Myspace got about half the number of mobile visits as Facebook, with 11.4 million users. The number of people who accessed Myspace on their mobile phone actually dropped compared to January of 2009, when they got visits from 12.3 million people. Facebook surpassed Myspace’s mobile browser audience size in February of 2009, 3 months before it overtook Myspace’s visits via personal computers.

A big reason for such a huge increase is the increased popularity of smartphones like the Droid, iPhone and Blackberry. 30.8% of smartphone owners accessed social media sites with their phones in January compared to just 6.8% of people using feature phones.

comScore says that the real number of people accessing social networking sites on their phones is actually even higher. This is because their figures do not include data from the 6 million people using mobile applications to get on social media sites; It only includes data of people accessing the sites with a mobile web browser.

We saw a huge shift in 2009 from portals like MySpace to Twitter and Facebook. Blogs became increasingly important in any social media marketing campaign as did social bookmarking and a presence on YouTube or other video sharing sites.

What is your prediction for 2010?

Fast forward to the present and you’ll see the complete opposite is in effect. There is an all-out blitz on social media by companies wanting more customer-brand interaction. It’s not just feedback they’re looking for, but actual interactions and interest. Brands want to become more a part of their customers’ lives by becoming more involved with their daily social media activities. And it really is no surprise businesses would want to jump on the social media bandwagon. Over 350 million people use Facebook and it is one of the most visited sites on the web. It would be a huge mistake for a business to overlook the marketing benefits it could gain by tapping into that giant audience.

A brand can’t simply create a fan page and expect results, though. The user-generated content will never appear and people will never follow a brand that has nothing interesting to get people involved. So, brands are constantly soliciting responses out of the social media users by posting announcements, questions, updates, sales, polls, games, and anything else you can think of. The game now is for the company to get you talking about them. Good or bad they’ll let you speak your mind and leave your mark (they’d much rather have the good). The control is no longer entirely in the hands of the brand as they have given in to democracy where any person can voice their opinions. Sure, they could just delete the negative comments, but that is frowned upon in the social media world and defeats the purpose of the system.

In a time when user-generated content is constantly updating and flowing onto our smart phones, PCs and TVs, brands have become aware of the power of social media and have just one thing on their mind: What do you to have to say?

2009 has been the year of Twitter, and really many other forms of social media. 2010 is set to be just as big for social media, if not bigger. Up until a few weeks ago our Facebook news feeds and those beloved tweets were pretty much limited to our computers and mobile phones. Now, though, Xbox has integrated both of those social networking sites into Xbox Live, a social networking portal in it’s own right with over 8 million male users ages 18 to 34. Gamers can access their Facebook and Twitter accounts directly from the TV set, something that more and more poeple could start to get use to in the next year or so.

With the number of homes with HD televisions rising (High Def sets were among the hottest sellers this Black Friday) and a large number of homes having high-speed internet social media may begin to make its move very soon. Depending on how well people adapt to this “new” social media channel we might be tweeting about The Office directly on our TVs while we’re watching it.

Imagine, by this time next year you could be watching the news and at the same time have a small box on the side of the screen with real-time facebook updates and tweets coming directly to your TV. You could be watching a movie and chatting with friends spread across the globe at the same time.

Social media on our TVs will also provide businesses with an incredible opportunity to drastically change their marketing strategies and where they spend their money. It will be very interesting to see how this all shapes up.

Source

A long, long time ago, before social media took over the planet, people would make call after call during the holiday season. Stressing, wondering, and stressing some more. Now, with the power of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, holiday shoppers can skip the phone calls and look online to find out what their friends and family want. Many people are posting holiday wish lists to their profiles and those that dont probably have posted some sort of information that will give you a pretty good idea of what they want or are interested in.

But saving a few phone calls is just the tip of the iceberg in how social media is effecting the way people do their holiday shopping. People are looking to social media

profiles of their favorite brands and stores for deals, special discounts, and coupons. Often times these stores will post deals exclusive to their friends, fans, and followers of their social media profiles.

According to data published by eMarketer 17% of Americans plan to use social media in some way this holiday season. 60% of those people said they would use it to find deals and coupons, 53% to research gift ideas, and 52% to check on gift wish lists.

Its really amazing how different we live our lives today compared to 10 years ago. Looking back, who really could have predicted this?

Social Media has had a profound impact on our lives. In his article on Mashable Soren Gordhamer does a great job looking at 5 of the ways it has changed how we live.

First on his list is Where We Get Our News. Most people still read their favorite online newspaper or watch the nightly news, but we also are looking at news posted by our friends, colleagues, and other people or businesses that we have become “fans” of or have “followed”. These are the people that we choose to get news from at every minute of the day. When we get up in the morning we check facebook for posted links and status updates; we log on to Twitter to see the latest tweets from the people we follow.

What else has changed? How We Do Business (say, for instance, social media marketing), How We Meet and Stay Connected with People (how many people have you friended or followed that you barely know, or didn’t know at all? Would you have cared about what these people are thinking or doing 10 years ago?), What We Reveal (Would you have announced to the world that you’re making a trip to Starbucks before social media?), and What We Can Influence (Anybody with a blog or Twitter account and some spare time can gain thousands or even millions of followers that read, care about, repost, and comment on their ideas and thoughts).

It really is amazing how the world has changed. Are you online?

You can watch footage from the event here.

Source

You can read the full article here.