Forty ads, nearly 100,000 tweets, and over 50,000 participants later and BrandBowl2010 is a wrap. It was a lot of fun to work on, and hopefully you found it interesting to participate in or just watch from the sidelines. Our partners at Mullen have posted the detailed results and some great analysis over here, but these are the highlights:

BRANDBOWL TOP THREE
1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus on the Family

TOP NET SENTIMENT*
1. McDonald’s
2. Dr Pepper
3. Universal

TOP TWEET VOLUME
1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus on the Family

LOWEST SCORER
Budweiser Select55

There were some clear leaders in volume and conversation ramping up to the game that held on to the end. Doritos and Focus On Family had momentum going in and stayed in the top ten throughout to land in the first and second spots.

Brands that garnered solid pre-game buzz, like Audi, didn’t make the final ten, but still placed respectably as runners up. Others came out of nowhere to capture top spots, including Google, which you could almost see coming through pack. Google’s ascent to the top started with speculation and a growing amount of mentions, and ended with the tech giant jumping to second place and holding it once its spot aired. Vizio also came on strong at the end to secure a top-twenty mention.

If you’re wondering how the data was collected and ranked, here’s some background: the brand mentions were gathered on the Radian6 platform using sets of keywords. The keywords were selected to pull as much of the conversation as possible without bringing in a lot of unrelated discussion. As the ads aired, the keywords were tweaked to reflect the major elements of the ads and pick up as much of the conversation surrounding them as possible.

Results were based mainly on volume, but sentiment was also applied to help calculate ranking. The feeds of brand mentions were passed along via the Radian6 API and turned into the visuals and charts you saw on the BrandBowl2010 site. On the site, sentiment scores were calculated after filtering out the neutral posts. The wrap-up stats were provided via the Radian6 platform.

The most outstanding players of the big game are the smart folks at Mullen, who lead and conceived this whole project. We’re thrilled to have been a part of it. Thanks to everyone who tweeted, visited the site, or participated via the #brandbowl hashtag. BrandBowl2010 was a team effort that worked because everyone showed up and played hard on game day.

*This ranking doesn’t represent brands with the highest volume of positive sentiment, but rather those that received the highest ratio of positive to negative sentiment.

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from Google, Facebook, and Twitter with others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code ‘Mashable‘ for a discount when registering.

In the era of social media, our networks are much larger than they have ever been, and we have more ways to communicate with those in them. Even if you are not very active on Facebook or Twitter, my guess is that your sphere of communication has expanded significantly in recent years. Who you communicate with and how you communicate has changed radically. This new connected era brings both opportunities and challenges.

In the past we had a set of contacts, all of whom generally knew how to reach us — via phone, e-mail, or regular mail. Today, thanks in large part to social media, we have many different levels of communication, each with a specific purpose and etiquette. When we do not understand the role of these levels, they can become huge time wasters. When we do understand them however, they can help us more effectively engage and navigate these new waters.

Just about everyone, including Bill Gates (who if you have not heard, recently joined Twitter), has learned the importance of having both a means to communicate with people, and a channel where people can respond. Though you can do this on Facebook through comments on Fan pages and in groups, this seems most applicable to Twitter, where people use @replies to send and receive short, publicly viewable messages.

The public reply provides an open and transparent channel for people to interact with public figures, brands, and each other, without the pressure of response that comes with e-mail. Public interactions are a great starting point for engagement that never existed before social media, and if done correctly, can often lead to more fruitful direct communication.

Once a relationship is established through public communication, the next step is often a direct message within a social network. A direct message creates a private connection without opening the floodgates of e-mail. In fact, in may even be preferable to e-mail in the long term.

Why? Especially with Twitter, a DM has a character limit, and can only come from people you follow. If you have ten e-mails (of unlimited length and possibly unknown sources) and ten Twitter DMs, which are you likely to open first? For an increasing number of people, the answer is DM.

Once you make a connection through DM and get permission to follow-up via e-mail, the e-mail is often better received. Facebook, where most people allow private messages, can also be a means to take communication to the next level.

E-mail still has its place in this new era. It allows for more in-depth communication, can be easily forwarded, and sent to numerous people at once. When e-mail is used skillfully, it enables deeper communication. When not used effectively, it can become a huge time drain, as people write lengthy messages without much thought of the time and attention they are asking of recipients.

This fine line makes e-mail tough to master in the social media age. If you’re looking to advance to the next communication level with someone, respect this direct and private channel, and be sure to keep your e-mails succinct and meaningful.

Hearing someone’s voice allows people to get a better sense of one another. While communicating via text, a person can take time to carefully craft his or her words, potentially presenting an image that may not be true or is harder to trust. A phone call allows for more immediate back-and-forth, and can be particularly helpful if a subject matter is delicate or people are considering a more in-depth relationship.

Some time back I was communicating with an editor about an issue that we had bounced back and forth several times. Finally she said, “Let’s chat about it on the phone.” This furthered the dialogue significantly and bypassed what may have taken weeks to sort out via e-mail.

I have met numerous people in person that I first communicated with via social networks. All of these meetings were enhanced by the natural progression of our first digital communication. While at one time face-to-face interactions were the entry point, today, in-person meetings often come at later stages.

Particularly if people are considering working on a project together, an in-person meeting allows for the most in-depth connection. For some people Skype or other video chat may be enough to experience this.

