Digital vs. social media, what is the difference?
Year after Year, technology evolves at what seems like an ever-faster pace. I realize that’s not shocking news – a bit like when your Great-Aunt Evelyn points out how tall you’re getting for the umpteenth time. Time flies and technology evolves quickly. However, whether it is a new gadget or a new operating system, it is fascinating to see how it impacts the way we go about our lives.
In the era of the Internet and social media, viral videos and memes, media is an integral part of our daily routines. It’s fair to say that if you’re reading this, you’re someone that would be more crushed to lose your smart phone than your wallet. You’ve also probably launched your very own personal social campaign. And you are no doubt guilty of tweeting, facebooking, instagraming, and pinning something that you thought was worth sharing in order to enhance your social presence. That’s what we do with media these days.
I was struck by an article by Rebecca Leib positing that ‘digital’ and ‘social’ media are the same. She states that ‘all media is digital.’ Upon examination, that’s hard to refute. Perhaps we have focused on separating the two based upon who distributes the content. If a consumer posts something, it falls in the category of social media, whereas if a brand posts something it is known as a digital media campaign. The assumption could be that the individual is simply sharing while the brand is using more sophistication and analysis in order to sell stuff.
Media is everywhere, whether it is print, broadcast, digital, or social. What we see from both consumers and brands is that they are sharing media of the digital variety. Over time the lines have blurred to the point that the lines don’t really exist anymore. What we are left with is an ever-evolving set of tools. A decade ago, we shared silly jokes or photos via e-mail. Now we share them via Pinterest. In between there was MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg and a slew of others, some of which fell by the wayside. The point is, they were all digital and they all offered us the ability to share something about ourselves, or something we liked, or something that reflected our personality. In other words, they allowed us to launch our very own social campaign.
As proof, look no further than the painful demise of Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The e-reader created by the only remaining national bookseller just couldn’t keep up with the advancements made by other tablets. It wasn’t full-featured enough, including its e-mail functionality and social media components. Its ability to be a digital and social portal was inadequate, and people didn’t adopt it despite the bookseller pushing it at every turn. Folks don’t want a device or a broadsheet that only allows them to take in content. They want that device to do more. They want to be able to share.
From the brand side, look at how campaigns are launched. The majority of the commercials shown during the Super Bowl were shared prior to the big game and utilized hashtags, Facebook pages and other sharing options. Viewers expected to be able to join the conversation, bridging the gap between broadcast and digital. This is a trend that companies have adopted across all their digital campaigns.
So what does this all mean? It means that we might no longer be able to draw a distinction. Digital media has gone social, and social media has gone digital.
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This week, we wanted to highlight a few more apps from one of our Sprint video projects. These apps are pretty popular. If you have time, download them from the Android market today!
Rhapsody – Build a virtual playlist and listen to all the music you want with Rhapsody. This service is 10$ a month and streams music to an app that is downloaded on your phone.
Identify songs fast with SoundHound. Read lyrics, watch videos, and share songs with this awesome app.
Use Foursquare to check into your favorite local spots and build a social network that revolves around exploring the world! Compete for the ultimate title of “mayor” by checking in the most!
Twitter is great for getting a ton of updates all on one feed. Download this app to your phone to keep up to date with trending topics and daily happenings. If you haven’t joined this microblog service, you’re missing out on the fun!
What apps are you using? Share them below!
Austin Allen
Photo courtesy of The Noun Project
For Social Media Week in San Francisco (#SMWSF), Adobe held a panel on The Future of Social TV. Social video is described as when a viewer is engaging with a second screen while viewing TV.
Here are the key takeaways for today’s Social TV experience:
1. The best experience with media is with your friends. Social TV needs to solve a problem. What is that problem? How can TV still be social when your friends aren’t around to watch?
2. Marketers need to find a way to find you online and offer you something that adds value to your TV viewing experience.
3. Different genres will always create a different experience (not all genres might have the potential to be social).
The Future:
1. Will 2nd screen devices or the content itself become more central? Most of the panel agreed that the “socialness” of TV as it currently is, is due to the 2nd screen device. We can’t see this changing anytime soon. The future of social TV lies in how well the 2nd screen device is able to add value to a video, but it is also important for the content to be worth talking about. One panelist envisions that social TV will mean your device can automatically realize you are watching a certain show and offer premium content to go along with it!
