Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

A supermassive black hole: Twitter's big brother?

More than 70 percent of tweets on Twitter get no reaction from one’s followers.

Sysomos, a market research company that specializes in social media, examined 1.2 billion tweets posted over a two-month period and found that only 29 percent produced a reply or a retweet. Of those that did get a response, 19.3 percent were retweets and the rest replies. This means that of the 1.2 billion tweets Sysomos examined, only 72 million tweets — that’s 6 percent – were retweeted.

The study found that 92.4 percent of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published, while an additional 1.63 percent of retweets take place in the second hour and 0.94 percent in the third hour. This means that if a tweet is not retweeted in the first hour, it’s not likely to be retweeted at all.

If you haven’t at least heard of Facebook and Twitter, you have probably been living under a rock — or in denial. But as quickly as you get used to the ins and out of the most popular social media sites, more are on the rise. And these sites want to know where you are, where you’re going and where you’ve been.

Welcome to the location-based social networks, such as Foursquare — which I have previously discussed in another post. I tried out Foursquare — and I while I’m not super familiar with it, I can see the appeal. You “check in” to businesses and other locations in real time, and many places are now offering special perks for their most frequent visitor — called the “mayor” — and others who check in.

But what about Blippy? Customers can tell their friends about the products that they buy through this site, which links merchant accounts to broadcast members’ purchases to the world. Blippy lets you communicate about and share purchases with friends by syncing already existing e-commerce accounts to Blippy such as iTunes, Netflix, Woot, eBay and more.

And then you’ve got TagWhat, which takes a leap into the world of Augmented Reality (AR). It allows people to tag real-world locations and attach information, reviews, links, photos, videos, notes and so on to those particular spots, whether tied to their current location or not. Users can also follow other people and merge their respective ‘markers’ together in an effort to build a global network of augmented reality hotspots.

A little overwhelming, right? Well, maybe it’s best to start with a toe in the ever-changing social media pool instead of taking a flying leap headfirst. But whatever you do, start swimming!

Once a big fan of flashy TV ads and radio spots, full-color magazine ads, glossy showroom brochures and billboards that canvassed the nation to debut a new car line, things are different at Ford Motor Co. as it prepares for the 2010 U.S. debut of the Ford Fiesta. Ford’s going social in a big way. The company has signed on 100 major bloggers to “test drive” the Fiesta for six months and share their experiences on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.
http://tinyurl.com/mxfp2b