Firstly with this post on November 11 and then this update on December 11.

There was one really notable thing about the numbers that Facebook’s own advertising platform produced.

Within a month, Facebook told me that the number of 18-24 years olds in Sydney had fallen by 830k.

Such a massive drop that it didn’t sound right. Surely, enough people would have heard anecdotally about a shift like that.

So I checked in again today and the numbers suggest another step down.

Here are the numbers for that specific segment again:

• November 11: 1,979,840
• December 11: 1,149,060
• December 18: 1,059,700

Down by an additional 89,360 in a week!!

I have consistently included ‘cities within 80kms’.

Could this suggest that Facebook’s user profile is ageing and fewer 18 years old are signing up to the service or growing into it?  Would that explain these numbers, I don’t think so.

Looks like a trend – could it be?

Here are the numbers today for the m/f 18-24 age groups in following cities:

• Adelaide: 250,000
• Melbourne: 915,160
• Perth: 379,420
• Brisbane: 507,400

The notable thing is that the sixth segment (the youngest group that I looked at) has declined significantly.

Nov 11: Australia – age 18 to 64 male and female = 9,290,380
Dec 11: 9,290,380 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 18-24 male = 2,048,140
Dec 11: 2,048,140 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 18-24 female = 2,096,240
Dec 11: 2,096,240 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 25-45 male = 3,091,620
Dec 11: 3,091,620 Flat

Nov 11: Australia – age 24-45 female = 3,560,300
Dec 11: 3,563,300 Up by 3,000

Nov 11: Sydney – age 18-24 = 1,979,840
Dec 11: 1,149,060 Down by circa 800k

Either I mucked up my search the first time around or something weird is happening.  Facebook couldn’t lose 800,000 Sydney users in one month could it?

Facebook does include the caveat that numbers are estimations only but still it seems strange that four out of six numbers are exactly the same.  Obviously the social network can’t grow exponentially for ever. How would Facebook handle the PR around a user exodus do you think… that would be an interesting comms challenge?

Back in one month.

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/is-facebook-flat-lining-in-australia-or-even-worse-losing-users/feed/ 0 http://justanother24hours.com/politics/kevin-rudd-to-return-really/ http://justanother24hours.com/politics/kevin-rudd-to-return-really/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:45:45 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=1410

There has been much speculation in the Australian media about the possible return of Kevin Rudd MP as the leader of the Australian Labor Party, currently the Federal Government.

He was deposed by his deputy in a ‘bloody coup’ (only metaphorically speaking) last year.

The media has had a field day with the Rudd to Return speculation, which is odd as I simply can’t see it happening.

During his tenure as PM and leader of the party, Rudd was exposed as a very poor leader, he was shown to be controlling and unable to negotiate or compromise.  It was widely accepted that he was obsessed with style over substance, manipulative towards the media, travelled too much, enjoyed pointless talk fests and presided over poorly managed public sector programs.

Crucially, he was also very unpopular with everyday Australians.

For these reasons his return would be a kamikaze move by the Labour Party and simply won’t happen.

Yet we’re subject to the endless speculation by the media and the opposition (and possibly fuelled by Rudd), which undermines the Government and detracts from the very very important issues of the day.

There are only two possible explanations – either they think we’re stupid or they actually believe this stuff, which makes them stupid.

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/politics/kevin-rudd-to-return-really/feed/ 1 http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/old-dog-new-dog/ http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/old-dog-new-dog/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:27:10 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=1333

I'm sad. I'm sad you're sad.

A recent research project by Edelman and Brandtology identified Twitter as the top channel for technology brand mentions in Australia.  The Whirlpool and Overclockers forums ranked in second and third place respectively.  I believe that these findings are reflective of a mature social media environment for technology brands in Australia.

Google, Apple and Microsoft ranked as the most talked about technology brands in the study which uncovered more than 154,000 mentions of 60 major technology brands across 581 influential online channels between April and June 2010.

The survey found that 27 of the 60 technology brands researched did not have a local presence on Twitter.  This represents an ‘opportunity for brands to…become smarter about communicating through this channel,’ according to Edelman.

But is Twitter the right channel for all technology brands?  I don’t think so.

Take the enterprise tech sector as an example (the study covered: ‘Internet and Software, Consumer Electronics, Mobile and Telecommunications, Business and Consulting and IT and Technology brands).  This  sector of the IT industry is characterised by complex technology and business issues that aren’t well suited to the  open Twitter platform limited as it is to 140 character updates.

Enterprise tech brands tend to be most interested in reaching senior decision makers within medium to large organisations – individuals that are less likely to be spending time on Twitter.  These brands need to demonstrate authoritative positions on commercially sensitive and strategic issues.  Twitter just isn’t designed or suitable as a platform for this sort of discussion or engagement.

With these facts in mind, I would be inclined to recommend that enterprise tech brands seek to establish online communities where customers can engage with experts and product specialists but also – importantly – share ideas and experiences with other customers.   I would look to the social media platforms where these targets are already active, the most obvious one being Linkedin.

