The growth of smart phones – from a consumer perspective, the iPhone in particular but also Blackberries – has really driven mobile apps into the limelight at a faster rate than almost any technology out there recently.

Over the last couple of years, and especially the last few months, we’ve seen mobile applications vault more and more into the mainstream. We’re at the point now where many people don’t think twice about downloading the latest Facebook, Google Maps or gaming application to use on their mobile device – any more than they would about downloading something to their desktop.

Mobile apps even appearing for business functions now (beyond regular email) – email campaign service Constant Contact launched an iPhone app yesterday to let people check in on their email campaigns, for example.

(Caveat: Of course, many people aren’t there yet. I know plenty of people whose phones don’t even have bluetooth, let alone data plans)

So, if mobile apps are becoming a current “big thing,” what’s next?

My take: local.

Keeping it local

While as sites like Yelp have leveraged user reviews at a local level, the best mobile apps over the next couple of years will pair GPS, cell tower or manually-set location information with contextual content.

Consider FourSquare. I started playing around with FourSquare fairly recently. Essentially, it’s a social network that lets you tell your contacts where you are right now. There are a bunch of other game-playing features wrapped around it, but it’s basically a location-based social network.

Think for a minute about the potential simple extensions to a network like this:

• Know when your friends are in the same neighbourhood as you
• Receive special offers from businesses in the area (check in at a subway station and get a $10-off coupon for a nearby restaurant, for example)
• Ensure ads are targeted to only come from businesses in the neighbourhoods you frequent, or even the kinds of places you visit

Take that kind of thinking and consider the optional extensions to your favourite apps. I might like to know which nearby restaurants my Facebook friends have eaten at. I might want to be notified about breaking news from near my location, whereas I might have to proactively check a news app to get other news.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to every application. I won’t go as far as Kate Imbach and suggest that you care what your neighbours are eating, but there are plenty of extremely interesting applications even for recipe-based sites (perhaps showing you which stores in your area stock the ingredients you need).

Stop and think for a moment – could your company or your clients be working location-based applications into their marketing mix?

What do you think?

(Additional: I’m on the look-out for good books on mobile marketing, especially those considering topics like this. If you know of any, let me know in the comments!)

Earlier this week, Gartner released its latest Hype Cycle report showing the state of various technology trends.

Some of the trends on the rise at various stages of the cycle include augmented reality, Internet TV, Web 2.0 and corporate blogging.

One noticeable point, however: microblogging is about to cross into the trough of disillusionment. Of course, the dominant player in this field is Twitter.

Twitter is social media’s golden child right now. Recently, Twitter has sat at what Gartner calls the “peak of inflated expectations”:

“…a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations”

It’s hard to argue that Twitter hasn’t been over-hyped recently. We’re about to see that change. The next phase is characterised as:

“Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.”

What does thais mean from a communicator’s perspective? Here are five potential effects of Twitter’s transition into the trough of disillusionment:

• Less breathless media coverage: corporate Twitter use won’t be enough to generate media coverage
• Less snake oil: the field will thin as the opportunistic snake-oil salesmen move on to the next shiny tool
• Maturing use by companies: smart communicators already know that Twitter isn’t a social media strategy unto itself. Twitter will become less of a focus of campaigns and more of an integrated tactic. In more cases we’ll see companies decide that this isn’t the right tactic for them
• Maturing expectations of users: we’ve seen the growth of somewhat unrealistic expectations in terms of response levels and times by organizations. This should lessen, making issues management more… manageable
• Increased focus on measurement: as Twitter moves into the trough, it will become all the more important to measure effectively and for communicators to tie Twitter use to business results and metrics

Make sense to you? What do you think?

Earlier this year Brian Solis commented on the trend of people moving from participation on blogs to engagement through micromedia tools like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and so on. The next day he posted a piece on TechCrunch:

With the popularity and pervasiveness of microblogging (a.k.a. micromedia) and activity streams and timelines, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and the like are competing for your attention and building a community around the statusphere – the state of publishing, reading, responding to, and sharing micro-sized updates.

He’s right. More and more people, especially in social media circles, seem to be shifting their conversations away from long-form blog content and towards tools like Twitter. They still read blogs, but more and more conversations happen in the cloud, not on destination sites. That’s why tools like BackType Connect are so helpful.

Until recently these tools have been populated largely by early-adopting, progressive types who are open to new ways of doing things. However, that’s evolving. Unlike some, I welcome the mainstream adoption. However, in the last six months we’ve seen a shift towards people applying the same old tactics (the ones that have led many people to loathe public relations and marketers) to these new tools.

