Facebook vs Twitter :: A Breakdown of 2010 Social Demographics

A look at the breakdown...

2010 Social Demographics of:

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New Competition for Online Social Network Marketing Giant Facebook...Is this Hype or Truth?

In the world of social networking, one name stands above the rest. Facebook. It is the undisputed champion of the social scene, a monolith in the market. That makes it very hard for any newcomer to survive. With 500 million users and a net worth of about 33 billion dollars, the giant is certainly not going out without a fight. Despite all that, one company thinks there may be a few chinks in Facebook’s armor. The David facing off against the Facebook Goliath is called Diaspora.

 Loosely translated, diaspora means the spreading out of people. This new company aims to take advantage of two things, the first is Facebook’s privacy problems. Not long ago, there was a tremendous outcry when Facebook started changing its privacy settings. People were often confused by the new settings and many users felt their information was not being protected. Since then, Facebook has simplified its privacy controls but there is still a fear that the company will try to make more profiles public. That is good news for Diaspora, which describes itself as a “privacy-aware, personally-controlled” social network. Their goal is to give users more control over what information is shared and who can see it. That means users can choose who can see what on an individual basis. For instance, Your boss, won’t be able to see that hilarious picture you took of him at the office christmas party. The second innovation that may help Diaspora succeed is the fact it is open source. That means the company allows people to access the code that runs the programs. In laymen's terms, anyone can see how the program works. That gives apps creators and other software developers more access and means there may be more games and other customizable creations for the individual account. Diaspora is set to be released on September 15th. So far the company has raised more than $200,000 dollars. Among the initial investors was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. With plenty of capital and some luck this new upstart could give Facebook a run for its money.

Do you think this is just hype, or a successful business venture?? Do you feel Diaspora can compete with Facebook? Let us know what you think about this new business and idea!


Blog Posted by: Tyler Griffin, Creative Director - Mindshift Media
Written by: Brad Girtz - Mindshift Media Blogger

Optimizing Online Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

Starting an online ad campaign is an involved process, especially for the inexperienced. Advertising is a specialized field with its own series of challenges. Simply deciphering the jargon can seem impossible. To understand how a good ad campaign is run, it is important to know how to analyze a campaign.

The first step is locating the target audience. Find a website with plenty of traffic, that caters to the target audience. This is like finding a good fishing hole, it may take a few tries but eventually you find a good place. Once you have found a suitable site to advertise, you will need to run an advertising audit. This means looking at every part of the advertising campaign to see what is making money and what needs improvement. First, look at click through rates. This is the number of people who actually clicked on the ad and were redirected back to the advertised website. These numbers give you initial indications of how the ad is preforming, but they can be deceiving. For instance, they do not take into account accidental clicks or people who clicked on the ad, only to immediately leave the site.

To better understand an online ad campaign, advertisers must move beyond click through rates and look at engagement rates and overall ad performance. Engagement rates are the number of people who actually navigated around the site, commented on products, and/or purchased a product. In short, they spent time with the site and its content. These numbers should have a direct correlation with the overall ad performance. Sales should go up in proportion to the number of people clicking through and engaging with a site. Along with these tools, advertisers should be using “intent to purchase studies”. This is a complex term, meaning a study taken before and after an ad campaign, that looks at the target audiences willingness to buy a product. The goal of the study is to gauge any change in the buyers opinion of a product due to an advertising campaign.

Intent to purchase studies provide, what is possibly the most reliable data to understand the effectiveness of an online ad campaign. Using these tools, even a first time advertiser can better understand how to improve and tailor their ad to increase revenue and maximize effectiveness.

Zeekee Interactive Experiences Success with Online 
Multimedia Marketing Campaign 

(Produced by: Mindshift Media and STVP)

Blog Posted By: Tyler Griffin, Creative Director - Mindshift Media
Written By: Brad Girtz - Mindshift Media Blogger