Too often people think communication is only through words, but our bodies communicate as well. They communicate how comfortable or uncomfortable we are discussing a matter, our level of passion for a subject, and our hopes and fears. Meeting with someone in person allows for communication to occur on multiple levels, and people often come away with a much better sense of each other.

In this era of social media when we are reaching out and engaging more and more people, the question is not just “Should I communicate with someone?” but “How should I communicate with someone? How can I build engagement one step at a time?” The more we allow for and understand the importance of all the various levels of communication, the more we can skillfully and effectively use each one.

- Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting
- The Tao of Tweeting
- How Social Media Has Changed Us
- 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
- 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL, PaulPaladin, Kohlerphoto, sandoclr

Tags: communication, e-mail, email, facebook, List, Lists, meeting, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter

Hi everyone, I want to take the time to introduce myself since you will be seeing a lot of me very soon. I'm Donald Harris (@tallgamer if you are looking for me on Twitter.)  First and foremost I am a NERD in every sense of the word. It's the main reason why I started working at Dell -- to get closer to the technology I love. I have been working with Dell Sales since 2003 in the education and state and local government space. I have 2 kids of my own who I am turning into nerds at an early age.

My down time is usually either spent on researching technology or playing video games. Many years back I even owned my own computer repair company. When I am not at work at Dell, I build video games on the side. As you can see I about technology and its impact on society.

I joined Dell's Education social media team on Feb. 1st and will be responsible for Dell's social media efforts in the K-12 space working closely with Bri Brewer @Edu4U and Kerry Bridge (@kerryatdell). I am very excited to be part of the team. Stay tuned for a fresh perspective from this geeky dad about technology's impact on education and its effects on the way we think about teaching and learning.

A writing habit is cultivated by two things:

1. Writing a lot.
2. Reading even more.

The more you write, the more you get to practice flexing vocabulary and voice as well as how to put your ideas into clear thoughts. The more you read, the more you capture lessons about tone, sentence structure, cadence, and idea flow.  And the more you do both, the more everything you touch, see, hear, and read becomes the seed of something else to write about.

There are some great posts out there about cultivating a writing habit, like these:

• Cultivate a Writing Habit: Chris Brogan
• 10 Steps to Create the Habit of Writing: Write to Done
• Seven Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School: Copyblogger
• Posts on Better Writing: Men with Pens
• Complete Your First Book with These 9 Simple Writing Habits: Dumb Little Man

These practices apply whether you’re blogging or penning a novel. Writing is an active discipline. You have to do it. Often.

But absorbing the written word in lots of different forms makes you a better writer. Period. Read blogs, articles, business books, biographies, fiction, whatever suits your fancy right now.

Not sure what to read? I piled a bunch of recommendations for books in my Twitter favorites. Scroll through them and you’ll find lots that have been tossed to me by my Twitter friends.  And I keep an Evernote file called “Book List” where I capture all the titles I haven’t read, but want to, so I’m always prepared at the bookstore or the library.

Reading more helps you identify good writing AND bad writing, and how to tell the difference between the two. You’ll start learning to spot words that are smooth to read versus overly dense, the pace of delivering ideas and organizing them in a flow, length of sentences that are easy or hard to read, vocabulary that’s too high brow or not nuanced enough.

Julien Smith tells you how to read a book a week in 2010. I probably average that if not more, in addition to all the blogs I read and online articles, news, whitepapers, etc. I read a ton, and I write every day. If you hate to read, that’s going to be harder for you, but it’s important nonetheless.

If delivering content on the web in written form is something you seriously aspire to – for the sake of contribution of ideas or to make money or both – you’ d better learn what it takes to write well, and reading is an important step to doing just that.

There is no shortcut.

Are you a writer? Reader? Both? Do you agree? What are you reading right now?

Wanna Write? Read Voraciously.

Google is planning to unveil a broad new social product on Tuesday that will integrate with at least two existing Google products. Some details emerged earlier today on the Wall Street Journal (“a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users of Gmail to view media and status updates”), but our understanding is that the product goes well beyond a Gmail integration.

As I wrote last night, there is still a lot of room for improvement in online social services. Status updates, photo and video sharing, review and location based content are not only decentralized today, but are becoming overwhelmed with spam and other noise.

The Google event begins at 10 am. Tune in to TechCrunch for live coverage.

Google could launch a Twitter-killer as soon as this week, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Read the rest of this story »

All right Tweetdeck fans, rev up your engines and prepare to update to Tweetdeck 0.33, which adds a slew of new features, better API management and more in-Tweetdeck media previews.

We could list all the new features in Tweetdeck 0.33, but the company was nice enough to make this little video that shows everything off:

Some of the highlights:

Tweetdeck Can Manage Your Twitter API Usage — This means that the program can delegate how to use your available API calls so that the most important info gets to you as easily as possible. Plus, Tweetdeck now uses OAuth and can request up to 350 API calls an hour, and that is expected to increase soon.

Better Column Management — You can now view Flickr, YouTube and Posterous media within Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck is free. Don’t forget to check out the Mashable branded version.

Tags: software, tweetdeck, twitter client, web apps

Left: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level.

Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ .  True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies.

So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth.  Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals.

This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the topic of social strategy.  In the spirit of open research, we’re leading a discussion in public, and encourage you to join, learn, and share with others. Co-hosting with Charlene Li, we’ll be hosting a no-cost webinar to discussin how companies can develop a social marketing effort that meet business goals.

Although not a requirement, our sessions build off each other, read, watch, and listen to our previously recorded session, we discussed how companies should really understand their customers before entering the social space.