It’s important that organisations monitor conversations about their brands across all forms of social media, including Twitter, but the most ‘active’ channels aren’t necesarily the best places to actually engage your target audience in a meaningful way.

There are a number of factors that would lead you to expect that brands operating in Australia would be investing heavily in social video content and leveraging the large user communities in the top sites, such as YouTube.

These factors are:

1. The simple fact that Australians are demonstrating a huge appetite for online video.  Close to a billion, yes a billion, videos were consumed by Australians in the month of January 2010. A billion in one month, or 33.3 million per day, or 23,148 per minute.
2. Video and mobile. 42% of online Australians use a smartphone, according to Nielsen.  Everything is going mobile, therefore brands need to provide content that works well on mobile devices.  The answer is video.
3. Because the average online Australian spends more than 6.52  hours per month in social media (Nielsen).
4. Video content is three times more clickable than text – this is an anecdotal fact that I hear quoted regularly. I don’t have a source for it, I’m afraid.
5. YouTube is emerging as one of the leading search engines.
6. The media landscape is shrinking, presenting fewer opportunities for brands to engage with their target audience.  Therefore, brands have to seize the initiative and begin creating their own branded content.  That content could take many forms; educational and how to guides; infotainment; news; opinion; video based campaigns and so on.

The fact is that 65 per cent of the brands that we studied did not have an official brand presence in the top social video sharing sites. That figure is a little disappointing but not tragic – the bad news is that more than (just over) 50 per cent of the corporate channels were inactive, which we generously defined as having not been updated for more than 2 months.

Now, this inactive issue is one we have encountered before.  It points to the issue of brands engaging without the necesary resources or strategy or integration in place.  We’re not saying this stuff is easy but I strongly feel that no presence is preferable than an inactive / dormant account.

Here is the full presentation and a link to the press release on our local website:

One of the challenges when conducting this research is identifying a credible list of companies that can act as the sample for the research.  In this case, we used the Nielsen Top Advertisers Report for 2009.  We worked with Nielsen to make sure that they were comfortable with our methodology for the study.  It’s important to stress that the study does not assume any direct link between media spend and social media strategy or between advertising content and social media.

It’s possible that the methodology caused us to miss video content that is being produced by these brands because it is served via their own corporate website, or a third party channel provider (such as Viocorp) or Facebook.  That could be the case but it still represents a missed opportunity.  If you’re creating video content then you may as well make it available via the most popular online video service, even if your primary video channel is hosted elsewhere.

The research is far less rigourous and detailed than anything that Nielsen would do (for obvious reasons) .  Having said that, we do feel that the research produced some interesting findings.  It can act as a benchmark for brands in Australia that want to assess their social media engagement and presence against industry as a whole.

We’ve worked on quite a few of these now.  It follows our study into the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) by twenty top Australian brands and an evaluation of online newsrooms.  For both of these studies we drew the sample companies from the Interbrands Best Brands report.

Take for example, the Telstra Social Review program, a competition whereby Australians with a social media presences could ‘compete’ (in loose terms) for the chance to be one of 25 social reviewers.  The final 25 were each given a HTC handset and asked to review it for 2 weeks.

There is nothing new about this initiative in some respects – it is essentially a blogger relations program – but the public nature of the Telstra ‘experiment’ represents a very different approach.  Good blogger relations practitioners will insist on full disclosure but its rare for an organisation to PR this kind of program in the way that Telstra did.

As a result, Telstra has telegraphed its respect for blogging (as well as other forms of social media) and I believe that other Australian corporations will sit up and take notice.

I believe that ‘commercial confidence’ in blogging is a requirement for blogging if it is to acheive genuine mainstream acceptance.  This ‘commerial confidence’ could take many forms including advertising and sponsorship investment, collaboration, access, insights or simply advocacy.

The blogging community is challenged however by a fundamental lack of transparency.

Readership data underpins the traditional media sector, it provides the business justification for advertising spend and PR programs. In a section of the media where the glossy finish of the product (or lack of it ) bares little or no relationship to its reach and influence, its essential that proprietors become more open about their traffic and engagement scores.

Commercial (business) decisions are based on an assessment of risk over opportunity.  The blogging community in Australia needs to help its potential partners understand the opportunity.

That might sound like a scary proposition for a young blog with low traffic scores today.  But remember this.  At some point, consumption of print media will be a small proportion of what is consumed online.  Transparency can help you build trusted relationships with potential commerical supporters today, for the future.

What do you think?  Do you agree?  If not, why not?

Is it wrong to assume that all blogs have a commercial imperative?

Should bloggers be open and transparent about their number of readers, time spent, uniques?

If so, what data should they share?