As micromedia platforms grow in popularity, their ease of use and the ease with which they can be “gamed” has led to people playing the “follower” game, racking-up huge numbers of followers over a very short period of time. Sometimes it’s done through fame and personality (Oprah and Kutcher, anyone?); other times, often by black-hat marketers, through a more insidious tactic of rapid follower-gaining.

One common thread with many of these new people, whether celebrities or otherwise, is their use of these two-way tools as a one-way broadcast mechanism. These tools, whether they’re blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn or any other popular application, are just numbers games to these people, letting them shout ever louder and leading some smart people to wonder whether social media is losing the “social” part.

Forget the “statusphere.” We’re entering an egosystem where the masses judge value by the size of someone’s following and the volume of their voice, not the value of what they say. It’s a path back towards the mass media model – the one-way broadcast model that drove people to these new tools in the first place. It’s a dangerous path, and one that’s difficult to avoid as those with the loudest voices are the ones calling to entrench it.

Is this a ubiquitous trend? No. Some people develop followings through the value of their content. They’re at the peak of the pyramid, though, and as with any such peak they are but a few.

Fortunately, you have the power to control your own experiences in social media. So, if the egosystem turns you off as much as it does for me, you can avoid it. How?

• Stop equating follower numbers, friends, etc with authority. Smart people, like Seth Godin, long ago started to shift away from looking at how many listen to you. Start thinking about who listens.
• Consider two-way interaction as a major criteria when deciding who to listen to.
• Offer advice to newbies who you see going astray. Some may adjust their approach. For those who don’t listen:
  • Unfriend those from whom you derive no value. Life’s too short to waste your time with them.
• Set an example. Use Twitter the way you would like others to.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you noticed this trend? Does it concern you?

CNW Group and Leger Marketing today announced the results of new research into social media use in Canada (disclosure: CNW Group is a client).

The research provides a useful insight into social media trends along with some of the challenges that social media faces, but also sheds an interesting light on the differing perspectives between practitioners and regular social media users.

The top-level results are available online now. The full results will be released in a webinar on April 29 (register through the site).

Some key findings:

• 49 per cent of social media users use social media at least once per day
• 31 per cent of users agree that social media is more credible than advertising
• 61 per cent are researching products to purchase
• 36 per cent depend on social media to help them with purchase decisions
• 40 per cent are “talking” to or learning from specific organizations
• About one-quarter of users feel better about an organization that is engaged in social media
• 89 per cent of users say they use social media the same or more than they did last year.

Once you dig down into these top-level facts, though, it gets more interesting.

User/Practitioner Gap

Social media is highly influenced by practitioners. For example, 19 per cent of social media users say their opinions are influenced by social media outlets, while 53 per cent of practitioners said the same – a significant difference. Similar, though smaller, differences show through in responses to other questions.

The implication of this is that practitioners often think that other people find social media to be more credible than they do in reality. 

There’s a gap between social media practitioners’ perceptions and those of users. However, given the time that social media has been around, the proportion that are influenced by social media is a good start.

Measurement is uncommon

Practitioners are generally only using broad objectives – there is a lot of room for improvement.

As well, few practitioners using social media tools are measuring what they do, and even fewer are going beyond looking at traffic. Interestingly, few managers are asking for this at this point. You can differentiate yourself by proactively digging deeper.

Room for improvement

While practitioners have a higher awareness of social media and its uses, they still think they, and organizations could use it better.

• Few practitioners have a dedicated budget for social media
• Few are monitoring social media (which astonishes me – I see it as a foundational piece for social media engagement)
• Few practitioners are using social media for community building – most use it for marketing (although the lines blur in my eyes

Interesting stuff.

Which points stand out for you?

I recently received an excellent comment on my recent post Blogging vs. Twitter: A Different Kind of Commitment from Doc Kane (@dockane on Twitter), principal of Chicago-based Roscommon – a marketing, communications and PR professional writing services agency. Thoughtful and insightful, I thought it really drove the discussion forward.

His view: the difference between blogging and Twitter isn’t commitment, it’s effort.

With Doc’s permission, I’m re-publishing his comment here, as a post, for your input. What do you think?

I think there are a few simple reasons why we’re seeing businesses jump into Twitter much more readily than they have blogging, and in my opinion, those reasons are mainly related to the effort required to create a blog; a lack of management’s awareness about how to create and maintain one; and the simplicity and effectiveness of Twitter as a communications tool.  Unlike many other forms of new technology, one does not need to be a tech whiz to get up and running on Twitter – and this is a huge advantage over blogging.

