I like Zappos, because they are good at social networking, online and offline. I like Amazon too, because they provide the easiest way of shopping online.

I wrote about Zappos’ social marketing activities earlier. To me, they are the one company who gets social media!

• Zappos’ Facebook page and Twitter are well integrated
• They fully leveraged all types of media (pictures and videos)
• Their employee engagement is very high: it’s a place naturally to be social - it’s personal!

People can comment on Amazon’s acquisition from different perspectives. To me, I wonder how Zappos’ social gene can be passed and emerged into Amazon. I’m not sure if that is a benefit from business value part, but I do see it would help to shape the culture and the company’s social value.

Tags: amazon, Facebook, social media, Social network service, Twitter, Zappos

ComScore recently did a research, which found that among 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Russia has the world’s most engaged social networking audience, with the average online Russian spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per month.

Brazil ranked close behind Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The US ranked at #9  in terms of social network engagement, with an average of 4.2 average hours and 477 pages consumed per visitor.

I was surprised at once, because I thought that the Asian countries will definitely top the ranking. But neither China, Korea, or Japan is even showing up in this top-20 list. So I looked closely and found out that this data/research doesn’t include the internet Cafe or mobile web browsing…

This is really a good example of showing how mis-leading a social networking research could be. In my opinion, this research totaly ingored the big social networking factor - how it’s being social networked. In other words, in what way people are socializing. Without Internet Cafe data, China of course will not show up; without mobile web browsing, Japan, Korea, South Africa or China will probably not show up. Because that’s how people in those countries socialize. If you cut their main social networking platform, there is no way to understand how they are engaged.

Here is the list of the top 20 countries from ComScore research:

Tags: Australia, Canada, china, ComScore, mobile, Puerto Rico, Russia, Social network service, social networking, Spain

The beauty of social media is that there are so many ways of doing it. To some people, this might sounds challenging, if it’s viewed as “too many things, where to start?”. If you look at from a different angel, it actually shows how social media is powerful, and can be very easy and simple at the same time. One example that I just saw while I was looking at my Facebook page:

• Target posted a simple feed to the fans “Targets want to hear what you think about our guys’ clothing selection” and there are 3 more detailed questions within the same feed.
• Within the first 12 hours of posting, it received over 250 Likes and 800 Comments!

two screenshots:

1, how this campaign shows up on my personal profile page:

2, all comments of Target wall:

Why this is so exciting:

• the cost is so low: it’s just a facebook feed. it’s so easy & quick to implement and doesn’t even require any money!
• the response is huge: look at the numbers of responses within the first 12 hours. Comparing with your traditional campaigns or research, how can you get feedback this quick?
• it’s a great way to get customer feedback: it’s almost like open ended questions. All the comments are from the Target fans and it’s great insight and valuable data!
• it’s a great way to keep the dialogue and build communities: traditional media and research won’t give user any chance to interact, but in this campaign, people can see each other’s comments - that’s the best way of building WOM

Conclusion: don’t be scared about social media. It can be simple and easy. The point is that you need to get started somewhere now!

Tags: Facebook, On the Web, Online Communities, research, social media, social network, Social network service, Twitter

This is my weekly mobile wrap up around trends. You can find my weekly mobile wrap up around “thinking” in a separate post. You can also check out my ongoing mobile news & event updates from my Mobile page.

• Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), which recently released its top 10 list of mobile entertainment trends for 2009:

1. The ‘iPhone effect:’ Mobile applications have emerged as a new content category and the mobile internet will finally come of age.
2. Greater value and transparency for consumers will help sustain demand in 2009.
3. There will be some delay in the proliferation of mobile advertising.
4. Telcos will begin to act as enablers for the entertainment industry with services such as billing, authentication and zero-tariff data driving adoption.
5. Services that operate at a multi-platform level are on their way to becoming dominant.
6. There will be a rise in ringback tones.
7. Social networking will become an important driver of mobile entertainment consumption.
8. Mobile video will really take off in 2009.
9. Emerging world economies will become an increasingly important driver for global mobile entertainment.
10. The proliferation of touch-screen devices will continue to drive discoverability and content usage.

• Mobile Banking Users to Exceed 150M Worldwide by 2011:

Tags: iphone, Mobile advertising, Mobile Computing, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile phone, Mobile Web, Social network service, weekly wrap up, Wireless Data