The SXSW INTERACTIVE FESTIVAL in Austin, TXis the place to be March 14-17 for all the latest tech innovations, discussions, and, let’s be real - it’s about the parties. So join us if you’re there!
ShamRock St. Patty’s! with RockYou and friends.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 8:00 PM (PT)
Come party with RockYou & friends at SXSW! We’re closing out the Interactive Festival with a bang, with live performances from:
Datarock (www.myspace.com/datarock)
Kid Sister (www.myspace.com/kidsister)
Hey Champ (www.myspace.com/heychamp)
The RockYou Cabaret Room:
Presented by Child’s Play & Om Records
Amp Live feat. special guests
J-Boogie
According to a new study by Insight Express, 43% of the online population is on social networking sites. On top of that, social network users see advertising as important. In addition to Insight Express’ findings, a recent report from Netpop Research LLC also has promising results. According to their report, social networking has grown 96% since 2006 and if users view advertising as an integral part of their experience, there’s a lot of room for expansion.
When asked, however, users are not excited by blatant advertising but are much more interested in unique advertising campaigns. With 76% of US broadband users, or 105 million people, are involved in social media (uploading photos, blogging, etc) and 29%, or 40 million, of broadband users directly involved in social networking and online communication, this notion becomes quite interesting. What also makes this quite exciting is that another, nearly simultaneous, study released by Netpop entitled “Social Networkers US” says that social networkers are also more likely to shop online.
There’s no doubt that social networking is growing at a very fast rate. On top of that, social network users are interested in advertising on those networks, but only if done in a engaging way. The exciting news is that it appears social networks can be a booming outlet for brands to take a stab at some new, creative campaigns. Could this be an integral part of saving our current, dismal economy? Only time will tell, but the news is promising and brands have one more reason to leap in.
Last night’s Developer’s Garage in Palo Alto gave the Facebook engineering team a chance to announce a some user interface changes and new features to a full house of developers. Here’s a quick recap of what went down:
1. Partnerships with Brightkite, Vimeo and Geni will allow FB users to avail themselves of these outside services without really leaving Facebook. The Vimeo partnership is a big deal as FB is obviously banking on it to become the preferred method for user video hosting. If the integration is smooth, we can expect to see a lot more of the Vimeo player.
2. The new Facebook Comments widget will allow anyone to plug in a comments box into their site, blog, photo gallery with just a few lines of code. It’s essentially FacebookConnect lite. The comments entered in the widget box can be also be posted on and shared to FB profiles. Similar to blogs that employ FacebookConnect in their comments, anyone with a Facebook account can chime in on any site that has the Comments widget.
In between these announcements Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came in, took the mike and said a few words about openness. He also spent a few minutes talking about the FB engineering team and how hard they’ve worked, which was the right thing to do in a room full of developers, and then he (probably) went back to work.
3. Feeds and Status updates are changing to look more personalized – which means no more quote marks around posted items. Images, videos, quotes and links can all be renamed and edited, so Status Updates just look better. More like a blog. More like a micro-blog. It’s interesting but for now it’s just a prettier face on the already existing system.
We’re betting that the concept of following and followers can’t be far behind.
There are lots of people who aren’t ‘friends’ whose feeds could be interesting to follow, but as it stands you have to be their ‘friend’ to see them. The wooden stake (assuming Twitter is the vampire) is going to be a private/public publishing option baked in to every feed. Could be a pain in the ass to get used to (as with every other change on Facebook, people will complain), but it could also make Facebook users . Facebook: The mega-micro-blog platform.
The SXSW INTERACTIVE FESTIVAL in Austin, TX is the place to be March 14-17 for all the latest tech innovations, discussions, and, let’s be real - it’s about the parties. So join us if you’re there!
