Looking into the future

There is a bright future for social network sites. This became clear when I read the eight prediction that Frederik De Wachter made about the future of social network sites. He is the founder of tagger.fm, a brand new internet company where you can bookmark your music and share it with your friends. De Wachter sees eight major evolutions in the next year

1. Mobile internet breaks through, thanks to attractive applications and fixed tariffs.

2. Social networks will become the most important youth media.

3. Internet piracy will be successfully attacked for the first time on ISP level in EU countries.

4. The digital sales of music will be the biggest source of revenue for a lot of labels.

5. Packaging of unlimited data and music subscriptions will find acceptance

6. Next to IPhone other manufacturers will bring similar phones on the market. This will make Mobile browsing more interesting.

7. Gent confirms his new role as catalyst for web start ups.

8. In Flanders digital economy breaks through as fourth sector. It will be the driving force of innovation and growth.

Not all of these predictions can be reflected on our internet start up,E-Runner, but we get a good feeling when we read this!

Source: Frederik De Wachter, tagger.fm

Am I an active user?

Social networking is the next big thing, we all know it, everybody is talking about it, the internet is filled with it. Almost everybody has a Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn account. I have them as well, but sometimes I have the feeling that I’m missing the vibe of all this social networking stuff. I don’t feel the need to use my Facebook as some kind of public diary, I don’t tweed every hour of the day and my LinkedIn Profile is only for 50% complete. I ask myself the question: Am I an active user or not? Am I the only one who thinks like this?

So, I did some research. I was convinced that I am not the only one who has an account on Twitter and never tweets. Numbers have confirmed my suspicion. A study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. This company looked at 19 million Twitter accounts to search for active Twitter users. The definition they used was the following: An active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times. By that definition though, only 21% of Twitter users are active users. Surprisingly, I am not one of them…

Then I looked at some statistics of Facebook. As we take a look at the Facebook statistics page, we see that Facebook already has more than 400 million users. 50% of the people who have an account log on to Facebook in any given day and almost 10% of the total users update their status each day. According to the numbers an average Facebook user looks like this: he has 130 friends, sends 8 friend requests a month, spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook, clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month, becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month, is invited to 3 events per month and is a member of 13 groups. I recognize myself in all the ‘passive’ things. I have more than 130 friends, I receive more than three event invitation a month and I become a fan of more than 4 Pages each month. But when I look at the ‘active’ things such as inviting friends, hitting the Like button and spending time on the site, I must confess that I’m not a real facebook user.

If a want to become a real active user of social networks, I'll have to try harder.

Sources:

http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/twitter-follow-stats/

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

40% Cardio, 60% Cocktails

Market trends. Target audience. Objectives. That is how most of the teams in our class developed the concept for a new social network site. And of course, you can come up with a whole range of possibilities to give meaning to your SNS. When it comes to our own start-up projects, we’ve already seen the combination of fashion & gadgets, running & networking, and so on. Whether you want to go niche or a whole lot broader, everything is possible. But what about this one: Iamsuperchick.com claims to offer its members ‘fashionable affordable female fitness’, and thereby considers itself to be ‘the contradiction you’ve been looking for’. The key to their success? Cardio and fitness. Sounds like a plan to me!

Source: www.iamsuperchick.com

Flanders' Spirit of Enterprise

At the beginning of the second term, Dr. Els Van de Velde asked us if any of the eleven groups were actually considering executing their start-up for real. With a rather resigned attitude, the whole class uncomfortably looked at one another.

After several months of working on the concept, strategy and finances of a new online platform, none of the teams seemed to consider setting up a real business. So I wondered: is launching your own company at the age of 22 even a real option? The very thought must have crossed everybody’s mind once in a while, but I, for one, put the idea out of my head.

And apparently, this attitude characterizes the Belgian investment climate. That is why the Flemish government has devoted a big part of her new communication campaign “Vlaanderen in Actie” to entrepreneurship.

I’m curious to see what the outcome of this new approach will be. Other similar initiatives, such as the Battle of Talents, have already proven to be a big success.


Sources: www.vlaandereninactie.be and www.battleoftalents.be

The importance of internal and external social networks

Companies have to jump on the train of social network sites, both external and internal social networks.

Some companies still have to decide if they want to be active on social network sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. They still have to realize that the maintenance of a profile on Facebook or LinkedIn has a lot of advantages. It amplifies the image of the company, it attracts new employees and it amplifies the bonding between employees and the company.

