This article by CNET, Why Google is Ditching Search, prompted me to look for empirical research supporting the author’s premise. And I found this gem of a research paper, #TwitterSearch: A Comparison of Microblog Search and Web Search. The Stanford and Microsoft researchers compared how individuals use search in Twitter versus traditional Web platforms like Google [...]
Following is a series of research articles focusing on social CRM. These articles explore different facets of the concepts underpinning social CRM. Interactive digital advertising versus interactive community (download). This article focuses on what motivates individuals to participate in social networks and what causes these individuals to respond to social advertising. Advertising on Facebook. This [...]
Data analysis is the new plastics. Remember this scene from the movie the The Graduate? Below is a curated list of articles from this week of innovative social analytics and business intelligence initiatives. In this article from O’Reilly Radar, we learn that social network analysis is amalgamation of social science analysis such as sociology, political [...]
This study focuses on how to find similarities amongst individuals using social media based on their behavioral characteristics. Finding such similarities across myriad social networks has beneficial uses: making users aware of other users with similar interests, finding users who comment on the same blogs, and enhancing already existing recommender systems (e.g., Pandora’s partnership with Facebook). Would [...]
Facebook is at the epicenter of issues surrounding “publicity vs privacy” as marketers seek to leverage the social web to engage existing and new consumers. This CNET article is a really good summary of issues swirling around the latest changes Facebook has made to its data sharing policies. Here are the salient take-aways: Facebook marketing [...]
This study (.pdf) delves into programmatic methodology that can be used to predict strong and weak ties between users of a social network. From a community manager’s perspective, this is important because predictive activities can alleviate some oversight tasks while intelligently satisfying the needs of community members. As an example of practical implications of their [...]
Brand engagement This presentation, The Audience is Always Right, by TBWA\ Berlin Media Arts team is one of the best I’ve seen explaining how brands need to reconstruct their core ethos pertaining to consumer communications. It delves deep into a situational analysis and then delivers some very meaningful aphorisms as guidelines: Start with a simple [...]
If one stops and ponders the amount of data and content users add to Facebook on a daily basis, it’s truly staggering. I’ve often wondered what the Facebook data team does with this data and content. Recently, I stumbled across two insightful articles and a video series that sheds some light on this. The first [...]
Although many real estate brand managers have embraced social media and are pushing their executives and agents to start a blog, join Facebook and LinkedIn, etc, many are still reticent to step into the space. Questions like these are fairly common: “What if someone says something bad, or posts a rude comment, or is just [...]
The New York Times has a great read on how Obama embraced social media to help win the election. Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television…Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower [...]
This paper argues that allowing consumers to “co-create” or “co-author” products–i.e., directly engaging and encouraging consumers to participate in new product development processes–taps vast wells of creativity while exploiting certain cost efficiencies in terms of labor. Similarly, this paper explores how Web 2.0 will fundamentally (has fundamentally) changed the manner by which companies must brand [...]
This paper points out that social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook have huge potential for high advertising revenue gains because “the cost of gaining new customers is practically nothing [since] users join voluntarily and provide their own content through their profiles. In addition, the cost of running the sites’ web servers is relatively [...]
Another excellent post by Jeremiah Owyang: Social media brand-jacking. The post highlights some interesting brand mishaps in the social media space. Make sure to read to the comments too.
Social networks will change the way real estate professionals interact with their clients. Terms like engagement, conversation, and community underpin social networks. And in “off-line” environments real estate professionals have likely “engaged” in meaningful and relevant “conversations” while building a “community” of long-term clients. Yet many real estate professionals are reluctant to embrace social networks [...]
Research papers: Identifying inherent privacy conflicts in social network sites Assessing the privacy risk of sharing anonymized network data Proposed algorithm for automatically extracting social hierarchy data from electronic communication behavior Discusses how rumors, viruses, and ideas propagate over social social networks
Here’s a reason why Microsoft invested over $200 million in Facebook. It’s all about the data Facebook has compiled on its user base and the time this user base spends on Facebook. What’s the “veracity index” for this data? One assumes it’s higher than other data sources, since users’ incentives to enter data honestly is [...]
This paper, Inferring Social Network Structure using Mobile Phone Data, explores how to use social network analysis to predict individual behavior indicators. Privacy considerations are explored in this paper, Wherefore Art Thou R3579X? Anonymized Social Networks, Hidden Patterns, and Structural Steganography. Here are some Videos of social network data analysis, and here is a presentation on [...]
eMarketer predicts that in 2007 advertisers will spend $900 billion on social network advertising. As a real estate professional witnessing an explosion in social network sites (e.g., Active Rain, TruliaVoices) aimed at agents (and consumers), what are some first steps to engage this form of real estate marketing? Step 1: Just understanding it. In this regard experience is the best [...]
