Abrams Research Blog

“I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening”.

Does this sound like you? When you want to check up on your friends, do you use Facebook? When you want to find out what pre-teens think is cool, is it Twitter that tells you it has been and always will be Justin Bieber?

The fact is, rather than use the phone or walk to a friend’s house, we log on and plug in. It’s gotten to the point where we don’t even think about it anymore. But what would happen if you had to abstain from social media, say, for an entire day? University of Maryland students recently found out. read more »

Social media’s power to transform advertising is a well-documented phenomenon—look around and you’ll see that the majority of corporations are now testing the waters. But advertising is not the only corporate division affected by Web 2.0′s innovation. What is equally astonishing, and often overlooked, is social media’s effect on what the public doesn’t see (unless it involves a sensational story about inappropriate Facebook use)—human resource management. Personneltoday’s recent feature, “Social Media: 6 functions HR can’t do without”, highlights what many professionals already know to be true: social media has promoted some amazing HR improvements. read more »

Although social media has been used by the likes of students and musicians for almost a decade (oh hey, MySpace!), only within the last few years has it been embraced by international and corporate communities. The late ‘aughts’—is that what we’re calling them?—brought about a social media explosion, pushing us into 2010, where its popularity continues to grow, monitoring and analytics technologies have been vastly improved, and social media-based marketing reaches becomes the norm. What a perfect time, then, to discuss where social media is headed!

This week, an interesting article by Freddie Laker in AdAge featured 11 social media predictions for 2012. Ranging from the obvious—product/venue ratings becoming the norm—to the more extrapolated—social media augmented reality overtaking reality as we know it—Laker offers a comprehensive overview of what 2012 could really be like, assuming, that is, that the earth isn’t destroyed by the apocalypse. Here’s a quick rundown of his most interesting/important points. read more »

“‘If they’re not on Facebook or Twitter, then they aren’t in touch with the “electronic” people.’ Female 55-59″

Companies, take heed! This survey respondent knows what she’s talking about.

According to a study of over 1500 consumers by research firms Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies, 67% of consumers are more likely to buy products from the brands they follow on Twitter, and over 50% more likely for brands on Facebook. As favorable as those results sound, they’re not the final word.  Capitalizing on the, well, social nature of social media, it was also found that once becoming fans, consumers are 79% more likely than before to recommend their follows to a friend on Twitter, and 60% more likely on Facebook. Although Chadwick Martin Bailey did not extend its research to the purchasing power behind this “second-hand” interest, it seems unlikely that researching a brand’s social media presence would have a negative impact upon someone’s opinion.

Unless the company has no social media presence at all. read more »

Foursquare and Gowalla. One, a fantastic childhood game. The other, an offshoot of a popular smoothie brand? Nope! They’re both big names in the newest social networking trend—geolocation. The progression makes sense: profile viewing led to wall posts, which led to to status updates, eventually leading to status updates on your mobile device, which could only logically lead to where we find ourselves today—in love with physical location updates. And word on the street is that these location-based services, though still relatively under the mainstream radar, are here to stay. But nothing this interesting stays a secret for long, and starting this weekend we may see the beginning of the end: this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), running March 12-16 in Austin, Texas, will be the “ strategic playing field” for the current geolocation forerunners.

So what’s the attraction?   read more »

For today’s post, let’s first take a trip back to London, 1910:

“Mary Poppins: Now! Shall we get on with it?

Jane: Get on with what?

Mary Poppins: In your advertisement, did you not specifically request to play games?

Jane: Oh, yes!

Mary Poppins: Very well then. Our first game is called ‘Well Begun is Half-Done’…

Michael: I don’t like the sound of that.

Mary Poppins …otherwise entitled, ‘Let’s Tidy Up the Nursery’”.

Michael:  I told you she was tricky!”

Ah the British… so neat, so orderly, so astoundingly capable, with a clever phrase and an affected accent, to make something so ordinary and unpleasant sound so intriguing. So who better than the practically perfect Mary Poppins to personify the recent decision by the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to clean up internet advertising practices and regulate marketing and brand activity on social media websites? read more »

Sorry, kids. If you thought that friend request from your mom was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. According to a 2009 study by the Continuum Crew communications firm, last year saw a “dramatic rise” in the amount of time your parents and grandparents spend using the internet and social media platforms. Gone are the days of “facespace” and the “webernet”; that vast generational gap may not be growing as quickly as we think. Bad news for the teenage set, but great news for almost anyone else.

The shift in media consumption that Generations Baby Boomer (1946-1954) and Jones (1955-1964) are currently undergoing is a product of the realization that news coverage is readily available through the internet, often at a speed, depth and breadth unavailable from traditional media sources. Though younger generations have unhesitatingly embraced this idea for more than a decade, older generations have, until recently, relied upon the mediums of their youths—newspapers and television networks.

However, this last year has shown a remarkable change in direction. In Continuums’ study, the number of Baby Boomers reporting an increase in internet use rose 24 percentage points between 2008 and 2009, and a majority indicated that the internet, as opposed to the cell phone, is now the media service they would be least likely to give up. Even more telling: the majority of these users have only joined in the last six months. read more »

After the launch of Google Buzz and your personal information’s unexpected debut into high society, you may be tempted to conclude that February has not been the best of months for social media. But rest assured, Google is Google and with enough consumer ire the kinks will be worked out and your focus will eventually shift back to where it should be, on Google Logos.

In the meantime, there has been some good news for Twitter. The best being, of course, that the Dalai Lama now has a Twitter account. So with the Vatican, the Dalai Lama (and as of February 22, Lil’ Wayne) all official members, the implications of this exponential growth become clearer. According to the Neilson Company’s recent report, social media use has grown 82% in the last year alone. Twitter boasts 50 million messages a day, up from 5,000 in 2007. Someone is obviously paying attention. read more »

The Oscar Army

Watch out, Jersey Shore; The Academy Awards isn’t going down without a fight.

It’s 2010 and everyone knows the Oscars have been losing steam for years. With the advent of reality TV, YouTube and TiVo, the world of exclusive, self-congratulatory, 4-hour telecasts simply can’t compete. The show sank to its lowest ratings of all time in 2008, with the 2009 broadcast barely scoring any better. And really, who can blame the audience, when the best clips are available online later that night?  Anyone would rather watch a 4-hour marathon of something else—Jersey Shore, SVU, Ace of Cakes, etc. But this year the Academy Awards may have a couple of final tricks up its sleeve. read more »

Image courtesy of Facebook

A-Level students in the UK have caused quite a stir early this week by staging a protest on the popular social networking site – Facebook. On their group, over ten thousand disgruntled students have been making death threats to shrews of all sorts. Now comes the obvious question – why? It seems that for the A-Level students who spent the past six months preparing for the A2 Biology unit 4 exam, feel that the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance exam board unfairly placed questions on the exam that the students were told they would not need to prepare for.

The textbooks of the AQA specifically stated that there will be no mention of certain topics, such as Spearman’s Rank. But students were shocked when they sat down to the test and found these topics not only included, but that important topics, such as genetics, were omitted. Instead, they found questions asking them about shrews, faunagoo, and other outlandish topics. The Facebook group was not only a venting outlet for disgruntled students, but also mobilized all its members to send in letters and e-mails to the AQA expressing their dismay and demanding a retest in February or March. read more »