Register: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives, Hosted by Altimeter Group
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST

Please sign up, we’re only limited to 1000 attendees and last time we have over 800 signups. If you are unable to make the live webcast, we’ll post the full set of slides and recording on this blog and the Altimeter blog, so please subscribe.  The hashtag for this event is #AltimeterWebinar, and if you’ve questions you want to pose in advance on Twitter, I’m listening and will factor in the top questions, or leave a comment below.

Time to put the hammer down, and start focusing on building that house.

Today we’re launching the Social Mediators video podcast.

Each week, Joe Thornley, Terry Fallis and I (three guys who, as Joe says, should never be on camera!) will chat about social media and its intersection with communications, organizations and society in general. As Joe put it on his site:

“We’re always on, always connected. How are we taking advantage of the new capablities that gives us? And how is that affecting the way we relate to one another and how we organize around common interests? Finally, what does that mean for traditional organizations – companies, cause-based groups and government?”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

In our first episode this week, we talk about personal branding online. Each of us is serving as a mentor at the upcoming Personal Brand Camp 2, organized by Michael Cayley for students at Humber College. We give our thoughts on the advice we’ll give to attendees there, then get into the topic of the personal/professional divide – a hot topic for us right now as we fine-tune our own new online communications policy.

Check it out here, or head over to the Social Mediators website to subscribe directly.

A post yesterday on TechCrunch did a wonderful job of illustrating how many more men than women there are in the U.S. venture capital industry — and how that imbalance extends to tech entrepreneurs. It also extrapolated a rationalization for this gap that, while reasonable, was incorrect. Silicon Valley’s gender problem isn’t that complicated — it boils down to babies. As in, those who have them can’t be a startup CEO, too.

Vivek Wadhwa, the author of the TechCrunch post, included a nice list of reasons why women entrepreneurs and women-led venture-backed companies are scarce:

Sharon Vosmek, CEO of venture accelerator Astia doesn’t think that VCs have an overt bias against women. Instead, it’s the way the venture-capital industry operates. Vosmek says that these “systematic or hidden biases” include: 1. that VCs hold clear stereotypes of successful CEOs (they call it pattern recognition, but in other industries they call it profiling or stereotyping.) John Doerr publicly stated that his most successful investments – and the no-brainer pattern for future investments – were in founders who were white, male, under 30, nerds, with no social life who dropped out of Harvard or Stanford (2009 NVCA conference). 2. VCs invest in people they know. If women aren’t in their natural networks, they won’t get through the door. We know that still today, men and women network in separate business networks. 3. VCs want to invest in serial entrepreneurs. (This further reduces the chance for woman entrepreneurs.) 4. The VC community is obviously male dominated, and it just got worse…after the cold freeze VCs experienced over the past 24 months, many women partners exited the industry. As the Diana Project research shows, a firm with women General Partners is more likely to invest in women entrepreneurs.

However, it was a comment from TechCrunch reader Chem that actually laid bare the issue of why women aren’t better represented in tech — essentially, it’s because women have babies, and the perception is that when we do, we leave the workforce to take care of them. And while Chem’s stereotype isn’t correct ( I was back at work and even took on a more demanding job soon after my daughter was born), the fact that women are “supposed” to bear the brunt of raising children is a huge reason why women aren’t more visible at the helm of venture-backed startups. It’s the babies, stupid.

Or rather, it’s the idea that women should shoulder the burden of raising children, an idea that dominates our society to such a degree that many women and men buy into it without question. Society at large explicitly perpetuates motherhood and not parenthood (check out the New York Times, from stories that demand mothers learn how to speak nanny, to the spate of “wow-men-are-now-staying-at-home” stories, and implicitly enforces the status quo through its policies around access to childcare for babies, school calendars and thousands of other complicating factors that any family, be they dual-income or single-parent, must navigate.

And when that navigation does require a trade-off, it’s generally still the mother that makes it. Which means that yes, once women have babies there are forces that can keep them from taking on a 90-hour-a-week startup gig. We can bemoan a scarcity of female role models in tech, entice women into the math and science professions or even blame women who leave the work force to take care of kids for the lack of gender diversity, but to fix the problem, we’re going to have to discuss the lack of parity between men and women when it comes to raising children.

Because Wadhwa is right: Gender diversity is important, and women shouldn’t have to choose between raising a family and building a startup any more than men should.

Image courtesy of Flickr user anonymous to you

Each month, our partner Visible Measures compiles a list of the top ten most popular web video series, and we share those results with you and provide analysis.

In January, the threshold for entry into the list was the highest it’s ever been, but viewership for the top 10 shows dropped 26% as compared to the record-breaking month of December.

If you’ve been keeping track in previous months, you won’t be surprised to see that Fred and Happy Tree Friends have again topped the list. Also notable: CollegeHumor and video game-themed shows collectively took up half the list. There weren’t any new series on the list in January, but a couple that dropped off in the past made a comeback. We also learned that the majority of viewers for the top 10 shows were male.

Here’s the complete chart with video clips included for each series. We provide some deeper analysis below.

