Game of # in 2012

Trends(generally affixed by a #) are the topics for which we see noteworthy Twitter conversations. Trends reveal what captured our attention, rather than what terms were consistently popular.
Since using twitter i have noticed the following trends this past year 2012 :- 

Conversation Starters : Hashtags help to organize conversations around topics: #nowplaying to share your favorite music, or #blessed to enumerate the good things in your life. The popularity of terms like #oomf (“one of my followers”), #lrt (“last Retweet”), #shoutout, and so on highlight the personal interactions at the heart of Twitter.


#nowplaying
#oomf
#blessed
#quote
#lrt
#salute
#news
#followfriday
#throwbackthursday
#shoutout

Sports : Rooting for their favorite team, discussing an MV player's performance, or getting caught up in Olympic competitions, sports fans never flag on Twitter. And there’s never an off-season.

#nfl

#nascar

#mlb

olympics

#sfgiants

jeremy lin

super bowl

dwight howard

kobe

#yankees

Politics : This year, voters discussed candidates and their ads, campaigns and conventions. Hashtags like #tcot (“top conservatives on Twitter”) invited more conversation, and real-time events like the debates saw record levels of engagement.

#tcot

#teaparty

#gop

#romney

mitt romney

#dnc2012

charlotte

#gop2012

#rnc

#obama2012

TV : People tweet incessantly about favorite contestants on reality shows like Big Brother (#bb14) and American Idol; they obsess over plot points on hits like Pretty Little Liars. TV nostalgia is popular too, as fans reminisce about shows from the past.

family guy

#bb14

american dad

hey arnold

american idol

pretty little liars

106 & park

SNL

fresh prince

boy meets world

Food : People love talking about food on Twitter. This year, trends spiked around specific eateries and that perennial favorite #coffee — as well as a certain coffee chain.

ihop

starbucks

waffle house

mcdonalds

bbq

#coffee

taco bell

denny's

burger king

olive garden

Movies : Movie buffs take to Twitter to discuss the hottest releases, most buzzed-about blockbusters, and all their favorite films. Based on this list, it seems fans are drawn to action flicks and dark tales — but romance always finds a way.

think like a man

the hunger games

the avengers

Red Tails

21 Jump Street

Dark Knight Rises

Dark Shadows

The Devil Inside

Safe House

The Vow

Tech : As new products were announced (cf. the new iPad, iPhone or Kindle, they saw significant spikes in Twitter discussion. Other buzzworthy tech terms reflected the social sphere on platforms like Skype and Pinterest, or with a social game (Draw Something).

at&t

iphone

instagram

skype

kindle

ipad

pinterest

draw something

amazon

apple

Music : Fans share their favorite songs via hashtags like #nowplaying and #musicmonday. This year, hip-hop stars took center stage on Twitter. Large music festivals like Coachella also generated much live tweeting, and fans all over chatted about performances.

rick ross

#hiphop

trey songz

nicki minaj

#musicmonday

kendrick lamar

chris brown

coachella

big sean

r&b

Countries : Whether it's firsthand photos from Syria, the drama of Italian football, or the latest in Afghanistan, Americans are tweeting about a wide range of global issues

#syria

china

japan

iran

India

afghanistan

australia

israel

italy

Canada

So Enjoy Tweets and wish you all #HappyNewYear2013 .

OBAMA WINS ROMNEY

OBAMA WINS ROMNEY 

What ought to pain Republicans most about Barack Obama’s victory is that 2012 was entirely winnable for them. In European elections over the past few years, voters have thrown out leaders who were in charge during the worst of the financial crisis, whether those leaders deserved the blame or not. Economic indicators in the United States, where an unemployment rate of 8 percent is highly correlated with defeat for the incumbent party, pointed in the same direction. Obama himself had proven a disappointment to many of his former supporters, going from a beloved symbol of generational and social change in 2008 to a detached and remote figure, with limited ability to touch an emotional chord in the electorate.

