Fist of Digital

Vince Broady, CEO-cofounder of ThisMoment, said the platform gives Lionsgate access to a "critical mass of advocates online. One of the things that makes people advocate things online is when people join in with them, so if they can all communicate with each other it's a good multiple effect."

But with the exception of Twitter, Lionsgate is using paid media across social networking to influence earned media impressions -- the Facebook, YouTube and MySpace partnerships are all the result of existing ad buys on behalf of "Kick-Ass," including a home-page takeover on MySpace.

"It's a big efficiency play," Mr. Broady said. "Publishers are happy because they still get their media buy and don't have to create a custom microsite, and Lionsgate doesn't have to manage 10 different campaigns across 10 different publishers. This creates a mechanism where everyone gets off the hook."

The iPad is going to change publishing forever and even journalistic integrity. Its not just about the device anymore its how it can alter the world.

More at the Wired link above.

Understanding The Law of Reciprocity
The simple way to describe the Law of Reciprocity is to equate it to The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But most of us were taught that in grade school and it still doesn’t help us win friends and influence people on Twitter! The actual, mathematical theorem depicted at Wikipedia is no help at all (except for you super-smart-geeks!) and what I am talking about is not spiritual in nature, though many students of spirituality and “law of attraction” believers consider this an important aspect of the universal condition.

We're at the beginning of a major shift in how we find, consume and interact with information. If the 2000s was the Google decade, then the 2010s will be the Facebook decade. Already, you can see the writing on the wall - pun intended. Case in point: a search for "google decade danny sullivan" pulls up his Facebook note higher than a blog post (an item I wanted to include here for context). But that's nothing. Look at the data.

According to new stats from compete.com Facebook is becoming the web's top source of traffic (link via Jeremiah Owyang on where else, Facebook). The image above is a snapshot I pulled from compete.com. It shows where Facebook is sending traffic...

Since being blocked, Facebook usage in China has plunged from hundreds of thousands of users in mainland China to tens of thousands. Based on anecdotal evidence Twitter, on the other hand, remains a lively source of news, information and discussion from within China. (If anyone can provide reliable numbers on the growth Twitter usage in China, I will add them here.)

Microblogging itself is an interesting phenomenon in China, due to the nature of the written Chinese language: A Tweet in Chinese is almost a short blog post.

But the case of Twitter raises the question of why it has remained popular even as the inevitable government-compliant copycats proliferate.

In terms of why, for one thing Chinese users have found relatively painless ways around the Great Firewall. Having worked around the blockage, users may have developed an even stronger loyalty to the service. Some cross post using the Chinese services, while others have rigged up sites using Twitter’s API.

Very interesting post on insight into the China educated technology users:

…why do they Tweet?
1. To know the truth and open the horizon
2. To record and share my life
3. To get information and show my concern about democracy
4. Because Fanfou has been shut down
5. To get all the gossips in order to clear information for my colleagues who live in Mars
6. Follow the planet that I like and later fall in love with everything in Twitter
7. The exchange in Twitter is very interesting
8. No censor here and we can preserve the primary mode of communication here
9. To kill time
10. To follow uncle leg (@kcome)
11. I learn about twitter from kenengba and feel that as a party member I should learn more about this world
12. I can say what I want here without considering whether I should say this or how I should say this. Whether or not I would violate any law. This is the taste of freedom that I enjoy.
13. In an army school where ideological control is very strict, Twitter allows me to keep my independent citizen conscious.
14. University teacher introduces me here
15. Less liars here
16. Job requirement
17. An inevitableness choice for journalist student
18. Passion for new technology
19. At first I come here because I have a crush with a girl who is using Twitter…
20. Why not?

Read the rest here:
http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/china-twitter-demographics/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=china-twitter-demographics

"Mommy, Where Does Content Come From?" 11 Easy Ways to Create Great Stuff

Jan 28, 2010 -

Creating great content is increasingly a cornerstone to lead generation and lead nurturing. In other words, it's key to attracting new customers and to deepening relationships with existing ones.

But many companies have trouble creating enough of it. So blogs languish. Flip cameras gather dust. Your Twitter feed is as sparse as Oprah's. How can you create and distribute a steady flow of stuff that your customers actually care about?

Here are 11 ideas:

1. Think small. Creating a white paper or ebook is a huge task. Instead, create smaller chunks of content. A series of smaller blog posts will be easier to produce, more digestible for readers short on time and attention, and multiply your search love.
2. Think really small. Ask your Twitter followers for their take on a specific theme or topic related to your business, and create a blog post from it (with credit to them, of course). Something open-ended (no wrong answers) and that solicits personal suggestions or advice works best. Such as: What's your favorite must-have iPhone app for business? What's your must-read book on Widget Management for 2010? What's your favorite social media tool?
3. Bundle. Conversely to #1, bundle existing blog posts around a central theme into an ebook or white paper. Give it away freely (not requiring users to register to download it), or not. See which approach works best for you here, in "

Record presentations or speeches. Record the speeches or presentations you or your team gives at industry events, and post them on YouTube. Repurpose as needed to your blog, on Twitter, Facebook, or other social sites.