Rank	Last Month’s Rank	Title	Studio	Genre	True Reach View Count	% Change in Views	Sample Episode
1 1 Fred n/a Comedy 24,719,556 -28% Play 2 2 Happy Tree Friends MondoMedia Animation 17,697,316 -15% Play 3 4 Smosh Deca TV Comedy, Sketch 13,151,356 13% Play 4 5 The Station The Station Comedy 4,317,575 -24% Play 5 Back On Chart POV CollegeHumor Comedy 4,146,733 Back On Chart Play 6 10 Hardly Working CollegeHumor Comedy 3,562,906 32% Play 7 9 Jake & Amir CollegeHumor Comedy, Sketch 3,275,001 6% Play 8 Back On Chart Red Vs Blue Rooster Teeth Animation, Comedy 3,224,802 Back On Chart Play 9 8 The Guild n/a Comedy, Gaming 3,209,027 -17% Play 10 7 Key Of Awesome Next New Networks Comedy, Music 3,150,905 -39% Play

*The Visible Measures Top 10 Webisodes Chart focuses on digital studio-driven Web series that appear on Internet video-sharing destinations. Each Web series is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both studio-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million Internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations.

Note: This chart does not include vloggers, interviews, how-to series, news shows, or product review shows. View-count results are incremental by month.

To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming Web series, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign’s overall performance, please contact us directly.

If you’re interested in exploring this data further, go to visiblemeasures.com/mashable.

The teenager with the high-pitched voice has topped the list again, and he managed to do it even though he only put out one new video in January. That new episode garnered 1.7 million views, so the rest of the 24.7 million were all thanks to old content that people are still discovering or re-watching.

You can’t fault Fred completely for dropping from his December high of 34.2 million views; he didn’t have topical holiday content to work with this time. It’s still impressive that a 16-year old actor with a webcam is beating each and every show from web TV networks like Next New Networks and CollegeHumor.

We mentioned earlier that the majority of top 10 show viewers are male; it’s interesting to note that Fred has the highest ratio of female viewers at 45%.

CollegeHumor is straight up mainstream now thanks to two cable TV deals in the works with MTV, and its online performance is as impressive as ever. It’s the only network with three series on the list — POV, Hardly Working, and Jake & Amir. They’ve all appeared on the list before, and together they racked up just shy of 11 million views.

All three of these CollegeHumor series saw growth since last month; POV didn’t appear on the December chart at all, but now it’s back. Hardly Working is actually working hard; it cranked out several new videos in January and grew 32% as compared to last month. Jack & Amir experienced a modest 6% growth.

Video game-themed programming has always been a significant genre in web TV. Because web series are usually cheaper to produce and viewership expectations are lower than would be the case with over-the-air shows, web series find it advantageous to serve a deep and narrow niche. Gamers are a great audience because there are just enough of them, and because they have their own dedicated ecosystem of social media and blogs to spread the word.

The Guild and Red Vs. Blue aren’t performing as well as they used to, but the gamer audience is still obviously alive and well since these gamer shows take up two of the top 10 spots. Red Vs. Blue just started airing new content, so it returned to the list after a hiatus. Conversely, The Guild is off-season so its numbers have declined.

A greater portion of Red Vs. Blue’s audience is male than any other show on the list. That should be no surprise since the series is based on the science fiction action shooter Halo.

Tags: monthly top webisodes, video, visible measures, Web TV, web video

Magazine newsstand sales plummeted 9% in the second half of the year compared to last year. Certain popular titles like Newsweek, Time, and W took it particularly hard, losing more than 30% of newsstand sales.

While these sales aren't make-or-break for magazines, they contribute a fatter profit than subscriptions, since most subscriptions are sold at a discount to the cover price.

This decline in sales explains, in part, why media companies are praying at the altar of the iPad and other tablets. The market for applications is gaining steam at the same time the market for physical magazines is dying. If publishers can get into the biggest online newsstands in the world, the theory goes, they can regain some of the vanishing sales.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• CHART OF THE DAY: Facebook Catching Up To Google And Yahoo As Your Home On The Web
• CHART OF THE DAY: Apple Dominates Smartphone Growth In Q4
• CHART OF THE DAY: Apple's Giant Pile Of Cash In Context

If you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.

Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating Conversation Prisms specific to each country. I shared several new social maps in “The Landscape for International Social Networking.”

Over the years, other maps emerged that documented leading social networks around the world as well as the social behavior associated within each country. As Social Media is truly global and relationships are truly without borders, I too have spent a great deal of time researching the networks that host conversations relevant to my projects regardless of geographic location.

Italian blogger Vincenzo Cosenza has for the second time, published a visual map that portrays the most popular social networks around the world based on the most recent traffic data (December 2009) as measured by Alexa & Google Trends for Websites.

Upon review, it’s clear that Facebook, at 350 million (mostly likely closer to 400 million) is truly earning a global audience, which naturally burrows its social roots with every new connection and the connections of connections forged within the network. According to research, Facebook dominates in 100 out of 127 countries measured.

If we were to analyze the top three social networks by what many argue are the top 10 markets for social networking, our view comes into focus and allows us to see where our attention and participation is required in our global efforts.

Australia

1. Facebook
2. MySpace
3. Twitter

Canada

1. Facebook
2. MySpace
3. Flickr

China

1. QQ – 300 million active accounts
2. Xiaonei
3. 51

France

1. Facebook
2. Skyrock
3. MySpace

Germany

1. Facebook
2. StudiVZ
3. MySpace

Italy

1. Facebook
2. Netlog
3. Badoo

Russia

1. V Kontakte
2. Odnoklassniki
3. LiveJournal

Spain

1. Facebook
2. Tuenti
3. Fotolog

United Kingdom

1. Facebook
2. Bebo
3. MySpace

United States

1. Facebook
2. MySpace
3. Twitter

In other parts of the world, social networks that might not have registered previously among leading experts, emerge as candidates when location and society prove paramount in highly targeted, culturally-aware programs.

