DIGITAL. TRENDS. FUTURE.

23
Feb

Twitter Mania: More Tweets then ever

(Via L.A. Times) More tweets than ever are hitting Twitter. But the social network is still far behind Facebook, the world’s most popular social network.

Back in 2007, an average of just 5,000 tweets were added to Twitter on a daily basis. By 2009, that figure grew to 2.5 million tweets a day. It was impressive growth. But over the last year, thanks in large part to celebrity and media attention, tweets have exploded.

The company reported Monday that the number of tweets added to its site grew by 1,400% in 2009 to an average of 35 million a day. Just two months into 2010, 600 tweets are hitting the site each second, amounting to 50 million tweets a day.

Twitter has officially joined the ranks of Facebook and MySpace as a premier social network. But, as successful as it is, the site still pales in comparison with Facebook.

Last week, Web analytics firm Compete announced that Facebook had become the second-most popular website in the United States behind Google.

According to Compete, Facebook attracted approximately 134 million unique visitors in January. Twitter had 23.5 million unique visitors for the month.

Facebook users update their status 60 million times a day, outpacing Twitter’s 50 million daily tweets.

Another sobering fact for Twitter: More than 5 billion pieces of content, including photo albums, notes, and web links, are added to Facebook each month.

In other words, Twitter has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to Facebook.

19
Feb

Abu Dhabi Media Summit

Abu Dhabi Media Summit 2010 H.E. Mohamed Khalaf Al Mazrouei, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Media Company and Mr. Edward Borgerding, CEO of Abu Dhabi Media Company, together with Co-Chairs invite media executives to take part in the inaugural ABU DHABI MEDIA SUMMIT March 9-11, 2010 at Yas Hotel, Yas Marina Formula 1 Circuit, Abu Dhabi.
The summit for March 9-11 is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Media Company and is by invitation only.

The Summit is being held under the Patronage of H.H. General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. The Summit will provide an unprecedented gathering of the people and companies driving the transition to a networked new world, with special emphasis on fast-growing markets in the Middle East, South East Asia, China and Africa. With a focus on opportunities and investment, the Summit is structured to encourage both private discourse and public conversation at the highest levels.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Publicis boss Maurice Levy, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt are some of the luminaries who will be heading off to Abu Dhabi next month for a three-day international media summit.

Other notable speakers are Dirk Meyer, president and CEO of AMD; Jon Miller, CEO Digital Media, News Corporation; Nicholas Negroponte; James Murdoch, Chairman & CEO, Europe & Asia, News Corporation; Hartmut Ostrowksi, Chair & CEO, Bertelsmann; Skye CEO Josh Silverman; Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg; and Samir Arora, Chair & CEO, Glam Media.

I am proud delegate and attendee of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit 2010 and will report @montymetzger and on my blog about the exclusive event.

Abu Dhabi Media Summit Co-Chairs

  • H.E. Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman, twofour54
  • Tim Armstrong, President & CEO, AOL
  • Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman & CEO, Innovation Works
  • Dr. Suk-Chae Lee, CEO, KT Corporation
  • Maurice Lévy, Chairman & CEO, Publicis Groupe
  • Didier Lombard, Chairman & CEO, France Télécom-Orange
  • Kishore Lulla, Chairman & CEO, Eros International
  • H.E. Mohammed Omran, Chairman, Etisalat
  • Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros.
  • Dirk Meyer, President & CEO, AMD
  • Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman & CEO, Bharti Enterprises
  • Rupert Murdoch, Chairman & CEO, News Corporation
  • Hartmut Ostrowski, Chairman & CEO, Bertelsmann AG
  • Dr. Prannoy Roy, Executive Chairperson, NDTV
  • Hans Vestberg, President & CEO, Ericsson
  • Mehmet Ali Yalçindag, Vice Chairman & President, Dogan Media Group
19
Feb

How to make money with Twitter?

If the Twitter Management is not inventing advertising on Twitter.com the users just do it themselves.

Twitter users inetgrating advertisements in their stream of updates have begun adopting new standards for disclosure.

Many ads are now being marked with tags — “#spon” for sponsored tweets, “#paid” or “#samp” for those who received sample products — based on guidelines released Thursday by the Word of Mouth Marketing Assn. (WOMMA). The new instructions are a response to the Federal Trade Commission’s call for more explicit disclosure from bloggers.

