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A little talked about study was recently release by Com.motion and Pollara that looked at how 401 Canadian business leaders plan on utilizing (or not utilizing) social media in 2009.  The results were quite telling.

Some key takeaways quoted from the report:

• Despite the economic slowdown forcing marketers to modify their spending, 82 per cent of Canadian business leaders and senior marketers say they will spend as much or more on social media in 2009 than they did this year. That’s more than for any other marketing communications discipline.

• Nearly four in five Canadian marketers (78 per cent) say senior management supports greater investment in social media. That’s up dramatically from 54 per cent a year ago.

• Canadian business leaders say it would be a mistake to cut back on social and digital spending in tough economic times, with 7 in 10 recommending increased investment.

• Two-thirds of Canadians (65 per cent) who use social media say social media tools are important for learning about products, services, organizations and brands, up from 59 per cent a year ago.

• The number of business leaders who say they are less familiar about social media than their customers has fallen to 17 per cent, down from 26 per cent a year ago.

• Just 7 per cent of Canadian business leaders see social media tools as a fad, down from 15 per cent a year ago. And one in two (46 per cent) say social media tools have forever changed the communications landscape and are becoming more important than communications tool such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines.

• Nearly four in five Canadians (79 per cent) say they have used social media tools. That’s up from 71 per cent a year ago.

Despite all the dark news about the economy it looks as though social media is here to stay.  There will definitely be a bit of rethinking going on in 2009 as companies start demanding more accountability and metrics around social media campaigns, but this latest poll certainly shows that there is a growing commitment to the social media model of marketing and consumer dialog.

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In a three year study of 800 teens over 5000 hours of observation, The Digital Youth Project found that, contrary to what many parents feel, usage of social networking and social media is actually good for kids. Yet another positive mark for the future of social media.  Among the skills it hones are social and technical navigation.  Will Richardson highlights some of the findings in his excellent blog post:

• “New media allows for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in classroom settings. Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed, and  the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented toward set, predefined goals.”

The study further found that youth are mostly using social networking and social media to extend their face-to-face friendships.  They are exploiting the “always on” nature of the internet and mobile communication to keep in constant contact. However this, along with the permanent nature of so much internet interaction is not without it’s pitfalls, but therein lies another valuable lesson young people are learning: to navigate this new medium gracefully.

As Read, Write, Web puts it:

• “It’s a new world for those privileged enough to have access to the web. The consequences of these changes will unfold in years to come.”

Indeed, in the future we may very well see a break between those that have developed these skills and those that have not.

• “Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technological skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning. Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access “serious” online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions.”

So regardless of the detractors, it looks more and more like it will be a social media world in the future.  Unfortunately it might take this fresh generation of social media savvy people to transform corporate culture’s understanding and use (or misuse) of this exciting new medium.

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This weekend the makers and marketers of Motrin saw the power of Social Media…but not in a positive way.  The whole mishap began when Motrin released a new commercial aimed at mothers who carry their babies in slings and harnesses.

The commercial, which was attempting to be light-hearted, ended up offending mothers by insinuating that, among other things, they’re doing it because it’s fashionable.  It’s easy to see why some would be offended, it is a poorly crafted message that seems condescending.  And, as Jeremiah Owyang states, it is hard to imagine that Motrin tested this message before pushing this ad out.

But by Saturday it was the most Tweeted subject on Twitter. By Sunday there was a video up on YouTube highlighting the angry Tweets along with photos of mothers and their babies.  And by Monday the issue had made it to the New York Times blog.  Around that same time an apology had been issued by Motrin along with a promise to pull the offensive ad.

Now, many top marketers and social media thinkers have spoken on the things Motrin did wrong.  Jeremiah Owyang’s “Lessons” are well put:

Lessons Learned

• Always test your campaign with a small segment first

• Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend

• Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond

• The participants have the power, so participate

• For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

All is Not Lost

There are a couple of winners in this scenario.  The biggest is Social Media.  You can bet that if companies didn’t consider Social Media in their campaigns before, many will now.  And ultimately Motrin wins something for the added bump in brand awareness, regardless of the negative nature.  That’s one small step for Motrin and one giant leap for Social Media.  Thanks Motrin!

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We are proud to announce that the Next2Friends Social Suite is now available for the iPhone.  That’s right, owners of one of the most talked about phones in the world can now utilize the Next2Friends bundle of mobile tools to snap and upload photos in two clicks, easily interact with one another from their phones, create opinion polls on the move and meet others based on their real time proximity.

