Social Marketing News

Some more social marketing posts that have caught my attention

MySpace CEO Bullish On Mobile
After unveiling a revamped MySpace Mobile earlier this week, MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe said Thursday that the social network is looking into further mobile initiatives including portable playlists, location-based applications and mobile commerce.

U.S. Social Network Users To Grow 44% By 2013
The number of people in the U.S. who use social networks at least once a month will increase 44% to 115 million in 2013 from 79 million in 2008, according to a new eMarketer report.

The basics of social-media monitoring
One of the first steps before developing any social-media program is figuring out how [and whether] you’re already being discussed on social networks. This post details a five-step plan for monitoring social media for mentions of your company, organization or brand. It’ll be old hat to pros, but newbies will benefit from this reputation-management primer.

Google SearchWiki Puts Strain On Reputation Management
Lawsuits claiming defamation of character will continue to rise as social networks and online tools like Google’s SearchWiki emerge to encourage people to express opinions and leave comments. The trend has made managing a company’s reputation online one of the major challenges that businesses face these days, aside from the economy, according to lawyers at SMX West last week in Santa Clara, Calif.

Twitter User Base Continues To Grow
Despite the potential for information overload, short-message sharing services like Twitter appear to be taking hold with an ever-larger share of U.S. consumers. By last December, 11% of Web-equipped U.S. adults said they used such a service to put out updates about themselves or follow the updates of others, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

FTC releases guidelines for targeted ads
The Federal Trade Commission issued a 48-page report outlining a series of principles designed to serve as the foundation for industry self-regulation in online advertising. The principles stress openness and transparency in terms of data collection and targeted advertising. FTC commissioner Jon Leibowitz said, “If the industry doesn’t do a better job at explaining what they are doing with consumers’ information and giving them a choice, then it could easily move to a more regulatory approach.”

Generation X leads in online shopping
Generation Y might be more likely to use social-networking sites, but they lag behind Generation X when it comes to e-commerce. Of people ages 33 to 44, 80% shop online, while 71% of people ages 18 to 32 do so.

Report: More Teens Are Gamers Than Social Networkers
More teens play online games than visit social networking sites. Also, the number of teens using email has dropped significantly over the past four years. Those are among several of the more interesting nuggets contained in the latest report issued by The Pew Internet & American Life Project.