1. With meaningful follow through, crowdsourcing can deliver a specific business outcomes and audience engagement
2. Allow the community to determine success, ensure that you profile contributors and make it fun
3. Crowdsourcing not recommended as a first foray into social media

Telstra were on the bill today.  David Quilty, Managing Director, Group Communications at Telstra shared details of a Telstra crowdsourcing initiative called T [ideas], an internally focussed initiative designed to gather feedback from employees and partners.  Partners and employees can submit ideas to the company, which are then voted on by the community and ultimately implemented by Telstra.  Quilty provided examples of ideas that had been implemented including a contact centre customer callback service and new applications.   

This conjures up some amusing / disturbing images of breakfast at the hotel with patrons munching away and imbibing (via straws) at various stages in their recovery with a multitude of bits and pieces bandaged, stitched and stretched.

The over 55s: A sizeable and wealthy segment of the Australian population with an increasing penchant for all things Internet.

I am not planning on cosmetic surgery.

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/australian-medi-hotel-to-offer-cosmetic-procedures-and-rr/feed/ 0 http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/google-sidewiki-causes-a-pr-headache/ http://justanother24hours.com/social-media/google-sidewiki-causes-a-pr-headache/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:59:51 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=978 Julian Lee at the Sydney Morning Herald interviewed me a week or so ago for a story on Google Sidewiki and the implications for PR advisers and businesses, more generally. The story also ran in the The Age, the Melbourne daily.

Julian posed the question: Is Google Sidewiki a threat or an opportunity? I think that it is both and made the point that active participation in conversation via Sidewiki provided another PR opportunity for organisations to communicate with their customers.

I also suggested that businesses develop a policy for Sidewiki and that they publish this so that customers know what to expect when using this form of feedback. Brian Giesen makes a great suggestion when he says that companies should ‘claim’ their Sidewiki by making the first comment (if possible).

A quick scan of major corporate websites highlights the fact that Sidewiki is yet to take off in a big way. Potential commenters need the latest version of the Google Toolbar and they also need to be aware of the service. The digerati set will be well aware of this but I am not convinced that Joe Bloggs has this on their radar. There is more activity around social media related news sites and social networks, check out Facebook as an example of a active Sidewiki.

Google Sidewiki is an extension of an existing service from Google; which is the ability to place comments on search results.  This didn’t take off or hasn’t taken off as yet (it continues to be available – check out the speech bubble icon below organic search results in Google).

Radian6 announced last week that it now offers the ability to monitor Sidewiki, an important development for businesses that need now to be aware of conversation in a wide range of digital tools.

I think Sidewiki represents a major PR opportunity for small businesses, who may not necessarily want to invest in discussion boards, recommendation and feedback mechanisms for their websites but are provided a free infrastructure for exactly that via Google Sidewiki.

Sidewiki causes a PR headache

ALREADY struggling with the mountain of blogs, forums and social networks, public relations consultants are weighing up whether a new Google tool that enables consumers to leave comments next to a brand’s website is a threat or a challenge.

Google Sidewiki gives a new and very transparent avenue for disgruntled customers to air their grievances against companies.

Travel websites already carry customer reviews of hotels and resorts.

Google says it is all about ”facilitating the conversation on the internet” between general users and experts but the PR industry is watching closely to see if Sidewiki will become as popular and as powerful a tool for opinionated internet users as Twitter and Facebook.

Gabriel McDowell, the managing director of Res Publica, said companies that failed to understand Sidewiki risked damage to their image and reputation. ”This is going to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to managing corporate reputation,” Mr McDowell said.

Although Sidewiki presented ”yet another channel for them [corporations] to manage”, Daniel Young, the digital director of Burson-Marsteller, said it could be a useful tool. ”If one person has a complaint and you respond to it then, in a way you are answering others before the question has even been asked,” he says.

Brian Giesen, who heads the digital consultancy in the Asia-Pacific for Ogilvy PR, says Sidewiki could prove to be a handy way to spot potentially hot issues and the pressure groups pushing them.

”It just reinforces the need for brands to listen to such media. This is also a useful way for companies to find out who are the people who are making the comments and then to reach out to them,” said Mr Giesen, who recommends companies race to be the first to make a Sidewiki comment on a page, a privilege Google extends to website owners.

Mr McDowell said Sidewiki could also provide an avenue of redress by corporations that felt they misrepresented in the mainstream media. For example, a public relations consultant could post the entire statement given to a journalist, rather than the truncated version that might appear in an article. ”One of the major complaints about the media is the time it takes to get a correction up. This could go some way to rectifying that.”

But there are concerns that because Sidewiki is ”completely unregulated and uncontrollable”, as Mr Young put it, it will be harder for companies to sort out the legitimate complaints from the serial sledgers. Deciding on whether to answer was going to be key, he said.

Mr Giesen said Google ”needs to take greater responsibility for the comments that appear on Sidewiki”.

A spokeswoman for Google Australia said it had not received any concerns from Australian publishers. ”Website owners and publishers here and abroad have told us that they see this as another way to connect with their users, similar to conversations they’re already having on their blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.”