Blogs are a lot of work.  To really pull it off consistently one has to have a strategy, enough content to write consistently AND the desire to even do it. But before even starting with a blog, blogging itself needs to first be recognized as valuable by upper management (which I think is still not even close to being a reality), controllable by middle management (in terms of helping/guiding the company blogger) and executable by staff willing/able to do it. And this, I think is where everything stalls. . .before it ever even gets started. . .

In my opinion, the perceived TIME it takes to create a blog isn’t a factor…it’s the EFFORT.

A blog requires major planning and concept development on the part of the writer. So the immediate perception of blogging then, isn’t. . “Ugh, this is going to be time-consuming” (ALL work is time-consuming). . .it’s “Ugh, this is going to take a lot of EFFORT”.  And effort here, is the key. This is particularly true of course, when the assignment to create a blog falls on an employee who could really care less about what they’re writing about.  Trying to be passionate about a company or product that’s not your own, or that you’re not completely in love with, is not easy for any salaried writer/marketer/comms person.  Where you see the difference is with blogs written by consultants and business owners.  The reason is because they have a passion for, and a vested interest in, getting the word out.  They have to blog even if it takes a lot of effort! The salaried writer hardly shares that same spirit or necessity.

So essentially, it becomes a big pain in the butt for everyone involved, making it easier to just shelve the idea until it becomes “necessary”. . .or something comes along that’s simpler:  like Twitter.

When people ask me to explain to them what Twitter is, I tell them it’s like “public texting.”  They get it right away. Okay, so now imagine you’re a manager, and you tell your colleague you want them to hang out on Twitter for a while and text people.  Do you think they’ll be more open to that than all the work that comes with creating a blog post?  You bet. One can sit down and rattle off Tweets to different people machine-gun style, one after another, without much thought. . .or at least until they really get strapped for characters, or are trying paste a link, etc. Not so with a blog:  think, write, edit, give to boss, re-edit, post in CMS, catch typo, re-edit, etc.

Then factor in the time to train, and the software and IT costs, and you’re looking a behemoth of a project just to have an employee create what many still think is a series of ego pieces.  Blogging’s early function as public diaries for quirky personalities still haunts the platform to this day. CEOs don’t dig public diaries.  Especially when they’re public companies.

So, in my opinion. . .it’s the hassle-factor and a lack of knowledge, not the time-factor that keeps the blogging at bay.  Video/Podcasting?  Good luck.  Ask someone to upload a video to any video sharing service and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts!

Isn’t that something IT does?????

Talking with Michael O’Connor Clarke the other day, we both commented on a trend we’ve both observed recently:

Corporations seem to be much more willing to sign-up for Twitter than they are to set up blogs.

We’re seeing companies big and small signing up for Twitter; from Ford, General Motors, Southwest Airlines and Dell to smaller companies like Natura Mattresses and Freshbooks (check out this list of organizations on Twitter).

This isn’t always intuitive. While some companies see the inherent value and potential in communicating directly with their customers, many others are are afraid of it. It’s unpredictable, it’s often not on the topics that you want to talk about and, well, it’s something new for many organizations. So, something must be making the difference.

Of course, we have to remember that social media as a genre of tools is much more advanced, high-profile and, to an extent, accepted than it was a few years ago when blogging first broke. However, that hasn’t helped podcasting become mainstream news the way that Twitter has over the last few months.

Is something else making the difference?

Commitment

Is Twitter less of a time commitment than blogging?

As with so many things, it depends.

If you, or your organization, uses Twitter extensively, it may not be less of a time commitment than blogging. However, it certainly is a different type of commitment.

Writing a blog post takes a solid block of time – you need to set aside anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours for the process, depending on the kind of post you’re writing. Many of my posts here take upwards of 90 minutes to pull together. That can turn blogging into a big black hole for your time.

Twitter is a different kind of commitment. Each post takes just little time. That can give Twitter the appearance of requiring much less of a commitment than writing a “traditional” blog.

In reality that’s not necessarily the case. Many people post multiple times per day. What’s more, as a company representative on Twitter, you need to put a little more thought into what you write. That can make it just as time consuming over the course of a day as blogging. 

Still, is the perception that Twitter takes less of a time commitment leading to companies engaging more readily through it?

What’s your take?

A new survey released today shows that Canadian business leaders plan to invest more in social media in 2009, while increasing numbers of Canadians see social media tools as important for learning about products, services, organizations and brands.

