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Traffic to Twitter’s video-sharing network Vine exploded last month, making Vine.com one of the fastest-growing sites in America. Vine hit second place on Compete.com’s fast mover list for April, surpassing two million unique visitors to the website alone.

“We may be witnessing the rise of Twitter’s recently acquired Vine,” Compete.com’s Conor O’Mahony said in an email.

Source: Compete.com

Fast movers for April 2013

Vine, which bills itself as “the best way to see and share life in motion,” was acquired by Twitter for $30 million in October of 2012, when it had only three employees. The site is essentially a combination of a video-based Instagram and Twitter, as users upload short 6-second videos and share them with friends.

Two million unique visitors is not huge, of course, although it is significant. But it’s important to note that many users who access Vine solely via mobile will not be counted, and that this is a momentum signal, not a sign that Vine is already at Twitter or Facebook-style reach.

Vine, which has had some challenges lately due to copyright violations and hard-core porn appearing as an editor’s pick, is ideally suited to grow fast simply due to the fact that Twitter owns it … and can feature it more prominently in users’ tweet streams whenever it wishes. Twitter has already signaled with Twitter #Music that it intends to go full-media and extend what has largely been a textual medium into music and other media.

Other top sites included MLB.com — as baseball season hits — and Boston.com, for reasons too obvious and painful to mention. Java.com and Adobe.com hit the fast mover’s list simply due to new software updates.

photo credit: mclcbooks via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Media, Mobile, Social

Het is geen geheim dat veel bedrijven berichten als tweets van te voren inplannen, dat is natuurlijk hartstikke handig. Maar waarom plannen veel partijen deze berichten in op hele uren? Bol.com,…



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Over wie werd er gisteren op Kroningsdag het meest gesproken op Twitter? Hoeveel tweets zijn er in totaal over de troonswisseling verstuurd? Salesforce.com heeft gisteren met Salesforce Radian6 de tweets gevolgd rond de troonswisseling. Radian6 volgt en analyseert de realtime conversaties van meer dan 500 miljoen online bronnen (inclusief de Twitter Firehose van 400 miljoen tweets per dag).

After a rash of major Twitter account hacks, rumor says the company will be releasing two-factor authentication. While this is a great extra protection, it’s not the panacea many are looking for.

Over the past two weeks, three major news outlets — NPR, CBS, and the Associated Press — have all had their Twitter accounts hacked. In the AP’s case, hackers took over the account and tweeted about a bogus explosion at the White House. Following that breach, many called on Twitter to introduce that golden security measure: two-factor authentication.

We saw something similar when a journalist was hacked through Apple, prompting the company to figure out two-factor authentication for iCloud. The rumor now is that Twitter is going to release its own version of two-factor authentication. For that, we say, thank you, Twitter! But as PhishMe chief executive Aaron Higbee points out: that’s not the be-all, end-all solution to the problem.

“You would think this is obvious, but there seems to be a lot of undeserved criticism directed towards Twitter simply because AP employees fell for a phishing attack,” said Higbee in an email to VentureBeat, “Calling on Twitter to provide two-factor authentication doesn’t solve the AP phishing incident, nor would a long, frequently-changed password. That’s not to say it’s not worthwhile. Twitter should make an effort to offer two-factor for those that want it.”

The AP confirmed that the hack was preceded by a phishing attempt in a post about the incident.

Brian Krebs provides an excellent overview of why two-factor authentication could fail in such cases. Summarized, people set up phony phishing websites where targets are tricked into submitting their login credentials, which might include two-factor authentication codes. These codes often expire, but for many consumer sites, they are left connected for days because companies don’t want to create a barrier to entry.

Many of these spoofed websites are done really well. In the case Krebs writes about, hackers made a fake Citibank portal that served up error messages just like the real website would if incorrect credentials were supplied. That’s sophisticated and difficult to detect for us regular folk.

Higbee suggests that Twitter open up its own “group tweet” abilities so employees don’t have to share the same login credentials for an official company account. But education on phishing for all types of company employees could help too.

