Why Marketers Get Scared of Social Media Marketing

The growing prominence of social media is a topic of debate across the world today. Since the past couple of years, social media has turned into a great phenomenon and is continuously gaining attention from businesses from various industries. Today, you will come across a host of brands being promoted through social media channels such as media sharing sites, social networking portals, online forums, corporate blogs, social bookmarks, etc.

However, critics point out that social media is not as effective when it comes to earning return on investment. Especially when it comes to social networks, users are not too keen to engage into trade as they use these sites purely for communication purposes. On the contrary, social media experts believe that social media is still underrated, and businesses will soon realize the tremendous potential that lies in using it as a marketing tool.

Test Whether You Are a Social Networking Addict

Are you a social networking addict? If yes, don’t worry. You are not alone! You are just one of the millions of people who can’t live without social networks today. We all know how important it is to build communities, network with people, engage in online entertainment, promote ourselves, express our thoughts, and build professional contacts, in today’s communication era. But, are we getting too much into it? Is this really an addiction?

To know whether you are addicted to social networking, consider the following situations. If your answer is ‘Yes’ to at least 4 of these seven situations, you have been probably bitten very hard by the social networking bug:

Bebo Gets Lifestreaming Features

Online major AOL added vigor into its social networking site Bebo by upgrading it with  lifestreaming features. Acquired in 2008, Bebo has been a strategic investment for AOL to enter the fast-growing social networking market. Lifestreaming is a rapidly growing form of online service that allows users to broadcast regular and brief updates regarding their lives via videos, pictures, comments, blogs items, and other content.

In lifestreaming, the posts are aggregated from several other social media and social networking sites and arranged in a chronological order. Some of the sites already offering lifestreaming services are FriendFeed.com and Tumblr.com.

How Blog Writers Popularize Social Networks

Currently you are reading a blog that focuses on social media and social networking. Similarly, there are millions of people like you who access news and stories about social networks regularly to know what’s hot in the market and what’s not. Today, there are thousands of blogs that cover news on social media and social networking, mainly covering the latest developments happening around popular social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

One of the most important lessons in marketing is to be in the news as much as possible. If people discuss about your brand, more than half of your job is already done. For social networks, the good thing is that large number of blog writers post news about them each day. In short, they track their movements every second to know what they are upto, and finally report it to the general readers.

Voice Blogging Gets Attention at ibibo

As blogging becomes a regular activity for millions of people worldwide, there is one industry that is aiming to use it as a means of innovation – the social networking industry! After introducing voice blogging just less than a month back, ibibo is already enjoying great response from users.

Social network ibibo provides users an option to create blogs and share it with their friends. By introducing voice blogging, it now also allows users to create voice posts on their blog directly from their mobile, provided they have an existing ibibo blog and a mobile number that is linked to their account.

India – Hot Market for Social Networking

It is really interesting to see how social networks have changed users’ perception and habits towards online communication. It all started with small communities, which slowly and steadily expanded over a period of years and ballooned into a full-fledged global interaction space for people to get connected to each other.

Just like American and European markets have shown a healthy response towards this growing trend, Asian markets have come out as a surprise package, generating one of the greatest demands for social networking industry.

MySpace Banks on Mobile Service Delivery

To strengthen its position in the mobile social networking space, MySpace plans to strike deals with handset majors Nokia and Palm, making it the first ever social network to support all the major smart phones. Other than these mobile firms, MySpace applications are also supported across BlackBerry, iPhone, Sidekick and Google Android.

As social networking sites drive the use of mobile Web, MySpace expects 50% of its traffic to generate from mobile phones rather than desktop PCs. The News Corp. owned social network is also working on its mobile Web site by modifying and adding features for enhanced user experience.

O2 Embraces Bebo Open Mobile

With Bebo announcing its plan to join the mobile social networking bandwagon just recently, O2 has pounced upon the opportunity to make the most of Bebo Open Mobile, an initiative that was launched by the social networking site just over a week ago. This move makes O2 the first ever UK mobile operator to embrace the Bebo Open Mobile technology.

Designed exclusively for mobile service providers, handset makers and mobile software developers, Bebo Open Mobile offers a set of tools to its partners for delivering Bebo social networking experience to mobile users. This means O2 can now enjoy access to the program’s mobile Web, messaging and media equipments to provide exclusive mobile content to its subscribers.

8 Basic Rules of Successful Blogging

Capturing readers’ attention is a huge task, especially when you are one amongst millions of people across the world trying to do the same. With a number of blogs available online, you have to ensure that your blog stands out from the clutter and delivers value to your readers.

Your challenge as a blogger is to make people visit your blog again and again and speak about it to others. For this, you must keep in mind the following eight basic rules of successful blogging:

An Idea Costs Facebook $65m

A confidential information leak has spread like fire over the Internet. As per a law firm, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg paid a staggering $65 million to two ex-classmates from Harvard, who claimed that their idea to create a social networking site was stolen.

The two classmates, who own another online community ‘ConnectU’, alleged that Mark stole their idea of building a social network. The highly confidential deal, which was agreed upon only last year, was leaked recently including huge amount of money, both in forms of cash and stock.