For those unfamiliar with the now legendary Cat Facts’ origins, in late January a Reddit user shared a masterful prank he pulled on his little cousin, a child who was just looking for a way to alleviate boredom by sharing his new cell number online. Lil cuz got more than he could ever have bargained for.

Perhaps one of the best parts is that legitimate website Catfacts.org started receiving swarms of requests to [sic] “stop texting me.” Catfacts.org, whose writing style reminds me of a middle-aged luddite woman, crafted a banner and also launched a Facebook page to help minimize the influx of emails … and ignorance. Truth is – CatFacts.org traffic has increased 20x since Cat Facts hit the internets.

As a lover of cats, my first reaction to Cat Facts was: “Um, sign me up?!” Moments later my marketing half kicked in and envisioned how much fun it would be if a client participated in the trend.

Out of our amazing client roster, the most organic fit was Monster High, a popular tween lifestyle and toy brand by Mattel where sons and daughters of famous monsters attend high school. Quickly, the team “breathed life” into a Cat Facts fiasco at Monster High, where kitty-like characters Toralei Stripe and the Werecat Twins played the role of “Catfacts.org” and everyone else at Monster High played the “cousin” (and other victims), all captured by their student newspaper The Gory Gazette (the official Monster High Tumblr).

Click here to enjoy this moment in Monster High storytelling and here to actually sign up for cancel-able Cat Facts, which should in no way be confused with CatFacts.org..

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Be sure to read Katharine’s blog and follow her on twitter

This week in social: Twitter rolls out self service ads, Facebook brand pages for timeline expected to come this month and Zuck joins Pinterest

Google+ Rolling Out Granular Control For “What’s Hot”, Aiming For More Relevant Content

MySpace Announces One Million New Users Since December

Twitter Opens Up Self-Serve Ad Platform to 10,000 Small Businesses, Offers $100 In Free Advertising

How the Whitney Houston news spread on Twitter.

Zynga Mobile Grew Five-Fold To More Than 15 Million Users In 2011

Google+ Demographics: 2/3 Of Users Are Men, 42% Are Single, 20% Are Students

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Joins Pinterest

Pinterest Demographics: USA vs UK

Facebook to Release Timeline for Brands This Month

Facebook Launches Verified Accounts and Pseudonyms 

2012 Presidential Elections: Social Media Reveals Economic Concern

Facebook Releases New Content Guidelines

Drawing insights from the expansive web of online chatter can be a daunting task without the assistance of sophisticated technology.  Using Tracx, a social media data-collecting tool, I gathered social media data on the presidential race: the candidates, political parties, and top political issues.   By crafting Boolean queries that inform the tool’s crawlers, I cast a net to capture relevant data from social media spaces.  I analyzed data collected from the 1/1/12 to 2/14/12 in order to gauge the nature of online conversations and public concerns about the upcoming elections.

Unsurprisingly, blogs were the most popular social platform for political discussions with 79% of all conversations about the elections occurring there.  Facebook, forums, Twitter, and YouTube served as secondary spaces for public discussions about the elections, nearly evenly splitting the remaining 21% of conversations.   (Note: Data from forums and Facebook reflects only public-facing pages or parts of pages.)

Comparing the volume of conversations for political topics revealed a dominant concern.  The fiscal budget and national debt was the most heavily discussed political issue, occupying 35% of conversations about the presidential elections.   The national debt topic generated over twice as many posts and conversations as any other monitored topic, and it has remained the most popular political topic since the beginning of the 2012 election.

Taxation was a topic in 16% of conversations about the presidential elections.  The topic spurred over 1.5 times more posts and conversations than the less popular topics.  When looking at national debt and taxation combined, they accounted for 52% of all posts and 50% of all conversations about the elections.   The dominant monetary focus of online conversations reflects a widespread insecurity about the nation’s economic future.  With the economy slowly rebuilding after the recent recession, the comparative volume of these public discussions shows that economic concern for America’s future will be a powerful factor that voters will take to the polls.

The presidential candidates assert their stances on relevant issues, the emphasis of which varies depending on the perceived concerns of the audience.  But the social media audience is not limited to geography; they read blogs, articles, tweets; they share links on Facebook; they watch debates on YouTube; they engage in meaningful public political discussions.  Listen to them.  What they are saying is they want to avoid economic collapse.   Tailoring speeches to appeal to specific states may win political support, but listening and responding to the dominant themes in social media conversations can be a valuable component of an effective campaign strategy.

