5 Social Media Stories For Your Business

There are too many happenings everyday in the social media space for any single business owner to keep up with. Today's web is fast, and very, very innovative. The production never slows down. New tools and integrations are launched seemingly every other minute.

While I'd encourage you to sift through the headlines and social media app directories on a regular basis, I've put together a few currently unfolding storylines with big implications for business owners.



1. Why the Google Buzz Firehose Will Benefit You

Google Buzz launched to a lot of hype, but that kind of died down to some extent after a while. The privacy-related issues that it launched with didn't help. However, Google Buzz has steadily been making more moves to become more relevant to the social media universe. It already has a solid user base, and we've likely only seen the service's infancy.

A couple months ago, Google launched the Buzz API, which was a big step in the right direction. This gave developers tools to build applications around Buzz, or integrate Buzz into their existing applications, hence making Buzz more useful. Just as Twitter became more useful when more apps were built for it, Buzz has similar potential.

That potential has now increased greatly, as Google has launched the firehose for the Buzz API. This means that all public information from Buzz users is accessible by developers for use with their apps, which opens the door for many more opportunities. See how some are already using it here.

From the business owner's perspective, simply think of Buzz as another group of potential customers, in addition to Facebook and Twitter users, which will probably be integrated into many of the same apps that are already utilizing these other groups. So any promotional benefits you are seeing from said apps should increase with the addition of Buzz data, not to mention the fact that this and other factors will likely lead to the growth of Buzz itself. That brings me to the next point.


2. Google Me

For weeks, Google has been rumored to be working on a new big social network to rival Facebook. The company of course does not comment on rumors, but has not denied the concept. Details are scarce, but "Google Me" as it's commonly being referred to, will likely utilize existing Google profile pages, which are tied to Google Buzz. As I discussed in a recent article, Google is making all YouTube users connect their accounts to a Google account, which could mean that all of these Google account holders become part of Google's massive social network by default.

Without knowing Google's exact plans, it's hard to say exactly what benefits will become available that aren't already there, but you can bet that the implications will be big, and it might make all of Google's social properties more beneficial to businesses. YouTube is one of the most popular sites in the world. Add that to everyone else with a Google account.



3. Virtual Goods Increase Purchase Intent

Virtual goods are becoming more popular within social networks, and businesses are already finding ways to utilize them to not only increase brand awareness and influence positive opinions about their products, but drive purchase intent.

In fact, new study from Appssavvy found that they can do all of these things, while increasing all brand metrics. More about this here.

 4. Customers Are Checking In, and This Will Become Searchable

Another hot trend in social media is checking in. You know, all of these geo-location services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Booyah, etc. More and more of them will continue to pop up, and let's not forget the really big names. Google has Google latitude, Twitter has Twitter Places, and Facebook will be launching something location-based one of these days soon.

Foursquare is already in talks with all of the major search engines. We don't know exactly will come of this, but it seems clear that search engines are interested in indexing this kind of data, and why wouldn't they be? Imagine if you as, as a business, could search for all of the people sharing their location in your area. That could be pretty powerful.


5. Social Media Hasn't Plateaued.

During the world cup, Twitter was breaking records for tweets. While this is related to a large-scale event, it just shows that a massive amount of people still care about Twitter, and that isn't changing anytime soon.

It was only earlier this year that Facebook announced it had surpassed 400 million users. The company is widely expected to announce that it's reached 500 million this week. I probably don't have to tell you that between these numbers, Facebook faced a huge amount of criticism in the media over privacy issues, with a lot of people talking about deleting their accounts. Facebook just kept on growing. That's not going to change anytime soon either. Facebook is becoming integrated into the very fiber of the web more and more each day (through social plug-ins, apps, etc.). There are more access points all the time (see Microsoft's new Outlook integration). It's getting harder to ignore if you're not already a user.

If that wasn't good enough news for businesses placing their fatih in social media, more consumers are actively using Facebook and Twitter to engage with brands. They're making email marketing campaigns (an already effective marketing channel) more effective. sorce: www.webpronews.com

Google Apps Goes To India

A country that's known for its fast-developing tech industry - and for its enormous population - should soon have improved access to Google Apps. Google and Tata Communications announced a deal today that involves both Google Apps and India (for starters).

A Tata Communications representative explained in an email to WebProNews, "Tata Communications is partnering with Google to deliver the Google Apps portfolio of web-based office productivity applications to businesses in India."

