the digital den

For all the praise that brand advertisers have for social media, they must be aware that it’s very much a double-edged sword. And for all the free marketing, advertising and brand promotion via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and other platforms used to help build an identity and relationship with your customers, it can just as quickly turn on you and your brand.

Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.

Read more at Mashable for 3 great examples.

A new study from Pew Internet found that between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking site usage grew 88% among Internet users aged 55-64, and the 65 and older group’s social networking presence grew 100% in the same time frame.

Read more

If you spend any time at all talking about online communities, you’re bound to stumble across the 90-9-1 Principle. The idea is simple: In social groups, some people actively participate more than others. Researcher Jakob Nielsen calls this “Participation Inequality“. 

These three groups make up an ecosystem, of sorts. Pulling on one group affects the distribution of the other. Of course, it’s typically not possible to change the distribution in significant ways, as the more people added into one group directly drives the growth of the other two groups, maintaining something close to a 90-9-1 split. Social participation tends to follow a 90-9-1 rule where:

From Social Media News

Found this funny picture doing the rounds.

These days alot of employees connect with their bosses on Facebook. I think its generally best to keep your personal life amongst your friends and family – leave work at work.

Anyway if you do add your boss to Facebook, don’t make this mistake:

A new web application, Election.ly, from PeopleBrowsr, has launched today converting twitter conversations into real time, quantitative data about voting intentions for the upcoming Federal Election. Candidates no longer have to wait for complex and exhausting polling to gauge the success of policy announcements; www.election.ly displays in real time how the electorate is responding to their policies and campaigning in general

I reckon 1 year in the digital world is worth 7 in the real world. Things move so quickly in such a short space of time that if you blink you’ll miss it. We need to be constantly recalibrating our digital compass. What people didn’t quite understand last year you’ll find they have mastered this year. Check out the video and see how in such a short period of time our digital literacy changes.

More women than men across the world visit social networking sites and spend 30% more time per month using them.

As such, in the “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet()” report, comScore concludes that women are the digital mainstream, a group of savvy Internet explorers who are more engaged than their male counterparts, and are the primary drivers of online and group buying.

How Women Use the Web [REPORT].

A survey involving over 140 Victorian school principals was used to provide an insight into the professions consumption habits of social media.

The paper Why schools are spooked by social media attempts to explore why schools are underrepresented in their use of social media as a method of communicating and engaging their community. Research has shown that 43% of small businesses in Australia (socialmedianews.com.au July 14, 2010) have attracted new customers through social media networks and that over 70 percent of Australian Not for Profits are using social media, yet schools have almost no presence in the space.

The title of the study ‘why schools are spooked by social media’ infers that schools are frightened by social media. Not surprisingly, business has been too. Anecdotally, discussions have revealed a concern about the potential for a parent to run amok in a blog as well as the spectre that has become Facebook. On an all too frequent basis, Facebook horror stories dominant the medium’s publicity in main stream press. In almost all cases, bad Facebook publicity involves a student (although the activity was in private time) which means schools have first-hand experience of the dark side of social media.

A number of conversations with principals during a seminar series conducted in May 2010 uncovered a general lack of awareness of social media controls and most importantly a lack of awareness of the commercial sector’s successes in building online communities through social media.

This paper is part science, part expert commentary and a road map for schools contemplating using social media to engage their community.

Facebook has agreed to implement a panic button to improve the online safety of its younger users.

The button will only be available in the UK to start with but is expected to roll out globally over time – it would be smart to.

Kids just have to install the following application, http://apps.facebook.com/clickceop/

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center – ClickCEOP

Once installed the ‘panic’ button will appear towards the top of a Facebook profile. The button can be click and will redirect to a site where online crime and bullying can be reported.

As mentioned this is only setup by the UK at the moment but government worldwide will no doubt want to follow this strategy.

For users in other countries, in the time being reports will be passed on to law enforcement in those other places.

This is a great move by The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center & Facebook to improve online safety.