Archive for February, 2009

Review: Techcrunch’s 2008 Year in Review Report

Categories: Social MediaPosted on February 21st, 2009

I just finished reading (although some parts I skimmed, like the data tables) Techcrunch’s 2008 Year In Review a report they recently published at a fee, although the executive summary is available for free. Techcrunch is monetizing Crunchbase, their wiki/database of companies and funding, and is now offering research reports –the same industry I’m in. Although my coverage is different as I do research for consumers and large brands, their’s are aimed at startups and VCs, and somewhat bumps up against O’Reilly’s research arm.

Overall, this 143 pages of data offers a broad look at money movement within the technology, startup, and social media space, and is tracking funding, funding types, M&A, VC activity, failed startups, layoffs, and other data. The report also provides a summary of key trends in this space, and highlights key activities during the past year, and takes a stab at some changes that could come in 2009 in their “punch” (predictions) list. The report self-admits that some of the data is not complete, and some industries have holes in them, as wiki-style research will always have limitations.

Heather, (read her response) the CEO of Techcrunch sent the report to me to review, and overall, the report is appropriately priced for a broad set of data that they’ve been harvesting in crunchbase, although there are some data missing, massaging of data, and a useful, but sometimes unrefined graphs. For a first release, this is a solid start, and CEOs at startups should shell out the money if they’re out of touch with the industry and need a refresher, or if you’re an investor, the aggregation will also be helpful.

While certainly not the refined reports that I’m used to seeing, the data is helpful for startups that need to a 30,000 foot view of the funding and market view. Expect their future reports to be more refined, with more insight and recommendations. It’s interesting to watch Techcrunch, which started out as a blog, grow into events, conferences, and now research –multiple revenue streams is a smart move in a difficult-to-monetize space.

Takeaway: While a lot of raw data, and a few good summaries, this report isn’t yet refined. However those involved with funding (lender or startup seeking funding) should invest the $149 to quickly check the temperature of the market, and identify trends in finance and M&A. Expect these reports to evolve over coming years, as Techcrunch continues to expand beyond a blog.

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Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess

Categories: Social MediaPosted on February 19th, 2009

Yesterday, Cece, who also blogs about getting laid off, did an analysis of the PR firms that are are –and are not– using social media for their own corporate agency use. It’s surprising that many of the top PR firms didn’t have a corporate presence in their social media –despite that they need to represent the communications for their own clients.

I’ve heard this argument before, the “cobbler’s children” don’t get any self attention as they are too busy helping clients. The counter to this is that in a new media that’s radically different than communications of the past, agencies should be practicing so they can learn how to be better at applying this to their own clients.

This isn’t just limited to PR agencies, I was once pitched when I was the community manager at Hitachi in 2006-7 by agencies to offer a blogging strategy for 100k –yet none of them were currently blogging or had any experience. I made sure that proposal was dumped.

Currently, I get press releases from social media vendors, and often they don’t have a URL, it’s just the release inside of an email. If it’s something important, I’ll share it on twitter and maybe in my digest. There are some vendors that sell social media products and services that make announcements using press releases, without the use of a corporate blog. Going forward, I’ll be mentioning those vendors that aren’t visibly walking the talk –in an industry as new as ours, it’s important to know if they are learning by doing.

Don’t take my word for it, I asked the VP of Marketing, Paula Drum (a social media buyer and decision maker) of HR Block if she would hire an agency that wasn’t using the tools, and she said “no’, read more about it here.

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Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Feb 18, 2009

Categories: Digest, Social NetworkingPosted on February 18th, 2009

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
Twitter raises a very large round of funding, potentially enough to last the economic drought for their small company. LinkedIn and Facebook demonstrate they continue to grow –especially in a recession. More individuals are worried by Facebook’s new Terms of service, which the CEO has responded to.

Funding: Twitter raises $35mm –without generating any revenue
Raising money in a recession is always tricky, valuations fluctuate, and business models do too. Twitter raised a cool $35mm (one of the largest rounds since the recession was announced in Oct 08), despite not generating any revenue. Their hype, buzz, and accelerated growth (albiet a small community of estimated of around 5mm from some news sources) leave many wondering if they will generate revenue from brands.