For example, Google’s Orkut is Brazil’s top social network.

Hi5 is leading in Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Thailand and Mongolia.

In the Czech Republic, Lide is the network of choice.

Maktoob is the social hub in Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen.

South Korea is focusing its dialogue and connections in Cyworld.

Social networking in Guadeloupe and Martinque is concentrated at Skyrock.

Mixi is the leading central station for social activity in Japan.

The leaderboard of those countries not yet friended by or fans of Facebook include:

Hungary – Iwiw

Poland – Nasza-klasa

Philippines – Friendster

Netherlands – Hyves

Lithuania – One

Latvia – Draugiem

Taiwan – Wretch

Zing – Vietnam

The race for supremacy in social networking is only part of the story.  As in any race, we typically expect a winner to reach an end. However, this competition is absent of finish line and as a result, a true overall winner is beside the point. Many networks will enjoy time in the spotlight until their luster ages and a new framework for engagement lures our friends of friends, our friends, and finally our attention and participation. As consumers, we go where we are not only wanted, but also where we can make an impact.

While we’ve reviewed the top social networks across the social Web, ranked by countries spanning the globe, the balance of the story is represented in the actions that define social media engagement within each network and influenced by the culture of each country of prevalence.

TrendStream analyzed social media activity around the world and captured the results in a stunning infographic.

This graph essentially unravels the ties that bind us and peels back the layers of social networking technologies and platforms to reveal how real people are adopting and engaging in the social web.

The map demystifies how social media is embraced around the world, demonstrating that social computing and collaboration is far from ubiquitous. And, in many countries, how we use social media is much different than how we will use it over time. We’re still in the very early stages of the social (r)evolution..

TrendStream in partnership with Lightspeed Research interviewed 32,000 Web users in 16 countries. As such, the Global Web Index analyzes active social web involvement and then organizes and presents behavior by volume (in millions). Reviewing the Global Web Index and fusing the information with the data included in the World Map of Social Networks, we can get a clear indication of how social behavior defines social networks and to what extent. It’s a goldmine of data for any brand or government agency seeking a more influential form of propaganda (2.0).

Social Web Involvement is categorized as:

Pink – Uploading photos online

Purple – Uploading videos

Blue – Managing a social network profile

Orange – Blogging

Pink – Micro-blogging

Grey – Percentage of population with access to social tools

Australia

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access= 40% | Users = 5m
Photos: Access = 39.1% | Users = 4.9m
Videos: Access  = 11.9% | Users = 1.5m
Blogging: Access = 11.4% | Users = 1.4m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.6% | Users = .7m

Brazil

Leading Network: Orkut

Social Network Profiles: Access= 59.6% | Users = 17.9m
Photos: Access = 54.9% | Users = 16.2m
Videos: Access  = 34% | Users = 10.2m
Blogging: Access = 20.7% | Users = 6.2m
Micro Blogging: Access = 14.2% | Users = 4.3m

Canada

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 46.2% | Users = 10.2m
Photos: Access = 40.9% | Users = 9m
Videos:  Access = 14.9% | Users = 3.3m
Blogging: Access = 10.6% | Users = 2.3m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.1% | Users = 1.1m

China

Leading Network: QQ

Photos: Access = 60.3% | Users = 117.7m
Blogging: Access = 46% | Users = 89.7m
Videos:  Access = 28.7% | Users = 55.9m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 27.3% | Users = 53.2m
Micro Blogging: Access = 21.3% | Users = 41.5m

France

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 29.3% | Users = 11.2m
Photos: Access = 27.5% | Users = 10.5m
Blogging: Access = 9.5% | Users = 3.6m
Videos: Access = 9.5% | Users = 3.6m
Micro Blogging: Access = 3.8% | Users = 1.4m

Germany

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 32.7% | Users = 13.9m
Photos: Access = 31.6% | Users = 13.4m
Blogging: Access = 10% | Users = 4.3m
Videos: Access = 8.5% | Users = 3.6m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.7% | Users = 2.4m

India

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 63.9% | Users = 22.4m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 57.5% | Users = 20.1m
Videos: Access = 36.2% | Users = 12.7m
Blogging: Access = 34% | Users = 11.9m
Micro Blogging: Access = 24% | Users = 8.4m

Italy

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 43.3% | Users = 9.1m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 35.8% | Users = 7.6m
Videos: Access = 20.9% | Users = 4.4m
Blogging: Access = 19.4% | Users = 4.1m
Micro Blogging: Access = 12.3% | Users = 2.6m

Japan

Leading Network: Mixi

Blogging: Access = 24.5% | Users = 15.9m
Photos: Access = 19.5% | Users = 12.7m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 14.9% | Users = 9.7m
Micro Blogging: Access = 8% | Users = 5.2m
Videos: Access = 5.7% | Users = 3.7m

Mexico

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 52.9% | Users = 6.4m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 40.2% | Users = 4.8m
Blogging: Access = 25.6% | Users = 3.1m
Videos: Access = 22.1% | Users = 2.7m
Micro Blogging: Access = 13.7% | Users = 1.6m

The Netherlands

Leading Network: Hyves

Photos: Access = 37% | Users = 4.8m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 36.2% | Users = 4.7m
Blogging: Access = 10.1% | Users = 1.3m
Videos: Access = 10% | Users = 1.3m
Micro Blogging: Access = 3.5% | Users = .45m

