Its time for the September Social Media Round Up, covering events, developments, and statistics for the month. September saw its share of controversies and rumours and generated a lot of buzz. There were tremors being felt across the social media network with the Obama assassination pollster on Facebook. Though this shock survey was removed by Facebook, the incident revealed the darker side of social media. The US Secret Service is probing the poll. Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, explained that the survey had been developed by a single user using a simple program that was immediately disabled.
Considering the statistical aspects, social media and real time search continues to buzz. As per survey reports of Marketing Sherpa 97% (see the chart below) of marketers are of the opinion that social media will complement other marketing tactics like email and search marketing, rather than replacing them. A slightly smaller percentage (88%) considered social media as a standard tactic for most companies equivalent to email or search engine marketing.
Twitter Talks
It is reported that Twitter is poised to secure an additional $100 million in financing from seven investors, which would place the company in the $1 billion company club, the newest in the tech world. There is cause for concern for Twitter as well as Hitwise reports that there is a notable slump in new user registrations in US. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that Twitter searches have declined. They have only stabilized a bit after the early period of incredible growth.
Social Media Roundup
Here’s a roundup of some of the most notable happenings in the online world.
- Digg adds nofollow attribute to some links, the links they're unable to rely on. I think this is a smart move from Digg for showing original stories to the online populace.
- Bing is working on a new feature on it's SERPs 'Bing & Ping', which allows user to share search results to Twitter and Facebook. Seems Bing is being shrewd here. Bing was innovative with the addition of the new feature called 'Visual Search'.
- Stumble Upon has announced the introduction of a new interface, which is going to be more simple to use with programming updates.
- Yahoo's has launchedan English version of it's social product Yahoo Meme, a microblogging service similar to Twitter.
- Google acquires reCAPTCHA, a company providing anti-bot programs that can tell whether the user is a human or a computer.
After catching wind of the attention social media enjoys today, all the three major search engines have made tweaks that would make them better equipped to harness the available potential. Google has undergone a facelift . Bing launched a unique feature called 'Visual Search'. Yahoo has also added some new enhancements to the search home page.
Social media has made such a strong hold on the online activity of people that it is clearly only going to keep growing by leaps and bounds. It has become part and parcel of the netizen's everyday life and no marketer can afford to ignore its influence .The best thing is that it is a dynamic field that is constantly evolving and generating new trends. Make sure to read our own article that helps business owners understand how social media can play a role in your business.
The future is certainly bright for social media!
on
Nice read Asha.
We cannot ignore the fact that it is only because of social media internet became such a favourite haunt for millions world wide, as well as spammers.
on
Very interesting read.
No comments on that facebook poll 😉
Digg’s move is smart as it can cut down all low-quality links. I think others also can follow digg’s ‘no follow’ steps to bring informative and qualitative articles to users.
on
This social media roundup regarding the happenings in social media is a great way to help to me as i can learn the trends / happenings in the social media industry by just reading the monthly articles. Thanks and keep going Asha !
on
Dimitry:
You’re right, spammers are adamant and will try to exploit any loophole to do their pernicious activities. Obviously, the effect of social media has been so astounding, and they want to take mileage out of it in fulfilling their agendas. I was mentioning about this other side of social media.
on
Good post Asha. But I cannot agree with your viewpoint on social media. I think the ‘Obama’ incident has nothing to do with the darker side of social media. Whoever is behind it just used Facebook as a vehicle to carry out his intention, if facebook was not there he would have used any other medium to host his pollster campaign. Here only attitude and intention matters nothing more.