That Mitt Romney lost nonetheless is in part a tribute to his own weaknesses as a candidate. The Obama campaign put Romney on the defensive early about his work at Bain Capital, and left him there. The Republican nominee made any number of horrendous gaffes. He ran a disastrous GOP convention. He never found a way to talk about himself or his agenda in a way that middle class voters could relate to.

But even a clumsy candidate might have beaten Obama if not for a simple factor that could not be overcome: the GOP’s growing extremism. The Republican strategy of making the election a referendum on the president’s handling of the economy was perfectly sound. The problem was that the Republican Party couldn’t pass the credibility test itself. For many voters disenchanted with Obama, it still was not safe to vote for his opponent.

This failure began with the spectacle of the extended primary season, which was dominated by candidates with views far outside the political mainstream. Rick Santorum rejected the separation of church and state. Newt Gingrich challenged the notion of judicial supremacy. Michele Bachmann claimed the government had been infiltrated by radical Muslims. Donald Trump refused to recognize the validity of Obama’s birth certificate. Rick Perry wanted to take down more parts of the federal government than he could successfully name. In the debates, the country saw the GOP talking to itself and sounding like a bizarre fringe party, not a responsible governing one.

Romney is not a right-wing extremist. To win the nomination, though, he had to feign being one, recasting himself as “severely conservative” and eschewing the reasonableness that made him a successful, moderate governor of the country’s most liberal state. He had to pass muster with his party’s right-wing base on taxes, immigration, climate change, abortion, and gay rights. Many of his statements on these issues were patently insincere, but that was hardly reassuring. Romney’s very insincerity and flexibility made it improbable that he would stand up to the GOP’s hyper-partisan congressional wing once elected any more than he had during the primaries.

Romney’s pandering to the base made it possible for the Obama campaign to portray him as a right-wing radical from the start of the campaign. Fear that he didn’t have the base locked down kept Romney from moving smoothly to the center once he had secured the nomination. It further encouraged his choice of Paul Ryan, a popular figure with the Tea Party. And when Romney tried, much too late, to move closer to the center, Republican Senate candidates, like Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, kept popping up with disgusting reminders of the GOP’s retrograde views on gender issues. For women, Latinos, and young voters tempted to abandon Obama, the old Romney might have been a plausible alternative. The new Romney, fettered by a feverish GOP, was too risky a choice.  According to exit poll results, Romney won men as expected, but lost among women by 11 points—too large a gender gap to be overcome.

Demographic change and better economic circumstances stand to make the Republican road back to the White House an even steeper climb in future years. Simply put, the party has to present a more conciliatory and reasonable face to sell itself to swing voters. To do that, it must elevate its own moderate voices, cut loose its theocrats, and liberate itself from the domination of Tea Party know-nothings. 

So let the season of Republican recriminations begin. The GOP now faces the challenge of self-examination and internal reform that Democrats began to undertake after losing twice to Ronald Reagan. It desperately needs the kind of centrist reform movement that was led on the other side by the Democratic Leadership Council, which paved the way for the election of a centrist Democrat named Bill Clinton. Without that sort of renewal movement, the 2012 election may come to be seen less as a fluke than a harbinger.

“Bhrashtamev Jayate”

Talking about social media today in India, I think it’s important to start off with some global basics. The first is of course is that the freedom of expression is fundamental. That’s my belief and commitment as a citizen, and as somebody who uses all media, social and otherwise — social and anti-social!

Freedom of expression is the mortar that binds together the bricks of our freedom and it’s also the open window embedded in those bricks. We need freedom of expression to guarantee all of our other acts. In this country we are all entitled to receive and send information thorough electronic networks, to share information, whether through the newspaper, the TV screen or online websites and to do so without censorship and restriction. This is fundamental to the kind of world which we all live in.