Russia

Leading Network: V Kontakte

Photos: Access = 59.9% | Users = 18.8m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 48% | Users = 15.3m
Videos: Access = 39.6% | Users = 12.6m
Blogging: Access = 18.3% | Users = 5.8m
Micro Blogging: Access = 12% | Users = 3.8m

South Korea

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 53.1% | Users = 14.9m
Blogging: Access = 39.9% | Users = 11.2m
Videos: Access = 19.5% | Users = 5.5m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 15.6% | Users = 4.4m
Micro Blogging: Access = 14% | Users = 4m

Spain

Leading Network: Facebook

Photos: Access = 39.4% | Users = 7.4m
Social Network Profiles: Access = 35.8% | Users = 6.7m
Blogging: Access = 17.2% | Users = 3.2m
Videos: Access = 16.2% | Users = 3.1m
Micro Blogging: Access = 7.5% | Users = 1.4m

UK

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 42.6% | Users = 15.9m
Photos: Access = 38.2% | Users = 15.7m
Videos: Access = 11.5% | Users = 2.4m
Blogging: Access = 8.4% | Users = 5.5m
Micro Blogging: Access = 5.3% | Users = 4.6m

USA

Leading Network: Facebook

Social Network Profiles: Access = 44.2% | Users = 92.1m
Photos: Access = 42.6% | Users = 79.2m
Videos: Access = 15.3% | Users = 23.5m
Blogging: Access = 12.8% | Users = 17.6m
Micro Blogging: Access = 7% | Users = 10.7m

In 50% of the countries included in this study, online photo sharing dominated the list of social media applications. It is also among the oldest of social services within the included mix.

44% of the countries in this survey embrace online profiles in social networks suggesting that their personal brand, whether for engaging in personal or professional interactions, is becoming increasingly important.

81% shared photos and online profiles as the top 1 and 2 activities with the exception of Japan, China, and South Korea where blogging displaced social profiles as a top application.

94% of countries reported that micro-blogging (think Twitter) were among the least pervasive with the exception of Japan, where it ranked fourth – just below social network profiles and above video.

China’s digital footprint is massive, defined by the incredible volume of content creators and the contribution of their social objects. As the study reports, “due to the inward looking nature of China’s internet economy combined with the language mean that this volume of content does not impact the broader Internet.”

TechCrunch also observed a tremendous opportunity for Facebook in Russia. Leading network Vkontakte.ru is in many regards, a Facebook clone. However, its facsimile of a growing global network is also indicative of a potential deal. Vkontakte is owned in large part by Digital Sky Technologies, a company which also owns a noteworthy stake in Facebook. A deal of this magnitude would further socialize Russian and other worldwide users under one truly global social network.

As we examine opportunities for global social networking, we are reminded that anthropology and sociology play critical roles in observing and documenting behavior, supporting cultures, and established governances for dictating how content, information, and relationships forge and flourish. In order to ensure relevance and earn significance within networks, we must think locally when examining opportunities globally. In addition, as culture and behavior shifts across countries, they also establish a new dynamic within each Social Networks creating a universal population that adapts what they know to what they learn and experience.

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I remember reading one of Tom Peter’s books about five years ago, when this sentence popped right out at me:

“Make appealing to women your Marketing No. 1 priority.”

It seemed like a very bold statement to me at the time, though Tom’s rationale was rock-solid. Not only do women account for over half of the nation’s GDP, their power over what is spent in the household is vastly greater than their menfolk’s.

Sure, it’s a no-brainer. Did I pay any attention at the time? Of course not. I’m a Man. And men are stupid.

Fast-forward half a decade and slowly I’m wising up, for three main reasons:

1. My women print customers skew just under 50%.

2. Though the remaining small majority of my print customers are male, before they buy from me, it seems 90% have to get their wives’ or girlfriends’ permission first. Especially for the large, more expensive prints to be hung in the home.

3. The online conversation I’m having- in the blog comments, Twitter, Facebook etc, is skewing increasingly female, especially on Facebook. I’d say 60% overall, maybe more.

In short, women are now calling the shots on gapingvoid. All in all, I think it’s a VERY positive development. What about your gig?

[UPDATE:] Nia left a nice comment below:

“Well, what did you expect? You do clever work, which can be used as a decoration, about relationships.

Cleverness, decoration and relationships? Women are carefully trained to be experts at all three of those!”

[UPDATE:] Elizabeth also made a great comment below:

Not surprised – there’s a bunch of us women who love smart, moving, funny, irreverent stuff about changing the world while making money, that’s romantic-yet-realistic.

And the thing is, we women talk. We connect. We nurture relationships. We are awesome at social media b/c it is extension of what we natural do IRL.

Yes, Elizabeth, and those are EXACTLY the kinds of customers I want and need. Like I said, it’s a no-brainer. Rock on.

Although all is said and done when it comes to football this season, such is not the case for the Super Bowl advertisers.

We’re now entering the entertaining aftermath of the Super Bowl ad showdown, and thanks to social media tracking services like Alterian and Radian6, we can take an early look at advertisers winning big on the web.

The following results come from two sources. Starting in early December, Alterian SM2 looked at social media conversations across a variety of sites and tracked all discussions relevant to Super Bowl advertising. Its latest report is embedded below. By contrast, Mullen and Radian6 crafted BrandBowl2010 to measure volume and sentiment of Twitter chatter mentioning the advertisers, with analysis beginning the Friday prior to the game. The discrepancies in their results represent different methods of data collection.