Making Money with Twitter

19
Feb

Pepsi had the biggest advertising success in the Superbowl, without advertising

Pepsi Can The Superbowl is nearly as famous for its commercial breaks as for the game itself. In fact, the commercials are more memorable than the game for many viewers – a study by ad agency Venables, Bell & Partners showed that 66% of viewers remember their favorite advertiser from the 2009 Superbowl and only 39% recall which team won. However, this exposure comes at a hefty price, rates for Superbowl commercials run far above any other TV event because the game draws around 95 million viewers in the US alone. 30-second spots run close to $3m and the game typically includes 50 to 60 spots. PepsiCo has advertised its cola during every Superbowl for over 20 years but it has become more and more difficult (and expensive) to stand out from the field.

Instead of running the risk of being an also-ran, PepsiCo announced in December that it wouldn’t be advertising its cola during the Superbowl this year, instead it unveiled a $20m fund in which it is looking for people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact on US communities. Anyone can submit and rate ideas and each month those rated highest receive grants of between $5k and $250k. Moving away from the norm seems to have worked, in a recent survey by Nielsen, Pepsi’s ‘Refresh Everything’ campaign accounted for more than 21% of the media coverage and online buzz around Superbowl advertising. Given that PepsiCo usually spends in the region of $30m on Superbowl advertising breaking away from the norm seems to have paid off.

Pepsi refresh everything campaign

Via Weijiblog

18
Feb

The Baseballs

I met the Baseballs at the NOKIA Party at the Mobile World Congress 2010.
Here is a video interview I recorded right after their show.

Follow The Baseballs on Twitter @TheBaseballs

18
Feb

Review Mobile World Congress 2010

The GSMA today reported that more than 49,000 visitors (I was one of them :-)) from 200 countries attended the 2010 GSMA Mobile World Congresss, the premier event for the mobile communications industry. The four-day conference and exhibition attracted executives from the world’s largest and most influential mobile operators, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies and media and entertainment organisations, as well as government delegations. 54 per cent of Mobile World Congress attendees hold C-level positions, including more than 2,800 CEOs.

Here are my highlights in pictures:

“It’s a hugely exciting time to be in the mobile communications industry and the extremely strong attendance at the 2010 Mobile World Congress underscores that,” said John Hoffman, CEO, GSMA Limited. “The innovation that is the hallmark of our industry was on display front and centre this week, from the insightful presentations in our conference programme to the demonstrations of new devices, technologies and services in the exhibition halls. Once again, Mobile World Congress stands out as the must-attend event for the global communications industry.”

During the event, leaders from companies including Alcatel-Lucent, BBC, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom, Ericsson, Huawei, KDDI, RIM, Samsung, Spotify, Telstra and Vodafone, among others, discussed and debated the trends and issues which are shaping the mobile industry today and into the future. In a Mobile World Congress first, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt delivered a Mobile World Live keynote to a standing-room only crowd in Barcelona; the session has also been viewed by more than 35,000 people to date via the Mobile World Live portal. To access the replay of the Mobile World Live keynote, as well as interviews with the industry’s leading executives, please visit www.mobileworldlive.com.

More than 20,000 people visited the inaugural App Planet, a focused event designed to bring together the many critical elements of the broad mobile application ecosystem together in one location. Google, Motorola, RIM, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone and WIPJam each held application developer conferences (ADC) within App Planet. Overall, more than 6,000 developers attended Mobile World Congress this year.

05
Feb

Join me at Webrazzi Agenda “Mobile Internet” February 10th 2010 in Istanbul

Webrazzi Tech Blog Webrazzi is the leading Turkish tech blog. This is like Techcrunch of US. They’ll be organizing 10 different events through 2010 and Mobile Internet conference is the 3rd one in the series. First two was about e-commerce and social media. They call these series of events “Webrazzi Gündem” which means “Webrazzi Agenda”. So, the name of the next event is “Webrazzi Agenda: Mobile Internet”. The event will be on February 10th, 2010, at Istanbul Elite World Hotel.

I will give a speech about my book “Future of Mobile”.
See the blog post at Webrazzi.com

There will be 200 attendees and they are mostly mid-high level executives and startup founders. They’ll cover mobile internet usage in Turkey, mobile apps market and future, opportunities in the market and especially opportunities for Turkish entrepreneurs.

You can check out Webrazzi event site at www.webrazzi.com/gundem