As a common man ( Indian citizen), I am conscious how fortunate we are to live in a country that guarantees us that right. People in some developing countries have to contend with the argument that development and freedom of expression are incompatible – that the media, for instance, must serve the ends of development as defined by the government, or operate only within the boundaries of what the social and religious authorities define as permissible.  The developing world is full of writers, artists and journalists who have to function in societies which do not grant them this freedom.  For them freedom of expression is the oxygen of their own survival, and that of their society, but they are stifled.  In countries where truth is what the government or the religious establishment says is true, freedom of expression is essential to depict alternative truths which the society needs to accommodate in order to survive.

And yet it is all too often absent, because in many countries, there are those who question the value of freedom of speech in their societies, those who argue that it threatens stability and endangers progress, those who still consider freedom of speech a Western import, an imposition from abroad and not the indigenous expression of every people’s demand for freedom. What has always struck me about this argument is that it is never made by the people, but by governments, never by the powerless but by the powerful, never by the voiceless, but by those whose voices are all that can be heard.  Let us put this argument once and for all to the only test that matters :- the choice of every people, to know more or know less, to be heard or be silenced, to stand up or kneel down. Only freedom of expression will allow the world’s oppressed and underprivileged a way out of the darkness that shrouds their voices, and their hopes.  The Internet has been giving them this choice as never before.

But then beyond that, and beyond the way in which social media reflects our freedom of expression, we have to go into how the information society of the 21st century provides citizens with full information to allow democratic participation at all levels in determining their own future.

Technology has become the biggest asset for those who seek to promote and protect freedom of expression around the world. The exciting thing about social media is that the new digital technology offers great possibilities for enhancing traditional media and combining them with new media.

The Internet has been made possible by advances in technology that have also transformed the traditional media. Traditional media, and especially radio and television, remain the sole form of access to the information society for much of the world’s population, including the very poor and the illiterate. The poorest, and the illiterate, have not yet been able to use social media and the internet. But even the rest of us rely on traditional media, we can’t wish them away. There is increasing convergence between television and the internet and soon we can try and see how we can marry modern technologies to actually make serious progress in the world.

Today, however, our focus is on social media. Look at the extraordinary transformation that is happening. Just a day after he was sworn in as our President, Pranab Mukherjee announced that he would be opening a Facebook account to receive and respond to the queries from the public. In fact, his fellow Bengali, Mamata Banerjee, has beaten him to it, with a popular and widely read website that the media mines daily for new stories about her views. Just three years ago, when there was a toll on social media, it was fashionable for Indian politicians to sneer at the use of social media. Today our own President made it clear that these are essential tools for clear, accountable and credible political leadership. The governments of the world or the big institutions of power have become more vulnerable today because of the fact that the new media technology has exposed them to the uncontrolled impact of instant news. And so the fact is that when we speak about the social media, we can’t get away from understanding the impact of new technology on the way the world is working.

Technology is such that everybody has a mobile phone in there pocket and you can do far more than when you could have first acquired a mobile phone. Now, you can take pictures, you can take videos, you can transmit them and go on the internet. Something like 5 billion people worldwide, including 84% of Americans, more than 70% of Chinese and at least 60% of Indians, today use mobile phones. You can all get your messages out more rapidly. The strength of this is that you can enable ordinary people to issue and disseminate even raw footage or compellingly authentic images before the mainstream media or the government can actually do so. So you can open up a social media space even not being a professional media person. 

“Bhrashtamev Jayate” The immoral relationships are always harmful for a house hold. Fight against internet censorship and website Ban for our own development !

If you haven't heard of Pinterest, you likely will soon.

Recently, Facebook acquired Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing platform with over 30 million users, for $1 billion. Palo Alto, CA-based Pinterest is one such company, which some believe has many potential suitors or a possible IPO in the waiting. If you haven't heard of Pinterest, you likely will soon.