This last advantage brings us to the importance of an internal social network (also called enterprise social networking). A lot of big companies already have an intranet where employees can search for name, address and email of colleagues, but companies have to see that this also brings a great opportunity. An enterprise social network could help bonding the employees with each other and could help the teambuilding within the company. Some Belgian companies have taken this to the next level: they made a social network site oriented towards their customers. ABConcerts is a good example of this new trend. They are convinced that it can help the customer relations and that it can have an improving effect on the image of the company.

Source: Bruno Peeters

Voorspellingen 2009: 20 experts aan het woord

Let's go flunning!

After smirting, the combination of smoking and flirting, there is a more sportive and healthy trend: FLUNNING. Running and flirting at the same time.

British research has shown that a quarter of the British people go running to flirt with runners from the opposite sex. A thousand runners and a thousand non-runners participated in the study and the research revealed that one out of three runners tries to strike up a conversation with someone from the opposite sex.

Because of the fact that our target audience for our brand new internet start up are business people who want to plan running dates, this trend could be pretty interesting for us.

Source: De Standaard

Get your SNS analyzed here!

Before launching your own brand new website, it might be interesting to analyze some of its aspects. In the business plan for our own new social network site we have incorporated a test phase during which we can look for weaknesses and optimize our online network and service. A helpful tool for this could be the online marketing consultation service of the Stylez company website. Stylez offers a variety of services like web planning and development, system consulting, internet media business and online marketing consulting. You can get a free website analysis for instance where two of the most substantial aspects of your website are analyzed: its usability and the implementation of its SEO (Search Engine Optimization). For a new start-up like ours this could be very helpful since we would want to know whether our website is efficient or not, especially in comparison with that of the competitors. Stylez also offers ways to direct your target market to your website and to increase conversion. With a proper strategy and relevant web contents that comply with the users’ needs you can direct users to reach your desired goals.

Sources: http://www.stylez.sg/index.php

New SNS'es have a hard time finding an audience

InSites, a Ghent based internet consulting agency found that about 70% of Belgian surfers are on social network sites (which is in line with the global average of 72%).
What is remarkable is that most surfers have membership to two or more online communities. Most of those communities are for personal use. Only 16% of the Belgian surfers is member of a professional network like LinkedIn.
Most users visit their profile twice a day. Professional profiles like LinkedIn are only visited 9 times a month on average.
InSites claims that new SNS'es will find it more and more difficult to penetrate the market and find their own niche. Most surfers are happy with today's situation and do not want to change their community site or add one to their 'portfolio'. Steven Van Belleghem, managing partner of InSites: "There is a certain stability in the SNS market".

Source: T-zine

A great business plan: the road to success?

One of the stress inducing school assignments I was talking about earlier is to write a business plan for our internet start-up. The books and articles about the topic are countless and the number of business-plan contests is increasing every year. Even entire courses are devoted to writing a business plan. I started to think that the only thing standing between our group and success are some nice color charts, a financial projection and a nice lay-out. But then I wondered: “can we really ‘plan’ our business? Is it even possible to say that an investor will have a ROI of 23% within 2 years or do we just mean "If everything that could go right does go right, you might get your money back"? I guess what I’m saying is that avoiding risks is impossible and not everything can be laid out in a plan. However in the absence of crystal ball, a business plan consisting of correct and honest information is indeed a good start to success.

Web 2.0: Down the rabbit hole?

The hot internet phenomenon of the moment seems to be Chatroulette, a brand new one-on-one service for text-, webcam- and microphone-based chat around the world. After hitting the “start” button on the website, your webcam is activated immediately and before you know it you’re staring into the eyes of a stranger. When you hit “next” you are presented with a new chatting partner. It feels like speed-dating to the max. What does this fad tell about us though? Have we fully embraced the general spirit of internet randomness? Why don’t we feel inhibited to scroll through others’ lives like it’s the most normal thing in the world? Is this just one of many platforms leading the way for the social domination of hyper dynamic Me The Media mass communication? The individualization of the web and ever-growing need for self-expression on the internet definitely offers food for thought and discussion. Nothing seems to shock us anymore, terms like “personal” and “private” don’t mean the same thing they used to do and we are assuming that life is happening here, online. Can everybody deal with the virtualization of life? After my own Chatroulette deflowering I must say that I’m far from ready to put myself out there like that. Guess I’ll just stick to Facebook for now.

Sources:

http://mashable.com/2010/03/16/chatroulette-vs-hot-or-not/

http://www.methemedia.com/

http://www.chatroulette.com/

Running to reduce stress!

