Social Networking InView (September 2010)

Social Networking InView
September 2010

News and observations from Jun-Sep 2010

© 2010 by M/A/R/C® Research
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Statistics/Trends
 A survey of CPG buyers found that they are more likely to visit a company’s website (74%) than its
Facebook (34%) or Twitter page (28%) for information, coupons or promotional offers. If the consumer
wants to let people know about their opinion or experience with a brand, more respondents said they
would go to the company’s Facebook page (57%) than web site (50%) or Twitter (38%). (brandweek.com, 6/2/10)

 New research from AARP shows that 27% of Americans over age 50 use
social media/networking sites. Among those that use social networking
sites, over 60% are connected to their children and 36% are connected to
their grandchildren online. (PR Newswire, 6/7/10)

 According to a new poll of social networking users, gay and lesbian adults
are more likely to use Twitter, read blogs and check social network sites
more often than heterosexual adults. Twenty-nine percent of gays and
lesbians said they use Twitter, compared to 15% of heterosexual
respondents. (PCMagazine.com, 7/13/10)

 A new survey reported that over one-third of Americans are “tuning out” from social networking. Among
those that have tuned out, almost 40% said it was because someone was rude or uncivil to them through
the site. (PR Newswire, 6/23/10)

 A study of the integration of social media with e-mail marketing found that e-mail messages with one
social sharing option had a 30% higher click-through rate (CTR) than e-mails without the social sharing
feature. Emails with three or more social sharing options saw a 55% higher CTR and emails with a Twitter
sharing feature had a 40% higher CTR than those with no social sharing options. (PR Newswire, 6/21/10)

 A recent survey of consumers and marketers found that the two
groups use tweets differently. Over 40% of consumer tweets are part
of a conversation between Twitter users and just 1% are conversations
between a consumer and a brand, while 75% of marketer tweets are
simply broadcasting information and not engaging the consumers in a
conversation or dialogue. (Business Wire, 7/27/10)

 Researchers from two different American universities have published
the results from a joint research project about inferring the mood of
Americans through Twitter messages. The project teams analyzed more than 300 million messages
posted between September 2006 and August 2009 and found that people are happier on the weekends,
with the “peak” of happiness occurring on Sunday morning. People on the West Coast are consistently
happier than people on the East Coast for the duration of three hour time difference – if people on the
East Coast are sending unhappy tweets at 10am EDT on Monday, people on the West Coast don’t start
sending unhappy tweets until 10am PDT, or three hours after the first wave of unhappy tweets showed
up. When all of Twitter is upset, the Midwest and East Coast are usually the most negative in their
tweets. (New York Times, 7/26/10)

©2010 by M/A/R/C® Research
Page 2  3Q10

 A global survey of social network users found that, on average, women spend 5.5 hours per month on
social network sites compared to 3.9 hours spent by men. Women also account for 47.9% of total unique
site visitors in the social networking segment, but they consume 57% of pages and 56.6% of total
minutes spent on the social network sites. (PR Newswire, 7/28/10)

 A new study of American internet users reported that they spent just
over 22% of their time online visiting social networking sites, up from
15% last year. The increased time spent at social networking sites resulted
in less time being spent on e-mail, or 8.3% of their online time this year
compared to 11.5% last year. Mobile internet users break out their time
differently, with 41.6% of their online time spent handling e-mail and
11.6% spent visiting web portals, while 10.5% of their mobile web time
is spent on social networking sites. (PCMagazine.com, 8/2/10)

 An online survey found that 20% of adults said they would try to contact police, fire or other emergency
responders via e-mail, websites or social media if they needed help and could not get through to 911
operators. If the respondents knew of someone else that needed help, over 40% would ask other people
in their social networks to contact authorities on that person’s behalf, 35% would post a request for help
on an agency’s Facebook page and 28% would send a Twitter help request to first responders. The
survey also found that almost 70% of respondents think emergency responders should be actively
monitoring social media for help requests and almost three-quarters expect help to arrive less than an
hour after posting an emergency help request on Facebook or Twitter. (PR Newswire, 8/9/10)

Page 3  3Q10

Business of Social Networking Sites
 The location-based social networking site foursquare
announced that it has raised $20 million from venture
capitalists. The site was launched in March 2010 and already
had 1.8 million users by the end of June, with roughly 10,000
new users signing up each day. The venture capital firms that
provided the cash have valued foursquare at $95 million.
(New York Times, 6/30/10)

