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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Courtesy of Photobucket.com/Germanica Photos

Taking their disdain for gray areas one step further, Clorox Co. has begun to advertise for ‘full-time in house legal counsel’ to monitor its social media practices. Acknowledging that “social-media channels are a growing focus for consumer communication and stakeholder engagement”, a Clorox spokesman said that duties will include “clearing and procuring intellectual property rights regarding production and distribution of advertising.”

Wishing to rein the astounding power of the consumer en masse while maintaining control over intellectual rights, Clorox Co. may well be one of the first in a wave of companies to recognize the need for legal counsel when navigating the increasingly murky waters of social media. The creation of newer and better-integrated web applications provides the public with a number of tools that facilitate access to both licensed materials, as well as large, uncensored speaking platforms. In the age of rapid diffusion of information, such freedom is highly desirable. However, this expanded arena effectively obscures limitations on both sides of the discussion–how much freedom does an employee spokesperson truly have, and to what extent may consumers utilize and manipulate private intellectual materials? These guidelines are what Clorox Co. wishes to establish before faults on either side result in legal complications. read more »

I love how consumers have so much power at the tip of their fingers now. They contribute reviews, discussion, multimedia and a plethora of other types of content daily. The way consumers are utilizing the technologies available to them is uniquely shaping the internet in numerous ways. Iranians using Twitter to protest their presidential election shows us how users can truly innovate technologies. This influence that users are having online is beginning to permeate to other dimensions of the net. In particularly, the field of online search is drastically, for better or worse, going to change as a result of how we behave.

read more »

The Associated Press

As social media policy becomes a more pressing issue for companies facing the digital age, it seems just as important to create a social media guide for businesses when dealing with their employees’ social media presence. There have been many instances of individuals getting fired from their positions because they posted negative content about their jobs on their social networking sites, but I had not heard a story like this before:

On Tuesday the New York Times reported that a Canadian woman who is unable to work due to major depression is getting her disability benefits revoked because photos of her “appearing happy” on Facebook surfaced.

read more »