Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Facebook Memeology: More Empty Social Chatter” plus 3 more

Facebook Memeology: More Empty Social Chatter
YouTube Introduces Its Own Trends Offering
YouTube Removes Time Limit for Some Users
Google Still Rules as the Most Used Social Media Login

Facebook Memeology: More Empty Social Chatter

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 05:56 AM PST

Wow. If there is one thing I can take away from these end of year lists of trends etc. is that social media is truly a mile wide and about a ¼ inch deep. In other words, what gets the most attention in places like Twitter is very shallow. All of the talk of the social media revolution and passing information along that will change the world blah, blah, blah and this is what Facebook tells us are the biggest trends in status updates in 2010.

Again I say Wow. For all the issues facing the world from global warming, financial crisis, war and just about anything else that actually impacts a person's life in a real way the number one trending mention in status updates is the newest acronym for the virtually lazy, HMU (hit me up)?

I think I have said enough about this over the past few days but let's get something straight. Social media looks more and more like a vast wasteland of inane chatter than ever before. As Internet marketers it appears as if the task at hand is just finding a way to either market your products and services alongside this 'interaction' or figure out an effective way to wade through the muck to find the people that are interested in your message. Neither is going to be easy. If this isn’t evidence for cultivating a strong community around your cause / product / whatever rather than looking to the masses, I don’t know what is.

When 20% of the top 10 'trends' in status updates are about events that truly impacted people and the other 80% are about mere distractions, it's time to call the social media world what it actually might really be: a way for people to express just how empty their lives really are. Harsh? Maybe but if it’s anything other please explain so in the comments section.

Well, here's to airplanes (Airplanes? Really?) and to trying to predict the future in 2011 (rather than dealing with reality in 2010, I suppose).

Here's my predictions for what will trend next year. Happy 2011!

1. Boats
2. Dirt
3. Movies
4. Bieber puberty
5. An event to create hollow online activism
6. Plastic
7. iAnything
8. Gas (of the personal kind)
9. An event that makes everyone look cool because they mentioned it
10. AUKM – Are U Kidding Me?

YouTube Introduces Its Own Trends Offering

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 04:35 AM PST

The trend today seems to be about what’s trending. Of course, part of the interest in this is how trending is defined then carried out as we discussed yesterday regarding Twitter’s take on trending.

Google in its usual fashion has created videos to help us understand the service. The first one is pretty entertaining (while being mildly informative).

Video number two is more about the service’s nuts and bolts.

How Google, I mean YouTube, will be able to trend the 35 hours per minute it receives is kind of mind boggling but that’s what the back room developer, PhD types get paid for, right?

The Trends blog puts some of this in words if you aren’t ready for video this early.

What you can find on YouTube Trends:

New algorithmically-generated feeds that highlight trending videos and topics. (Over there →)

A twice-daily collection of videos called “4 at 4″ drawn from those feeds and from top video curation sites around the web. (If you're on the homepage, up there ↑)

A blog with more in-depth and contextual explorations of videos, trends, and cultural phenomenon as seen through the lens of YouTube, using YouTube's own internal data. (You're there now ↔)

And a brand new dashboard that allows you to quickly explore what's popular in different cities in the United States and in countries around the world, as well as within specific demographic sets.

Happy viewing!

YouTube Removes Time Limit for Some Users

Posted: 13 Dec 2010 04:13 PM PST

YouTube made an interesting move this week that appears to be a portent of things to come. Only a few months after raising the maximum video time from ten minutes to fifteen, they’re now removing the cap completely — but only for the privileged few.

To see if your account has been selected, log in and click the upload button. Chances are you’re still stuck on fifteen but for how long?

In the past, limiting video time might have been related to bandwidth issues both on site and for the average user. But with faster processors and the switch from dial-up to cable, downloading and watching a fifteen minute video isn’t a problem for most users.

So why not remove the cap across the board? Copyright. That’s why. Sure people are uploading whole movies and TV shows now, but to do it they have to break the file into pieces and that’s too much trouble for most. Remove the cap and the number of unauthorized uploads is likely to climb faster than Tarzan heading for a night of romance with Jane.

Copyright issues aside, there’s a bigger problem with an unlimited cap and that’s boredom. Does anyone really want to watch a forty minute video of cats playing with the Christmas wrapping paper? It’s going to happen. You know it.

So what’s to be gained by lifting the cap completely? It will be an opportunity for filmmakers to get their work out to a wider audience. And I wouldn’t put it past YouTube to create a “film division” that nurtures new talent. After that, we’ll all be sitting in the theater watching the first full-length film from YouTube Productions. It could be a way of cracking the studio system and as a person who works with a lot of small filmmakers, I’m all for it.

What do you think? Is the removal of the YouTube time limit a good thing or will it just be more of same, only longer?
Thanks to ReelSEO for the head’s up.

Google Still Rules as the Most Used Social Media Login

Posted: 13 Dec 2010 12:02 PM PST

In an average day, I log-in to no less than twenty different websites. Some of these are blogs I work on. Some are communities I follow. Then there's Amazon, eBay, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. Each place has its own username and password and some make me change my password on a regular basis. Firefox remembers most of them for me, thank heavens, but it's not an exact science.

So in comes social media logins. These are the sites that allow you to bypass their own login system by using Facebook, Twitter, etc. At first glance, it seems like a great solution. You only have one front door key to your house, so why not one "key" for the entire internet. But which key?

Janrain, Inc., (www.janrain.com), a company that provides third party logins along with other user management platforms has just published their latest study on this very topic. They looked at 300,000 sites that are currently using their Janrain Engage program and figured out which social media login was the most popular.

In spite of the fact that Facebook logins have been popping up everywhere on the web, they're still only the second most popular login system. They're up 3% over the past three months and rapidly gaining on Google which still holds first place. Yahoo comes in third, which surprised me at first, then I realized that I use Yahoo to login to sharing site Yahoo Buzz and the old standby for bookmarking, Delcious. Twitter was up from 5% to 7%. Windows Live, AOL, and Paypal picked up the rest of the pie.

The numbers take a fascinating turn if you segment the data by category. Looking strictly at entertainment and gaming sites, Facebook jumps up to become the leader by a wide margin. Windows Live moves up on the list thanks to its popularity in Europe and Google nearly falls away.

When it comes to mobile, Janrain turned to their iPhone app users and found Facebook (34%) and Google (30%) still in the top spots but Twitter came in much higher at 15%.

For the consumer, social logins are all about getting up and running faster. It eliminates the need to remember a log list of username and passwords and it allows you to automatically populate profile fields with the click of one button. For the marketer, social media logins turns each user into a mini-brand ambassador for your site. Actions on site, can be automatically sent as social media updates on Twitter or Facebook. Being connected also gives the user easy access to their friends list which encourages sharing.

The downside of using a social media login is privacy. Though every site serves up an assurance that your personal data won't be accessed, it's hard to believe. And then there's the annoyance factor. If I forget to uncheck a box on GetGlue, every move I make will be broadcast to my friends on Facebook and Twitter. Great for brand awareness but not so great for my followers.

Do you use social media logins on your site?