Recession: Linkedin continues to grow during a recession
The social networking industry has opportunity during economic downturns, perhaps this is due to people having more time to after being laid off, those want to connect and find new opportunities, or the natural instinct in many social animals to find safety in numbers. Comscore data shows an increase in total unique views since the recession was announced in Sept. Do see this report from Pingdom that indicates that Twitter and LinkedIn’s network availability may be changing.

Stats: Facebook continues to grow
Now reported to have 175mm users with 600k new users everyday this social newtork continues to grow. Already saturated with you, now the fastest growing demographic is “Women over 55, up 175.3% in the last 120 days. Facebook growing faster with women than men in almost every age group.”

Feature: MySpace to index and search images
MySpace has confirmed that it recently went live, and indexes around 3 billion of the site’s 7 billion photo according to coverage by Techcrunch. This feature will allow people to quickly find related content, and could help with contextual advertising.

Security: Dangers of Social Networks
Recent PCWorld article discusses with so many people in one location the dangers of a social network being hacked and exposing a great degree of personal information in one place. Given users don’t’ pay for a contract, nor terms of service, this is a liability most don’t foresee.

Privacy: Facebook’ Terms of Service Scare
More than a few folks are concerned about private and personal data, but when articles that suggest that Facebook’s terms of service mean they can do anything they want at anytime, (like forever) it starts to scare on folks, do read Mark Z’s response.

Ning continues to grow, despite porn removal
A few months ago, Ning made a bold announcement to remove all adult content from their network, despite this gash in content inventory, they still continue to grow, Techcrunch cites Comscore data

Usage: Surge in Europe, acceleration in France
Comscore reports that social networking in Europe is up, with France having a 45% year of growth. Key finding: “Of the 282.7 million European Internet users age 15 and older who went online via a home or work computer in December 2008, 211 million visited a social networking site – representing a penetration of 74.6 percent”

Culture: Facebook is for the old?
Time Magazine gives some pretty silly –and somewhat true reasons why Facebook is for old folks, funny thing is, my parents nor my grandma is on it …yet.

Culture: Hackers take aim at celebrity accounts
Apparently, Miley Cyrus, who plays Hannah Montana, knows how to write a lot better than her hackers led on. This is the second case we’ve heard of Twitter being ‘hacked’ in a few months.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

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The Twitter Spoofer

Categories: MicroMediaPosted on February 15th, 2009

Apparently, a spammer is creating dozens of Twitter accounts, each one has one letter added to my profile name jowyang and is linking to a ‘get rich quick’ scam. I’ve received hundreds of messages from replies, direct messages, emails, and even a long distance phone call warning me. It’s likely a computer program, as it’s just adding one unique letter to my name, then following thousands and sending them direct messages. Many suggest that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I supposed I should be flattered. I’m not going to link to any of these accounts not to give them any attention, but I see this as an opportunity for Twitter.

How so? If there was a ‘report spam’ feature on Twitter the community (which already self-supports itself) could quickly notify the system when there’s an issue. This type of crowd sourcing already works for Akismet, wordpress’s spam system, and could easily be applied to Twitter.

Thank you all for watching out for my brand, I appreciate each and every message.

I sent a message to Ev and Biz, and I’m confident that Twitter will resolve this, I’m not concerned, but am thankful to all my followers.

On a related note, Twitter needs to keep the network clean, why? Brands are very interested in this community, I’ve been getting more and more requests from clients to discuss twitter, and whether or not they should engage and how. Just today, Forbes captured my thoughts on how I believe Twitter can monetize from corporate services, read why and how.

We’ve a report publishing soon, headed up by Zach Hofer-Shall, and edited by Josh Bernoff and myself, so if you’re a client, keep an eye out for it soon.

Update: Biz sent my emaill to the support team, and a few minutes later the offending accounts were suspended. Apparently, anyone can DM the @spam account to get this handled, I didn’t know that till now. This smells like a bot/computer program so we should expect more of these spammer accounts to appear to others, read Jacob’s account of the activity. Impressive how Twitter crew quickly cleaned this up –now that they just rounded up a cool $35mm, high quality service is certainly expected.

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Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Feb 14, 2009

Categories: Digest, Social NetworkingPosted on February 14th, 2009

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Web Strategy Summary
Facebook adopts OpenID, and makes more of their API available to developers shows a new leaf as the largest platform by registered users opens up –this should spur growth even further. MySpace, likely in reaction to all the Facebook clamor, and touts it’s engagement numbers and Hi5 aims after gaming, an activity ripe for a recession.

