Study: What makes Twitter users trustworthy?

We all want to know what makes us trustworthy, especially when we tweet something. What is the secret sauce that makes others believe in the importance of our tweets? What makes those tweets better than those of our competitors?

The answer comes with a study “Tweeting is believing” from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University. In their research the two parties find how companies and individuals can feed their tweets with more credibility, and giving them some of the secret sauce.

So, ok,… the results were no really the deepest insights, but somehow they undermine what many of us might have expected: Gain followers, receive retweets, include URL’s in your posts, set up a profile picture alongside a serious bio with information that correspond with your tweets.

In order to get the right findings the researchers surveyed more than 250 Twitter users factors to understand what makes up credibility in Twitter accounts. These factors got scored from one tot five, five being the highest.

The top-rated factors that make tweets more trustworthy…
1. Tweet was retweeted by someone you trust – 4.08
2. Tweet from a verified subject expert – 4.04
3. Author is someone you follow – 4.00
4. Tweet contains a URL you clicked through – 3.93
5. Author is someone you’ve heard of – 3.93
6. Account has verification seal – 3.92
7. Author often tweets on topic – 3.74
8. Author’s tweets frequently include similar content – 3.71
9. Author’s user image is a personal photo – 3.70
10. Author often mentioned and/or retweeted – 3.69

These were the lowest five credibility lowering factors for tweets…
1. Weak grammar and/or punctuation 2.71
2. Profile picture equals Twitter’s default user image – 2.87
3. User image is a cartoon/avatar – 3.22
4. Author follows many users – 3.30
5. Author’s user image is a logo – 3.37

Spot On!
In many seminars, companies and managers have asked me whether a weak language and incorrect tweeting is destroying the credibility of the brand. They wanted to know whether avatar pictures or brand pictures might affect it. In my eyes, companies should worry more about their general company Social Media standards, their way of collaboration external and internal, and ask themselves why and what they are tweeting about. Tweeting is just a tiny part of your Social trustworthiness….
What are your own experiences? What makes you trust a Twitter user? Any ranking similarities you can see as well?

What happens in 24 hours on the Internet?

We have had the 60 minutes infographic and we have had the dynamic Social Media Count. Now, we get to know what is happening in 24 hours on the internet with a great infographic by MBAOnline.

As we know from the elder illustrations mentioned above, there is a hell of a lot happening these days on the net. The time people spend publishing status updates on Facebook and Twitter, writing on their blogs, or watching videos on audio-visual platforms like hulu or YouTube is unbelievably high.

See some of the facts that we think are quite impressive…
- Facebook as the biggest social network sees 4,7 billion minutes spent on their platform…
- Although some companies like Atos proclaim the end of email, there are still 294 billion emails being sent…
- With the importance of Google+ for business and the increase of blogs, it is not surprising that 2 million blog posts are written every day…
- The evolution of the audio-video world – 864,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube.
- The explosion of Mobile – More iPhones sold than babies born on!

See, what else is happening in 24 hours on the Internet…

Google+ for Business (Infographic)

Although the world is discussing how Pinterest becomes the next Social Media rockstar and how it will revolutionize the world of social networking, it might be worthwhile seeing how far Google+ has become a valuable social networking platform for business.

Chris Brogan and the guys from Blueglass have created a nice infographic which give some good insight and tells you why Google+ is the place to be and why business pages are taking networking to the next level.

Study: Social Media and content marketing attracts brand advocates

Content marketing is one of the fastest growing areas of business for marketers. A report by Zuberance now shows how businesses can make use of content marketing in combination with Social Media to attract more and more web users to become advocates for products and services.

According to the Zuberance report, an amazing portion of 38% of web users have recommended between five and nine brands to their friends and other web contacts. The respondents stated to have advocated at least one company. Even more, 30% recommended between one and four businesses or other organizations. 38% of the advocates stated that they discuss brands with a frequency of once per month. Some of the advocates (12%) even recommend brands several times in a week.

The three main findings…
1. Brand Advocates are even more actіve than previously thought. They recommend more brands, products and services and more often than and in more categories than arlier data suggested.
2. Brand Advocates have even larger social networks than previous studіes showed. They have hundred of friends and colleagues in their social networks. Thus, their recommendations reach more people than earlier estimates suggested.
3. Brand Advocates’ recommendations aren’t lіmited to consumer brands and products. They even advocate products and services that might be considered as mundane like anti-virus software or file transfer services.

