Interesting Stats and Data From the Third Day of Social Media Week

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Interesting Stats and Data From the Third Day of Social Media Week

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Wednesday marked the half way point for Social Media Week. The bad news is that the week is half over, but the good news is there’s still half a week left. I’m back with some more interesting things I found from Social Media Week cities around the word. Using Sysomos’ social media monitoring and analytic tools, MAP and Heartbeat, I was able to look at conversations happening all around the world. The following are some interesting things I found.

Before I dove into each of the individual cities I pulled up the media share for the global “Social Media Week” and the hashtag #SMW. While Twitter is still the dominent medium people are using to discuss their experiences and what they are learning, there seems to be some action all across the board on Wednesday. This is also the first time this week I’ve seen anything coming from forums. As well, our sentiment gauge on the right shows that everyone seems to be enjoying their Social Media Week.

First, I pulled up some key conversations for Hong Kong. It appears that there was a big conversation that day that garnered a lot of attention around Facebook and what it plans to do in China.

In New York, I found it interesting that their top three influencers around their social media week for the day were all companies.

Here in Toronto I pulled up the buzzgraph, which shows us the words most used in conjunction with out search terms, and was very happy to find Sysomos (my company) right in the middle. We held an event on Wednesday that was well received, but I didn’t realize how well until I saw this.

Meanwhile, in São Paul, Brazil, there appeared to be interesting conversation surrounding the ideas of social gaming. My favourite quote is the last one, which roughly translates to panel moderator Renata Honorato saying “The label ‘social gaming’ bothers me because every game is social. The board game is social.”

Always the city that seems to surprise me the most, I’m happy to say that in San Francisco there is an even amount of men and women talking about their Social Media Week experiences.

Last but not least, I thought that I would do something special for the half way mark. I searched Twitter for the individual city hashtags to find out who had tweeted the most using each hashtag and came up with the following list.

Top Tweeters by individual city hashtags:

#SMW – @dan_martin
#SMWNY - @worldlyjohn
#SMWSF – @sue_anne
#SMWRME – @ivoriccio
#SMWPARIS – @jonathanulco (really it was @smw_paris, but I thought that was unfair)
#SMWTO – @40deuce (yes, that’s me, but I swear I didn’t manipulate the data at all. I just tweet a lot)
#SMWSP – @oi_acontece
#SMWLDN - @lesanto
#SMWHK – @adhigoen
#SMWIST – @pirayeninkedisi (really @smwist, but again, that’s just not fair)

Well, that’s what I have for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to update you on the interesting things that happened on Thursday.

Happy learning everyone!

Tags: #smw, analytics, social media week, socialmedia, sysomos
Posted in Coverage, global, Reports

On the Ground at Social Media Week: The Internet & Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already In A Post-Social Media World?

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

The revolution will be televised.

And social media will accelerate the revolution.

That was the message of the panelists at a discussion, “The Internet & Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already In A Post-Social Media World?,” held at Google’s New York City office. John C Abell, New York Bureau Chief for Wired.com, moderated the discussion.

Abell noted the role of social media is being debated in many quarters, including the pages of the New York Times and the New Yorker, where Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point,” holds court. The debate begs the question: Why?

The panelists knocked down Gladwell’s strawman argument that Twitter did not cause the popular uprising.

Abell said Gladwell is “staking out a position that no one is arguing against. No one is arguing that social media has created new behavior.” Adam Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University, agreed:

Gladwell is arguing with himself. No one thinks social media caused the revolution. It’s an accelerant.

Micah Sifry, co-founder and executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum , cut Gladwell to the quick: “I think Malcolm Gladwell hit his tipping point with that essay.” Ouch.

Penenberg drew parallels to the civil rights movement. He observed that civil rights activists “would have used cell phones if they had them. All of this stuff are tools. They accelerate the social networks we already had, that used to be called friends.”

