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Via Techcrunch

ComScore has just released data from its Video Metrix service, showing that 170 million Internet users in the United States watched online video content in February for an average of 13.6 hours per viewer.

According to the audience measurement giant, the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5 billion viewing sessions during the course of last month.

Google Sites (read: YouTube) again ranked as the top online video content property in February, with an impressive 141.1 million unique viewers.

Microsoft notably surged from the seventh to the second place in the ranking with 48.8 million viewers. It was followed by Yahoo and Facebook, who both logged 46.7 million viewers. VEVO ranked fifth with a decent 45.9 million viewers.

Hulu only came in ninth with 27.3 million viewers in February, but according to comScore did generate the highest number of video ad impressions (more than 1.1 billion).

Looking at the top online video content properties last month, Google attracted as many viewers as the three challengers that make up the rest of the top 4 of the ranking, combined.

According to comScore, Google Sites also boasted the highest number of viewing sessions with 1.8 billion, and average time spent per viewer at 262 minutes (or 4.4 hours).

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Digital Clarity, a specialist digital marketing agency whch recently polled over 1300 people under 25 from a cross section of the UK has reported that UK Under 25′s not only media stacking with 80 per cent using a second screen to communicate with friends when watching television – 72 per cent Twitter, Facebook or mobile applications to actively comment on shows as they are watching them and they are significantly swapping remote controls for iPhones as the ‘Social TV’ trend takes over.
The ‘Social TV’ trend is proving hugely popular with young people as it allows them to instantly comment on their favourite shows to friends in different locations via the web or mobile phone.

As appmarket.tv previously reported, a joint Nielsen and Yahoo US study late last year found that the trend is already well established with over 86 per cent of mobile internet users choosing to communicate with each other in real-time during broadcasts. Now ‘second screening’ or ‘media stacking’, as it is referred to in the States has become common place in the UK too.

Rather than social networks and television competing for attention it seems that young people are happy to embrace both and use one to enhance their enjoyment of the other.

The UK study found that 34 per cent described the trend as ‘fun’, 32 per cent said it made television ‘more interesting’ with 42 per cent mentioning the ‘community’ aspect of ‘Social TV’.

One survey respondent, Ashleigh Foulser, 18 a student in Bournemouth said:

“I love being able to keep in touch with my mates while I’m at college. They are in different towns to me but it’s like having them round to watch TV. We share a lot of jokes and if I comment on something funny or stupid I get replies almost immediately.”

The survey discovered that the most common way to communicate is to use Twitter (72 per cent ) Facebook was next popular (56 per cent ) and mobile applications (34 per cent ). 62 per cent of Social TV users like a combination of all three.

Certain shows such as X-Factor, Skins, Glee, as well as soaps Coronation Street and Eastenders are particularly popular in the UK generating very high Twitter traffic and Facebook messages as they are broadcast.

Reggie James, founder of Digital Clarity explains:

“Up until 12 months ago, TV was struggling to reach the younger market as more and more channels were becoming available. Social TV has changed this completely by turning programmes into online events where you have to watch them as they happen”.

The significance of ‘Social TV’ is not lost on the television networks who have found themselves with whole new marketplace and a different pitch for advertisers.

Last month, a US HBO channel reran the Howard Stern film ‘Private Parts’. Stern was watching simultaneously and started add a live commentary to the action resulting in sky high ratings far higher than could have been forecast breathing new life into a 14 year old movie.

“The audience have already taken their seats and are ready to join the conversation”, concludes James, “it’s now up to the TV companies to tap into this huge and lucrative market.”

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David A. Yovanno is the CEO of Gigya, Inc., a leading social optimization platform for online business. He can be found on Twitter at @daveyovanno or e-mail dave(at)gigya(dot)com.

Now that most social networks are supporting functionality on third party sites — via Facebook Connect, Sign in with Twitter, Yahoo! Open Strategy, MySpaceID, and other similar technologies — entertainment companies are experimenting with a variety of approaches.

While movie promotions on Facebook, top sports moments on YouTube, and MySpace music pages remain key fixtures, many entertainment companies are also now actively focused on how to apply social strategies to their own sites to deepen relationships with fans and become more relevant. Here are four ways on-site social features are benefiting both fans and the entertainment industry today.

1. Making TV Participatory

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TV has historically been a “lean back” form of entertainment -– just sit back on your couch and let your eyes and ears take it in. Reality TV shows like American Idol broke new ground by making TV participatory -– fans can take action and influence the outcomes — and social technologies are now helping to make TV a “lean forward” experience.