When it comes to sheer volume alone, Alterian SM2 ranks Focus on the Family as the advertiser with the most mentions overall from December 1, 2009, to February 8, 2010, at 3:00 a.m. CST.

You might recall that initially the unaired ad stirred up controversy prior to the big game due to its pro-life subject matter. While this viewer thought the buzz was much ado about nothing, the fact of the matter is that the build-up led to a highly anticipated spot with a big payoff on the social web in terms of overall mentions.

By comparison, however, Alterian SM2 found that conversations on game day alone were Google-heavy. According to the company, Google’s late entry into the Super Bowl advertiser foray was a pretty big win for the search giant. On Super Bowl Sunday, Google was the advertiser with the most mentions, highest Social Engagement Index (i.e. farthest reach), and the second-highest sentiment score (second only to Doritos) among all advertisers.

According to Mullen and Radian6’s BrandBowl2010, which looked at just Twitter chatter over a shorter time span, Doritos saw the most volume of tweets, and was its winner for “most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast.”

BrandBowl ranked Google and Focus on the Family as second and third in the most-buzzed about competition. Its top 10 most effective brands are as follows:

1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus On Family
4. Snickers:
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola

Quantity is one thing, but quality is something else entirely. When looking at initial tallies, social media analysis points to the advertisers and ads we loved the most.

Alterian SM2 crowns Anheuser-Busch as its initial post-game victor in the battle for the most-loved brand overall (for the entire duration of the measurement period).

On game day only, however, Doritos took the top spot with the highest sentiment score, followed by Google in a distant second. Due to the flurry of social positive sentiment Doritos garnered on Super Bowl Sunday, the brand was able to skyrocket to become the second most-loved (i.e. highest sentiment score) brand overall as well.

Per BrandBowl, we — the members of the Twittersphere — loved McDonald’s and Dr Pepper. Though neither of these advertisers ever cracked the top 10 list in terms of volume, tweets about them were extremely positive.

Per Alterian SM2’s data, the advertiser with the most negative conversations from December 1, 2009, to December 8, 2010, at 3:00 a.m. CST was Focus on the Family.

Interestingly enough, BrandBowl declared Budweiser Select55 to be its last place-finisher. The kind hearts at Mullen are now offering free creative services for next year’s commercial as a consolation prize. Its 10 least effective brands list is as follows:

30. NBC’s Universal – Universal Orlando
31. Paramount Pictures
32. FloTV
33. Cars.com
34. Motorola
35. Diamond Foods’ – Pop Secret
36. Honda
37. Teleflora
38. Michelob Ultra
39. Budweiser Select55

[img credit: Willard, iStockphoto]

Tags: Anheuser-Busch, doritos, MARKETING, Super Bowl, Super Bowl ads

"The events of the last 18 months have scarred people," Mr. Edelman said. "People have to see messages in different places and from different people. That means experts as well as peers or company employees. It's a more-skeptical time. So if companies are looking at peer-to-peer marketing as another arrow in the quiver, that's good, but they need to understand it's not a single-source solution. It's a piece of the solution."

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As more and more of our friends and favorite organizations start publishing updates online, being able to organize them well is becoming even more important. Niche-popular desktop social media stream-reader Tweetdeck issued a software update this morning and the most striking change is in its handling of user groups. It's beautiful. The new Tweetdeck is faster, more flexible and easier to navigate.

Groups, we have argued, are the secret weapon of the social web. Here are five ways that the new Tweetdeck gets groups right and that Facebook, the world's dominant social media stream reader by a long-shot, could learn from what Tweetdeck is doing. That would drastically improve Facebook's own user experience.

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Internet startup investor John Borthwick of Betaworks has told us that he invested in Tweetdeck specifically because its column metaphor represented a drastic break from the page-based metaphor of the rest of the web and the Instant Messaging metaphor of most other Twitter clients. That's how Tweetdeck works: it lets you put your friends and contacts on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn into grouped columns across your screen. It's a powerful system and the clear leader in the ecosystem of interfaces built around Twitter. Competitor Seesmic has a similar offering and is also based on columns for groups.

These applications may be more overwhelming than many mainstream users are looking for, but the principles could be adapted to Facebook's own interface in some very interesting ways.

Groups of users, which Facebook calls Lists, are extremely helpful in prioritizing messages by their source. They enable users to subscribe to more sources of information in total without fear they will miss high-priority content. Groups help contextualize messages in a stream and with good search support they can help you target queries and unearth the information you're looking for within a limited space of trusted, topical sources of information. Last month, Facebook suggested its users subscribe to news organizations on the social network and put those updates in a special list called News, for example.

Unfortunately, Facebook has never treated Groups with the respect that they deserve. The newest redesign pushes friends Lists a click removed from the front page of the site, even. (It took me three clicks from the home page to see the view pictured on the right, for example.) The company is instead focused on serving up content from favored sources using the new News Feed (vs Live Feed) algorithm. This algorithm says that the more you've interacted with a source of information in the past, the more likely you are to want to read that person's updates in the future. News Feed is a self-reenforcing paradigm that simplifies and narrows a user's universe by taking editorial control out of their hands and putting it in the hands of a black-box formula.

How could Facebook better handle groups? Let's take a look at how Tweetdeck does it.