 A study by a social media management firm found that
each “fan” a company has on Facebook is worth $3.60.
(CRM Magazine, 6/1/10)

 The co-president of MySpace, Jason Hirschhorn, resigned less than four months after taking the job.
News Corp., parent company of MySpace, said that Mr. Hirschhorn’s departure was a “personal
decision.” His co-president position will not be filled and Mike Jones will become sole president of the
company. (Los Angeles Times, 6/18/10)

 Facebook was given a valuation of $23 billion by Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm that
purchased 2.4 million of shares sold by Facebook employees on the “gray market.” The $23 billion
valuation is three times what Facebook was estimated to be worth in 2009. (New York Times, 6/30/10)

 Paul Ceglia has filed a lawsuit saying that he owns 84% of Facebook. His claim is based on a “work for
hire” contract allegedly signed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The contract states that Ceglia
would pay Zuckerberg $1,000 for work he did on a different database, plus $1,000 for “continued
development and design of “The Facebook.” In exchange, Ceglia would own a 50% interest in the
“software, programming language and business interests derived from the expansion of the *Facebook+
service to a larger audience” and that if Zuckerberg did not finish his work on TheFacebook.com website
by January 1, 2004, Ceglia would also receive an additional 1% of the company for each day the project
ran late. (PCMagazine.com, 7/12/10)

 Twitter launched its first e-commerce service with @earlybird
Exclusive Offers. People can follow the @earlybird account and
get access to limited-time sales on products, concert tickets or
travel deals. (New York Times, 7/12/10)

 Twitter will open a new data center in Salt Lake City. The
company needs a larger facility to handle the 300,000 new
accounts opened each day and the new building will be
designed with the company’s “unique power and cooling needs” in mind. Twitter will transition over to
the new data center from its current location in San Francisco over the next two years. (PCMagazine.com,
7/22/10)

Page 4  3Q10

 Facebook announced that it passed the 500 million member mark. The
company had 250 million members in the summer of 2009 and added
100 million members between February and July of 2010. The company
plans to have 1 billion members by the end of 2011, although industry
analysts don’t believe that will happen since growth in the U.S. is
beginning to plateau. For comparison, Twitter had 105 million users and
LinkedIn had 70 million when Facebook made its announcement.
(Los Angeles Times, 7/22/10)

 Data showed that Facebook only registered 320,800 new members during a 31-day period covering June,
a sharp decrease from the 7.8 million new active users in May. During the same time period, over
250,000 Americans age 18-44 didn’t even log in to Facebook, with more than 100,000 of those people
being women age 26-34. No one is quite sure if the June data is a seasonal fluctuation, reporting mistake
or an actual reflection of how the U.S. market is saturated with fewer Americans available to sign up for
Facebook. (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/8/10)

 Amazon has partnered with Facebook to offer recommendations to Amazon customers based on
Facebook “Likes.” The consumer will need to first link their Amazon and Facebook accounts, then they
will see gift suggestions and birthday reminders for their friends who are also on Facebook. The service
does not, however, share past purchase history so items your friends purchased on Amazon will not
show up in the system; only those items that people have “liked” will be referenced. (PCMagazine.com, 7/28/10)

 Target and Facebook have partnered to sell Facebook Credits gift cards. The cards will cost $15, $25 or
$50 and will allow users to spend money on social games, apps and virtual goods such as Farmville,
Happy Aquarium and Bejeweled Blitz. (USA Today, 9/1/10)

 A new forecast from eMarketer predicts that global marketers will spend $1.28 billion on Facebook ads
in 2010 – almost double the $665 million spent in 2009 – and $1.76 billion in 2011. Spending on ads at
MySpace will drop, however, from $347 million in 2010 to $297 million in 2011. (Promo, 8/17/10)

 A new social networking site, Tumblr, is growing in popularity.
Tumblr is a cross between Facebook and Twitter – it lets users
post short messages like Twitter, but also upload images, videos,
audio clips and quotes to their profile page or “dashboard.”
Users can follow other users, as on Twitter and Facebook, but
Tumblr does not display the number of followers/friends a user
has, so it is less competitive. Tumblr had over 6.6 million users
in August, but was adding 25,000 new accounts each day.
(New York Times, 8/2/10)

