6.10.2008

Digital Download 6/2/08

WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING IS BECOMING MORE MEASURABLE

The IAB Leadership Forum on User-Generated Content & Social Media held in New York on June 2 included an intimate workshop with Jon Gibs, VP of Media Analytics of Nielsen Online and Jeffrey Graham, Executive Director, Customer Insights of The New York Times on the subject of quantifying brand influence in consumer-generated media, specifically in the social space. Using the previous NYTimes project as a case study, Neilsen’s BuzzMetric tool measured 70 million blogs, 6 billion comments and their corresponding sentiments and impact, 48 million inbound links and 19 million unique visitors from January to February in 2007. Statistics show NYT.com far exceeds brand influence level suggested by audience size. Findings also show the blogs that link to NYT business coverage are influential, independent and wealthy. The demographics reveal the average is male from ages 25-49, self employed and make around six figures in income.

CELL PHONES REVEAL WE’RE CREATURES OF HABIT



A new research study done by an undisclosed European mobile service provider along with Dr. Marta C. Gonzalez and Cesar A. Hidalgo using sensitive location-tracking data from random cell phones in Europe has revealed interesting results of human behavior. The study shows that most people don’t go far away from their home, they frequent the same locations and they exhibit similar patterns whether they travel long or short distances. Researchers believe studies like these could help open new doors in disease tracking, urban planning or emergency planning. They also made sure to exclude and scramble any individual identifying information that could personally be misused. 100,000 randomly chosen cell phone users were tracked via calls, texts and cell tower proximity for the study.

THIRD PLACE IS A PRETTY GOOD PLACE TO BE


According to the latest Hitwise report, MyYearbook.com is the third-largest and fastest growing social network in the U.S right now. MyYearbook was founded by two high school students and has grown over 426% over the past year in the market space. In contrast, Facebook and Myspace both have declined over the past six months in regards to growth. Still, the two social giants beat out MyYearbook with internet visits, 74% and 15% respectively. MyYearbook, however, wins over on site stickiness with an average time of 32:54 compared to Myspace’s 29:54 and Facebook’s 20:52.