In the most recent season of Dancing with the Stars, ABC made the voting process social. Fans could sign-in to abc.com with a Facebook or Twitter account to cast a vote for their favorite couple, and then donate their status to help support that pair. For example: “Vote to keep Louie Vito and Chelsea Hightower dancing on ABC!”

In the realm of real-time engagement, another example comes from MTV, which enabled live chat for previously aired episodes of the popular show 16 and Pregnant on MTV.com, where viewers could discuss the often controversial content with other fans.

Benefit for fans: Viewers are empowered to not only vote, but get out the vote among friends. Voting with a Facebook or Twitter identity makes voting a personal, rather than anonymous, experience. For 16 and Pregnant, teens have a live forum for sharing thoughts and experiences.

Benefit for TV networks: Fans are highly engaged with the show online, and the shows gain significant exposure on social networks from donated status updates. Traffic is generated back to the show online and off. Offering users a choice of networks for participation appears to boost engagement. For example, data from Gigya shows that for a single episode of 16 and Pregnant, tens of thousands of messages were sent by chat users to their social networks with the following distribution: 40% to Yahoo, 29% MySpace, 24% Facebook, and 7% Twitter.

2. Bringing Live Sporting Events to Life Online

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In the real world, sports fans experience events together, whether live at the stadium, with buddies at a sports bar, or with family in front of a new 50” LCD TV. Recognizing this, sports media are trying to make online viewership a bit more like the real world.

A slew of sports media added live social chat to their event webcasts this year, enabling fans to participate online alongside the event using their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Yahoo identity. TNT used it for the NBA Eastern Conference finals and NASCAR Race Buddy series, CBS for its College Football series, NBA.com forongoing games, and the PGA for the summer tour events including the PGA Championship. Fan messages about the game were syndicated to the social networks as news items in the feed. Even Roddy White of the Atlanta Falcons has gotten into the act on his own website.

Benefit for fans: Live social media integration provides an opportunity to chat about stats, players, and highlights, and to virtually high-five other fans or friends –- almost as if they were watching together in person.

Benefit for sports media: Fans participating with real identities adds authenticity to the socializing. Interactivity means fans are highly engaged, generating more page views, and messages shared to the social networks drive more traffic back to the online event, creating a virtuous cycle.

3. Giving Music Lovers an Outlet for Self-Expression

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MySpace proved years ago the power of grass roots social efforts to take an artist from obscurity to household name, with Sara Bareilles one of the poster children for resisting the traditional label model. Now music companies large and small are putting social channels to work, and taking a number of new approaches in the last year.

MuchMusic, a music channel on Canadian cable TV, incorporated celebrity tweets and live chat into theirMuchMusic awards, bringing fans “backstage” to a behind the scenes interview room. Similarly, MTV incorporated live social chat into its webcast of the “Hope for Haiti” telethon with the aim of further engaging viewers for a special cause.

Reverbnation, a music marketing platform that helps individual artists manage promotion, fan relationships, and other aspects of the business, built a feature enabling fans to register on the site using their social network identity, then build and share their favorite playlists into the feed on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Rather than help the artists build a presence on the social networks and send fans away, Reverbnation has integrated their own site directly with those key platforms to make themselves a one stop shop for the social music ecosystem.

Benefit for fans: Social integration creates an outlet for communicating with other fans, and sharing passion for artists and music –- whether in the form of a comment or their own playlist creation.

Benefit for music sites and artists: Integration provides greater exposure for artists and tracks as well as increased page views for the site.

4. Driving Word-of-Mouth for Movies

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Word of mouth is everything in the movie industry. Buzz puts fans in seats, and is the benchmark by which the industry gauges traction for marketing efforts. It’s no surprise that studios are experimenting more with social media far beyond basic trailer promotion.

The movie Paranormal Activity broke new ground by using grass roots efforts and word-of-mouth to build buzz and gain a wider distribution for the film. They also took advantage of social media promotion, enabling fans to invite their friends from social networks to join them at the same time that they purchased movie tickets.

Twentieth-Century Fox, together with MTV, got fans directly involved to promote Avatar. They put on a first-ever live interview with James Cameron and the Avatar cast, answering questions from fans, who in turn shared their reactions in a real-time chat via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Yahoo.