2. Will social continue to be more prevalent with appointment TV: IE: news, sports, reality, season finales? or will on-demand content find it’s place with social? Social TV will always be more useful with appointment TV, Viewers want to watch and gossip as events unfold live. Although it is possible for someone to engage with on-demand content, it is most likely that someone else has seen that content and talked about it already.
3. Television won’t be disrupted, but rather expanded. It is clear that video is here to stay, but Social TV is still very young. New technologies could change and expand TV like we never would have imagined.
Are you a social TV viewer? What do you envision the future of social TV to look like?
San Francisco based (only the best are right?) “Path” is a social app that allows you to keep a journal of your life electronically. One of the coolest features of this app is the fact that it actually does some of the record keeping itself and learns your patterns. This app isn’t Facebook or Twitter. You can only add 50 of your closest friends and family.
It is essentially a very closed social network. Privacy is not taken advantage of here. The main focus of this app seems to be to allow the user to share anything with a smaller, more selective, group of people. Maybe this would be a better place to post those awesome Vegas photos with your friends, that you would prefer to keep hidden from your boss. If you feel the need, you can even share what time you go to sleep. Now all your friends will know what time is inappropriate to be texting you!
We loved the “less is more” interface design. Yeah, it looks a bit like Facebook, but easier to use. The main page features: a profile picture, a cover picture, a timeline of current events, and a pop out menu of sharing options. That’s it, that’s all. It’s so easy a caveman can do it. This app won’t replace the big boys (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) but it creates a network that you can keep a bit more private with a very easy to use interface.
Grab this one in the app store!
Got a cool app? Share it!
Last month as Oscar nominations began rolling in, people took to their social networks to express their opinions on the Academy’s decisions. NM Incite (NM), a social analytics company, then corralled the data and sentiment around each nominee and came out with a report that seemed to be a clear depiction of who would be winning big at the 84th Annual Academy Awards.
I wrote a post in which I made my own predictions, based on this information and my own opinion of the nominees. As it turns out, those blabbering tweeters were pretty spot on.
“The Artist” had a huge night last night, taking home 5 awards including Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role and Director. During nomination time, it also garnered nearly a quarter of the buzz within the study by NM. In my post, I had predicted that it would be a bitter battle between “The Artist” and “Hugo” and boy was it.
“Hugo” took several awards early on in the night including Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound Editing and Mixing. What I don’t get is these are all things that, to me, would work to create the Best Film, yet that award went to “The Artist”. Kind of weird, right?
Either way, where social and the Academy differed greatly was Best Actress in a Supporting Role (which went deservedly to Octavia Spencer for “The Help”). Now, in my post I championed Melissa McCarthy for her work in “Bridesmaids” while understanding that bathroom humor doesn’t typically score big at the Oscars. I mean, I get that squatting over a bathroom sink to, um…. might not be as emotionally demanding as, say, dealing with Civil Rights, but I was hopeful McCarthy would pull through.
In the end, those blabbering tweets were pretty spot on with their predictions and I’m sure anyone who said social media can’t predict anything is sitting at their cubicle with a foot in their mouth. Oh, and congratulations MERYL F—ING STREEP!
What did you think of the Oscars? Share it below!
This week, we’ve been playing around with Square (@Square). Accept credit card payments from anyone, anywhere! We know, at first people jump to argue that this is not a safe thing for people to have for their phones! Identity Theft anyone? But the people at square have security measures in place to make this a safe app to use. All users must provide bank account numbers and verify information about themselves before being able to connect an account.
The app is free to download and they will send you a credit card swipe that connects to your phone for free as well! Square makes their money by charging a percent of each transaction just like any card company would. The money is direct deposited in your account instantly. Even the Salvation Army bell ringers are using it!
The coolest part of the app is that Jack Dorsey (@Jack), one of the founders of Twitter, is masterminding this application. So SQUARE UP, and start your small business.
Well, we’re feeling generous, so we’ll go ahead and let you in on another awesome app from the makers of Square.
