Since Facebook’s inception, Mark Zuckerberg has had an uncanny knack for maintaining the site’s exceptional growth, despite royally pissing off the majority of its users with shady privacy practices, monetization strategies like the Beacon fiasco, and of course, its latest incarnation, Timeline. And yet, despite all the user resentment, we’re apparently using the site more than ever before. It’s this kind of fortitude in the face of user frustration that has led some to compare Zuckerberg’s forceful genius to that of Steve Jobs.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Business – Derek Thompson – This Graph Is Disastrous for Print and Great for Facebook—or the Opposite! – The Atlantic
If you work anywhere near media, you’ll want to take a long look at this graph. It tells you where Americans direct our attention (in BLUE) and where advertisers pay money to capture our attention (in RED).
— Takeaway #1: We still love TV.
— Takeaway #2: Advertisers still love print.
— Takeaway #3: Audiences move faster than advertisers.
According to this chart — adapted from a Mary Meeker slideshow excerpted by Bill Gross — we spend more time engaging with mobile devices than reading print. But print publications still get 25-times more ad money than mobile. Either the eyeballs are moving faster than the advertisers, who will eventually stop paying for print … or the ad teams don’t think a minute spent around mobile ads is worth a minute spend around print ads. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.
We can take this chart in a lot of directions. Could print see another mass exodus of money? Is mobile advertising about to explode?
8% of Online Adults Use Twitter Every Day [STUDY]
Most Americans don’t use Twitter. But about half who do use it every day.
Of 2,253 U.S. online adults surveyed in a recent Pew study, 15% said they use Twitter. Among the same population, 8% said they use the service on a typical day day.
20 Reasons to Switch to Google+ [INFOGRAPHIC]
Thinking of truly embracing Google+ as your go-to social network of choice? The folks at Infographic Labs have put together a compelling infographic as to why the Google service is worth your time.
Social Media Companies: A Cheat Sheet [INFOGRAPHIC]
Did you know Club Penguin has more employees than Twitter? That Spotify has larger revenues than Tagged, which in turn has more users than Twitter? That Pinterest may be a hot property, but Foursquare still has more users? (All revenue figures are in U.S. dollars, by the way.)
How important are all those ugly Tweet Buttons to news sites? » Nieman Journalism Lab
But do these buttons work? It’s hard to say. What we know for sure is that these magic buttons promote their own brands — and that they tend to make you look a little desperate. Not too desperate, just a little bit…
Don’t worry. These buttons will vanish. The previous wave of buttons for Delicious and Digg and Co. vanished, Facebook and Twitter and G+ might vanish or they might survive, but the buttons will vanish for sure. Or do you seriously think that in ten years we will still have those buttons on every page? No, right? Why, because you already know as a user that they’re not that great. So why not get rid of them now? Because “they’re not doing any harm”? Are you sure?
via How important are all those ugly Tweet Buttons to news sites? » Nieman Journalism Lab.
The New York Times’ R&D Lab has built a tool that explores the life stories take in the social space » Nieman Journalism Lab
Some of the most exciting work taking place in The New York Times building is being done on the 28th floor, in the paper’s Research and Development Lab. The group serves essentially as a skunkworks project for a news institution that stands to benefit, financially and otherwise, from creative thinking; as Michael Zimbalist, the Times’ vice president of R&D, puts it, the team is “investigating the ideas at the edges of today and thinking about how they’re going to impact business decisions tomorrow.” (For more on the group’s doings, check out the series of videos that we shot there a couple of years ago.)
Some teens aren’t liking Facebook as much as older users – Los Angeles Times
For teens, it has been an essential rite of passage: They turn 13 and join Facebook.
Since she signed up three years ago, friend requests and status updates are as much a part of Meera Kumar’s life as homework and exams at Menlo School, the elite private school in leafy Atherton, Calif., where she’s a 16-year-old sophomore.
But when her kid sister Anika turned 13 last year, she gave Facebook a pass.
“I guess I haven’t been that interested in it,” said Anika, who prefers sharing photos with friends on Instagram via her iPhone or video chatting with them onGoogle+.
via Some teens aren’t liking Facebook as much as older users – Los Angeles Times.