It’s been great getting to know all of our new members. There have been hundreds of new photos streaming to the site from all those iPhones through Next2Friends SnapUp.  Here’s one:

We want to extend a warm welcome to all our new members!  Thanks for making Next2Friends an even better place to be, and by all means, drop by and say hello!

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A very interesting study was commissioned by AT&T and conducted by Dynamic Markets that found that Social Networking facilitates higher efficiency and creativity in the workplace.

“The study, conducted by Dynamic Markets on behalf of AT&T, reveals:

• 65% of employees surveyed say that social networking sites have made them and/or their colleagues more efficient
• 63% say they have enabled them and their colleagues to achieve things that would not otherwise have been possible
• 46% say they have sparked ideas and creativity for them personally

The Top 5 social networking tools being used as part of everyday working life are:

1. Companies’ own collaboration sites on intranets (39%)
2. Internal forums within the company (20%)
3. Company-produced video material shared on intranets (16%)
4. Online social networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook (15%)
5. External collaboration sites on the web and internal blogging sites (both 11%)

The study and corresponding White Paper look at many aspects of Social Networking in the workplace.  Perhaps the most telling were the predictions.  They read like Social Media commandments:

1. Corporations Will Change the Way They Communicate
2. Corporations Will Change Their Vision
3. Corporations Will Change Their Organization
4. Collective Intelligence and Customer Experience Will Lead Innovation
5. Networking Will Be Key to Employee Excellence
6. Employee Mobility Will Increase
7. Corporations Will Adapt Their Motivation and Career Path Systems
8. IT/Telecoms Applications Will Mutate
9. Corporate Adoption Will Happen at Different Speeds
10. Social Networking May Allow Increased Revenue

You can read the corresponding explanations in the White Paper but the titles are sufficient to get an idea how sweeping the changes brought about by Social Networks and Social Media will be on the corporations of the future.  Changes that we have believed in from the beginning at Next2Friends.  Even if half these predictions come true we’re still looking at a revolution in the way people communicate, collaborate and get their work done!

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We were trolling videos this week and came across something that exemplifies the power of Next2Friends.  When we began about a year ago we had some very cute and delightful videos submitted to us was by Hash of his daughter Aimen. One was a hilarious situation Aimen got in with her crib. Have a look (don’t worry, he assures us she was ok):

Another was Aimen learning to make kissing noises:

But what got our attention was a video shot this week of Aimen rolling out roti.  Like all kids she is growing up fast, but because of Next2Friends we have gotten to watch it all take place from the other side of the world!  Truly amazing!  And such a great example of the way that mobile tools can truly bring us closer.  Keep the videos coming Hash, and because of Next2Friends, we look forward to watching your beautiful daughter grow even more!

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There is no doubt that technology can greatly influence society and thereby politics.  Consider how greatly the printing press came to effected Europe’s Reformation, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, or the American Revolution and Civil War. Then fast forward to the effect of the telegraph or the first televised presidential debates. With the use of the internet and particularly Social Media  we are seeing yet another sea change in the way people gather information and are influenced by technology.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project conducted research in June that outline this shift.  In 2008, nearly half of Americans (46%) used the internet, email or a text messaging to get news about the presidential campaign, share their views, or mobilize others. Further, the most common online activities were watching online videos, social networking and making campaign donations.  In many cases use of these technologies have doubled or tripled since just 2004.

• 35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos - nearly triple the level of the 2004 race.
• 10% say they have used social-networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social-networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns.
• 6% of Americans have made political contributions online, compared with 2% who did during the entire 2004 campaign.

Jeremiah Owyang did some quick election day social networking number crunching as well.  He found that in nearly all instances Barack Obama has far outpaced John McCain in the use of Social Media.  Barack Obama has 380% more Facebook and Myspace friends, almost a 1000% more Youtube views and 240 times the number of Twitter followers.  Will this mean that he will be the next President of the United States?  Not necessarily, but you can be sure that future elections will have a growing Social Media component. Good luck to both candidates and regardless of who wins, it will be interesting to see how our new leader deals with the difficult times ahead.

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Forrester Research, which publishes surveys and data around social media usage, has come out with their 2008 Technographics Data.  Don’t let the name scare you.  Technographics is Forrester’s method of analyzing consumer behavior.  Here is a nice visual of how they categorize people “technographically”:

As you can see they’ve devided people up into 6 different categories based on their level of involvment with social media.  So to find the information Forrester compiled data from tens of thousands of people in North America, Canada, Europe and Asia. Their results were very telling.