Card Case takes Square one step further. Open a tab in your name at your favorite participating Card Case location and pay with Square. Imagine a world where you no longer even need a credit card. Give your name, get your order and walk out. The location services tells the vendor that you are indeed who you say you are.
What’s your favorite app? Share it already!
Austin Allen
Unthink is “an online home built with integrity”. Facebook meets LinkedIncombined with a revolutionary way of opting for brands to see your information anonymously, creates a pretty cool concept. Upon receiving my invite code by email (after waiting almost a week), I entered my code and came to a page that basically outline their philosophy and privacy policy in a short and concise couple of documents. Believe it or not, I could actually read the privacy policy in a realistic amount of time! Upon arriving to my dashboard, I noticed a large and prominently displayed “Privacy” button. Click it and begin taking charge of your own privacy. It is clear, Unthink is putting privacy first, what a relief.
Social. The social profile works much the same as Facebook would, (but privacy seems to be the number one priority for the designers of the site). You can add a picture, share information about yourself and post status updates. Unthink combines Twitter’s hashtag function with a status update box more in the likes of Facebook to create a cool hybrid status update feature. None of the information you share with your social profile will be shared with brands. The stats that brands will use to target your interests will be left up to what is on your Lifestyle profile.
Lifestyle. The lifestyle page allows the user to define their brand and shopping style. An avatar is created to define you but no personal identifying information is shared. It is pretty cool that users now can let brands know what they want without giving away privacy as these profiles are anonymous. It also allows the site to be useful for brands. If the site doesn’t provide brands with tools for marketing it would fall apart fast.
Professional. This is the page where you can build a professional network much like LinkedIn. Users can add work and education information and connect with other professionals. You can upload a separate profile picture for this profile that is different than your social one. Connect with employers and other business opportunities under your professional profile and keep them out of your personal life.
I really like how the site allows you to manage 3 different entities of yourself. Be yourself on social, be a consumer on Lifestyle, and be a professional on Professional. The best of 3 worlds. They are claiming to be the “emancipation of social media”. I think this site has potential. If they can come up with a user experience that is better than Facebook, and hold on tight to their “revolution in privacy” policies, I think the site with grow and be a success. They are clearly targeting young people (probably the most likely demographic to adopt something new and anti-facebook). The last little thing I noticed is you can like or dislike posts. I’m not sure if that is such a good idea for brands, but will give users more control over their experience.
What do you think about Unthink? Will it be able to stand up to Facebook?
By: Austin Allen
Twitter recently unveiled its new search engine features, which allow users to see photos and videos related to hashtags. They have also incorporated an automatic link shortening feature. Search features are nothing new to Twitter but the returning of links to photo and video content is. There is already a search bar add-on for Mozilla Firefox, and if that isn’t enough to make Twitter the go-to search engine for media content, now Apple has incorporated Twitter into its IOS 5 software for iPhone and iPad to be released in Fall 2011. The obvious next step, for Twitter to monetize its video and photo integrated search, would be to have promoted videos and photos, just as it has promoted search results.
But, will these features make Twitter more like a search engine than a social media site? Twitter has seen explosive growth in its search usage. I can only see this trend continuing as they refine their search engine and add more convenient features, but Twitter users will always continue to use it most as a refined news feed of the content they want to be exposed to.
Will Twitter become the go-to search engine for media content over say Google or Youtube? I don’t think it will. Although Twitter is becoming increasingly popular, Youtube and Google will still be used to find videos of cats meowing and links to the most relevant content to a user’s keywords respectively. Twitter will always be most useful as a news source.
Although it is possible for many different sites to be interchangeably used for the same kind of searching, Twitter is not going to “disrupt” Google and Youtube’s search business but will be increasingly used to find media related to current buzzing topics. I don’t think Twitter will cause huge damage to Google’s business but will operate in harmony with it. While all different sites might step on each other’s toes here and there, generally the most successful sites have something that sets them apart.
Twitter sets itself apart as a news feed more than a search engine. It democratizes news and allows people to seek current information on the products, services, celebrities, and politics of their choice. The ability for anyone in the world to become a news reporter or content publisher has caused an uprising in Egypt and a so-called “sex scandal” by House of Representative Anthony Weiner.