That sounds promising. Google won't exactly have to overcome a lack of awareness, since the spokesperson cited Springboard Research's 2009 finding that 95 percent of Asian organizations are familiar with SaaS and Saas-based apps. India is supposed to be the fastest-growing market for SaaS in the Asia-Pacific region, as well.source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Then here's another benefit of the arrangement: the representative wrote, "Tata Communications will eventually extend this partnership into other emerging markets around the world," perhaps including parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

And a major selling point of Google Apps is of course that it's supposed to represent a low-cost alternative to traditional IT solutions, making it more appealing in markets where money is an especially important factor.

Unfortunately, Google and Tata Communications didn't provide any sort of timeframe for the expansion, or disclose the details of the current partnership.

Bing Takes Users to Mars

Microsoft has added Mars imagery to Bing Maps and to its WorldWide Telescope project. The imagery comes straight from NASA itself.

"Microsoft Research and NASA are providing an entirely new experience to users of the WorldWide Telescope, which will allow visitors to interact with and explore our solar system like never before," says Bing's Chris Pendleton. "Viewers can now take exclusive interactive tours of the Red Planet, hear directly from NASA scientists, and view and explore the most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available."



"The beauty of this is that the Bing WorldWide Telescope Map App has been updated with the new imagery, as well," adds Pendleton. "This means users of Bing Maps can immediately enjoy the new imagery of the Red Planet from within their browser via our Silverlight site."

The Worldwide Telescope Mars experience can be downloaded here. On the Bing Maps Silverlight site, users can simply click the "Map Apps" button, select "WorldWide Telescope", and select "Mars" from the Collections list.

More Businesses Using Social Media To Gain Customers

More than one-third (35%) of U.S. businesses have had success using social media to attract new business, according to a new survey from Regus.

The U.S. lags slightly behind the global average, with 40 percent of businesses globally having successfully used social media for business development.

Globally, social networks are still used for their original purposes. The most popular use of social networks is staying in touch with business contacts, with 58 percent of respondents globally indicating they use networks in this way. Joining special interest groups is also popular (54 percent).

Although a number of skeptics (34 percent) believe social networking will never become a significant method of connecting to customers and prospects, 51 percent of companies globally organize, connect to or manage customer groups via social networks. Fifty four percent of firms use social networks to find useful business information. Only 22 percent of respondents had found new employment through social networking, in spite of the specific job search functions of networks such as LinkedIn.

In the U.S. specifically 28 percent of businesses have set aside a proportion of marketing budget for social networking activities. Fifty four percent of respondents used social networking to keep in touch with contacts, slightly lower than the global average. Notably, 44 percent of U.S. companies use social networking to join special interest groups, well below the global average of 54 percent. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Google Sets Forum-Like Goals For Wave

Google Wave may soon make some significant strides towards winning over people who don't see the need for a new form of communication. This week, Google semi-officially endorsed an open source project that would see Wave imitate several aspects of traditional online forums.

David Crane, the founder of Debatewise, is the developer behind the push, and he was asked to write about it on the Google Wave Developer Blog. Crane argued, "A forum could be a killer app for Wave. It's a tool that people already use in huge numbers for specific purposes, are used to keeping separate to their email, and will dip in and out of as required."

Crane then continued, "Wave is similar enough for them to jump in quickly and different enough for them to get, and be hooked by, the benefits. . . . Wave could enhance and improve upon some of the most important features of a forum and through acclimatisation, will encourage them to use it for a world of other purposes."

So Crane - and/or Google - is looking for developers to help realize three goals. First, he'd like to see a way of grouping waves around subject matters. The second objective is to encourage participation using things like karma levels and trophies. Finally, he's interested in implementing trust mechanisms to distinguish between helpful and useless individuals.

It should be interesting to see how this project progresses. Google Wave still doesn't seem to have found an audience in its original form, so perhaps Google will lend Crane some additional support in order to speed up the process.

Google Sets Date Of Second Quarter Financial Report

Any of Google's investors who feel that the company has some explaining to do need only wait another nine days. Google's announced that it will report its second quarter financial results on Wednesday, July 15th.

Things could get ugly for a couple of reasons. As the graph below shows, Google's stock hasn't done at all well since March 31st, which is the last day covered by its previous report. And in fact, the graph would look even worse if we'd messied it with lines representing Microsoft and Yahoo, because their stocks lost just 20.60 percent and 14.88 percent, respectively, in the same period.


Then it's necessary to consider that Google's relationship with China appears to be deteriorating (again), jeopardizing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue.

On the bright side, Google's maintained its dominance in the search market, and Android continues to make inroads against the iPhone. Google TV and Google Music have people excited and don't appear to be far off, either.

Also, to be quite simplistic about this, Google just has a habit of presenting impressive numbers during its earnings reports, regardless of how bad things look.

Anyway, if you're interested in learning about the financial results in real time, Google's conference call is supposed to occur at 4:30 PM New York time (so as not to mess with the stock market) and will be accessible here.