Increased social media spend planned by marketers

The second annual Social Media Barometer survey, conducted by Pollara and com.motion, shows that 82 per cent of the Canadian business and marketing leaders who responded plan to spend as much or more on social media in 2009 compared to this year. That’s up from 51 per cent in the 2007 survey. Also, more than three quarters indicated that senior management supports greater investment in social media.

Interestingly, the only other communications discipline that showed a net increase in planned spending in 2009 was public relations, while banner, newspaper, radio, TV and magazine advertising show over a quarter of respondents plan to decrease spending in those disciplines.

This may be due, in some small part, to the other significant trend revealed by the survey…

Social media seen as more credible

The survey also gives some interesting insights into Canadian respondents’ use of social media.

While Facebook unsurprisingly rears its head as the top social network for Canadians (with 87 per cent of social media users having tried it), the survey showed that 13 per cent of social media users have tried Twitter.

One result that is surprising, though, is that the same proportion of respondents (65 per cent) rated social media tools as important for learning about products, services, organizations and brands as rated them important for developing relationships. Interestingly, in 2007 more people viewed social media as important for products than for relationships (59 per cent compared to 52 per cent).

Methodology concerns

With all that said, I need to offer a caveat around the methodology used for the survey.

This survey – on social media – was conducted online, which is akin to asking Democrats how they voted. It’s hardly surprising that people who responded to an online survey indicated they think online tools are important.

I would love to see this addressed in future surveys – as things stand the credibility and applicability of the results is reduced by the methodology. While the trends revealed here are useful, and the survey offers a useful insight into the views of online consumers, as it stands the results aren’t really translatable to Canadian consumers as a whole.

What do you think about the trends highlighted by the survey?

(Disclosure: com.motion and its parent company Veritas Communciations are competitors of my employer Thornley Fallis. Thanks to Keith McArthur for the information on the survey)

While looking over the new Vancouver Sun website recently (congratulations again on the redesign to Kirk Lapointe and his team), a blog post by Pamela Fayerman on the Sun’s Medicine Matters blog caught my eye.

Fayerman’s post, entitled Health and medical blogs; what interests you?, offers a couple of interesting thoughts on the changing nature of journalism:

We know that print stories are just a stop along the information highway for readers, not their final destination. Tom Rosenstiel, an author and director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says reporters are like hunters/gatherers of information. Our role, on the digital side, is to do the aggregation work so that readers can use links where they can go to learn more.

Meanwhile, on my way home from work yesterday, I listened to the latest Media Bullseye Radio podcast with Ike Pigott. The panel featured a lively discussion about the role, nature and future of mainstream media and how it will influence social media (and vice versa) as different media channels converge.

There’s an interesting trend in these two pieces – they both talk about the different media coming together:

• Fayerman’s piece mentions media as aggregators (a role frequently played by bloggers)
• The Custom Scoop team talked about convergence between the different forms of media.

Over the last couple of years I’ve observed lots of discussions about the way that conversations are fragmenting. I’ve bemoaned this trend with social media tools as they take up ever-increasing amounts of time just to stay involved with the diverse channels.

I found it interesting that on one day I came across two mentions, on both sides of the old/new media divide, that mentioned a similar trend.

What do you think? Are channels fragmenting or converging?

Update: Ike offered a useful summary of his key points around convergence in the comments:

• “Print, radio and television news outlets aren’t really all that different when you look at their web components.
• The fear among all forms of media about “scooping yourself on your own website” is gone. Getting news on your site first does indeed count as “getting it on the record.”
• The typical silos that media relations people used to consider are gone. If you’ve got some relevant b-roll for your event or news release, you stand a better chance of getting it on the newspaper’s website than you do of the TV stations pulling from it.
• Eventually, those outlets that are still competitive now will continue with web as the primary means of distribution, but with legacy branding from when they were primarily pulp or broadcast.”

Forrester recently released an updated set of data for their very useful technographics profile tool.

What’s a technographics profile?

Forrester’s tool divides consumers into six groups along a “technographics ladder.”

The tool is based on consumers’ social behaviours and on techniques detailed in Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li’s book Groundswell (which I have not yet read, but plan to shortly).

The six groups are:

What’s the news here?

As Bernoff put it in a post on the new technographics data yesterday:

“…the big news in 2008 is that, not unexpectedly, social technology participation has grown rapidly.”

Critically, the proportion of people who are “inactive” is down from 44 per cent to 25 per cent. Just a quarter of US online adults are not engaged in social media in any way. Almost seventy per cent of online Americans now at least read, listen or watch some form of social media.

