This Week in Social Tech: Second Screen Apps Lack Luster, Vine Swinging to the Top of the App Store, and Twitter Tackles Trending Tunes

 

Gone are the days when pseudo-intellectual debates at the bar or coffee shop escalate to fisticuffs. Long before it comes to blows, we whip out our smart phones to confirm that Steve Buscemi was the guy in Fargo, or it is Ulysses Grant on the 50 dollar bill (assuming no one has one in their wallet – in my group of friends, we’d certainly need the assistance of Google mobile).  

It speaks to a culture of multi-media stimulus. We are plugged in. We watch, surf, post, tag, snap, scroll, click, check-in, look up and download, often simultaneously. And for a time, it looked as if watching would be accompanied by “Second Screen” apps designed to supplement specific watching experiences – looking up products, playing games to coincide with programming, “checking-in” for rewards. A recent study, however, found that use of these apps are uncommon. Much more frequently are second-screeners looking up actors they just know they’ve seen before on IMDB or Wikipedia, or posting apropos status updates about the latest-eliminated Idol on facebook or other social networks. This puts advertisers dependant on specific second screen apps like Quips, Zeebox, Viggle and others in an awkward spot. The use of independent, standard websites during viewing do nothing for added-value cache, which we will likely see encourage a revamp of the second screen apps to become more attractive to viewers.  Read more...

Social Media Giant unveils “Lookalike Audiences” feature

Born of the lavish catacombs of a Harvard dormitory at the dawn of social networking, gradually surpassing former royals like Friendster and Myspace (now archaic drifters, subsisting on social gaming and music), it has been a long road to prominence. Giving rise to so many offshoots, by-products and even bourgeoisie copycats (have you seen www.affluence.org??), there is still only one “original.”   

But facebook’s most significant cross to bear among social sites has been leading the way in effective monetization. Once Zuck et al decided to go public, studies revealed that simple facebook advertising met with lackluster results. This seemed counterintuitive – how could a site visited so frequently by so many yield such poor ROI? Especially one with “fan” pages for every product imaginable, which might have been a revolution in online consumerism had it not been for the even bigger disappointment born when “liking” a page did not connote increase in business. 

Then, like the hero of any great 80’s romantic comedy, they figured out that what they needed was right in front of them all along.  Read more...  

It’s hard to forget the cacophonous bleeps, fuzz and buzz of our modem logging onto AOL in our pre-teen years. An exciting, confusing time when popular use of the internet was dawning, but so frustrating was that noisy wait to discover whether or not we had mail. There are few things we could hate so much as a kid but actually be nostalgic for now. And while we don’t need a research study to tell us that the sound so ingrained in our memories of childhood is something the youth of today will never experience, it is interesting to find that not only do they no longer need modems, but at least one in four don’t even need a computer.  Read more…

Influence is a funny thing. One never can tell just who will sway them to try the latest shoe style, iphone case, or say, social media app. There is an easy answer of course: celebrities. Who doesn't want to rock the same styles as their favorite pop artist or movie star. But the time may be coming for celebrity influence, at least online, to yield to that of the very demographic they most historically affect - teens.

The latest in social media - Pheed (www.pheed.com) - is a powerhouse new app combining the best features of some of our favorites. Users can post videos like youtube, images like Instagram, text like Twitter. The app recently celebrated its three-month birthday in significant style - by becoming the App Store's number 1 downloaded social media app (and 16th most downloaded in all the App Store). Read more...

Merging our Media-Tech world to see it “through the eyes of our friends”

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was the last great book recommendation I got. This is a nostalgia shot, people, because that sentiment is a double-whammy two-for of things that just don’t happen anymore: paper-page book reading, and getting recommendations directly from another person. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a bard of progress, so of course this is not a sad story of the way things used to be, but a promising indicator of good things to come. I recommended the book to a friend who is a regular reviewer on GoodReads, an app popular among book-savvy social networkers, and voila – the modern form of recommendation (via social networking) abounds, and a great book reaches a wider audience.  Read more...