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You can follow Emily on twitter @EmilyChambliss

This week in social: The Super Bowl sets a new tweets per second record, Pinterest makes money off of your pins, Facebook reaches $100 Billion on the private market and Lady Gaga preps a social network for her fans

In The Final 3 Minutes Of The Super Bowl, There Were 10,000 Tweets Per Second

Facebook Mobile Ads Developing: Sponsored Stories Coming ‘Within Weeks’

STUDY: Twitter Is Harder To Resist Than Cigarettes & Alcohol

Woody Harrelson Enrages Reddit Users With Movie Marketing Attempt

Lady Gaga Launching Social Networking Site Exclusively For Her Fans

How is Facebook like an Elephant? It Never Forgets

Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site EVER

Build Something, Build Anything

Google+ Saw Nearly Half as Many Unique Visitors As Twitter At The End Of 2011

Path Apologzies For Privacy Snafu, Nukes All User Data 

Foursquare Upgrades Explore Function; Finding New Spots More Intuitive

Facebook Valuation Surges Past $100 Billion On Private Markets 

Barack Obama Tweets His Campaign Spotify Playlist

Pinterest making money by adding tracking code to certain user pins

For those of you that don’t have the time to watch the video, here’s a quick recap:

Lots of free time + tools that make building digital “products” easier = unprecedented amounts of creation

Cognitive surplus is the idea that people are using their free time to collaborate and build creative and constructive tools thanks to the digital technology available to the masses today.

What people build is completely up to them. It could be anything from LOLCat Memes (which Shirky calls possibly the dumbest form of expression – feel free to disagree) to an application that allows a community to report and map incidents of sectarian violence.

Shirky notes that LOLCats do not add any civic value but they do add communal value. In other words, they’re fun for the community that enjoy cat pictures and captions, but they don’t do anything to help society as a whole.

Most people end the discussion there, saying essentially, “if the internet only helps us create stupid pictures and idiot websites, then we’ve lost as a society.”

But Shirky disagrees and says something that I love. He states that even though making an LOLCat might be the dumbest possible creative act, it is still a creative act. That act involves effort and putting yourself out there. Someone who knows how to make a LOLCat, can iterate the process and get better at it. And then eventually they could apply that learning to something else (satirical posters of politicians, for example, could have strong civic value).

Shirky says that with every advancement that has lead to media abundance (take the introduction of the printing press, for example) – there are both high and low brow introductions to the community (Shakespeare v. smut novels in the 1500s).

The tendency to overreact now is triggered by the sheer abundance of creation that is occurring.

I think there are a lot of questions regarding Shirky’s theory. Let’s say that advances in digital tech have increased both consumption and creation. The important question is whether they have grown proportionately. If the YouTube rule^[1] is true, is a 1% creation rate really something to be optimistic about? If not, then maybe Shirky isn’t right.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about things on too short a time frame. Maybe Shirky’s optimism about cognitive surplus is in fact a counter-example of Amara’s law^[2].

Worrying about LOLCats and all the stupid stuff created on the internet over-estimates the short-term dumbing down effects of this digital tech revolution and ignores the long-term effects. Perhaps the legacy of our current networking and digital technologies is not an immediate change in the way we communicate or consume, but the familiarity and comfort that we gain from these technologies and the power that familiarity imbues us with.

Think about LOLCats and “Shit __ Say” videos. Think about Bro Tips. Worry about them if you want. But then, think of the spectrum of powerful products that can be built using Twitter or foursquare’s APIs. Think about Code Academy and Code Year. Keep it all in perspective.

Building something great takes time.

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Check out Varun’s Blog

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As your college frat bro often slurred, “Here’s to the nights we can’t remember with the friends we’ll never forget!”

Unfortunately, if you or a fellow partygoer uploaded any of those forgettable moments caught on film on to Facebook, odds are they won’t actually be forgotten anytime soon.

According to yesterday’s post on All Facebook, the behemoth of social networking is still trying to figure out how to eliminate cached version of photos deleted from the platform.  This “bug” is cause for concern not only from a customer service standpoint, but also as a privacy issue.

As a somewhat recent college grad, I was among the first to have the ability to use Facebook as a resource for chronicling and sharing my life. Like clockwork, the morning after a party, photos would be plastered across Facebook, allowing friends to recall particularly noteworthy moments that may have otherwise slipped everyone’s minds. Of course, the usual request to “detag” was obliged, but photos were rarely deleted.

Fast forward a few years later and most of my college photos are difficult – though not impossible – to find. This is due in large part to dramatic changes and privacy options Facebook rolled out in 2007, when the platform stopped requiring a .edu address to create an account.  I don’t mind being friends with my mom (Hi, Mom!) but for some people, Facebook’s frequent changes were cause for complaint beyond the usual “I hate the new Facebook newsfeed!” declaration. Combine that with working in social media, and it’s easy to understand why my Facebook profile is now pretty bland.

There are nights – and days – and perhaps even friendships we’d rather not remember, but thanks (or no thanks) to Facebook, they are now even harder to forget – and easier for potential employers to find. But what can you do about it, since Facebook has dropped the ball?

