Facebook Launches Subscription Feeds: RSS for Status Updates

Looks like our carefully culled news feeds are going to get a bit of a switch up. Facebook’s had a busy week, rolling out one update after the next, the biggest one being the new “Subscriptions” feature that not only differentiates how much you want to hear from someone (between the options of “all,” “most,” “important,”), but allows you to subscribe to posts of people you don’t follow, be they journalists, artists, political figures, or acquaintances. CEO Zuckerberg kindly demonstrated its use by turning his five million fans into subscribers.  The subscriptions feature is hot on the heels of Facebook’s other updates, including “smart” friends lists and its now-fixed navigation bar. Very subtle.

 Twitter Releases Web Analytics

It seems Twitter has put its acquiring of social analytics company BackType to good use; earlier this week Twitter announced a free web analytics tool powered by BackType, intended to break down the effectiveness of Twitter integrations. The tool focuses on three key components: how much content is being shared on Twitter; how much traffic Twitter is sending back; and how well Tweet Buttons perform. The tool is free and still in Beta; a small group of partners will access it this week before the tool is rolled out to website owners in a few weeks. We’ve asked our dev team to look out for the API that’s also being released.

Foursquare’s “Push” API Shoved Ahead of Global Hackathon

What sneaky timing! Foursquare publicly released its Push API, which has been hinted at since March. The API allows developers to create apps that take advantage of Foursquare’s push notifications, utilizing it to shoot reminders and notifications (say, a reminder to pick up the milk when you pass a grocery store), or alert you when a friend is in the area. The most wonderful use of the API we hope happens immediately would be to tie into 4sqtransit to send immediate updates on public transit schedule.

Tweet for the Sky: How Airlines Have Taken Social Media Under Their Wing

We’re suckers for good infographics here at Affinitive, so we spent a few minutes appreciating these very pretty infographics of various airline companies and their social media savvy. In an industry that services thousands of people each day, it was only a matter of time until airlines adapted social media as an evolved customer service approach. These graphics all show that the savvy companies have grown a fan base through one medium or another. No mention about Southwest Airline’s bad encounters (and Twitter exposures) with celebrities though.

 Does Your Klout Influence Content?

Klout has once again upped the ante with its new Topic Pages feature, which reveals who influences content. At the moment, only 5% of users have access to this feature, which will soon be rolled out for all. The goal, said CEO Joe Fernandez, is to understand who is influential – about what and to whom. The feature analyzes a user’s content spread across 10 social media services before analyzing by topic, how influential a user’s audience is about it and how they respond. The rankings change daily based on created content. You’re killing us, Smalls.

 Get on the Bus with Affinitive

Last but not least, we were flattered to see our “Get on the Bus” campaign with Contiki featured in Mashable’s roundup of successful and creative Facebook contests! You can check out the fruits of our labor and read up on the contest – let us know what you think!

Did we miss a bit of buzz? Let us know and join in on the conversation here!

While Like might make sense as an action for objects and products, Like’s place in the lexicon of customer advocacy has remained a popular topic of discussion.  Brands have been rather perplexed as to what to call their legion of, dare we say followers.

We’ve seen brands change “Become A Fan” copy to “Like Us,” and some have taken the “Fan” copy down without a replacement.  Still others (ex 2) have kept Fan  for better or worse.

Facebook hasn’t made things any easier, populating their “Like Box” with the statement “Brand X has ### fans,” re-naming the Page wall filter from “Just Fans” to “Just Others,”  (Others?  Are we on Lost?), and providing this description in their Brand Permissions Guidelines:

“When inviting users to like your Page, say ‘like our Page’ or ‘become a fan by clicking Like on our Page.“

It seems this shift has struck a chord among consumers as well, as indicated by a recent Mashable poll which reported that ‘Become A Fan’ was more popular than ‘Like’ by nearly 2-1 among Mashable readers.

