Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Recently I presented at the 2009 Communicators Conference in Portland, Ore. My discussion focused on the changing media landscape and its effect on communication.
It was fun and interesting to talk about the changes I am seeing. With so much transition occurring in our industry, I think it pushes each and every one of us as communicators to be more resourceful as we look to tell our stories or our clients’ stories.
Clearly change can be frightening, and disruptive. However, with the right attitude and actions, I believe we can continue to find great opportunities.
I began my presentation by noting the changes in traditional media and then juxtaposed this with information about social networking sites, hyper-local news sites and consumer generated content. As part of this discussion I honed in on the stats surrounding Facebook and MySpace.
Clearly Facebook has come a long way from being a site for college kids. In early April, the social networking giant announced it surpassed 200 millions users world wide. Facebook also reports it has five million new people joining each week.
Twitter, the social media darling, is also very interesting. As an open network, it provides companies with an easy way to monitor public sentiment and engage with customers in a non-obtrusive manner. In 2008, Twitter grew an astounding 752 percent.
But what about MySpace? No one in my network uses it and I began to wonder about MySpace’s future. To get the most current stats for my presentation, I reached out to MySpace’s PR manager to request the latest user statistics. Here is the data about MySpace she shared with me:
- MySpace has more than 130 million monthly active users around the globe. (March 2009 comScore)
- MySpace has more than 70 million total unique users in the U.S. (March 2009 comScore)
- MySpace is the country’s most viewed site on the Internet. (March 2009 comScore)
- 89 percent of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or older). (March 2009 comScore)
- 40 percent of online Americans are on MySpace. In the UK, it’s as common to have a MySpace account as it is to own a dog.
- 70 percent of people visiting mobile social networks are visiting MySpace. (ABI Research)
- Internationally, MySpace hit 60 million unique visitors, beating September’s record of 54 million. (February 2009 comScore)
- Europe MySpace users surpassed the 29 million user mark, up 0.8 million unique users from August 2008.
- Latin America MySpace users are up 16 percent over the past seven months, reaching 6.8 million users in November 2008.
ENGAGEMENT
MySpace is the top social network in all engagement categories according to comScore. In March 09, users
- spent 16 billion total minutes on the site
- viewed 35 billion total pages
- spent an average of 226.2 minutes on the site
The company has localized versions in 30 regions across 15 languages, including:United States, U.K., Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Latin America (EspaÒol), Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Australia, China, India, Japan, and New Zealand.
MySpace is one of the fastest growing Web sites of all time:
- 827 Billion rows of data
- 27 Billion comments on the site
- 34.2 Billion mails on the site total
- 41 Million mails per day
- Eight Billion friend relationships
- 6.8 Billion images
- 18 Million images uploaded daily
- 62,507 new videos uploaded to MySpace Video daily
- More than five million artists and bands are on MySpace Music
- Acts including Lily Allen, Sean Kingston, Arctic Monkeys, Colby Caillat, Dane Cook discovered on the site by users
The stats are impressive, but still there are a number of industry luminaries who believe MySpace’s future is limited. To better understand their perspective I recommend reading a New York Times article from May 3, 2009 entitled, “Losing Popularity Contest, MySpace Tries a Makeover.”
If you have a point of view on the future of MySpace, we would love to hear from you. Let us know what you think. Is the bloom off the flower? We welcome your perspective and/or examples of how you use MySpace.
While reading about Amazon’s recent launch of the Kindle DX, the large screen addition to the Kindle family, I was surprised to learn textbooks are a $9.8 billion dollar industry. In a bold move to become a major player in this market, Amazon introduced the Kindle DX in hopes of “spearheading a paperless revolution,” as described by Brian Chen with Wired.com in his recent article, about the launch of the DX.
Although Amazon’s cause to move towards a paperless revolution may be noble, its entry has been met with some initial skepticism. According to Chen, several of the students polled by Wired.com via Twitter expressed concerns regarding the DX’s expensive $500 price tag as well as its difficulty for studying. One polled student said, “I’d need five Kindles just to hold a single thought while writing essays. Books work just fine”
Regardless of this sentiment, Amazon is moving forward and announced partnerships with several universities and publishers. According to an earlier article written by Chen, the DX will be made available to students to use in place of textbooks.