The panelists agreed that “it was the usual kinds of things that start these uprisings.” Economic hardship, including the rising cost of food, and the fear that the world is passing them by are the root causes of the Arab uprisings.

In Tunisia, the uprising was sparked by Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor who set himself on fire.

Sifry said there were “two vectors”: a sense of hopelessness and rising connectivity. The number of Egyptians who have cell phones has increased 60 percent in the last two years.

While all of the speakers were informative and engaging, I listened with keen interest to Susannah Vila, Director of Content and Outreach for Movements.org.

In 2008, I attended the Alliance for Youth Movements first annual summit at Columbia Law School. I have no doubt that some of the young Egyptians I met two years ago are among the “Facebook youth” in Tahrir (Liberation) Square.

Vila said social media “catalyzed” what was already happening on the ground:

It’s a lot easier to get a critical mass of people because there’s been an increase in the number of people on Facebook and Twitter.

Vila noted that in 2008, the largest Egyptian Facebook page, April 6 Youth Movement, had 70,000 fans. Today, “We are all Khaled Said” has nearly 600,000 fans.

We now know that Facebook page was created by Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who was arrested on Jan. 28. The Daily Beast reported Ghonim’s page “sounded the call” for the popular uprising:

The Facebook page that Ghonim ran sounded the call for the initial protest on January 25. As the page’s following approached 400,000 people, and word of the event spread, it hosted a constant stream of news, photo and video, downloadable flyers, and emotional entreaties for all Egyptians to join the push.

The takeaway: The takeaway: Young people are sick and tired of political repression and lack of opportunities. But alienation and anger were not enough to spark the popular uprisings. The Facebook youth used the new tools to organize and amplify their voices. Social media as an accelerator was less important once people took to the streets.

To stay informed, check out Movements.org Egypt Coverage.

Faye M. Anderson is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY blog and founder of Tracking Change.

Tags: #Jan25, #smw, #smwwired, Anderson@Large, Egypt, facebook, social media, social media week, socialmedia, Tahrir Square, Tracking Change, twitter
Posted in Event Spotlight

The Build Up to the Big Week

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

I’ve been looking forward to Social Media Week 2011 since Social Media Week 2010 ended. I’m even more excited that I’m going to be helping play a big role with social media monitoring, analytics and even blogging for Social Media Week globally. Well, today is the big day when it all starts!

I thought for my first post I’d do a quick look back at the month leading up today to see just how excited others are as well. Using MAP, Sysomos’ social media monitoring and analytics platform, I pulled up a couple of quick stats to show the build up to kick off day. By searching for all mentions of “Social Media Week”, “SMW” and “SMW11″ I was able to find a large build up leading up today. In the past month there were nearly 2,300 blog posts and 45,000 tweets alone.

No surprise that most of the activity is coming from Twitter and I expect that trend to continue for the remander of the week. Twitter is probably the easiest to update quickly and on the fly as people attend Social Media Week events around the world. Simply by adding a hashtag anyone’s tweet can become part of the global or their local Social Media Week conversation. I’d also like to point out that we can see that a 99% positive rating for all mentions over the past month.

A look at Twitter activity from around the world shows us that the whole world seems to be getting ready for this week’s activities. We can see a majority of tweets coming out of Social Media Week’s nine official cities; New York, San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Toronto, Sao Paulo, London, Hong Kong and Istanbul. However, it looks like the rest of the world is also ready to join in on the conversation.

Looking at our buzzgraph, which shows us connections of words most used in association with our search terms, shows that most of the talk seems to be a build up to kick off the week. We can see all of our nine official cities listed as well as today’s date, February 7th, coming up a lot. It will be excited to see these buzzgraphs daily to see how the conversations shape up each day for the rest of the week.

Check back here daily to see my updates on what’s going on world-wide for Social Media Week! See you tomorrow!

Sidenote: If you’re in Toronto I will be around the city all week attending all kinds of events so try to find me and say hi. You can also follow me on Twitter to see my live tweets from the events I attend.