• Buttons to navigate directly

  The new Tweetdeck update today added a series of buttons at the bottom of the application for your group columns. Hover over them and you'll see the column name. Click on that button and you'll be brought immediately to that column, a much nicer experience than the awkward old scrolling. The hover display does show some information that's probably not useful to anyone (API calls remaining) but putting rapid group navigation in a good place in the app makes a big difference. It would also be nice if those buttons were configurable in some way - like the red one or #3 is for my @ replies column. But Tweetdeck now makes it much, much easier to navigate between groups than Facebook does. Facebook almost seems to be discouraging use of groups by burying them several clicks below top level options.

  
  
  
• Different Notification Priorities

  Tweetdeck makes it easy to set up different levels of notification for different groups. For example, my "high-priority" Twitter group sends full messages as a pop-up in the corner of my screen when it updates, but my column for people I actually know in real life on Facebook (like my family members) throws a pop-up and an audio notification in Tweetdeck when there's something new. That's awesome.

  Facebook is all about the notifications, why not let me get a special notification when someone in a particular group has posted an update?

  
  

• Shareable Groups, Suggestions etc.

  For years Twitter has been fundamentally public and Facebook private, but for better or for worse that's changing on Facebook. Isn't it time for Facebook to offer bundles of pages or people that you can follow all at once? Twitter and Tweetdeck make this easy with lists, sharable lists and the Tweetdeck directory of recommended lists to follow. Facebook users would love something like that! My college newspaper staff as one big list of Facebook users to follow? My football team? Suzy Bright's curated list of top sex writers to follow on Facebook? People would eat that kind of stuff up.
  

• Keyword Filters

  Last week I was working when the season premier of Lost came on TV. I'm likely to watch it later on DVD. Tweetdeck let me add a filter to all of my groups to hide any posts that included the word Lost! Sick of hearing about the iPad? No problem! Tweetdeck does a great job of building value on top of these groups of contacts: filter for, filter out keywords, analyze a group for its most-used words. There are lots of possibilities. Facebook users would probably like these same options.
  

• A Group for New Friends

  Tweetdeck has a great feature that lets you create a column to display the bios of people who have just started following you. From there you can click once to follow them back. Facebook could easily do something like that, bring new friends and/or recommended friends up higher into a very visible place in the interface. Facebook wants users to go beyond connecting with people they already know in real life (sorry, users, that's what Facebook has decided) so why not create a "group" that's made up of people who are fans of the same pages you are or are otherwise recommended for connecting with?

There are all kinds of ways that Facebook could offer meaningful support for user groups and turn the News Feed into a more powerful tool, with more control for users and more value in the long run. Tweetdeck is doing a pretty darned good job of exactly that.

EA Sports President Peter Moore told Bloomberg that the popular Madden NFL series of football video games will make its way to Facebook.

We haven’t heard a peep about a launch date. Moore says we will definitely see Madden on the Facebook platform, but the social media version will be simpler than its console cousins, because EA wants to “make Madden more accessible.”

Facebook games are a big deal these days. FarmVille and Mafia Wars developer Zynga just raised $180 million in funding. The news that established (but more niche) long-time video game franchise Civilization is coming to Facebook this summer has gotten a lot of press and interest, too.

More presciently, EA just bought a huge Facebook game company called Playfish for $400 million. The quote from Moore about EA’s Madden plans didn’t mention Playfish, but it’s possible that the acquired company’s resources will be used to develop and publish Madden on Facebook.

EA launched Madden NFL 2010 for the video game consoles just in time for the Super Bowl, so hype for the brand is already high right now. This was a good time for the company to let this news slip out.

Tags: ea sports, facebook, football, games, madden, nfl, online games, sports, video games

With the Super Bowl yesterday came the time-honored Super Bowl commercials, each costing $2.5 million for a 30-second spot.  Even Google got in on the game with its first ever spot receiving rave reviews (although the commercial wasn’t new). But which commercials went beyond TV to score on the Web?  Reprise Media released a report that ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on the level of integration between their television commercials and presence on the web in terms of search and social media. According to Reprise’s scorecard, Boost Mobile, HomeAway, E*Trade and Google were the marketing standouts out of last night’s commercials.

Reprise decreed that Boost Mobile and HomeAway, which were both first-time Super Bowl advertisers, had the best cross-channel promotion from the tube to the web. E*Trade and Google followed with compelling ad spots that encouraged users to look to the web for more information. Who fumbled?  The Pop Secret/Emerald Nuts, Prudential, Dodge Charger and all movie commercials had the least amount of cross-channel integration.

Interestingly, Turbo Tax, Mazda and Pepsi didn’t have ads in the Super Bowl but they attracted traffic online by running paid search ads on keywords related to other Super Bowl advertisers. Unsurprisingly, millions of consumers turned to social networks including Twitter to discuss their favorite ads. According to social media monitoring service Trendrr, the four top gaining Super Bowl ad brands on Twitter within the last 24 hours were Dockers (+307%), Boost Mobile (+161%), Emerald Nuts (+150) and Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (+120%). Out of all of the car commercials, Audi’s A3 Green Police advertisement received the most buzz on Trendrr.  But was that because it was humorous (showing people getting arrested for using foam cups and incandescent bulbs) or too smug?

Social media measurement company Radian 6 and ad agency Mullen have released stats on which brand was most effective according to sentiment and volume of Tweets on Twitter. The report says that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55 was the least effective brand. And Google and Focus on the Family followed Doritos is becoming the most discussed commercials on Twitter. Of course, it should be noted that Doritos had several commercials in the Super Bowl, which could have contributed to the volume of tweets. On the other hand, Google had a higher percentage of positive tweets.