the service is allowing thousands of Southern California residents to stay safe by receiving up-to-the-minute geographical information about the spreading fires. Twitter’s short, instant updates are perfect for bare-bones, factual updates, and and it’s not the only Web service helping out panicked Californians. Several Google Maps mashups have emerged with dynamic blaze information and evacuation details, and a number of blogs are tracking the destruction chronologically to allow people to predict if their homes will stay safe.
People could track the relevant tweet-threads by following keywords such as #sandiegofire. Some relied much more on this source of information (i.e. tweets via mobile decive) than their landline based internet connection, which could have broken down at any time.
This is obviously a tragic example of how twitter can be useful. But nevertheless it shows that there is a lot of potential in this one-to-many sms/microblogging tool.
I know that most people will see this as a wake-up call for their industry, but I find it especially relevant to the Digital Marketing industry. Young people are learning about Marketing in the types of environments depicted in A Vision of Students Today. We need to empower and power them better. From the looks of things, they are already using the tools needed to succeed, but are stuck in „industrial complex“ like systems. They are mass collaborating, they are engaged in online social networks, they are spending more time with communications like email. Overall they are primed to be excellent professionals in the Digital Marketing space.
The other two videos have been around for a little longer already, you might have seen them:
Some interesting facts for my German readers: There is a new research published by TNS Infratest about about the users of web 2.0 offers. According to this research the senders or creators of content are still amongst the younger audience, while the recipients and content consumers are amongst all age groups:
Während etwa ein Drittel (33 Prozent) der Verfasser von Beiträgen [von Wikipedia] unter 20 Jahren sind, liegt der Anteil der Leser, die 30 Jahre und älter sind, bei 65 Prozent.
Also with blogs we need to differentiate:
Hier sind 41 Prozent der Personen mit einem eigenen Blog unter 20 Jahre alt. Die Blog-Leser hingegen sind deutlich älter, bereits 35 Prozent sind über 40 Jahre alt, nur 20 Prozent sind unter 20 Jahren. „Das heißt, Blogs werden zwar auch von Gleichaltrigen gelesen aber gleichzeitig scheinen sie auch für Personen interessant zu sein, die nicht direkt in der Altersgruppe des Blog-Besitzers zu finden sind. Dennoch sind aber auch Erwachsene unter den Blog-Schreibern: Immerhin ein Viertel aller Blog-Besitzer sind über 40 Jahren“
Notable is also the difference of topics chosen by men and women:
Am häufigsten werden Weblogs als persönliches Tagebuch genutzt (61 Prozent), aber auch konkrete Inhalte wie Reise & Urlaub (30 Prozent) und Wissen & Lernen (24 Prozent) werden von den Bloggern thematisiert. Frauen nutzen ihren Blog häufiger als persönliches Tagebuch (76 Prozent der Blog-Besitzerinnen). Männer behandeln eher konkrete Themen, wie Computer & Software und Nachrichten & Politik. Die Themengebiete Wissen & Lernen und Reise & Urlaub sind bei beiden Geschlechtern in gleichem Maße beliebt (jeweils ca. 30 Prozent der Blog-Besitzer).
Here you can find a PDF with some (very few) Charts.
Joe Jaffe, who just released his new book „join the conversation“ (and very successfully bumrushed the charts on amazon) also conducted a study (together with the Society for New Communications Research and TWI Surveys) on how marketers might shift their budgets to conversational findings.
Here is an excerpt from his blog (the whole study is here):
Nearly 57% of respondents report that in 5 years time, what they spend on conversational marketing will be greater than that of traditional marketing. Another roughly 24% believed it would be the same as traditional marketing
70% are currently spending 2.5% or less of their communications budgets on conversational marketing, but two-thirds plan to increase their investment in conversation within the next twelve months
Respondents noted that the primary obstacles currently preventing them from investing more in conversational marketing include: “Manpower restraints†– 51.1% “Fear of loss of control†– 46.9% “Inadequate metrics†– 45.4% “Culture of their organizations†– 43.5% “Difficulty with internal sell-through†– 35.8%
The rest you can find in his new book. I should get mine soon, amazon already notified me, that it shipped yesterday. (I helped Joe bumrush the charts on Sunday … )
We expected it, didn’t we. Facebook offering advertising targeted to peoples interests and likes. Now they offer this kind of advertising via their facebook flyers, reports TechCrunch.
The targeting offered covers the following sofar:
the Flyers let you target by country, city, gender, age range, political views, relationship status, education level, workplace affiliation, or any keyword in a person’s stated interests. It’s that last option that could be really powerful. For instance, simply putting in different keywords into the Facebook Flyers ad-targeting page reveals that of the 19,951,900 Facebook members in the U.S., 101,000 are into rock climbing, 411,000 are into cooking, and 706,160 people are into traveling.
Regarding Facebook: there are already many rumours spreading. And depending on who is seen with whom in photos (which are so blurry you can’t see anything), the valuations for Facebook are going up and up. Currently at $15 billion.
According to the this article, MySpace is going into the same direction offering targeted advertising.
Wo ich sonst so bin...