 Twitter announced that it reached 145 million registered users in September, up from 105.8 million in
April 2010. The company credits the increase to the new ability for people to access the service through
mobile devices. (San Francisco Chronicle, 9/4/10)

Page 5  3Q10

 LinkedIn announced that it reached the 75 million member mark in
August 2010. (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/5/10)

 Twitter redesigned its web site over the summer, dividing the screen into
two panes. Users can view a timeline of posts in one pane, and see author
information, photos and videos in the other pane. Previously, Twitter users
had to click back and forth between windows to see author biographies or
photos. (New York Times, 9/15/10)

 Google announced that it will be launching its own social networking feature in the fall. The project had
been called “Google Me” but that isn’t the official name so far. (Los Angeles Times, 9/15/10)

 Facebook issued a statement denying that it was developing its own mobile phone after a source
reported that it had a “super secret” project focused on creating mobile phone software based on
Google’s Android operating system. The alleged Facebook mobile phone software would allow users to
treat their Friends list like an address book and make phone calls or send text messages directly from the
Friends list. (Los Angeles Times, 9/21/10)

 A rumor surfaced claiming that Facebook and Skype were partnering up. The deal would add a Facebook
tab to Skype’s video chat so that Skype users could contact their Facebook Friends through the service.
(PCMagazine.com, 9/29/10)

 Facebook jumped in the location-based social media segment with the launch of its Facebook Places
service. Facebook users can share their location information with friends online so they can meet face to
face, find discounts at nearby stores or get local news. Some industry analysts say that Facebook Places
will raise awareness of other location-based apps like foursquare and Gowalla, which are more advanced
or “sophisticated” according to one user, but a survey of Facebook users found that one-half of them
said that Places was the only “check-in” location app they had ever heard of. (USA Today, 9/21/10)

Page 6  3Q10

Business Usage
 A survey of HR recruiters found that 86% look at social media sites in
order to get more information about a job applicant and 44% haven’t
hired someone because of what was on their social media profile
pages. (PR Newswire, 6/1/10)

 Con-Way Multimodal – a freight transportation and logistics services
company – has moved into social media with its TweetLoad Twitter
account. Carriers can view new freight loads that need to be moved,
then drivers can submit a bid to move the load to where it needs to go.
(Fleet Owner, 6/9/10)

 Purdue Pharma launched an interactive website called “In the Face of Pain,” which has “how-to” tips on
the use of social media by healthcare professionals, caregivers or people suffering from chronic pain. The
site has online videos to teach “pain management advocates” how to use Facebook and other social
media sites as a way to provide advocacy and information on pain-related topics. (PR Newswire, 6/2/10)

 Disney is testing a new application called “Disney Tickets Together” on its Facebook page. The app will
alert “friends” of Disney’s Facebook page when tickets for new Disney movies go on sale and let them
invite other friends to meet at the theater. The app will access the Facebook user’s personal profile
information (with permission) to provide information about local theatres and show times. (Promo, 6/3/10)

 AT&T has created its first-ever “social media customer care corps.” The team, which responds to
customers who have posted dissatisfied comments on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, has already
grown from 5 to 19 people. Six days a week, members of team respond directly to customers who post
to @ATTCustomerCare or any of the team members’ AT&T handles, plus they monitor social networks
for comments from people who don’t know about the special Twitter account – an automated program
watches and collects AT&T references when the team isn’t at work. The team also responds to customer
posts on its Facebook wall. (Advertising Age, 6/2/10)

 AXA Equitable launched an integrated social media campaign with company pages on Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube. The company carried over its 800-pound gorilla mascot from television advertising to
Twitter, establishing the Twitter account @AXA_Gorilla. (PR Newswire, 6/2/10)

Page 7  3Q10

 A survey of independent life insurance producers found that the segment is slow to fully use social
media. Less than three-quarters reported using any social media sites, and only half of those said they
used the site for business reasons. Overall, less than 15% think that social media web sites can help
generate word-of-mouth leads or stay in contact with clients. (Direct Magazine, 6/10/10)

 Food trucks are using Twitter and Facebook to keep their
customers updated on where they are located, what times
they will be in the spot and what menu items are available.
The Crème Brulee Man in the San Francisco Bay Area has
12,000 Twitter followers, while Curry Up Now has 2,000
Twitter followers and 1,700 Facebook friends, some of whom
will line up at the location before the food truck even arrives.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 7/1/10)

