Super Affiliate Zac Johnson gets interviewed by Eric Schechter, Clickbooth’s Social Media Manager.
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Zac Johnson Interview with Clickbooth
I had just dropped my daughter off at school this morning. As I waited at a traffic light a woman was making a left turn heading in my direction. I noticed she rolled down her window despite the rain that was falling. Immediately my mind went to “She’s smoking.” I was right. Next I went to the inevitable “She is going to toss that cigarette butt into the middle of the road” because in her nicotine choked mind that is not littering, She did. She then made the turn toward me and I saw the child in the back seat in a safety seat and I said “Wow, I need to pray for that poor kid.” You see the whole idea of smoking is filthy to me. I can say this because I once smoked (for about 10 years) so I am not some inexperienced windbag spouting off about this. I know how dirty, disgusting and unattractive the habit is because I have done it. I know it so much so that I can see and predict behaviors of this group of people to the tee just like I did with this lady.
This week Facebook will reportedly be rolling out the ability to send status updates to Twitter directly from the publisher box. There are apps that cater to the cross-posting of updates between the two social networks, but this would mark the first time Facebook itself actually encouraged it. The move is an interesting one, considering that Facebook has spent much of its time making itself more Twitter-like. Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook has a good piece chronicling the company’s “Twitterfication” over the past year, which includes events like opening the Status API, letting users subscribe to their friends and Pages and receive status updates via text message, releasing @replies-style tagging, and encouraging users to make status updates public. O’Neill says the only step left is to open a search API. Of course Facebook has also just released its own URL shortener . Facebook employees are already testing the Facebook-to-Twitter functionality: The feature will utilize the new Facebook URL Shortener, which could actually lead to more widespread awareness of it. Once Twitter is flooded with Facebook links, people may start gravitating to that to shorten their own URLs, although the service at FB.me is not live for everyone to use yet. Either way, things are really starting to heat up in the URL-shortener space. Not only does Facebook now have its own, but so does Google . On top of that, Twitter-favorite Bit.ly has just launched Bit.ly Pro . Related Articles: > Facebook URL Shortener Makes Appearance > Facebook Shows a Glimpse of Twitterness >
Google made a couple of announcements today that actually combined for perhaps a more interesting announcement than either of them as stand-alone news items. First, Google has added a new share button to the Google Toolbar , which allows users to share any site on the web via their social network of choice. Second, Google announced that with Feedburner, you can now set your feeds up to post to Twitter . The thing that these two announcements have in common is that they both utilize a new URL shortener from Google. They tried to slip that in their quietly a couple of times, but then went ahead and made an announcement about the service itself. The shortening service is located at goo.gl , but it is not available for broad consumer use at this point. Google is just using it itself to compliment the aforementioned services. In other words, you can’t just go to goo.gl and shorten a URL yourself. However, Google says that in time, it may offer such an option. “We think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links,” Google says. They also say the core goals of the Google URL Shortener are: – Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime – Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages – Speed – fast resolution of short URLs Google’s standard privacy policy applies to goo.gl. The company says that it may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end use clicks. On a related note, Facebook also now has its own URL shortener.