A group of pro-regime Syrian hackers called the Syrian Electronic Army took credit for all of the Twitter breaches, though we haven’t been able to independently confirm this is the case. The group has not mentioned any phishing in its congratulatory touting, but often targets publications based on their coverage of the conflict in Syria. If you’re one of those, it’d be wise to alert your employees to phishing attacks now.

Phishing image via Shutterstock

Filed under: Security

Marketers and brands have been working really hard over the past five years to make sense of social media marketing. Traditional PR firms have tried to jump on social as the new outreach medium and communications platform. Digital agencies have been salivating over how to define and monetize community management. And less savvy or buzzword-driven marketers have tried to equate social with viral. I’d argue neither social nor viral really exist, especially viral, but that’s another article entirely.

What is social media marketing?

Before we discuss what social media marketing is, let’s define what it’s not.

First, it’s not a medium. Defining social media marketing as a medium or even as a channel is the easiest definition, but one that misses the mark the most in many ways. It’s also very limiting. Direct mail is a medium. Radio is a medium. Social is big. Social is organic. Social is fluid. Social knows no boundaries.

Others, especially digital agencies, try to define social media marketing as community management. The way most agencies define community management, you could easily mistake it for customer support — which shouldn’t be outsourced in my view, especially to a digital marketing agency.

And, if community management is simply a channel to push marketing messages, or used as a campaign outlet, does community management equal social media marketing in this case? It’s a medium or a messenger at best in this scenario.

Direct response marketers and paid media specialists too often view social media marketing as just another property or engine to run or place ads. I think any marketer worth his or her acronyms would argue that ad placement in social media platforms does not define social media marketing.

So just to recap and to expand in an efficient manner, I included a quick list of what social media marketing isn’t below:

• It’s not a medium or channel.


• It’s not community management.


• It’s not running Facebook ads or sponsored tweets.


• It’s not posting and/or retweeting press releases or product updates.


• It’s not viral.


• It’s not a campaign.


• It’s not about the number of “likes” or followers you receive.

OK — so we’ve defined what it’s not, but what is social media marketing?

It’s a world view. It’s a philosophy. It’s a way of life. It’s a commitment to conversations — two-way and multi-way conversations. It’s a commitment to transparency. It’s not tethered to any site, platform, or medium. It’s engaging with customers, employees, vendors, and anyone else who wants to opt-in or opt-out of a conversation with a brand. It’s creating liquid content (for those of you who haven’t seen Coca-Cola’s 2020 content strategy, prepare to be amazed).

And, in 2013, it’s completely within the sphere of digital marketing. Social is a sub-segment of digital. It can’t be separated. For now…

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Outwit, outplay, outlast. These are the rules of “Survivor,” but they’re also the rules for surviving online. Nowhere do brands face more competition than on the web, where everyone is clambering to engage consumers and recruit new fans — and there are only so many fans to go around.

According to recent research from Ipsos, 40 percent of consumers follow brands online. Technorati Media says that more than 50 percent of consumers follow brands on Twitter and Facebook to “keep up with activities.” In other words, consumers are actively watching your posts. They’ve got their eyes on you, and one of the things they’re watching is how you engage with other brands that they know.

This puts marketers in a delicate position. In the past, competitive information was largely internalized. Business owners would count the cars in the competing hotel’s parking lot or, more recently, investigate a rival’s choice of search engine marketing keywords on Google. Rarely were consumers privy to these kinds of competitive tactics. If there happened to be an altercation between two brands, the news might make it to the local press, but rarely did its reach extend beyond that.

Social media has changed all of this in a very dramatic way. Not only are brands acutely aware of what their competitors are doing both online and off (if you aren’t already following your competitors on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr, you should be), but the contest for consumer loyalty and dollars plays out in public, for everyone to see.

The pitfalls of engaging with other brands

Take a look at Twitter. Early this year, Wendy’s used the hashtag #YouGetMajorPointsIf to promote itself online (“#YouGetMajorPointsIf you bring me a Frosty”). Over the next few hours, similar tweets were sent by Arby’s, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s, each one hijacking the hashtag to promote its own brand. And the rest of the fast food chains that count these brands as competitors? Those that failed to notice the spontaneous exchange missed out on a branding opportunity. Worse, their absence might have been construed as social inactivity.