Post presentations on SlideShare. Upload PowerPoint presentations to share on SlideShare, and similarly share freely on Twitter, your blog, and so on.

Chat with customers. Arm your sales staff or other customer-facing folks with Flip cameras to capture face time with prospects or customers. Bring a camera along next time you attend a networking event. Not sure what to say? Try asking customers a single question to unify their answers and string them together for a compelling video. Something like: What's your biggest marketing challenge? Name one business goal for 2010. What's a strategy you're using working to grow your business this year?

Interview luminaries. Q&A interviews with thought leaders, strategic partners, or flat-out interesting or creative thinkers makes for compelling text or audio content. (Bonus: It raises your profile with them, as well.) John Jantsch offers a great step-by-step approach to podcasting

Twitter in Asia: Total Users, by Country

According to Sycomos latest report on Twitter, Asian countries constitutes about 7.74% of the Twitter unique users worldwide. Indonesia topped with 2.34% of unique users, followed by Japan (1.47) and India (0.97). On a global perspective, more than half of Twitter unique users (56.59%) are located in the US and followed by UK (8.09), Brazil (6.73), Canada (4.36) and Australia (2.63). This is based on analysis of active 13 million unique users, between Oct 16 2009 and Dec 16 2009.

comScore reported the total global unique users of Twitter.com has reached 60 million. However, Fred Wilson argued that “Twitter ecosystem is about 3x Twitter.com.” Twitter ecosystem refers to all interactions with Twitter APIs, via the plethora of third-party Twitter apps i.e. Tweetdeck, bit.ly, Facebook, iPhone apps, etc. Wilson went on to summarize:

You can talk about Twitter.com and then you can talk about the Twitter ecosystem. One is a web site. The other is a fundamental part of the Internet infrastructure. And the latter is 3-5x bigger than the former and that delta is likely to grow even larger.

Let’s assume that Twitter ecosystem is 3-times the size of Twitter.com. With comScore’s 60 million unique visitors worldwide at Twitter.com, the Twitter ecosystem is estimated at 180 million. The total Twitter users across the globe (Twitter.com + Twitter ecosystem) is 240 million!

The table below weaves together Sycomos’ report, comScore’s estimate and Fred Wilson’s Twitter ecosystem. The “% Twitter Users” is derived from Sycomos’ report and the total Twitter users is based on 240 million users worldwide. Indonesia with 5.6 million users, followed by Japan (3.5 million) and India (2.3 million). Malaysia with 6th largest Twitter population in Asia with estimated 1.1 million users (and this is far, far, far more than my previous estimate of Twitter population in Malaysia). And the estimated total Twitter users in Asia is 18.6 million.

Asian Countries, by % of Twitter Users and Total Users

No.	Country	Rank in Sysomos’ Report	% of Twitter Users	Total Twitter Users
1	Indonesia	6	2.34	5,616,000
2	Japan	8	1.47	3,528,000
3	India	10	0.97	2,328,000
4	Singapore	12	0.88	2,112,000
5	Philippines	13	0.85	2,040,000
6	Malaysia	18	0.47	1,128,000
7	Thailand	25	0.30	720,000
8	China	30	0.23	552,000
8	South Korea	30	0.23	552,000

Source: Sysomos.com, 2010

Mashup of figures from different reports to derive estimates potentially lead to inaccurate conclusions (different reports with different sets of assumptions and methodologies). However, Sysocomos’ “% of Twitter users” gives us some ideas on Twitter use across Asia. With the percentage, at least we can derive Twitter population size by country, using the conservative comScore’s 60 million, plus-ecosystem’s 240 million or any other estimates out there. ¶  @zhiQ

Image from textually.org.

Hmmm, are we being lumped in with China or is Hong Kong not even ranking yet?

Indonesia is #1? More than Japan? Fascinating - these numbers are alot higher than even I thought.

While there’s no doubt that Facebook is the premier social networking site in most Asia-Pacific countries, with subscription growing by about 20% in the past month in some countries, growth is tapering off in the developed economies of Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The figures, gathered over the past six weeks from Facebook’s own data, suggest that once about a third of the population is on Facebook, there’s not much more room for growth.

An exhaustive list to get you going. If you read all 100 stories here you can get a pretty good handle of what is going on in Social Media.

Pick and choose the right ones for you.