Mediaboss Marketing

The world of social networking is breaking up. Thanks to a combination of increasing mobility and shifting preferences, people are connecting with each other through "small" apps rather than directly through large social sites at a growing rate.

Social network fragmentation and the rise of small apps has big implications for business, particularly for midsize firms. The mobile space may never be favorable for direct advertising, but well-crafted small social apps can provide firms with a wealth of information about their customers insights that can often be shared with business partners. All of this makes mobile apps an even greater growth area for the midsize IT community.

Social Networking On the Go

As Mike Elgan reports at InfoWorld, mobility has been a primary force in transforming the social media landscape by driving social network fragmentation. In a nutshell, users are increasingly connecting with each other using their mobile devices.

This has posed major challenges to social network giants such as Facebook and Twitter, as mobile ad revenue has not taken off as a revenue source. Moreover, mobile users, surrounded by distractions, favor "small" apps that do a single job easily and well; Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp are typical examples.

This does not mean that big social sites are an endangered species. Instead, they are buying up apps and transforming themselves into connection points in the social media ecosystem.

Mobility: Connecting Amid Distractions

The changes in social media can be directly attributed to mobility. Most mobile users are on smartphones, which have little screen space to spare for ads. Mobile users out on the sidewalk have little attention to spare for ads or complex interfaces hence the trend toward small apps.

Though mobile devices and the apps that run on them are a poor platform for ads, they are an excellent platform for gaining customer insight. Localization data adds a whole new layer of understanding about customer behavior and preferences. This data, which most mobile users provide readily and eagerly, can be fed into analytics solutions to draw out insights. Customer data can also provide a revenue stream since it is of potential value to many businesses.

In the app-centric mobility era, mobile apps are a crucial and valuable social business tool for midsize firms seeking to connect with their customers. As traditional IT functions are increasingly shifted to the cloud, midsize IT can focus its attention on the creative process of developing apps that reach out and connect the firm to its mobile customers, even as it connects them with each other.

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Social Network Fragmentation and What It Means for Midsize IT

Adobe has released its Social Media Intelligence Report analysing paid, earned and owned social media trends for Q1. Key findings of the Adobe Digital Index report show that Facebooks ad business continued to grow with click through rate (CTR) and ad impressions increasing by double-digits quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), 20 percent and 41 percent respectively. While revenue per visit (RPV) coming from Facebook grew by two percent QoQ, RPV from Twitter and Tumblr declined by 23 percent and 36 percent respectively, following a strong holiday quarter.

Leveraging its unparalleled data set, Adobes Social Media Intelligence Report is the industrys most comprehensive analysis and is based on 260 billion Facebook ad impressions, 226 billion Facebook post impressions, 17 billion referred visits from social networking sites, and seven billion brand post interactions including comments, likes and shares. Paid social data is derived from aggregated Adobe Marketing Cloud data.

Social media continued to grow even after a strong holiday quarter and the seasonal slowdown expected in Q1, said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index. Marketers are learning how to best reach their audiences across different social media channels and companies like Facebook are making changes to their algorithms and adding functionalities like auto-play of videos, which impact brands and users and how they engage with content."

Additional findings include:

Paid Social Trends: Facebook ad clicks and impressions are on the rise with clicks continuing to outpace impressions. Facebooks ad clicks increased 70 percent year-over-year (YoY) and 48 percent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), with ad impressions up 40 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Facebooks ad CTR jumped 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. However, Facebooks cost per click (CPC) dipped two percent YoY and 11 percent QoQ following a strong holiday season.

Earned Social Trends: Brand posts with embedded video gained traction in Q1 with 58 percent more engagement QoQ and 25 percent growth YoY. Facebook video plays increased 785 percent YoY and 134 percent QoQ following auto-plays for videos being implemented in Q4 2013. Meanwhile, text-only Facebook brand posts are losing share and engagement, but posts with links rose 167 percent QoQ and 77 percent YoY.

Owned Social Trends: Twitter and Facebook referred RPV increased YoY (5 percent and 11 percent, respectively), but Twitter driven RPVs dipped 23 percent QoQ. Tumblr referred RPV is up 55 percent YoY, but slumped 36 percent QoQ. LinkedIn stood out with a 15 percent share of social traffic to B2B high-tech sites. Only Facebook drove more traffic (52 percent) to B2B high-tech sites in Q1.

Helpful links

Adobe Digital Index: Social Intelligence Report

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Adobe report shows continued Facebook ad business growth

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) May 05, 2014

Tower App Development, Inc. (tower.io), a San Diego-based software company, today announced their share offering on AngelList (angel.co/Tower-1) to raise capital to complete the development and launch of their mobile app--Tower--that is set to re-write how the world interacts on social networks. Tower is a dynamic mobile application that connects mobile users with the people in their dorms, residential buildings, office buildings, barracks, neighborhoods, hotels, cruise ships, even resorts...anywhere in the world mobile users want to get connected they can!

In today's social media ecosystem, although social media participants can make friend requests and share pictures of food and pets rather easily, the Tower team found that it's quite difficult to actually make friends they can interact with outside of the social network. The Tower team found that there really is an interaction distance between social media participants and the friends they make online. Tower removes that interaction distance by facilitating a social environment based upon personal relationships and interactions. With Tower, not only will users be able to increase their interaction with their online friends, but theyll also be able to create group-specific privacy controls, create event notices, text/voice/video chat, share pictures and videos, search for users, post updates to various feeds, connect via Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, and post free notices in the classified section.

What we found, after a thorough analysis of the social networking ecosystem, was that there exists an 'interaction distance' between you and all of your online friends. Its not the users fault, though. Social networking users have perfected the ability to make friends requests and share media, but users havent been given the tools to take their social media experience to the next level, says Tony Silva, CEO of Tower. Tower removes this interaction distance and gives users a powerful tool that allows them to create a three-dimensional social networking experience. Basically, we are making social networking...well...social!

Towers offering on AngelList is staged to raise $2 million dollars so that the Tower team can complete the development of the mobile app as well as create an infrastructure that will allow the team to easily scale. Beta testing is set to begin in July 2014 with the app being launched in app stores by September 2014.

ABOUT TOWER APP DEVELOPMENT

Tower App Development, Inc. (http://www.tower.io) is a San Diego-based software company that is staffed by a team of creative and finance types that have been in the industry for a combined 24 years. Tower will be a free download available in the Android, Apple, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile stores around September 2014.

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Revolutionizing Social Media: Tower App Development Set To Turn Social Media Upside Down

Patient Attraction Episode 116: Social Networking DOESN #39;T Attract New Patients
http://SmartBoxWebMarketing.com Call Us: 888.741.1413 Hey everyone, Colin Receveur here on Wednesday, April 30. Today I #39;m going to take an example of how som...

By: SmartBox Web Marketing

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Patient Attraction Episode 116: Social Networking DOESN'T Attract New Patients - Video

Excelintel Commercial - Social Networking, E-Commerce, E-Learning
http://www.excelintel.com Excelintel is the first site of its kind. Made to protect the security of private users and give professionals a wide range of free tools, Excelintel brings together...

By: Excelintel

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Excelintel Commercial - Social Networking, E-Commerce, E-Learning - Video