Data: Facebook adopts OpenID
The biggest news of the past days is Facebook’s adoption of OpenID, which will mean that universal logins will be available to users, and eventually sharing of data, portable information to pass around the social web is also amplified as they’ve announced that APIs are available to impact Status, Notes, Links, and Video to Facebook Platform

Engagement: MySpace touts user interaction
Perhaps in a punch back to Facebook’s total user claims, MySpace ignites a PR campaign and touts that it’s user engagement is high: “The average MySpace user now spends 266 minutes (4.4 hours) on the site every month; a 5% increase over last month and a +31% increase year over year. MySpace says its users spend nearly 100 minutes more per visitor than the closest competitor. ”

Launch: Hi5 launches games
Hi5, which has a high growth rate, is now introducing gaming to it’s social network platform, which are not only popular during normal growth but could skyrocket during a recession. There are sponsorship opportunities and advertising opportunities for brands that want to get into this space.

Best Practices: Craig Newmark on the secrets of Community
RWW distills how Craig’s list built their online community: Recognize the Importance of a Feedback Loop, Get out of the Way, and Understand we live in a culture of participation.

Stats: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr
This image, which I don’t have much background on, gives some data on some of the social networks. Also see these stats from Compete, collected by CNET

Culture: Don’t get Facebook?
While 150mm clammer on Facebook actively, some still aren’t sure of it’s purpose, and that’s ok. Read how some do get it, and even those that don’t may still be addicted. Others question if it can continue, despite being 5 years old.

Culture: Suicide on MySpace prevented
An odd, but ever so real story how those on MySpace were able to prevent another from committing suicide. Expect more stories like this to increase during the year.

2009 Social Networking Stats continues to grow
My not so secret collection continues to grow, read it, submit to it, and book mark it. Read Social Networking Stats for 2009.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

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Understanding Open Stack, the Connective Tissue of the Social Web

Categories: Social MediaPosted on February 12th, 2009

I’ve been conducting interviews for my upcoming report on the Future of Social Networks, and have spent time with many vendors that have started to mention the “Open Stack” (both Google and Plaxo mentioned this to me). As a web decision maker (I call you a web strategist) you need to be aware of emerging technologies and how they impact your strategy.

The Open Stack (much like an application stack) is a set of technologies that allow for the passing, sharing of data across multiple containers and platforms, learn the details from the Plaxo guys. To be specific, the stack consists of OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, XRDS-Simple, and Portable Contacts. It’s a tendons between bones, it’s the sinew between muscles, it’s what I call “connective tissues”.

If you’ve been watching the news, major platforms are adopting these technologies, most recently, the big giant Facebook (who is known for being more closed and proprietary than others) has joined the Open ID Foundation.

Steve Kuhn took notes from a recent Web 2.0 event which explains why OpenStack and what the technologies do. Kris was at the same event and gives more details into how it works. Uncle Marc Canter, who flaked on my meeting with him, (he’ll say it was me who flaked, don’t believe him) thinks broader about the OpenMesh, in between painting his fence with architecture diagrams.

So what’s my report going to say? I’m looking at the impact of these technologies and others looking 3-5 years out and how they impact brands, consumers, and the community. What kind of crazy things can happen? The act of friending could go away, registration pages could die, and corporate product pages may look more like wikis, yup, anything’s possible. I’ve already finished many of my interviews folks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, RWW, Razorfish, Dell, Gigya, Intel, Meebo, Federated Media and others –and have found a few patterns. more to come soon.

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Impacts of MicroMedia on the Client/Vendor Relationship

Categories: MicroMediaPosted on February 12th, 2009

If you don’t know how I use twitter, I’ve inverted the question from “what are you doing now” to instead be “What’s important to me now”. While I’m high volume, you can read how I use the tool. I added a 6th bullet to reflect how I use it work for work purposes.

One of our policies is not to disclose who our clients are. Why? many of our clients do not want the relationship known in public, so we honor that. So, as I visit different clients on my travels, I often indicate I’m visiting a client in Houston, or a client in New York. Lately, and interesting phenomenon has started happening that clients indicate that i’m at their work –and most recently they took pictures on Twitpic and posted. I have no issues with this, but learned that one of my client’s corp comm team was monitoring and appropriately reminded employees to be mindful in public.