From a PR perspective, I believe Amazon’s move to partner with universities is a smart one. It will allow the company to:
1. Secure feedback from students about their experience using the DX versus textbooks.
2. Begin building the DX customer base which may translate to lifelong Kindle users and advocates for the product.
3. Track and publicize the positive benefits to universities and students of going paperless – a topic that is close to the heart for a generation of young adults growing up in more environmentally aware society.
For example, Princeton, one of the participants in the program, is hoping the Kindle DX will decrease the amount of paper used on its campus. If the program is successful, Amazon should develop a case study to make the argument for other why universities should adopt the DX.
I had a few other ideas on how Amazon might leverage and publicize its partnerships with the universities.
– Hold Focus Groups & Publicize the Findings. Amazon could identify students to participate in focus groups. Several of the students could use the DX while others would rely on textbooks. This would allow Amazon to directly compare changes in behavior, attitudes around costs, impact on studying habits, etc. with students using the DX versus text books. Focus groups are an invaluable tool for acquiring feedback and the potential market acceptance of a product.
– Leverage Social Media. Create a Twitter page to share best practices for the DX and motivate users to tweet about their experiences online. I believe there is a huge opportunity to share tidbits about DX features so students derive maximum benefit from their readers and libraries.
– Reward Good Behavior. Hold a contest to identify and publicize the top environmentally-friendly universities across the nation. Share best practices for going green and the DX’s role in reducing paper use.
These are just a few of our preliminary ideas on how Amazon can leverage student experience to demonstrate the benefits of the DX versus traditional textbooks.
It is clear Amazon is seizing the opportunity to create a compelling PR campaign around one of the most talked about gadgets of the year. It will be interesting to see if it can deliver on driving the paperless revolution.
A recent post in the New York Times “After Deadline” blog – an online section devoted to examining questions of grammar, usage and style – examined the words writers love to overuse. Since we’re increasingly called upon to create more written content on behalf of our clients, we find this blog helpful to improve our writing. Some of the words writer Philip Corbett highlighted in his post include the following:
Icon/Iconic: Times editors have waged a long battle against the trite overuse of these terms. Ask yourself whether a person or thing is truly worthy of these descriptions before using them.
Arguably: A sneaky way to say something without having to take full responsibility for saying it.
Famously: If it’s so famous, do we have to say so?
[Blank]gate: Troopergate was the latest. This is an overdone play on the name of a well-known historic event.
Toxic: As in “toxic assets.” This has become ubiquitous as the standard term to describe the troubled investments at the heart of the fiscal crisis. Avoid it if you can.
I found this post to be particularly interesting because as a writer and PR professional, we often struggle with developing content that is straight-forward, easy-to-read and when possible, devoid of marketing language.
From a PR perspective, there are thousands of overused words and phrases I’m sure journalists would like to see banned from press and marketing materials. A few that come to mind include:
Revolutionize
Leverage
Cost-effective
Unveiled
Best-of-breed
Turnkey
Robust
Flexible
Next generation
Mission critical
I admit that in my 10 years in PR I’ve used all of these words hundreds of times. But in the interest of continuous improvement, it may be time to chuck these old phrases and get back to simplify our writing.
What other words or phrases do you think should be banned from PR and marketing materials? We’d love to hear your opinion. Leave us a comment!
Communiqué PR recently completed a project with Dashwire, an independent connected services platform provider. Dashwire offers an industry-leading connected services platform solution that delivers mobile-to-Web consumer services. This means mobile users can sync and manage their personal contacts, text messages, calls, photos, videos and settings from their phone to the Web.
The connected services market is heating up, and Microsoft’s recent entry into the game with its MyPhone service validates what Apple, Nokia and Google are already betting on. Competition is no longer from device maker to device maker (i.e., Nokia vs. Motorola phones). Now, software services are competing to deliver value-added services to consumers on top of phone platforms.
According to a December 2008 press release from IDC, mobile phone shipments in 2009 are expected to decline, however, converged mobile devices (smartphones) are expected to grow 8.9 percent worldwide in 2009. The report states:
“Users have come to realize what these devices can do beyond voice telephony, especially when it comes to running applications. Take a look at how gaming, mapping and location, entertainment, news, and social networking applications for converged mobile devices have taken off, allowing users to do much more than just make phone calls. In response, handset vendors have been building their product and applications portfolios to catch this wave of opportunity.”