All categories have seen an increase besides “inactives”.  The number of “spectators” increased by a whopping 21 percentage points.  That means more people are on the sidelines watching the action even if they aren’t participating by being “joiners” or “critics”.  But “joiners”, “collectors”, “critics” and “creators” all saw an increase over the past year.  But let’s return to those “inactives” a minute, they’ve nearly halved over the year!  That’s right, that means the number of people untouched by technology is shrinking.

As Josh Bernoff puts it on the Forrester blog, “If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence.”  Indeed you did!

Use of social media has seen it’s greatest growth among people 33-45 years old, with 45-54 year olds also posting modest gains as well.  Josh puts it best again,

“It will soon be no more remarkable that your grandmother reads a blog than that she reads email. Social content is going mainstream. Social content ranks high on search engines because it changes so frequently and gets linked to more often, so more and more online adults are becoming exposed to it, accepting it, and embracing it.”

Not sure we’re ready for that one, grandma, are you reading this!?!

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We’ve been hard at work lately developing all sorts of new features and improvements.  The biggest of which was our development of Next2Friends Live for RIM’s BlackBerry Curve and Pearl.  But something slipped by virtually unnoticed lately (except by our members) and that is the launch of the Next2Friends Live embeddable widget.

Essentially it is a widget that displays your live videos.  You can embed it into anywhere that will let you use HTML code, like Myspace or a personal website.  It’s quite simple to use, just copy the embed code from the landing page of your (or anyone’s) Next2Friends Profile, paste it and away you go:

Already members are jumping on this new tool.  Have a look at how new member and active blogger dotlizard has utilized the widget on her website.  It’s also great for musicians, lifecasters, and anyone with something to promote.  It’s pretty clear that fans of virtually anything appreciate the intimacy of live broadcasts from artists and personalities.  But that is not to count out how families and friends are using it to offer a window into their life’s little happenings for one another.  All great stuff, we’re quite pleased with the response so far and ask that you stay tuned for even more features in the coming weeks!

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A very comprehensive study was released by Universal McCann, and reported on by Mashable, that looked at the growing role of Social Media in influencing people’s purchasing behavior. Called, “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers“, the study collected responses from 17,000 people in 29 different countries.  Operating a Mobile Social Platform like Next2Friends we clearly align and have believed from the outset in much of the study’s findings.  Some of the key takeaways from Culture-Buzz:

44% of people surveyed have a blog (compared to 28% in 2006)
57.5% have a page on a social network (compared to 27% in 2006)
42% download video clips (compared to 10% in 2006)
34% of users share their opinions about music
55% share their photos online

Internet users do not rely on just the brands to inform themselves. While 69% visit brands’ official websites, 82% prefer to search for information on a search engine or to read people’s comments on personal profiles on social networks like Facebook, for example (55%). Internet users’ preferred method for exchanging information about a product is MSN Messenger (44.5%). E-mail comes in at a close second (42.4%), followed by blogs (30.4%), and social networks (27.6%).

Most telling is the 82% of people who prefer to search for a products online and read other people’s reviews.  Indeed, Jaramiah Owyang highlighted this phenomenon in his post titled, “Your Corporate Homepage is Really Google.com“.

You can have a look at the Slideshare presentation of the data:

Will This Extend to Mobile?

We think the answer will most certainly be yes, if the right tools exist.  IM is the most frequented channel for recommendations right now because it is the most ubiquitous.  It is present on nearly every social network and delivers immediacy like nothing else…well, almost.  We asked ourselves years ago what would happen if information between a person’s social networking profile and their mobile phone could flow seamlessly.  We didn’t want to stop at simply recreating the “sitting in front of your computer” experience on a mobile phone, rather, we’ve been tirelessly interested in the unique ways that the mobile phone can deepen the experience of social interaction.  And this directly relates to the way people interact with each other over brands.  Tools like Next2Friends Ask, where members can ask, respond and receive answers to media rich questions from their mobile, provide even broader possibilities and a level immediacy that just hasn’t been seen or utilized in this space yet.  Marry that to Real Time Video Broadcasting from Mobile and you can start to see how much farther this can go.  Indeed, this is just the beginning.  The future looks very bright for the wisdom of the crowd!

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