Pinterest’s Financials :

There is one problem: The 16-person Palo Alto, Calif., start-up isn't sure how it is going to make money. Pinterest is a scrap-book like social networking site that lets users create pinboards around events and themes to share photos among their friends. Development on Pinterest began in 2008 through co-founders Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra. The Pinterest closed BETA was launched in March 2010 and post launch, the service amassed over 10,000 users within the first nine months. According to more recent data, the number of daily unique visitors to Pinterest grew from 2 million users in January to 4 million by March 2012. As of January 2012, the service had over 11 million users who can share their pinboards over other social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter.

"Pinterest's monetization strategy isn't in the oven and it's not even off the baking table," said Jeremy Levine, a board member of Pinterest and a venture capitalist at Bessemer Venture Partners. "We have one hundred ideas but no execution as of yet." {via WSJ article}

Mr. Silbermann co-founded Cold Brew Labs Inc. in 2008 and launched Pinterest, the company's only product, the following year. It has raised $37.5 million from Silicon Valley angel investors including Yelp Inc. Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman and top venture firms such as Bessemer and Andreessen Horowitz.

The closely held company wouldn't disclose financial figures, but isn't yet making much revenue and is unprofitable. Pinterest is currently valued at around $200 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

How traffic from Pinterest converts to revenues ?? 

Pinterest claims to be still searching for the right monetization model. For now, though, the company is generating revenues through successful implementation of an affiliate marketing model. Pinterest uses SkimLink services to identify if a photograph posted on the site can be linked to an affiliate program. Once a user clicks through the link and buys a product from the affiliated retailer’s site, Pinterest gets a share of the sale. While statistics are not available, analysts believe that Pinterest is driving plenty of traffic to retailers, especially the smaller ones.

PINTEREST: GOOGLE TAKES AN INTEREST(via Forbes)

Pinterest became the third most visited social network in the US in March 2012. Facebook is the leading player with seven billion total visits, followed at a distant second by Twitter’s 182 million visits. But, Pinterest is catching up with 104 million visits, already having surpassed Google+’s 61 million visits.

David Lawee of Google is taking a look at Pinterest. He says - ‘Pinterest is a phenomenon that’s extraordinary.’ Suggesting an acquisition price of around $2 bn, simply because Google can afford it and needs to make a move in the social space, but I still can’t get my head there.

Pinterest’s Video Move 

Recently, Pinterest extended its photo sharing capabilities by adding video sharing as well. The company enabled the addition of Vimeo videos on to its virtual pinboard. In 2011, Pinterest had introduced video sharing by letting users add YouTube videos on their boards. As a video service, Vimeo is preferred.

Google has been trying to grow within social networking through Google+ which will benefit from an efficient photo sharing tool. Instagram attracted a $1 billion valuation even when they did not have a revenue model in place. Considering that Pinterest has figured out a steady source of revenues through affiliate marketing, they should be able to command a respectable valuation.

//The contents of this blog has been able to put up data with a co-operation from Sramana Mitra and One Million by One Million//

Damaged Online Reputation Recovery

Now that is not what a real estate marketing company would like to recover being an Ostrich after reputation damage. Trying to stop a competitor from using trade dress similar to there trademarked theme brand these companies have got an up-close and unwelcome look at the dark side of the internet specially for the clients.

Blogger pals of their well-connected adversary, including one at a major industry website, blasts for being a bully and filing a frivolous lawsuit, often misrepresenting the circumstances. Some posts generated hundreds of angry responses, and anonymous callers began phoning office, leaving scathing messages. At the low point, one person even decided to inject some personal terror into their life by claiming their relatives had been in a serious car accident. Now to recover form such issues is a tough nut to crack. So here it goes this way :-

When misinformation and rumors circulate about your business, it can dominate your company's search engine results and potentially damage your business, says Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of Reputation.com, an online reputation management firm in Redwood City, Calif.