Tags: #smw, social media week, socialmedia, sysomos
Posted in Coverage, global, Reports

Q&A with Pepsico’s Chief Consumer Engagement Officer, Frank Cooper

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

As Senior Vice President, Chief Consumer Engagement Officer of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, Frank Cooper III is charged with leading the development of a new consumer engagement model for PAB and creating breakthrough marketing programs across the PAB portfolio. In addition, he has direct oversight of key operational areas across PAB that determine consumer engagement, including Digital, Media, Sports, Multicultural and Entertainment.

[Social Media Week]: What was your motivation for supporting Social Media Week?

[Frank Cooper]: Pepsi has a strong heritage in the digital world — our Web site launched almost 17 years ago. Since then, we have been investing in emerging technologies to grow together as we continue building our digital presence. Our long-standing belief in the power of people and their ideas to make positive change aligns with our constant digital growth, because social media platforms enable us to have ongoing conversations with our customers – and to explore new ways of driving social engagement.

We’re especially excited to be a part of Social Media Week because we recently launched the Pepsi Refresh Project – an effort that features a strong focus on social media. We’re inviting people to tell us their ideas about how they can refresh the world at RefreshEverything.com. Anyone is welcome to submit an idea, we’ll take up to 1,000 per month. And the public decides who wins. We’re giving up to $1.3 million per month to fund the winning ideas, more than $20 million in 2010. We’re using social media platforms to inspire ideas and encourage individuals to participate. In turn, individuals will be using social media platforms to drive votes for their ideas. Social media is our primary vehicle to getting the message out and driving social engagement.

Tell us a little about some of the Social Media Week events in which Pepsico and Pepsi Refresh will participate?

[Frank Cooper]: I’ll be speaking at the official press conference on Monday morning. Following the press conference, we’re hosting the opening session on the power of social engagement and the potential impact of the Pepsi Refresh Project. Lauren Hobart, CMO for Sparkling Brands at Pepsi, will be there to discuss the increasing importance in utilizing social media to develop corporate brands. Our partners from GOOD and Facebook will be a part of the conversation as well.

You’ll find Pepsi representatives at many other events throughout the week, including “Reinvention from the Ground Up,” “Mashable’s NextUp NYC,” and “What is Your Social Music Currency” on Wednesday. Thursday, you’ll find us at “Putting the Social in CSR.” At all of these events, you’ll hear from Pepsi representatives across all levels who believe in the power of social media.

[Social Media Week]: How is the social Web changing the way brands interact with their consumers? Why is this important?

[Frank Cooper]: Thanks to the tools of the social Web, the interaction between brands and their consumers is now a two-way street. And, this engagement leads to a meaningful dialogue – and in the instance of the Pepsi Refresh Project, we hope it leads to meaningful changes in communities across the U.S.

[Social Media Week]: In your opinion, what is the biggest misconception about social media?

[Frank Cooper]: Some people stay away from social media because they say they are worried about controlling the conversation. I believe this to be a misconception. Staying away from the conversation is not the same as controlling the message. People are going to talk — the choice is whether to be a part of the conversation or not.

[Social Media Week]: What is one of your predictions for social media in 2010? How do you see this influencing your brand?

[Frank Cooper]: As smart phones continue to become more mainstream, I think we’ll see tools such as location awareness really take off. The challenge for all of us is finding ways to stay engaged with our customers in a crowded marketplace.

Social media already strongly influences our brand. It enables our customers to become a part of our decisions. A clear example of this is our Dewmocracy program, which invited customers to create and package a product.

[Social Media Week]: What’s the biggest challenge presented by social media/ What are some ways this can be overcome?

[Frank Cooper: For these communication channels to be valuable, you have to put in the time. Cultivating online relationships, much like offline relationships, takes hard work. Pepsi is committed to engaging our customers and that’s why we’re investing in social media.

