04 Mar Social Media Topics That Are Igniting – 3/4/2011
It’s been a while since our last weekly update. Our longtime followers might remember this series from our very own Kailee Brown. For those of you who don’t recognize this, we’ll be taking the most interesting social media stories from past few days and compiling them in a weekly report. Enjoy!
March started off with quite a bang. Here are a few of the more interesting social media stories from the week that was.
The ‘Ad. Agency’ Cashes in on Charlie Sheen
Capitalizing on the recent “eccentricity” of the Two and a Half Men star, social media company Ad.ly signed Charlie Sheen and quickly verified his Twitter account. Ad.ly facilitates endorsements using Twitter and Facebook. What does this say about the monetization potential of social media? Read more here.
Facebook Continues to Share Your Info
Continuing it’s march towards 1984’s “Big Brother,” Facebook will continue to share cell phone numbers and addresses with third-party developers. The move has created a great deal of ire amongst users and privacy advocates. Facebook has included an explicit permission clause which allows users to prevent third parties from acquiring their information, but that doesn’t appear to be enough.
DEMO Highlights 5 New Social Media Projects/Trends
DEMO, a conference that provides a platform for new startups to show off their products, presented some exciting new companies and trends during the keynote:
- Gut Check – Realizing traditional market research is far too slow in today’s world, this company provides quick Web-based market research for only $40 a session.
- Marginize – This company provides a commenting system in the form of a widget which can be placed on any website. What’s separates this system from others is that it is completely controlled by the community, not by the website owner.
- eLive.pro – This social television project lets you pull in videos, annotate them with voice-overs, draw mark-ups, write comments, and share with your friends.
- Trend – Social Searching – Highlighting Thoora and Heystaks, there was a great deal of emphasis on adding social elements to search. It’s interesting to note this coincides with Google and Bing’s recent integration of social data into their search engines.
- Trend – Facebook Accessories – New products were unveiled that complement Facebook such as FetchFans which allows companies to easily create custom-branded Facebook pages and Twitter backdrops.
Financial Services Gear Up For “Social Media Days”
The popularity of social media is forcing banks, IBDs, wirehouses, independent RIAs, and financial advisors to figure out how they can utilize it to reach their customers. Meanwhile they have to work within FINRA- and SEC-mandated regulations on privacy and data storage. Thomson Reuters and Finextra announced Tuesday a pair of “Social Media Days” in New York and London that will be used to educate the organizations.