Battling with other brands in the public eye isn’t without its risks. Last year, Old Spice took on Taco Bell with the tweet, “Why is it that ‘fire sauce’ isn’t made with any real fire? Seems like false advertising,” to which Taco Bell responded, “Is your deodorant made with really old spices?” In keeping with its brand persona, Old Spice deftly replied, “Depends. Do you consider volcanos, tanks and freedom to be spices?”

Together the three posts generated more than one thousand retweets and became the favorites of hundreds — and the brands aren’t even direct competitors. The exchange was funny to watch, but a company that isn’t as quick on its toes could end up looking the fool. Also worth noting is that these kinds of unplanned interactions won’t appeal to every brand’s target audience. The social media strategists responsible for tweeting on behalf of businesses might be eager to defend the brands they represent, but is that in keeping with the brand’s persona? Or could it do more damage than good?

When the battle is uninvited

One of the biggest digital media stories of the year so far is the recent hacking of several branded Twitter accounts. Burger King and Jeep were both victims of the social media attack, but McDonald’s and Cadillac too found themselves unwilling participants in the affair. The hackers made it appear as though Burger King and Jeep had been sold to their competitors, and even featured McDonald’s and Cadillac logos.

This put the competing brands in a difficult position. Should they weigh in on the hack to let their customers know they weren’t responsible? Should they address the victims directly? McDonald’s chose to release a statement on Twitter that read, “We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking” — and the company went straight back to tweeting as usual. The effort, and McDonald’s disinclination to engage further in what amounted to a rather obtuse event, exhibited class and grace and resulted in more than 8,700 retweets and nearly 3,000 favorites.

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Twitter is branching out as of late.

While the rumors have been around for a while, we decided to wait until a service actually happened before we wrote about it so today is the day for Twitter #music.

The Twitter blog tells us

Today, we’re releasing Twitter #music, a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter. It uses Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists. It also brings artists’ music-related Twitter activity front and center: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists. And, of course, you can tweet songs right from the app.

There are plenty of music discovery options in the marketplace but there is only one Twitter and the blend of these two make great sense. Right now it’s either for iOS as an app or a web version is available.

You can download Twitter #music from the App Store today, or enjoy the web version, which will be rolling out over the next few hours: music.twitter.com. Right now, the service is available in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Over time, we will bring the service to Android as well as to more countries.

A quick look at the long list of artists featured in the ‘New music trending on Twitter’ page makes it look like I will be on the sidelines for most of this activity as the music ‘tastes’ certainly skew very young. Hey, not that there is anything wrong with that because at least for today a dollar is still a dollar no matter what one’s age is.

As for the sharing of music tweets that are likely to start coming? Much like Spotify updates on Facebook that might wear thin pretty quickly. Or, it might not. Let’s not guess about this will or will not do. Enough guessing was done on when it would be released. Maybe for once we can deal in some facts for a welcome change of pace.

So are you excited about Twitter #music? Why or why not?

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HuffPost Live is now. . . Live!

And with that, online news guru Arianna Huffington ushered in a new era of citizen journalism that could change how news networks conduct themselves going forward.

HuffPost Live is a daily news, live webcast that relies heavily on social media engagement. Monday through Friday, from 10 am to 10 pm, Huff’s news correspondents take turns manning the anchor desk, to chat about what’s happening in the world. To keep the conversation going, they’re pulling in comments and Tweets from the scrolling chat box to the right of the video. Then, they mix it up by inviting viewers to join them as guests.

In order to worm your way into the broadcast, you need to click the Join This Segment bar, promise that you’re over 18, then convince them that you’re worthy with your background and take on the issue. It looks like you can volunteer for upcoming segments as well, just scroll across the topics in the top bar and choose your issue.

If having a live conversation scares you, you can leave a video comment down in the old school comment box.