Enter the Canadians

Interestingly to those of us north of the border, Canadians are now featured, for the first time, in Forrester’s tool. Canadians are generally thought of as web-savvy, with high connectivity (according to the federal government, 73% of all Canadians use the Internet now) and high engagement (Canada is known as a leader in terms of Facebook use, for example).

So, how does Canada measure up against other countries in this new data? You may be surprised – this data is pretty controversial.

Let’s look at the groups one by one.

Creators are the people churning out the content – bloggers; podcasters; artists.

Surprisingly, according to Forrester’s data Canada is far from a leader in the creator category. Just 13 per cent of Canada’s online adults fall into this category, compared to 21 per cent in the US, 40 per cent in China and a whopping 51 per cent in South Korea.

While ‘critics’ don’t necessarily contribute their own content, they do contribute their thoughts and opinions on other peoples’ content. They’re the blog commenters, the podcast callers-in, the wiki editors.

Canada is actually at the bottom of the pile of critics according to this new data. Only Germany is close to being as low.

Canada fares a little better in terms of collectors – the people who, while they may not contribute directly, actively save, bookmark, tag, vote and otherwise store/arrange online content. Canadians are middle-of-the-road here according to Forrester.

With Canada’s reputation in the social networking arena (especially with Facebook), you would expect that there would be a lot of joiners here. For the first time so far, this is the case. Canada ranks third in this category, behind only South Korea and Australia.

Canadians are once again near the bottom of the pack in terms of people who passively consume online media. Only Germany ranks lower in this data.

You probably know what to expect by this point: online Canadian consumers sit close to the head of the pack in terms of consumers who are inactive in social media.

Notes of caution

Three things here set-off my “don’t jump to conclusions” alarm:

1. The survey looks only at online consumers;
2. We don’t know the methodology;
3. This flies in the face of other research out there.

Online consumers only

From what I can tell, this data only looks at the breakdown of online consumers. It does not, I believe, consider those people who are not online.

While this makes sense as we’re looking at peoples’ behaviours online, it does not consider the proportion of the total population that these consumers make up. Canada is highly connected, while others may have a much lower percentage of their population online.

For this reason, Canada may be short-changed somewhat in this analysis if you look at the broader populations of each country.

We don’t know the methodology

To be more accurate, I don’t have the $995 needed to buy the complete Forrester report detailing the methodology for this study. That’s not Forrester’s problem – it’s mine – but it sows the seed of doubt in my mind over the methodology behind the study and whether it is consistent with that used in the other countries listed.

What about the other research?

As Ed Lee and Sean Moffitt (among others, I’m sure) have pointed out, there’s a host of other pieces of research out there that suggest Canadians are far more engaged in social media than this data indicates.

Back in June, in fact, Ed highlighted comScore research showing that more than 84 per cent of Canadians are active on social networks and that 89 per cent of Canadians watched online video. These numbers seem a bit extreme on the other side to me, but it goes to show that there are lots of different data sets out there.

These three factors may go some way to explaining the difference between the picture of Canadians painted by this data (below) and what I expected to see.

Furthermore, this is raw data that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Personally, I’m taking this new data with a pinch of salt until I have more information.

What’s your take on this?

(Image credit for the first two images: Josh Bernoff. All remaining charts created by me, based on Forrester data.)

Sapient, a business consulting and interactive services firm, recently released the results of a US-wide survey that asked corporate Chief Marketing Officers what they wanted from their advertising and marketing agencies over the next year.

Here are the top ten results:

1. Greater knowledge of the digital space.
2. More use of "pull interactions."
3. Leverage virtual communities.
4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending.
5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing.
6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy.
7. Agencies that understand consumer behaviour.
8. Demonstrate strategic thinking.
9. Branding and creative capabilities.
10. Ability to measure success.

Want to read up on a few of these themes?

Check out these posts:

• Greater knowledge of the digital space: Five Tools To Base Your Online Life Around
• Demonstrate strategic thinking: Strategic Communications Planning – A Free eBook; Think: Strategy
• Agency executives using the technology they are recommending: Social media authorship is mandatory for credibility as an advisor (from ProPR.ca)
• Web 2.0 and social media savvy: Why I Worry About "Social Media Strategy"
• Ability to measure success: Why Measurement Is Important; Stop Using Views To Measure YouTube Success

Corporate marketers and communicators: does this list match what you’re looking for? What’s missing from the list for you?

(Hat tip to Michael Seaton for drawing my attention to this release).