Facebook (96%) is now the most popular communication tool, followed by SMS (93%) and email (91%), according to a new survey from Prompt Communications. When consumers were asked which method they used most frequently to communicate, 37 percent said SMS followed by Facebook and the phone at 28 percent. Respondents feel that email is now less important than social media, but only 20 percent said they could live without it entirely. “Facebook is the most popular social network in the world, with over 350 million users, so it should come as no surprise to discover that people are using it as a primary tool for communication,” said Hazel Butters, CEO of Prompt Communications . “However, our survey results also show that people are still using more established methods of communication, from the phone to email. It is important for organizations to understand these trends if they want to reach their customers exactly where and how they would like to be reached. As attitudes change and new methods of human interaction develop, businesses must stay ahead of the trends.” Many people have concerns about their employers seeing their personal information, with 73 percent worried that their bosses will view their profiles on social networks. When it comes to their family’s access only 27 percent would not want family members to see their profiles. People overall believe that advances in technology have created a negative effect on their lives and interpersonal communications. More than half (60%) believe communication relies too much on technology, while 71 percent feel social media is making communication less personal. Despite these reservations, people are still using social media regularly. More than a quarter (28%) of respondents said they could only go one week without using social media. Related Articles: > Facebook Forms Board For Online Safety > Facebook Cracks 350 Million Users, Adjusts Privacy Settings > Nearly Half Of Consumers Would Recommend A Product On Facebook
The majority (86%) of women are now using popular social networks, a 48 percent increase over 2008, according to a new study by SheSpeaks. In addition, social networks including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, have become drivers of purchase intent among women, with 50 percent of social media users reporting they have purchased products because of information on social networking sites, and 40 percent have used coupon codes found on social networks. The largest increase in social media use was among women 50 years of age and over, whose participation grew from 31 percent in 2008 to 70 percent in 2009. Social media participation was up across all age groups this year. “Last year our members were going online primarily to research purchases, but now they are looking to social media to help them research, guide and facilitate every kind of transaction, from social exchanges to purchases,” said Aliza Freud, Founder and CEO of SheSpeaks . “Women have become more comfortable using social media, and for marketers, the overall growth and habitual use of social media represents opportunities to reach and engage women of all ages, and influence their purchase decisions.” Facebook is the most popular social network among women with 95 percent belonging to the site, up 46 percent from one year ago. MySpace participation declined over the last year (63% to 42%), while nearly 40% of the women surveyed said they have Twitter accounts. Although many women use both Facebook and Twitter, 80% prefer Facebook. In fact, 25% of those surveyed abandoned Twitter after creating their accounts, while Facebook use only declined 7% for women after creating Twitter accounts. Facebook users also reported they are two times more likely to log in daily (72%), compared to Twitter users (36%). “Although Facebook is currently more popular than Twitter among women, they each share a purpose in women’s lives,” said Freud. “Facebook serves women’s need to interact with friends and share photos, while Twitter has become a tool that is primarily used for professional networking and learning about up-to-the-minute news, promotions and deals.” The study also found online video has grown in popularity over the last year. Almost 40 percent of women indicated they frequently watch video and TV content online, and 85 percent say they watch it frequently or sometimes. “Our members are spending more time watching video on the Web, especially now that more premium content is available,” said SheSpeaks CMO Fiona Pietruski. “It is important for marketers to recognize that influential female consumers are spending their time with many types of digital media, where they can be reached with advertising and marketing messaging.”
MySpace has announced a new set of APIs . These include APIs for real-time streaming, status and mood commenting, open search, photo uploading, and an updated version of the post to/share API. “MySpace sees huge value in real-time data and believes sharing it will mature the socialization of content on the Web,” said MySpace COO Mike Jones. “MySpace is building the next-generation content distribution platform and is opening up our floodgate of public data for developers to make compelling real-time experiences around the Web.” The Real-Time Stream API allows the full MySpace activity stream to be pushed to third party sites in real-time. It is already being used by Google, OneRiot, and GroovyCorp. “MySpace made it really easy to integrate public MySpace data into our search engine,” said Tobias Peggs, GM of OneRiot. “With access to this real-time data, we’re offering more comprehensive and meaningful search results to our users.” “MySpace users are making a huge contribution to the realtime, social web by sharing millions of links with their friends each day,” said Peggs. “We’re delighted to have access to that information through the MySpace Real-Time Stream API.” We’ve already seen what Google is doing : The Status and Mood Commenting API lets third party sites use MySpace status and mood updates and allows people to comment from those sites. Comments then appear in the user’s MySpace activity stream, and users can interact with that stream without leaving the third party site. The Open Search API allows third party sites to include public MySpace profile information in search results. Users can search for people by name, profile type (such as musician, celebrity, comedian) or email address and filter search results by gender, age and location. The Photo Upload API lets users upload photos to MySpace from third party sites or MySpace Apps. It also enables creation of public or private photo albums. The updated version of the Post To/Share on MySpace API allows for the sharing of content from third party sites with a MySpace user’s friends. When a user posts content from another site, it goes directly to his/her MySpace activity stream, creating a link back to the third party site. MySpace is even going so far as to host a ” developer challenge ” competition starting January 4 to encourage developers to come up with some cool apps utilizing the APIs. Developers will have the chance to win cash prizes and promotion on MySpace. These MySpace APIs could go a long way in keeping MySpace relevant in the era of Facebook and Twitter. Frankly, they are long overdue. The APIs mean that there can be a lot more useful apps implementing more functionality with MySpace. That means more ways users can keep using it. This and MySpace’s acquisition of imeem could be huge for the future of the social network.