Last night I was thinking back of my first years at university: it seems my life wasn’t so stressful back then. Things were much easier. No team work, no new deadlines in my diary every week, the only calendar I had to worry about was my social calendar. Now, I have to prioritize and make to-do lists: school, projects, blogs, team meetings…. Making the transition from being a student to being a young professional isn’t that easy apparently. The trick to reduce the stress level is to find an activity that calms you, for some of us that’s dancing to a favorite song, for others it’s reading a good book, for me it’s jogging. I have set myself a new goal. I’m going to run the 10km of Ghent. In 10 weeks I’ll run 10km in 1 hour. Who’s with me?

The internet in figures

The internet is a vast country. 247 billion e-mails per day, 126 million active bloggers, 27 million tweets per day. 30.000 servers to store your idiotic Facebook Fan Pages.
And that's 2009. 2010 is bound to break all those records!

The American web agency Jess3 collected different statistics into The State Of The Internet.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

Source: Focus Knack

BBDO Argentina, Sake and Nike+ tweet while running 10k

Responding of the current trend – set by Nike+ – of massive running events, BBDO Argentina and Sake invited 5 Argentinean celebrities, who would be running The human race 10k, to blog on their experience – live!

Nike+ Human Race 10K LIVE from the INSIDE from BBDO argentina on Vimeo.

They were wearing an iPhone, strapped to their arms and an earphone. By hitting a button they were able to share their thoughts orally, while running the race. These voice messages were turned into text messages which were published at thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo, in their Twitter accounts and various other websites.

To prove that the satnav-hype has still not yet reached its peak, the runners positions and points of messages were shown on a Google Maps map. The fanemka-team believes that within a few years everyone will constantly have a personal satnav with them in their smartphones, like digital cameras are nowadays even found in the cheapest cell phones.

Source: Vimeo

Switch to a Pitch for Free Publicity!

Promoting a new and innovative SNS surely sounds expensive. However, it can be extremely cheap and easy if you are willing to invest time in making yourself and your business visible on online PR networks. PitchRate.com is an online service that offers free publicity and connects journalists with experts and publicists for free media coverage. You can join the site for free and pitch yourself to journalists when you think you’re right for an incoming request or a source needed by a journalist. When you make the pitch, all of your contact info will automatically be sent as well. After that, all you have to do is wait to be contacted by the journalists who made the request for an interview and free publicity to promote yourself and your online business! Want to learn more? Visit http://www.pitchrate.com/.

Sources:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8114-Internet-Business-Examiner~y2009m7d28-Internet-Business-101--How-to-get-free-online-publicity
http://www.pitchrate.com/

Sociology and social media, two case studies

Recently, a lot of voices have risen saying Facebook, Twitter or other social media are used to utter hateful ideas about other people. Since its rise, social media have been applauded for their democratizing and emancipatory potential. Now, however, its users are often considered cold, harsh or cruel for voicing shocking opinions, hurting wishes and even death threats. With every new mediatic hype, a Facebook group and ante-group is created. Instead of invigorating debate on social issues, this phenomenon disembogues into a noise of shouted slogans.
Two case studies from recent Belgian media hypes are exemplary: journalist Linda De Win's envied streak of victory in De Slimste Mens, a Woenstijnvis quiz on Flemish broadcasting station één; and referee Luc Wauters' giving Club Bruges soccer player Ronald Vargas a red card. Both got stuck in the eye of a (social-)media-storm when people created several hate-groups around their person. The events were hyped on radio and television and in Belgian/Flemish newspapers. Society watchers were invited to vent their ideas on the matter and people condemned first the groups and later Facebook's giving people the ablity to spread hatred.
Obviously, what happened to mrs. De Win and mr. Wauters is intolerable. Yet, would the things said remain unsaid if Facebook or Twitter did not exist? They would still be uttered in bars, on busses, at the hair dresser's - which means they would be kept hidden or difficult to find for sociologists and academic moralists. The widespread availability of world wide fora does not create new social or moral standards, it merely gives people the opportunity to spread their immoral ideas more effectively.
Instead of convicting sites like Facebook, researchers on human traits should praise them for easily and freely externalising what goes about in society.

Sources: De Standaard, Knack

'Hidden Facebook' has much more 'users'

Even though you might not have a Facebook account, mind you that Zuckerberg’s team knows who you are! The idea behind it is as simple as it is terrifying. When a new Facebook user signs up, he is requested to automatically let Facebook find friends. He can upload his address book which is then scanned for known Facebook users. But next to them, also people in his adress book without a Facebook account are saved in the Facebook archives. Also, names that are searched for, even if they don’t have an account are saved and analysed. That way the system can create your personal web of friends just as if you were on Facebook. The advertising possibilities are ample.

One might feel assaulted by this, but Facebook puts the responsibility for breaking people’s privacy with its users. It says this quite clearly in its terms of use. The thing is; who reads those?

Sources: T-Zine