Benefit for fans: Movie goers receive greater access to their favorite films and celebrities.

Benefit for movie studios: The campaigns generate new and widespread buzz before and during the theatrical release.

Conclusion

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When fans connect to a company using a social network identity, they are establishing the basis for a longer-term relationship. The data shared by these connections will allow companies to better segment and serve their fans.

For example, in addition to awareness-generating efforts for individual films, a movie studio could gain greater insight into the specific demographics of those that are responding early to a release and adjust efforts accordingly. They could also more easily continue the dialog by remarketing to users around sequels or films in the same genre.

Whichever path entertainment companies choose, integrating social technologies on their own sites to deepen relationships with fans is a blockbuster opportunity.

Via Mashable

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Social networking has risen among all age groups in the past few years, particularly among teens and younger adults. 73% of online teens used social networking sites in 2009, compared to 47% of online adults. Breaking down online adults into older and younger demographics, 72% of adults 18-29 use social networking sites, compared to 40% of their counterparts 30 and older, according to research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Social networking adults in all age brackets favor Facebook by a wide margin, with older adults preferring it slightly more. Seventy-three percent of all adults 18 and older who use social networking sites have a Facebook account. Broken down by age demographic, this includes 71% of adults 18-29 and 75% of adults 30 and older.

In contrast, 48% of all adult social network site users have a MySpace account. The younger generation is much more apt to use MySpace, with 66% of social networking adults 18-29 having a MySpace account, but only 36% of the 30 and older bracket. Usage rates for the professional networking site LinkedIn are the reverse of MySpace. 14% of all adult social networking site users have a LinkedIn account, which breaks down to 7% of adults 18-29 and 19% of adults 30 and older.

Younger Adults More Apt to Tweet
Tiwtter and other status-updating sites are more popular with younger adults than older adults. 37% of online adults 18-29 use Twitter or another status-updating site, compared to 9% of 50- to 64-year-olds and only 4% of online adults 65 and older. The overall Twitter/status-updating site usage rate among all adults is 19%.

Older Adults Blog More
Blogging is becoming more popular with older adults and less popular with younger adults. While blogging among adults as a whole has remained steady, the prevalence of blogging within specific age groups has changed dramatically in recent years. Specifically, a sharp decline in blogging by young adults has been tempered by a corresponding increase in blogging among older adults.

* In December 2007, 24% of online 18-29-year-olds reported blogging, compared with 7% of those ages 30 and older.

* By 2009, just 15% of internet users ages 18-29 maintained a blog, a nine-percentage-point drop in two years. However, 11% of internet users ages 30 and older maintained a personal blog.

Almost Everyone Under 30 is Online
74% of all adults 18 and older go online. This percentage climbs to 93% for both 12-to-17-year olds and 18-to-29-year-olds. Even among adults 65 and older, the least likely age demographic to use the internet, 38% of the population is online.

Other Findings

* 81% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are wireless internet users. By comparison, 63% of 30-49-year-olds and 34% of those ages 50 and older access the internet wirelessly.

* Roughly half of 18-29 year-olds have accessed the internet wirelessly on a laptop (55%) or on a cell phone (55%), and about one quarter of 18-29 year-olds (28%) have accessed the internet wirelessly on another device such as an e-book reader or gaming device.

* 75% of teens, 93% of adults ages 18-29, and 58% of 12-year-olds now have a cell phone.

* 8% of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter. This makes Twitter far less common than sending or receiving text messages — as 66% of teens do — or going online for news and political information, done by 62% of online teens.
Global Time Spent Social Networking Rises

In December 2008, global consumers spent an average of three hours, three minutes and 54 seconds on social networking sites. That amount of time increased to five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds one year later. In addition, unique audience increased 27%, from 242 million in December 2008 to 307.4 million in December 2009. Facebook dramatically increased its dominance of the US online social networking market between December 2008 and December 2009. In December 2009, Facebook recorded about 110 million unique visitors, a 100% increase from 55 million unique visitors in December 2008. MySpace, which remained the second-most popular US online social network, saw its number of unique visitors drop about 17%, from roughly 60 million in December 2008 to roughly 50 million in December 2009. While Twitter only recorded 18.1 million unique visitors in December 2009, this represented 579% growth from 2.7 million unique visitors a year earlier.

via Kenradio.com

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A growing number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide are taking online social networking to the streets. The U.K. leads Europe in mobile social networking on a percentage basis — with the U.S. boasting comparable numbers. In the U.K., approximately 810,000 mobile subscribers, or 1.7% of all mobile subscribers in the country, visited social networking websites on their mobile phones in the first quarter of 2008. That reach percentage was twice as high as it was in other major European markets?though similar to the U.S., where 1.6% of all mobile subscribers (4.1 million in all) accessed social networks via their phones in December 2007.

