Jennings Social Media Marketing Reviews Mobile Apps’ Usage: 50% of Mobile Consumers’ Prime Time Overlaps With TV
Posted by: Eric Johnson
As the popularity of smart phones continues to rise, it was only a matter of time before the mobile screen began to catch up to the big screen in terms of usage. A new study conducted by a mobile analytics firm, Flurry, points out that approximately 50 percent of mobile consumers are utilizing mobile apps during TV’s prime time.
Flurry also reports that mobile applications currently reach more than 20 million U.S. consumers per hour and the number of active iOS and Android devices in the U.S. is estimated at 110 million. These numbers reflect a significant impact to prime time viewing habits.
For TV broadcasters, prime time is 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. In radio, programming and advertising are all about morning “drive time.” On the Web, the popularity of social networks like Facebook, instant messaging like Skype and video-on-demand services like Hulu are pushing up usage in the evening.
So what time of day do mobile apps find their biggest audience? A new study by the mobile analytics firm Flurry shows the audience for iPhone and iOS apps rises steadily during the day and peaks at about 9 p.m. That’s when half the U.S. app audience is using apps. “Mobile consumers are using apps either instead of, or along-side prime-time television and the Internet,” stated a Flurry blog post on the study.
The finding contributes to a growing body of research suggesting that two-screen viewing is becoming increasingly common while people are watching TV. The relative size of the TV audience during prime time was larger than that for mobile apps, at more than 60%. But app usage remained higher than TV from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and higher than the Internet almost all day. The Internet’s reach peaked at 7 p.m., when 40% of the audience for that medium was on the Web.
Twitter Looks To Buy TweetDeck for $50 Million
Posted By: Micah Pratt, Social Networking R&D
Twitter has recently been in talks to buy TweetDeck, a third-party client of Twitter that allows users to connect with contacts across a variety of social networking sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. According to an article by Chris Taylor on mashable.com, Twitter does not know the exact number of TweetDeck users, but believes it includes the most obsessive power users in social media.
Twitter In Talks To Buy TweetDeck [REPORT]
Twitter is in talks to purchase TweetDeck Inc. for $50 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
TweetDeck is one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, available in desktop, iPad, iPhone and Android versions. It displays your Twitter news feed, @mentions and direct messages, along with your Facebook feeds — all on the same screen, all updating in real time. TweetDeck can also support updates from MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare.
The 15-person company, based in the U.K., has never revealed how many users TweetDeck has. The number may be small — but it is also likely to include the most obsessive power users in social media.
Jennings Social Media Reviews Video Interview: Guy Kawasaki Talks With Mashable at SXSW
Posted By: Jamie Sutera, VP of R&D
I would like to share this video regarding well-known author, venture capitalist and former Apple luminary Guy Kawasaki.
At SXSW 2011, Guy Kawasaki sits down for an interview with Mashable’s Christina Warren. In the wide-ranging discussion, he talks about his new book,Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, and points out useful tools he’s discovered at SXSW this year. Along the way, he talks about his two different stints working with Apple, musing about what might have happened if he had stayed with the company (http://on.mash.to/eILzqG).
Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010
Posted by: Micah Pratt
What do you use your smart phone for most? Is it to find the nearest bakery, or get directions to the airport, or is it to check the latest scores of the Royals vs. Angeles game while at work? Whatever it is you use your phone for the fact is life is made a lot easier with it. Here is an article from mashable.com about the top five mobile commerce trends in 2010.
Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010
The mobile trends series is supported by Samsung. Read more about the Samsung Galaxy here.
Considering that most people would rather lose their wallet than misplace their cell phone, it’s fitting that the mobile world is quickly becoming a new hub for business. For many of us, our cell phone never leaves our side. It holds a place at the dinner table, is easily accessible in your bag’s front pocket, and often, somehow it even manages to end up sharing your pillow at night. Busy schedules mean people are often on the move and when marketers and companies can’t reach consumers at their computers, on TV, before the previews at the movies, with billboards, or magazine and newspaper ads, they must feel assured that they can still reach them on their cell phones.
Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is simply the ability to conduct business transactions through a mobile device. With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, never before has it been so easy to shop, anywhere, anytime from the palm of your hand. There is an enormous amount of ongoing market research, and though there has been a variety of numbers estimated and reported, they all conclude that mobile commerce is a profitable and rapidly growing market.
By 2015, it’s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend about $119 billion on goods and services bought via their mobile phones, according to a study by ABI Research released this past February. In the United States alone, mobile shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009, and mobile campaign spending also increased by 25 to 30% over the past year, with companies shelling out just under $313 million according to the same study. Senior Analyst Mark Beccue, said that he’s forecasting U.S. sales to reach about $2.2 billion in 2010.
Here are five mobile commerce trends to keep an eye on for the remainder of 2010.
1. Bargain Hunting
It would seem that mobile purchasing often lends itself to an impulse buy. Maybe you just have to suddenly download that song from the iTunes Store or really want to make sure you have tickets to that hot concert. In this case, it’s the savvy shopper that has taken note of mobile commerce. Beccue said that in the fourth quarter of 2009, he started to notice something unexpected and a bit “weird.”
Bargain hunting has become extremely popular with apps like RedLaser that allow users to scan product bar codes and discover it’s various prices at different retailers. Shoppers are melding the two worlds of online/mobile shopping with actual physical shopping to make sure they get the best prices.
Mobile Advertising with Smart Phones a Success
Posted by: Micah Pratt
Smart phones are becoming more and more popular and advertisers have begun using them as a tool to reach large audience with the use of applications. Here is an article from mashable.com about how people are welcoming advertising with smart phone applications.
Consumers Embrace Mobile Advertising
Advertisements on mobile devices are both welcome and effective, a recent study from mobile audience media company JiWire revealed.
This is especially true of advertisements that appear in apps. Of the roughly 1,000 smartphone users surveyed, 52% claim they have acted on an advertisement in an app and 18% have made a purchase directly from an ad in an app in the last month.
In addition, 53% said they were willing to share their location to receive more relevant advertising and a full 76% said they would prefer to download a free, advertising-supported app instead of paying an upfront fee for the same app.
This is great news for social gaming apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable users to unlock special deals from advertisers based on their locations. It’s also great news for Apple, whose mobile app advertising platform, iAds, will debut this summer with the iPhone 4.0 OS.
10 WordPress Plugins to Help Build Community
By: Valerie Jennings
The following article by Jessica Faye Carter highlights 10 WordPress Plugins that can help you build a stronger “community” for your own blog.
10 WordPress Plugins to Help Build Community
By: Jessica Faye Carter
The expression of community has changed considerably since the emergence of social media technologies, but its basic foundation — the notion of individuals exchanging information, ideas, and opinions — remains firmly intact. Today, one of the most widely-used tools in developing these types of exchanges online is WordPress, the popular blogging and publishing platform. Part of its appeal is the ease with which users can build advanced functionality into their sites with plugins. If you’re interested in building a community around your site, there are plenty of third-party add-ons that can help create one.
These 10 WordPress plugins add features that will help you to engage your user base. (Read more)
Manage Your Advertising is one of 10 WordPress plug-ins available.
Valerie Jennings 
Cassie Stubs
Katie Stumpf