To sum things up, Twitter has made itself more useful for searching with these new features but it will remain more of a social media site for communication than a search engine. I would bet on seeing more sustained growth as the new IOS5 software is released but Google and Youtube won’t be lost in the dust. It will still be useful for advertisers to advertise using all three of these sites. I can’t imagine a future internet landscape where the standard reply to an unknown question is “Just Twitter it”.
By: Justin Gonzalez
We’ve been talking about Facebook a lot lately, but really, who isn’t these days? The fact is Facebook has landed the No. 2 spot for Online Video Referrals to websites, surpassing search engines Yahoo and Bing.
The report was completed by Tubemogul and Brightcove to, “identify key industry trends and answer questions about the state of the industry.” An interesting fact about the report is the types of videos that see the most engagement via the different referral sites. People who find online video content via Facebook are more interested in watching for entertainment value while users of Google have more interest in trending news stories. It makes a lot of sense when you consider the use of Facebook as a point of social sharing and that of Google as a timely news source. Interestingly, Twitter users seem to be overall more engaged across all types of video content than the other referral sites in spite of its low referral rate.
The report will continue to be useful for marketers as the team updates it quarterly. We’ve already seen drastic differences between Q2 and Q3: the average minutes watched per stream either saw a drop in Q3 or no change at all from Q2. This could be due to cluttering of online content – or just poor content in general. Either way, it means that you need to ensure that you are using the right platforms to seed your online video content and guarantee that you are at the top of search results for your preferred referral site. As we enter 2011, keep these nuggets of knowledge in the back of your mind, and definitely find your following on Twitter. It’s an easy and informative read (probably something you could knock out while waiting to go through security checkpoints) but the value is worth the time spent.
By: Justin Gonzalez
You may remember him from The Hangover and Pineapple Express, but now Ken Jeong wants you to buy Pepto Bismol. If you haven’t checked out Pepto’s newly integrated campaign, you should. Covering all social spheres, the age old brand is on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and making huge strides in the social realm. I had a chance to chat with Elizabeth Ming (P&G)and Kristen Stutz (Assistant Brand Manager, Pepto Bismol) to learn a little more about their project, and it’s obvious the brand is changing the way people think about their stomach problems. Why worry yourself with under indulging when you have Pepto – and Ken Jeong – at your side? The funny and informative, or as Pepto is calling them “Funformative”, videos encourage viewers to have fun this holiday season and grab an extra spoonful of spinach dip knowing that Pepto has your back. Or stomach. The Procter & Gamble brand sees itself as being fun and witty, so choosing Ken for the job was a no brainer.
Immediately after checking out their page I was reminded of another popular P&G brand, Old Spice. I think by now everyone knows the success Old Spice had this year with The Old Spice Guy on YouTube so I won’t hash out the details. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you can check out our blog post on it here. Suffice it to say, I think we will see a resurgence of P&G brands increasing their market penetration via integrated campaigns like Old Spice and now Pepto in the coming year. Mashable actually wrote a great article on this last week after marketing chief Marc Pritchard held a meeting with the Associated Press.
Being over a century old (Yes, 108 years old. Take that Cher!) Pepto Bismol has definitely found a new voice for itself in social media. Recognizing that conversations were happening about the brand on social networks, it was an obvious choice for them to join in on the fun and become a bigger part of people’s lives. What’s great about their strategy is that in spite of being relatively new to the social game (a Facebook page was started around June of 2010) they have a clear voice, a strong following and a fully integrated campaign (using online and traditional media). According to Ming, since the campaign launched in early December they’ve tracked over 75 million impressions, Facebook “Likes” increased by 25% and the initial commercial has hit 25,000 views on YouTube. This week they’ve launched their second video, “Tummy Time 2” and expect to see another surge of views in the coming weeks. My suggestion: check it out, take notes and devour some chili cheese fries in the process. Web videos like these can go viral easily and change the game immediately.
If your campaign doesn’t have online integration you’re missing out on huge market potential.
Digital vs. Social Media, What Is The Difference?