Such companies must advice his clients to grab as much of their "Google Real Estate" as possible. That means reserving the .com, .net and .org versions of URLs and claiming identities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and local review sites including Yelp, Google Places, Citysearch and Yahoo Local. You might also want to reserve URLs that pair the name of your business with pejoratives like "sucks,". Businesses can use such vehicles to distribute positive, search-engine-optimized information about their companies, which can push down negative information in search results. In such cases, Global Computer Technologies  also creates several new websites optimized with various descriptions of the company, with links back to the main site to further drive down negative results.

But some rumors keep bubbling back to the top always. Since 2005, members of the Social Network family have been battling a persistent falsehood of their image so as the companies with web based networking. The stick rule is that "The nature of our background makes it believable, but it never happened," company president Elwood Martin says. Global Computer Technologies always extend their hands to the benefits of their customers in all possible ways.

Browse: Home / Socialnomics / Optimizing Your Social Marketing Program – A Practical Way to Social Media Optimization (SMO) Optimizing Your Social Marketing Program – A Practical Way to Social Media Optimization (SMO)

http://about.me/rajdeep.ramsay

If you are serious about your social marketing program, you are likely focused on executing across a number of social platforms.  I am of the mind that ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is key to success – that is, if our ideas are right to begin with. This is why I always advise our clients to take a breather and check in on their progress in the social realm at least twice every year.  Social media platforms change at an unprecedented rate and programs and plan we put in place just a few months can quickly grow outdated.  To add to that, we are often biased by our choices, and sometimes are too close to our programs to know if we are doing the best we can.  This is why we create How to Objectively Audit Your Social Marketing Efforts on white paper. I hope you will use suggested objective methodology to assess your progress and identify new ways to optimize your social marketing efforts.

An objective audit of your social marketing program will help you answer these key questions:

• How well are we doing with social marketing?
• How do we compare to our competition?
• What can our social marketing teams do better?

Start with some objective analysis of your Social Reach along with an analysis of the likelihood that your products or brands are or will be discussed in the social realm in the future.  You will learn that Social Reach is the estimated number of potential and existing customers you can reach via your presence on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Your reach is an important first baseline – you are as big as the number of people you can reach and touch (for a deeper conversation on how to grow your Social Reach.

Proceed by analyzing the volume and types of digital conversations surrounding your category and products.  You will likely find that new entrants are vying for your customers’ and prospects’ attention.  Understand who they are, where they are investing and what they are talking about.  This will help you assess if you have sufficient resources and focus to participate and dominate these conversations.

Remember – keywords are the new digital currency.  Create a list of top strategic keywords you want to own and see how well you rank for them with the top search engines.  You have to be good at connecting with your prospects and customers – wherever they are, however they search for your solutions. The SEO , helps you better understand your rankings and keyword authority. I learnt that to succeed with search engines, you need to use landing pages – research shows that best-in-class companies across all sectors are using landing pages to get to the users who have a clear idea of what they need.

Equipped with this data, you can build your own Social Marketing Effectiveness Dashboard.  This dashboard becomes your benchmark against your peers and against your own progress.  Updating it at least twice a year will help you stay focused, nimble and relevant.  It will also help you identify untapped opportunities for traction and growth. To bring this objective assessment to life, we connected with our friends at Social Media networks, who kindly agreed to be our featured company example. It provides Web Content Management (WCM) software that helps businesses increase traffic, drive conversion and improve social interaction. Recently invested in a new marketing team, who will use the provided objective assessment as a baseline to measure their improvements and create a targeted approach to social media and SEO practices. Special thanks to our social marketing agency WEB VELOCITY who helped with the analysis for this paper.

If you would like to review other resources on the same subject, I recommend WEB VELOCITY. You will learn the difference between social media optimization (SMO) and engagement. I also recommend the Social Media Explorer .

Curious to hear from my peers. How do you keep your social marketing program focused? Do you run health checks of your social and SEO programs and how often?  What methods and tools do you use? Let’s continue the discussion on this blog, Twitter, Facebook http://about.me/rajdeep.ramsay and in our Google + https://plus.google.com/110074757401718973167/posts?hl=en Group.