This makes for a very unique situation, as the client has disclosed the working relationship before I have, so should I respond and thank them and make it known to everyone? I don’t know the answer, but I tend to lean on the conservative side. Either way, anyone who’s paying attention, can figure out exactly who I’m visiting a majority of the time –it’s a well connected industry.

Speaking of keeping everyone updated. Next week, I’ll be in Salt Lake City at the Omniture Summit, which will be attended by thousands, and includes a concert by Maroon 5, then I’ll be down in San Diego speaking to a university that knows how community is important to their students and alumni. In mid March I’ll be in Austin for SXSW, and helping some clients, then head to Minneapolis, and will be hosting a tweetup. April, I’ll be in Orlando at Forrester’s Marketing conference, then in mid May, I’ll be in Amsterdam and Paris, and am open to other gigs in Europe.

Proto Analyst Ray Wang who writes A Software Insiders Point of View convinced me to sign up to Tripit, you can find me there if you already have an account.

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People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 12, 2009

Categories: Career, On the movePosted on February 12th, 2009

I haven’t published an “on the move in the social media space” in a while, in fact nearly 2 months. Why? Things really slowed down, and I received far less submissions, the recession is taking it’s toll.

Despite there being many layoffs in the startup space. I’ve started this post series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted, move, or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

Keith Burtis is new Community Manager for Best Buy Remix. you can find him as @keithburtis on Twitter, and his web site is at www.magicwoodworks.com.

Amber Naslund is Radian6’s new Director of Community, read her thoughts here.

Erik Langner, expresses his joy on Twitter and says: “Excited about starting my new gig as Customer Success Director at Lithium this week!”

Ed Lee is now the managing director and online and social media consultancy com.motion in Toronto, congrats!

How to connect with others (or get a job):
Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how:

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email. Please include a link to your announcement, and ensure you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

List of Enterprise Social Media Professionals
This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

See Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, fees pay for my hosting)

Learn from those that were recently hired, read these survey results

Read Write Web also has job announcements in Jobwire, although at a broader scope than my announcements

Connect with others in the community manager group in Facebook

Check out Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

See Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it)

I’m seeking folks that are related to full time hands on social media strategy and community managers, to be on this list, so let me know if you see these folks, and please submit them –try to include links to announcements on blogs or on the wire. Also, I probably will not include executive management changes on this list at social media companies, as the list would go on and on, but you can feel free to express yourself in the comments!

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Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers

Categories: Job SurveyPosted on February 10th, 2009

This is part 5 of an ongoing community project (see all posts) to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession.

This data is slightly skewed towards those that are already active in social media as the survey went to those within my network on my blog and the highly connected Twitter community. There were 214 respondents to the survey although this graphic only represents those who got jobs since Sept 2008 (71 respondents) that represent those that were hired during the announcement of the recession. This sample set is smaller than one would expect out of a formal research project, after multiple promotions, it was capping out at 200 respondents, and I don’t have other resources to deploy against email lists, or affiliate programs. This is a personal research project, and is not tied to my employer, clients, or anyone else for that matter.

Finding 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers
This is just the data from the 71 respondents that got hired since Sept 2008 (since the recession was announced).

Although these answers were open ended, I tried to summarize them into categories, and then graphed them as shown above, please note that some of the individuals gave more than one suggestion per answer, and some did not answer at all.

Note that their recommendations to connect with others online, is consistent with how they got jobs from friends and family. Which is the same as the first finding from this project

Notice how 9 out of the respondents encourage you to learn new skills by reading online, or by attending classes.

This means that 78% of respondents were hired in full employment positions, likely with benefits.

Recommendations for Job Seekers in a Recession

The recommendations are very clear, use online social networking tools to connect with others, and get educated by reading online or take classes

Important: In addition to reading my summary, here all the responses that they suggested to those who are seeking jobs –and their observations how the market has changed.

To find the other results from this survey, I’ll be tagging the post “Job Survey” and you can click that category to learn more.

Coming soon I’ll be posting results for: titles that were hired, and some other interesting data cuts

Resources: See my Web Strategy Job Board, or Job Wire.

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Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

Archive for February, 2009

The Twitter Spoofer

Impacts of MicroMedia on the Client/Vendor Relationship

People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: Feb 12, 2009

Jobs in a Recession Survey Results 5: What Recent Hires Recommend To Job Seekers

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