Tags: pepsi, pepsirefresh, socialmedia
Posted in Interviews

Proud to be the Global Media Partner for Social Media Week

Friday, January 29th, 2010

About this Guest Blogger: Stephanie Agresta is an EVP, Global Director of Digital Strategy and Social Media, Porter Novelli and member of the Social Media Week, Global Advisory Board. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter: @stephagresta

It’s been a busy year since Social Media Week launched in February 2009. The popularity of social media has grown exponentially in that time. And in 2010, Social Media Week is growing too – it’s going global!! Here are Porter Novelli we are proud announce our role as Global Media Partner for this important event.

Launching next Monday, 2/1/10, events will take place simultaneously in New York City, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paulo. The scope of Social Media Week has increased dramatically in size from its inception, with more than 170 events currently scheduled over the six participating cities. Now one of the only truly global social media events, Social Media Week is on track to be even bigger in 2011.

In 2010, global content will be critical to success in social media. Conversations are expanding across borders and without content and influencer relationships in these regions, brands will be at a loss.

I’d like to give a quick shout out to Toby Daniels. It has been a pleasure working with Toby on this and other social media projects. Toby has proven that he can fuel this powerful intersection of digital media, advertising and public relations for the corporate, public and non-profit sectors.

You can follow the news on the Social Media Week on Twitter and Facebook. And here are a few events that you can still RSVP for:

Social Media Monitoring & Analysis
RSVP: http://www.landaumedia.de/news/kundenevents/

Social Media Know How für Berliner Unternehmen
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=270255308830

Full schedule:
http://smw-berlin.sched.org

NEW YORK
Crowdsourcery Potions 101: Why Some Marketing Potions Fail and Others Thrive, Hosted By JWT
RSVP: http://bit.ly/c9py1z

Augmented Reality for Public Relations – The Implications of the Outernet on Culture and Commerce
RSVP: http://smwarpanel.eventbrite.com/

Full schedule:
http://smw-newyork.sched.org

TORONTO
CFC Media Lab LIVE @ VANCOUVER Olympics
RSVP: http://bit.ly/bYGZbA

Crushing It!
RSVP: http://crushingitstory.com/

Full schedule:
http://smw-toronto.sched.org

SAU PAULO
Register for all events here:
http://smwsp.eventbrite.com/

LONDON
Understanding Social Graph Optimisation – sponsored by Meebo
RSVP:http://smwlondonevent02.eventbrite.com/

Chinwag Live – Show Me the Money: Where’s the ROI in Social Media?
RSVP: http://smwlondonevent03.eventbrite.com/

Full schedule:
http://smw-london.sched.org

SAN FRANCISCO
The next challenge for the crowd: Quickly build real, hard, complex, shit that matters (like cars)
RSVP: http://smwsflocalmotors.eventbrite.com/

Social Media Camp
RSVP: http://bit.ly/anK0o5

Full schedule:
http://smw-sanfrancisco.sched.org

Selected events will be live streamed over the course of the week. Big shout out to the streaming partner Livestream. We will post details for how to tune in on the website shortly.

Tags: media, partnerships, porternovelli, socialmedia
Posted in Uncategorized

Can’t check out all the events at Social Media Week 2010?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Can’t check out all the events at Social Media Week 2010? Not to worry. In addition to our blog coverage of Social Media Week 2010, we have partnered with SmartBrief on Social Media to help keep you plugged in to all the great insights gathered from Social Media Week.

SmartBrief’s daily newsletters provide summaries and links to the “best of” industry news from around the web direct to your inbox. SmartBrief on Social Media will apply that model to Social Media Week 2010; gathering the best blog posts, articles and thoughts from thousands of sources and placing them in a special section in the newsletter from February 1st through February 5th .

SmartBrief will also be covering Social Media Week events on their blog, SmartBlog on Social Media so be sure to check them out and sign up for the free e-newsletter.

Tags: media, partners, smartbrief, socialmedia
Posted in News