Says Huffpost:

Location doesn’t matter. Anyone with a smartphone or tablet can instantly join us live. Picture a conversation about parenting with mothers in Kazakhstan, Kenya, and Kentucky, talking to us and to each other and to our users live via Skype or Google Hangout.

There’s not a news channel on the tube or the web that doesn’t use viewer comments, video and even Tweets. HuffPost is just taking that to the next level and it’s pretty smart. Some people are going to tune in to hear a variety of real-life opinions on an important topic. Others are going to tune in to see real people embarrass themselves in public (it’s going to happen, you know it is.) Either way, HuffPost wins.

Right now, the site is designed to discuss a range of topics over the course of the day including entertainment, tech, business and sports. Today’s lineup includes “Keeping Rich Kids Real,” “What Drag Queens Teach Us About Gender” and a piece on Mitt Romney’s appeal with minority voters.

It will be interesting to see how they handle a hard news day when we’re dealing with a major disaster or crime story. Makes me wonder how much control they’re planning to exert over their guests? Do they have a delay for foul language? What about false information or pranksters looking for their 15 minutes of fame?

Anytime you open up your microphone to the world, you’re bound to have both moments of brilliance and moments you wish you could take back. If HuffPost Live is lucky, they’ll get a little of each every week and that will keep viewers tuning in on a regular basis.

What do you think of HuffPost’s new take on citizen journalism? Power to the people or better left in the hands of the experts?

When it comes to ecommerce, Mac owners take the cake (the decorations, the plates, the party favors. . . ) with the highest average order value of $102.83. But the real surprise is what comes next. It’s not the PC owners, it’s the iPhone users with 97.49.

The numbers come from Monetate’s Ecommerce Quarterly data report for Q2 which looks at online shopping trends. And while you can’t control what device people use to shop, you can control how they access your e-store in the first place.

According to Monetate, that social media link that we all love so much, isn’t doing us any favors.

• Social media referral traffic lags far behind email and search, with the Average Order Value (AOV) of social traffic $26.21 less than search traffic and nearly $20 less than email referral traffic
• Conversion rates from social referral traffic in Q2 were .59% when compared with 4.25% for email and 2.49% for search

Let’s get a visual on that:

Wow, that’s quite a difference. Once again, it makes me wonder why we’re bothering with social media at all. Yes, I hear all of you shouting “it’s branding” and all exposure is good exposure but that only goes so far. At some point, you have to convert. You have to bring in new buyers, users, readers, listeners or whatever it is that pays the bills.

What I get from this, is that it’s not worth dumping money into social media ads like Facebook Sponsored Stories or Promoted Tweets. Seems like a free Twitter and Facebook account will get you just as much of a return with no (or very little) out of pocket.

Maybe that will change as social becomes a regular part of everyone’s life. But will it ever convert like Search does? I can see it getting close, but I can’t see it ever taking over. As for email, I think it’s become so common place that we forget about it, when clearly it’s the best channel for driving ecommerce sales.

What do you think? Will Social ever pack the punch of Search or Email? Or is it destined to be the little engine that thinks it can but can’t?

The Huffington Post is making a high-profile jump into the world of video streaming today with the launch of HuffPost Live.

The site will be Huffington Post’s answer to news networks like CNN — but with a major twist. Unlike the major news networks, HuffPost Live was created around viewer engagement. This is clear from the site’s design, which prominently features options for users to submit comments, tweets, and video.

HuffPost Live will also prominently feature viewers in its programming, offering them the ability to talk back to hosts and guest in real-time.

In short, it’s network news made created with the Internet generation in mind.

HuffPost Live will initially stream content 12 hours a day, five days a week, though Huffington promises that the site will offer 16 hours of daily content as soon as next year. Eventually, the operation hopes to broadcast twenty-four hours a day — though that day is probably a long way off.

But while the site hopes to herald the next generation of video news, its backend struggled to keep up. Video streaming was spotty during the site’s introductory broadcast, oftentimes dropping out multiple times per minute. Hopefully, these sorts of performance issues get ironed out as time goes on.

Filed under: media