asset in online advertising (Facebook) and even the secret sauce of Steve Jobs (he has the mind of an engineer and the heart of an artist).

Some of Meeker’s more revealing analysis:
•    46% of Internet users live in five countries: the USA, Russia, Brazil, China and India.
•    There are 670 million 3G subscribers worldwide, 136.6 million in the U.S.
•    iOS devices reached 120 million subscribers in 13 quarters, far faster than Netscape, AOL or NTT docomo’s growth rates.
•    Nokia and Symbian used to own 62% of the smartphone market (units shipped). Now it’s only 37%, mostly due to Android () and iOS.
•    The average CPM for social networking sites is at only $0.55. Meeker thinks this will increase and normalize in the next few years. She also believes that inventory on Facebook is one of the most under-monetized assets on the web.
•    It took e-commerce 15 years to get to 5% of retail. Morgan Stanley predicts mobile should get to that same level in five years.
•    Streaming video is up to 37% of of Internet traffic during traditional “TV hours.” Netflix is the biggest contributor to this, followed by YouTube.
•    Seven of the companies that were in the top 15 publicly traded Internet companies in 2004 are not in that list in 2010.
•    Interest payments and entitlement spending is projected to exceed government revenue by 2025. In other words, the U.S. government is facing a real financial crisis soon.

A pdf of the entire presentation is below:

Internet+Trends+Presentation