A recent contributor on at Forbes.com predicts that 2012 will be the year Social Media really becomes mainstream and that companies like Facebook are headed towards becoming blue chip companies.
Citing recent offers such as Linked in (NYSE:LNKD) and Pandora (NYSE:P) as examples of social companies that hit the public market, he suggests that Facebook will provide an offering in the new year. Other companies to provide large public offerings include Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) and Gilt Groupe and Groupon (Nasdaq:GRPN).
The average user spends two hours a day on the internet at large, and nearly 50 minutes of that is spent on Facebook.
Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) is in the midst of a huge media campaign pushing the benefits of Google+. Additionally they have been enhancing the product. I’ve never seen Google resort to advertising it’s products before – so this is a shift.
These sorts of products that are aimed towards enhanced social interactions are perfect for mobile devices and smartphones, which is the main reason we are discussing it here on Mobile Site Army. Google’s operating system is used on the Android devices. An estimated 3.7 million Android devices were activated over the Christmas holiday weekend. Another 700,000 devices a day are activated a swell. It isn’t hard to make the leap that Google has penetrated the mobile smartphone industry and that other programs such as Google+ will be adopted quickly with this kind of exposure.
Twitter has been behind Facebook, but the Forbes contributor puts forth that it will ramp up it’s brand and advertising-centric offerings in 2012. We’ll see. They’ve been pretty tight over there, even changing the profile links from follow to no-follow. But, if they want to regain mobile market share, or market share at all, Twitter will have to find a way to compete with Facebook, Linked in and others for business.
You see the article in its entirely here: (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2011/12/29/social-where-the-money-will-flow-in-2012/)
Many so-called marketing guru’s have predicted for several years running that the following year would be the “year of video,” each year being wrong. For certain this year will not be as a good 1/3 to 3/4 of internet users are on smartphones or other mobile devices and many video formats and sites simply do not work. Flash is also not widely available on mobile phones or devices yet. This makes a good amount of content unavailable to browsers. Perhaps once smartphones catch up or videos become more mobile-centric we will finally have our “year for video.”
Last year saw things amp up for a big push for social being huge. Not only did advertising take off on Facebook and tons of folks spend time on the site daily, but other mobile programs like Foursquared, QR codes, and the like are helping to keep people on their phones and making mobile hotter than the internet alone. The fact that Facebook is in your pocket doesn’t hurt Facebook either or other app developers.
Email is slower to catch on for businesses in terms of being optimized for smart phones. Most businesses who employ email have yet to consider that most of that mail is being read on smartphones and links are being clicked from cell phones. They are still sending mobile readers to sites that either can’t be read at all, videos that can’t be viewed at all, or are greatly not optimized for cell phones.
We suggest to all our clients that offer a mobile optimized version of their website to their readers. This is easily done with a WordPress installation (http://wordpress.org/download/) if you know what you are doing. Mobile Site Army offers this as a service for our customers with a custom, personalized mobile site design. If we can help you in any of your mobile needs, please feel free to contact us.
We also offer services to help you manage your email campaigns, content, video and social marketing. If you want to know more about how you can get more customers and engage them better on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or other social sites, our staff will be happy to speak with you. When you find a group of people who are interested in hearing about the solution your provide them through your products and services, it’s helpful to have a friend who knows best how to speak their language. We can help.
Also, if you haven’t gotten our FREE Going Mobile report, be sure and download that right away.