Some industry folks have summed up Like’s clumsiness in a recent tweets:

There are more serious implications under the surface of the language change, and ReadWriteWeb aptly covered  these concerns a couple months back so I won’t get into that here.

For now, you might want to consider referencing Like as it pertains to the direct action of clicking the button on the page, and perhaps try other verbs such as “Connect” for less direct calls to action (such as a link to visit the page).  Using Fan as a noun still works outside of Facebook and as a reference to users already connected to a page, but keep in mind that Facebook probably won’t be changing the Open Graph nomenclature any time soon so it’s going to be Like until it’s something else.  I didn’t think ‘Become A Fan’ was the most universally contextual phrase for pages in the first place, preferring “Connect” or “Join” or “Subscribe” as a more accurate descriptor of the result of the opt-in action and to avoid blanketing consumers as having the same brand sentiment.  But alas, if we’ve learned anything from Facebook it’s that they do what they “Like!”

While I have no evidence to argue against this other than the myriad personal anecdotes from teens in the comments of the media coverage (I tweet therefore we tweet!) and the content in the stream of the popular trending  “Teens Don’t Tweet” topic on Twitter, I do have a question about the stats Nielsen provided.

As Nielsen puts it, “…only 16 percent of Twitter.com website users were under the age of 25. Bear in mind persons under 25 make up nearly one quarter of the active US Internet universe, which means that Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent.”

Fine, but check out the age breakdown in the graph.  You’ve got 55+ (avg US life expectancy is about 75, so we’ll go with that), 25-54, and 2-25.  That gives us ranges of 21 years, 29 years, and 23 years, respectively.

However, you have to be 13 to join Twitter, so that cuts the youngest demographic in half, making those ranges 21 years, 29 years, and 13 years.

This seems heavily skewed in favor of the older demographics and of course a demo segment would under index when half the audience are literally not legally allowed to use the service, right?  But I welcome more savvy statistics people to show me the light.

Regardless, it wasn’t the teens under indexing bit that caught me off guard the most.  No, what gets me is that 20% of the Twitter audience is 55+.  Tweetup at The Villages, tonight!

In what will certainly become a smashing viral success, P Diddy, a relatively newcomer to Twitter (@iamdiddy), educates Ellen DeGeneres (now on Twitter – @theellenshow-  although at Press Time has yet to “tweet”).

In typical Diddy fashion he pronounces himself the most popular man on Twitter [112,820 followers - all #s as of 3/11 @ 5 p.m.] although Shaq: @The_Real_Shaq, [280, 948 followers], Ashton Kutcher @aplusk [290,534 followers], and non-celebrities (although arguably Social Media celebs) such as Pete Cashmore: @mashable [221,189 followers] and Kevin Rose: @kevinrose [263,953 followers - and the guy who got Ashton & Demi to tweet] have more “followers” than he does.

Whether he’s the king of Twitter or not, the trend of celebrities using Twitter as a platform to speak directly to their fans is certainly a viable (and smart) usage of the “tweeting” capabilities. In the same way that brands like Comcast: @comcastcares and Jet Blue @jetblue have communicated effective and important information and solutions to their consumers, strengthening their brand image.  Celebrities can utilize Twitter to clear up rumors, make big announcements, seem more accessible to fans, and ultimately strengthen their brand – which is what is also compelling to us as marketers and branders – the tweeter can now be the driver of their own brand message.

In the clip above Diddy butchers the explanation of Twitter calling it a “mass e-mail” which it certainly resembles, but isn’t. But the fact that he is on Ellen, explaining Twitter, and going out of his way to disclose the ways he utilizes it is what is important.  His excitement about it as a communication tool is the excitement I hope to instill in all of my clients.

I believe that we can officially say that Twitter has gone mainstream.

Note: Although I jab at Diddy’s explanation of Twitter, I find it tough myself to explain it in less than a paragraph. Does anyone have a succinct explanation they use? Do share!