 A global business survey found that 40% of global businesses have used social networks to win new
business. Among U.S. businesses only, 35% reported gaining new clients through a social network and
28% percent have set aside part of their marketing budget for use in social networking. (PR Newswire, 7/7/10)

 Henkel North America turned to social media to promote its new Soft Scrub Total cleaners. The company
created a website where people who currently use Soft Scrub could sign up to participate in the test of
the new line. Henkel picked “captains” from the thousands of respondents, and sent them kits with
samples of the new products. These “captains” posted their comments and reactions to the products on
blogs, Twitter and Facebook. (MMR, 7/12/10)

 Six Flags has partnered with foursquare to offer a “Six Flags Funatic Badge.” Park visitors who “check in”
on foursquare ten times before September 7 will receive a “Funatic” badge and qualify for the chance to
win a “2011 Exit Pass” that lets them bypass the line at any ride for an entire year. (DM News, 7/12/10)

 Cold Stone Creamery found a way for Facebook users to buy their in-network friends a real ice cream gift
instead of a virtual one. The Facebook member can purchase ice cream, a shake or a smoothie online for
a friend in a specific serving size. The friend will receive a Facebook message or e-mail informing them of
the gift. The friend then takes the account number referenced in the message to their local Cold Stone
Creamery and can receive any flavor in the size specified in the message. When the purchaser sends the
eGift through Facebook, that gift is noted on their wall so that other friends can learn about the eGift
concept. (Promo, 7/8/10)

Page 8  3Q10

 Pampers, Abbott Nutrition and Beech-Nut teamed up to
present a web-based television series called “Welcome to
the Parenthood.” The series will span fourteen 5-6 minute
long episodes following three sets of new parents tackling
various parenting milestones. The episodes will air on
Pampers.com and the Pampers Facebook page, where
viewers can submit stories about their own parenting
experiences. Three user-submitted stories will be chosen to
accompany each “Welcome to the Parenthood” episode’s digital story book. After the series is complete,
one story will be selected as the winner of a year’s worth of free Pampers. (PR Newswire, 7/13/10)

 Old Spice continued the success of its “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign with a real-time
Web request feature. For two days, consumers could submit comments and questions to the “Old Spice
Guy” via Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. The agency team behind the ads would then
record the actor responding directly to the questions and post the videos on YouTube, sometimes within
30 minutes of the comments/questions being submitted. Updates announcing new videos were sent out
via Twitter and the Old Spice Twitter account grew to 43,000 during the campaign. Videos at the Old
Spice YouTube channels had been viewed over 58 million times. (brandweek.com, 7/15/10)

 The latest campaign for a line extension to V-8 Fusion fruit and vegetable juice drink is solely through
Facebook. Facebook members who “friend” the V-8 V-Fusion page can enter in their mailing address and
receive a free sample of the new V-8 V-Fusion + Tea drink. During the first two weeks of the campaign, V-
8 gave away 1,000 samples a week. The number of samples still available was posted on the Facebook
page, so viewers could see how many were left. A few people left complaints on the site after the
samples for the week ran out, but more people posted messages saying that they were going to come
back the next week and try to get a sample then. (Promo, 7/22/10)

 The Kelly Blue Book website KBB.com added a new feature called the
Seller’s Toolkit that enables consumers to sell their cars on social networks,
high-traffic websites, personal blogs or via e-mail. A study found that 1.9
million private-party purchase offers were made via social networking
websites in 2009, resulting in 1.3 million vehicle sales. The Seller’s Toolkit
lets sellers create and send a digital “window sticker” complete with
custom descriptions and photos of the vehicle for sale. The seller can
then post the “window sticker” on Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist or their
own personal blog. There is also the option to add a “Car for Sale” tab to
a Facebook profile page, or an interactive widget on blog pages. The
feature also includes a link to the Kelley Blue Book pricing report for
that model. (PR Newswire, 7/22/10)

 The Pfizer Animal Health division of Pfizer has launched four Facebook pages to help livestock producers
keep up to date on animal health. The Facebook pages include “Livestock,” Pork, Beef and Dairy. (National
Hog Farmer Blog Content, 8/4/10)

