DISQUS

Connie Bensen · 11 months ago

Techrigy has the Freemium version of SM2 which offers social media monitoring, analytics (which includes demographic information including age, gender & geographic location).

Let me know if you'd like a demo.
http://sm2.techrigy.com

Zach Heller · 11 months ago

This post offers a lot of great information on social media trends. I can see where social media is catching on in new areas and I think it is important to continue to measure this moving forward. Social media holds a lot of opportunities in the business world and it is time that those "inactives" start to realize that.

Thanks

barryhurd · 11 months ago

I agree Zach, that seems to be the critical element in 2009 as some of the slow to adopt industries begin shifting over the fulcrum.

JustinSMV · 11 months ago

Nice stats here on the Trendsa dn measurements of Social Media. Great resource here!

barryhurd · 11 months ago

Thanks for stopping by Justin- checking out your site right now :)

jstorres · 11 months ago

Great piece. I think we started to see the tipping point at around the time Facebook took over MySpace as the dominant social network. MySpace made its surge tot the top with the younger early adopter crowd. The concept behind MySpace appeared more consistent with the needs of that demographic than any other social network at the time.

Once Facebook opened its doors to everyone, its more structured platform with a focus on reconnecting (vs. meeting new people or learning of new bands, music, etc.) appealed to the older crowd that saw an attraction to getting reunited with old high school and college friends. At that point, the combined strength of MySpace and Facebook showed that its was approaching that "tipping point."

With the combined daily use of MySpace, Facebook and others, I believe consumers have come to see the value in these tools as an effective communication method. With the mobile piece and other forms of social media (e.g., Twitter, et al) layered on top, it just makes it more obvious.

I am a banker. And we as an industry are seldom on the bleeding edge of technology. As a highly regulated industry that must carefully monitor its reputation, we collectively are the last to adopt. We let others blaze the trail and make the mistakes. The end of 2008 and into 2009 we are seeing broader acceptance of social media tools as part of the total marketing approach. We have been sitting on the sidelines, seeing what works and what does not (though it is still early in the game and many more lessons are due out).

As part of such an initiative that we are working on rolling out in 2009, I put together an ebook to educate my company and the industry in general. And, in the spirite of social media, I placed the work on Scribd.com and Docstoc.com. It's available at http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2873849/The-Communi.... I welcome anyone and everyone to dig into it and provide me with some critique and comments. As the banking industry jumps into social media with both feet, I felt it was important to provide a primer to doing it in a manner that reduces the downside while creating greater opportunities.

Thanks again for this post. The information and resources are excellent.

HowardADSmith · 11 months ago

Outstanding post, thanks very much!

Thanks to Alexa! · 11 months ago

In the face of the tough competiton, Alexa is coming up with more and more user friendly and unique features. Ability to www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortune... create own search enginem by giving access to the crawler is quite a novel feature in itself.