Marketers from technology companies should take a close look to these advocates as their business was the most frequently discussed industry. 25% of web users replied that they advise their web contacts on computers, smartphones, and other products. As consumers often spend quite a significant sum on these products, they want to make sure to have chosen the best product that fits their purposes.

Spot On!
Many technology and business companies have realized the fact of the value of word-of-mouth, and thus the value of brand advocates. Different reports by Brafton and Custom Content Council & ContentWise 2011 show how active content marketing influences these people. Companies are clever to promote the conversation around their products and services on the social web, aiming to get their content shared or to boost their search ranks.

Will those who pin finally win? – Pinterest & Engagement (Infographic)

What is interesting for marketers is how engaging Pinterest could be as the emerging new social network for pics and tricks. So which gender is using the platform the most? How much time are people spending there, and how much time compared to other social networks?

Here are some answers (US perspective) according to Wall Street Journal…
- Facebook stays as the most engaging platform with 405 minutes per month
- Pinterest and Tumblr come in second place with 89 minutes
- Twitter is number three with  21 minutes
- LinkedIn gets 17 minutes
- Google Plus only has 3 minutes

Please find the infographic “Pin it to Win it” from MDG Advertising as follows with some more interesting facts about some of the best performing social networks…

Why Social Commerce is not happening… yet

Many companies are asking when Facebook commerce is really taking off. Especially as some consulting companies like Booz see in Facebook an emerging market that might reach $30 billion within the next five years.

However people spend a lot of time on Facebook, social commerce is still low. And the reason is…? No other than those people fear in e-commerce: traditional security topics.

These are the findings of a survey that Harris Interactive did on behalf of Digitas last month in the US, polling 2,630 adults. 2,247 of them were identified as Social Media users.

The key findings of the study were…
- 75% indicate they would be more likely to purchase a product or service that a friend openly endorses via social media
- 55% don’t feel comfortable giving credit card information via social media
- 45% are somewhat comfortable however especially men between 18 and 54 with an income of $35,000 or more
- 34% are more likely to share info about a purchase they made on a social media site with friends than one made on a traditional e-commerce site
- 50.7% access Social Media sites close to a full hour per day on average via a mobile device

Spot On!
Virtual currency like Bitcoin or Facebook Credits seems to be a “NoGo” as the new currency model. 74% of the respondents stated they wouldn’t use virtual currency to pay for a purchase made on a Social Media site. Nevertheless, it seems that trust is a new link for brands to get money through Social Networks. 20% agree they would purchase products or services from their favorite brands on a Social Media site. So, another emerging trend could become that brands will use their merchandise shops and make it accessible through Social Media sites.

Cisco: By 2016, there will be 100 million smartphone users in the world

In 2010 Cisco predicted that internet video content would make up 57% of all consumer Internet traffic in 2014. They also predicted that online video (TV, video on demand, Internet, and P2P) is set to exceed 91% of global consumer traffic in five years. Although we cannot say yet, if this wll be reality, it is obvious that audio-video content on the web is on the rise.

As trends are chasing one another, Cisco is now foreseeing a future where by the end of this year, there might be more smartphones on the planet than humans. But they are going further: By 2016 Cisco sees a world with 100 million smartphones which means that there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita according to their data.

Cisco finds the three main reason for groth in global mobile data traffic in the Middle East and Africa (groth rate of 104%) and Asia Pacific (84% growth). China will account for over 10% of global mobile data traffic in 2016 – more than doubled since 2011 then. Tablet traffic will grow 62-fold with an average traffic generation of 4,2GB/month.

And again it is the video traffic which they see as a massive argument for growth. With the increase of mobile network connection speeds, by 2016 two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be from videos. Cisco predicts a 25-fold increase in five years.

Spot On!
Today, many people have two devices – one for business, one for private use. The interesting part of this Cisco forecast is that the development of “Bring-your-own-device” (BYOD) could actually change our attitude towards the “multi-management” and “multi-ownership” of smartphones in the future which is already causing a headache for CIOs. Although, in our house, we have a ratio of 2,5 smartphones per capita, I am about to change it and would never again have more than one phone – whether self-employeed or working for a company.

How about you? How do you see the development and what do you think BYOD could become a turning page on this evolution of smartphones? Looking forward to your input…

Pinterest: First facts & findings (infographic)

Pinterest is making the world crazy these days in 2012. Are you on it? Sure, most of the Social Media guys out there are exploring ways to make money with it. The funny thing is: You don’t need more than 16 employees to rock the Social Media sphere. That’s the actual size of the company.