For now, it’s best to accept the adage, “once on the internet, always on the internet” and let those nights you didn’t remember in the first place be forgotten the old fashioned way.

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Follow Drew On Twitter

This week in social: Facebook files its long awaited $5 billion IPO, President Obama hosts a hangout, & Twitter rolls out more brand pages

Facebook: Over 5 BILLION Songs Have Been shared Since September’s f8

Facebook Files $5 Billion IPO, Here Are The Highlights

Twitter’s New Censorship Policy Welcomed By Thailand

President Obama Hosts Google+ Hangout

RIM’s Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong 

 Pinterest Drives More Referral Traffic Than Google+, Nearly On Par With Twitter 

Google+ Is Adding 750,000 New Users EVERY DAY 

Twitter Begins Larger Rollout Of Enhanced Brand Pages

Tumblr Hires Writes To Cover Itself 

]]> http://blog.attentionusa.com/2012/02/this-week-in-social-23/feed/ 0 http://blog.attentionusa.com/2012/02/facebook-ipo-by-the-numbers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-ipo-by-the-numbers http://blog.attentionusa.com/2012/02/facebook-ipo-by-the-numbers/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:26:15 +0000 Chris Lubin http://blog.attentionusa.com/?p=4175 Facebook finally filed its long anticipated IPO yesterday. While this probably won’t affect your wallet, the numbers are staggering.

Here are a few key highlights:

100 Billion Friendships

$5 Billion S-1 IPO Filed

$3.7 Billion 2011 Revenue

2.7 Billion Daily likes & comments generated by Facebook users in Q4

$1 Billion 2011 Profit

850 Million Users

425 Million Mobile Users

350 Million Daily Active Users

250 Million Photos uploaded daily

88% YOY Revenue Growth

84% Of Facebook’s Revenue Comes From Ads

65% YOY Profit Growth revenues

35 – The number of times “privacy” can be found in the IPO

12% – Zynga Accounted 12% of Facebook 2011 Revenue

$1 – Mark Zuckerberg’s salary starting in 2013

$0 – Mobile Revenue

Priceless FB Employee Reaction:

You can view the entire filing here

“…understanding that in the twenty-first century we still grapple with the internal dilemma of wanting to feel like individuals and to feel as though we’re part of something bigger than ourselves – and that, most of all, we all seek ways to resolve this fundamental tension of modern life.” — Rob Walker, Buying In

That makes sense. Marketers and companies convince people to use products by resolving this tension for consumers – making them feel unique while at the same time giving them the comfort that this uniqueness is accepted by others.^[1]

But this also precisely describes what social networks do for us, right?

The structure of our popular social networks is built around the tension described in Walker’s quote. Take Facebook for example. Your profile (er, Timeline) is the hub of your life on Facebook. It allows you to express your creativity through a variety of media (text status posts, photo and video postings, links that give insight into your life). Frictionless sharing (i.e., all of the new Open Graph apps) allows you to express your individuality without any effort. Listen to a song on Spotify? Boom, it’s instantly published to Facebook allowing your friends to see how great your musical tastes are.

You. You. You.

But that’s not enough. Like the tree falling in the woods, if a profile exists or a link is shared, but no one reads it…does it really exist?

And that’s the second component to these social networks – a sense of community. You post something about yourself and then two unique (no pun intended) things happen.

First, you click around and see other people posting similar content. Wow, Rick also uses Spotify to listen to “N****as in Paris!” Rob also went to Shake Shack 17 times last month. There’s comfort in that.

Second, you get direct feedback on your unique activities. People can like, comment, and (the granddaddy of them all) share what you’ve done. Again, there’s comfort in the approval that people can bestow upon you.

Facebook is, in my opinion, the best example of this positive feedback loop. But the uniqueness-comfort balance does exist on other platforms. Pinterest is a great example. If offers users the opportunity to showcase their unique style through various pin boards, along with a sense of belonging through re-pins and seeing others pinning the same type of content. foursquare allows you to show off your uncanny ability to find hotspots, and provides the comfort of knowing that other people are exploring, too. Twitter is a harder sell on the community side because the asynchronous follower model makes it less likely that you receive feedback. But a retweet from an unexpected someone feels damn good.

To be honest, I think this is the major problem that Google+ is facing. From the start it set up a condition of exclusion (those damn Circles) as opposed to inclusion. Instead of creating a rich community, it started with the premise that you’re better off dividing your world. Oh, and there’s the fact that despite the massive user sign-up numbers no one ever used the network to comment on your activity. So you didn’t feel that special. You’re screaming into the void.

The best online communities build in mechanisms that encourage users to continue using the network (and expressing themselves) through positive feedback loops powered by community approval.

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Follow Varun on Twitter