Page 9  3Q10

 The dessert chain Tasti D-lite has launched a new loyalty program
that integrates use of Facebook, Twitter and foursquare. When a
customer gets a TreatCard at a Tasti D-lite store, they need to go
online and register the card. While they are on the MyTasti.com
site, they can also connect their Facebook, Twitter and foursquare
accounts so that automated status updates, tweets or check-ins
will be sent when they swipe their TreatCard at a Tasti D-lite store.
For each social network site update that is sent out, the user will
earn one extra point per purchase in addition to the one point for every dollar spent on their purchase.
The consumers can choose from a generic update message or several different automated messages,
which include the location of the store they are at plus notes like “I’m 5 points closer to a freebie.” (Promo,
8/10/10)

 The Mayo Clinic has launched a special Center for Social Media that will help train health care employees
in the use of social media and encourage hospitals, medical professionals and patients to use social
media to improve health conditions around the world. The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media will
provide: webinar, in-person and on-site training opportunities; consulting and coaching for organizations
that want to align their business goals with social media strategies; and conferences such as the Mayo
Clinic/Ragan Communications Social Media Summit. The Mayo Clinic already has over 60,000 followers
on Twitter and a Facebook profile with more 20,000 “friends.” (Business Wire, 7/27/10)

 The American Red Cross updated its “Safe and Well” website to make it more social media friendly. The
site enables people at a disaster-affected location to list themselves as “safe & well” so family and
friends don’t worry about them. The new update allows users to personalize messages for family and
friends, update their status on Facebook or Twitter, and even register and/or search the site via their
mobile phone. (PR Newswire, 8/4/10)

 Delta Air Lines added an app to its Facebook page. The Delta Ticket
Window lets users purchase tickets for simple round-trip flights (no
multi-city trips or reward mile redemption trips) through the Delta
Facebook page and share the travel plans with select Facebook
friends. (New York Times, 8/22/10)

 Alcoholic beverage makers are having a difficult time using social
media to connect with consumers. The marketers have required
visitors to their websites to provide age verification before they can
fully enter the site, but that is more difficult to control with Twitter,
which doesn’t require users to enter a birth date. The FTC is going to
publish a report in early 2011 that reveals how many times their researchers have found alcohol-brand
related fan pages featuring photos of drunk frat boys or messages/tweets about binge drinking. (Brandweek,
8/8/10)

Page 10  3Q10

 Apple introduced a new social networking service called Ping. The
service is built into iTunes and lets users follow their friends’ music
purchases, concert attendance and music reviews. (New York Times, 9/2/10)

 Novartis received a warning letter from the FDA’s Division of Drug
Marketing, Advertising and Communications (DDMAC) regarding its
Facebook Share widget available through the Facebook page for the
drug Tasigna, which treats leukemia. The widget “presents efficacy
claims for Tasigna” but “fails to communicate any risk information”
plus it “implies superiority over other products.”
(Medical Marketing and Media, 8/5/10)

 The grocery store chain Giant Eagle has come under fire from its shoppers after running a series of
contests on Twitter this summer. Several shoppers who were fans of the chain on Facebook posted
complaints that they had to open a Twitter account just to be able to enter the contest, that they find
Twitter to be more difficult to use and that Twitter isn’t “popular among Giant Eagle’s target market.”
(Supermarket News, 9/6/10)

 Norwegian Cruise Line is working with YouTube to support the YouTube Vacationer channel. The travel-
specific channel will feature videos, vacation ideas and travel advice from Lonely Planet, National
Geographic and the Travel Channel. (PR Newswire, 9/8/10)

 Pampers has added e-commerce shopping to its Facebook page. Pampers’ Facebook friends can order
Pampers diapers and baby wipes, as well as Tide, Oral B, Olay and other P&G products, directly through
Facebook and have their order shipped by Amazon.com. (PR Newswire, 9/30/10)

 Some companies’ or brands’ Facebook sites are drawing
more web traffic than the actual “web site” created by the
manufacturer. Oreo cookies have the #3 brand page on
Facebook with 8.7 million fans and 71,000 new fans being
added every day, but NabiscoWorld.com – the multi-brand
website created by Kraft Foods that features Oreo – saw its
traffic drop from 1.2 million visits in July 2009 to 321,000 in
July 2010. Pampers had over 327,000 fans on its Facebook
page over the summer, but the Pampers.com site visitor
count has dropped from 1.1 million a month in 2009 to
560,000 in 2010. (Advertising Age, 8/23/10)

Page 11  3Q10

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Social Networking InView (September 2010)

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