A company called Lemon.ly collected some interesting data from the platform Pinterest. They found out that 10 million users are on Pinterest already, 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women, and it is obvious how the platform might have an influence on designers and marketers.

Some more findings and facts…
- 12 million monthly unique users
- 10,4 million registered users
- 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users
- 145% daily user increase in 2012

What is your perception of the platform? What is the main difference to picture and photo sharing platforms like Flickr, Picasa or Instagram? And what is the benefit using the platform from a business perspective?

Study: From Fakes to Facebook Friends

In a recent research Barracuda Networks released some findings of their study “Facebook: Fake Profils vs. Real Users” which analyzed a random sampling of 2,884 active Facebook accounts. The idea of the study was to identify key differences between average real user and fake accounts which are coming form attackers and spammers.

As of their popularity in terms of personal and business communication, Facebook is consistently fighting attackers on their network in order to save their real users from spam or even worse attacks. According to their own stats Facebook has less than 4% of content shared on their network marked as spam. By comparison we could use some stats from Symantec which found that 74% of spam comes from email – however this will be filtered before it comes to our inboxes. Nevertheless, Facebook is in a lawsuit with a marketing firm that they accused of “spreading spam through misleading and deceptive tactics”.

These are some interesting findings of the Barracuda Networks study.

Fake accounts have..
…more friends than real users – six times more!
…use more photo tagging – over 100 times more!
…claim to be bisexual – 10 times more than real users!
…claim to be female (97%!) – only 40% for real user!

“Likes, News Feeds and Apps have helped lead Facebook to its social network dominance and now attackers are harnessing those same features to efficiently scale their efforts. These fake profiles and apps give attackers a long-lived path to continuously present malicious links to innocent users.” Dr. Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda Networks

The study was done with Barracuda Profile Protector tool and illustrates how attacks and spam on Facebook are structured to undercuts real “friendships” concept and trust of widely-used applications. So, marketers and private people should watch out and check before friending an account. No matter if you are more addicted to Facebook or Twitter than smoking and drinking…

Study: Active social networking engagement has tripled during working hours in one year

Are employees using social networks like Facebook or Twitter for private or business purpose? This is one of the question that management always asks me in workshops and seminars. Some new research called the “Palo Alto Networks Application Usage and Risk Report” could shed some light here. The report states explosive growth in global social networking and browser-based file sharing on corporate networks. In the last year, the activity has grown by 300% in active social networking (i.e. posting, applications) compared to 2010.

Some key findings of the study…

1. Social Media moves from passive to active engagement
Browsing Twitter at work alone grew by over 700% year-over-year which shows that the use of Twitter in the workplace has reached mainstream traction. Also Facebook usage has become more active with bandwidth consumption for Facebook Apps. Even more, Social Plugins and active engagement like posting has increased by 20% from October 2010 (5%) to December 2011 (25%) when measured as a percentage of total social networking bandwidth.

2. File sharing on social networks grows significantly
92% of the responding organizations reported that file sharing sites continue to be used on most networks. The report found 65 different browser-based file-sharing variants with an average of 13 being used in each of the organizations. The risks associated with browser-based file-sharing applications is based on the fact that these techniques are operating unchecked on corporate networks.

3. There is an evolution in types of traffic on company networks
While in earlier days, web applications using TCP port 80 were dominant, today it makes a minority of the traffic on enterprise networks for the first time ever with 25%, and 32% of the bandwidth observed. If companies don’t obey this development, it may cause problems as the standard web browsing-focused security model actually protects a minority of an organization’s traffic.

“Whether or not employees are using social networks or sharing files at work is no longer a question; this data clearly demonstrates that users are embracing and actively using such applications. Companies must determine how to safely enable these technologies on their networks so that users can maintain the levels of productivity that many of these applications can afford, while at the same time ensuring that their corporate networks and users are protected against all threats.” René Bonvanie, Chief Marketing Officer, Palo Alto Networks

Spot On!
Somehow these numbers might illustrate that companies and their bosses understand the value of Social Business and how the knowledge of employees might benefit from power of social networks. Especially the increase of the Twitter figures does not surprise at all, bearing in mind that European bosses support the use of Twitter for business purpose. And if you check out what people are actually doing on Facebook, then topics like consumer insights, work-life balance, or fun at work will reach different levels in organizations if CEOs or managing directors understand the real values of productivity.

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