In the U.S., MySpace.com, the leading social networking site among PC users is also the most popular mobile Internet social networking site. The site logged 2.8 million unique mobile users in December 2007. Also in December, Facebook, which has the second largest audience among social networking sites, had 1.8 million unique mobile users. In contrast, Facebook led mobile social networking sites in the U.K. with 557,000 unique mobile users per month in Q1 2008, while MySpace followed with 211,000 unique mobile users. While Facebook and MySpace.com were also among the top social networking sites in other European countries during the first quarter of 2008, MSN’s Windows Live Spaces led in Italy (154,000 unique mobile users per month) and France (106,000), and ranked second in Germany (45,000) behind MySpace, which boasted 52,000 unique mobile users per month. Social networking is already a global phenomenon, and going mobile is the next big thing. In the U.K and the U.S. already see millions of users of MySpace.com, Facebook and other social networks interacting with their virtual spaces while they’re on the go. Consumer demand for mobile social networking may be a significant driver of mobile service pricing models as evidenced by Vodafone UK’s recent move to offer unlimited Internet access as a standard feature of its new monthly mobile price plans.

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Bob Bickel, founder of Ringside Networks,  has written an article digging into the behind the scenes struggles between Google and Facebook over  Google’s Friend Connect service.  Facebook has been willing to share with other network’s integrated applications but told Google to talk to the hand.  Social Networking sites have yet to achieve the revenue levels that they so desperately need to maintain their services in the long run.  Which path is correct? open sharing or isolationism?

By Bob Bickel

Facebook came out swinging yesterday to defend their users and their turf. http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=111. They have basically shut down Google’s use of their API to collect user profile and social graph information on the new Friend Connect service. Here’s my take on the background and what is going on…

Google has made a nice business out of an open Internet. Facebook carved out a nice little corner of the Internet with a social network that does not give Google the type of visibility they would like into that little corner. In addition, that little corner looks like it might be kind of valuable. Google makes a few moves like buying Orkut and amassing all the other social networking vendors and creating Open Social. Those things are OK, but not really opening up that corner that Google now has become to covet.

Well, the world of social network walled gardens kind of exploded last week. MySpace, Facebook and Google all seemed to rush announcements to market without full thought, without proper collaboration and certainly a bit hastily.
Here’s the issue. Google’s Friend Connect has the potential of recreating the whole Facebook profile base and social graph. Two big problems. First, the terms of service that Facebook has defined and that Facebook users trust may in fact be broken. The Facebook API (the one Ringside uses) is meant for applications or individual websites to make use of the data as long as a user allows it. It puts things under user control. It is manageable by Facebook because they can turn off applications of websites that do not conform to the terms of service. The risk of opening up to Friend Connect is that rogue applications and websites might be able to access the Facebook profile and social graph information. This is obviously a legitimate concern and Facebook is in fact protecting their users.

The second problem is obviously Google’s ability to replicate what Facebook (and their users) have built. If that happens, where is the value for Facebook? Facebook has built this valuable asset. On the other hand, the users own their own profiles and individual social connections. Hmmm. Tough problem. And the real reason I say that all these announcements feel rushed to market…

From a Ringside perspective, we see the right path is a federated social graph that is under the direction of users. Let users make their own walls – and the big social networks will be there to protect their users, but enable them to open up when and how they want.

Bob Bickel

Founder, Ringside Networks

http://bobbickel.blogspot.com/

bob.bickel@ringsidenetworks.com

609-410-5056

Bob is one of the co-founders of Ringside Networks and sits on the Board. He helps with setting company strategy, sharing the vision of the future of social networking with others and getting market feedback to help set the proper direction for the company. He was an important part of the technology and business strategy and implementation at Bluestone Software and JBoss. Bob has helped advise a number of small technology companies and currently sits on the Boards of Hyperic and Metaverse. Bob also is a volunteer high school cross country and track coach at Moorestown High School, and co-owns the Moorestown Running Company. He maintains a blog at http://bobbickel.blogspot.com.

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