Ford Davidson, founder and CEO of Dashwire, has been an active voice in the connected services market. Ford carefully watches market trends, actively blogs about news and trends within and provides the media with a clear point of view on which players are well positioned to emerge as the market leader. As an independent vendor, Ford is well positioned to offer his perspective and expertise to help educate media, consumers and industry influencers.
From a PR perspective, providing media and analysts with a strong point of view on market trends is a great way to help build thought leadership and increase awareness for an organization. Just recently, Ford was quoted in a Reuters’ article about how Nokia’s OVI store stacks up against Apple’s App Store. This placement resulted from our proactive outreach offering Ford’s point of view on the connected services market on the heels of Microsoft’s MyPhone announcement earlier this year.
Ford commented on the increasing competition in the space, saying, “These companies are really entering the arms race.” Reporter Tarmo Virki included the quote in the title of his article, “Nokia takes on Apple in online software arms race.”
The Reuters piece has been picked up by more than 39 publications and blogs, including CNBC, MSNBC, Forbes, Condé Nast Portfolio, International Business Times, the Guardian, eWeek and PC Magazine. The piece also helped Dashwire meet one of their key business objectives and it positioned the company as an emerging leader in the connected services market alongside larger companies such as Nokia, Apple and Microsoft.
For more information about Dashwire, please visit www.dashwire.com, or visit http://blog.dashwire.com/ to read more about Ford’s thoughts on the connected services industry.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Emily Steel explores the world-wide movement to ban the Comic Sans font. This raises an interesting point about the importance choosing the right fonts in business.
Comic Sans has become synonymous with materials for kids and communicates a light-hearted, upbeat sentiment. Originally intended by its creator to mimic the font found in comic strip speech-bubbles, to some Comic Sans has become what the Ban Comic Sans movement describes as “the evil of typographical ignorance.”
While Comic Sans stirs up a decidedly less heated response for most readers in the context of grade school flyers, they would almost certainly be surprised to see it on a legal document. The same goes for its typographical cousins such as Lucida or Papyrus, both of which would seem markedly out of place on a business document.
Since when did Times New Roman become the font du jour of the professional world? According to a Wikipedia article on the topic, the font was originally created and commissioned by the British newspaper, The Times, in 1931. Ever since it became commercially available in 1933, Times New Roman has become “one of the most successful and ubiquitous typefaces in history.”
Unlike Comic Sans, Times New Roman uses serifs and is therefore easier to read. Says Tim North, author of “Better Writing Skills,” the serif makes each letter more distinctive and easier for our brains to quickly recognize. Without the serif, “the brain has to spend longer identifying a letter because its shape is less distinct.”
At Communiqué PR, we use Times New Roman in nearly all written communication except e-mail, where Arial is our font of choice. E-mail seems to be the only place in business where experimentation is acceptable, with many people using different fonts and colors for their signatures.
Do you have a favorite font or thoughts on the Ban Comic Sans movement? We’d love to hear your opinion.
Apple recently announced plans to release its iPhone 3.0 operating system software upgrade later this summer. This announcement has gained significant attention from the media about what the upgrade will mean not only for iPhone users but also for developers.
Among many of the new capabilities for users including copy-and-paste functionality, a landscaped keyboard and push notifications, Apple is introducing micropayments and in-app purchases. This means users will have the opportunity to purchase application upgrades and virtual gifts directly within an application.
So what does this mean for users and developers? Media are saying Apple has created a new mobile economy by allowing in-app purchases. The company’s App Store, which has received more than one billion app downloads in less than nine months, will is poised to see increased revenues and more offerings.
We asked Satoshi Nakajima, CEO of Big Canvas Inc., to share his thoughts on what the new operating system will mean for competitors. Says Satoshi, “The App Store is 18 to 24 months ahead of competitors, and additional billing capabilities such as in-app purchases and subscriptions will secure their leadership position.”
According to a recent article by Ben Parr with Mashable.com, developers will now have the opportunity to develop a relationship with iPhone customers, establish a steady stream of income and create digital stores within applications. iPhone users will also benefit and see an influx of up-to-date and better apps as well as an increase in goods and services to choose from.
Ben says, “The ability for the creators of applications to build relationships with customers by selling items and creating stores within applications is a bold step towards the iPhone becoming its own micro-economy.”
With these new changes to the iPhone OS, Apple is well positioned to continue expanding its popular app store and bringing new innovation to the mobile market. Click here to get a preview of Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 OS.