Facebook continued to dominate the social media landscape in 2012, but Google+ and Twitter introduced advertising and LinkedIn led the way to Wall Street with a successful IPO. To discuss these developments and look ahead to 2012, Online Media Daily asked Jordan Bitterman, senior vice president and social marketing practice lead at Digitas, for his views on the dynamic space. OMD: Facebook’s latest overhaul, including features like Timeline and Ticker, as well as Open Graph apps, encourages brands to create their own apps for the platform. How do you think that will play out next year as these features fully roll out?Bitterman: Publishers and app developers have real incentive to build into the Facebook graph. In doing so, they put themselves at the center of a highly sharable environment that provides both exposure for their brand and earned distribution for their content. While this immediate opportunity will create huge momentum for continued use of the platform, both consumers and brands are questioning whether the resulting abundance of push updates will create the dynamic of over-sharing -- and ultimately, burnout. On balance, we see strong growth, but will keep a firm hand on the tiller to make adjustments as necessary. OMD: A number of social media properties have started brand (or company) pages recently, including Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Google+ and newsreader app Zite. Will a Facebook Page still remain the anchor for social media marketing efforts? Bitterman: With 800 million users and legions of committed brands, Facebook has a huge head start. This will translate into another fruitful year for Facebook’s sales force. As the other platforms develop their brand page offerings, with new functionality and the possibility of streamlined graphics and coding standards, others will gain steam. For example, Twitter recently rolled out its brand pages, which made the site more consumer and brand-friendly. While these brand pages likely won't pull followers away from engaging their favorite brands on Facebook, interaction with a brand for the users -- and ultimately, marketers -- will be greatly enhanced. Overall, social brand pages give marketers options to connect with an audience, and numerous factors such as content, participation and listening will be increasingly critical for marketing success. OMD: What, if any, developments (or non-developments) in social media this year surprised you? Bitterman: We were surprised by the lack of true adoption of Google+ after an initial burst. With all of the resources at their disposal, we don’t count them out by a long shot, but integrating G+ into other parts of the Google ecosystem -- as they intend to do --– would be wise. 2012 feels ripe for a breakout in this area. We are pleased with the speed in which brands are embracing marketing as service. (Digitas defines this as developing experiences with utility built-in.) OMD: Will there be a standard metric for measuring effectiveness in social marketing campaigns? Is one needed? Bitterman: Digitas has been working both on our own and with industry partners to solve the equation. Generally, however, trying to measure effectiveness in social is analogous to doing so in brand and direct marketing: Every client is different and every client situation is different. The value of a fan or a follower depends on what you intend to do with them once you acquire them. The value of a connection on one platform is different than the value on another. Ultimately, we are making great progress toward standardization, but it will be a marathon in getting there -- not a sprint. If anyone says differently, don’t believe them. OMD: For Digitas clients, what proportion of their digital budgets goes to social media, and what portion to earned or owned media versus paid advertising? Bitterman: Investment in owned and earned channels is adopting rapidly. Hype is driving part of this shift. Brands are also realizing that in the social age, working media simply doesn't work well on its own. Still, even at strong growth multiples, it’s challenging for clients to take the plunge. The paid media ecosystem –- and the associated metrics -– have been an established driver of objectives for decades. For the next ring of dollars to move to line items beyond paid media -- owned and earned live in this column -- innovator brands such as American Express and P&G will have to show the way. OMD: Do you have any thoughts on what trend(s) in social media might emerge next year?Bitterman: Driven by the opportunity for exponential ROI gains, brands will embrace social commerce more fully in 2012. Consumers will become more comfortable buying through technologies on networks, and the technologies themselves will become more mainstream and reliable.Social will prove to be the “killer app” that drives mobile growth and adoption. Two-thirds of Americans are on Facebook and three-quarters visit social networks regularly, yet smartphone penetration is at just 50%. Social will be a force to push that figure higher.Investments in initiatives that stretch beyond paid media -- so-called 'non-working media,' such as development costs for brand pages or social applications -- and the buildout of the content that populates those experiences, will continue to scale as innovative case studies demonstrate an effective path forward.
Fox's "X Factor" may not have hit the ratings heights as promised to advertisers, but from a digital and social media perspective, the singing competition show was a home run.Although post-analysis data is not complete, Don Wilcox, vice president/GM of brand entertainment for Fox Broadcasting, says "X-Factor" soared on many digital levels."We really wanted to rethink digital extensions, marketing and sponsorship," he says. "We tried to embrace an open, distributed, multiplatform approach. Digital became a high priority for us -- much more than in the past."As it turned out, "the buzz was undeniable," he says. Almost every week since it debuted, "X Factor" regularly shows up in the top-five TV show results when it came to overall social media buzz.For major brand sponsors of the show, it was a pretty good deal. Sponsors of the show -- including Verizon, Pepsi, and Sony Music -- got a multiplatform ride: traditional TV and online. (General Motors was primarily a sponsor for the traditional TV show). "The good news for the sponsors is that we took them along for the ride," he says. "The brands were so tightly coupled with the content. There was a natural ownership."A plethora of marketing efforts included deep Facebook and Twitter efforts. Some of the biggest individual sponsors included Pepsi Choice Performance -- where fans could vote on the song choice, wardrobe, dance style, and set style. "Fans designed that spectacle," says Wilcox. "This is not something I've never seen [for a entertainment competition show]."For Verizon, it employed "touch voting," where customers with an Android-enabled phone could just tap a musical act's visual/photo to vote for them. It proved to be one of the most popular functions, says Wilcox. Verizon also sponsored live views of backstage proceedings.For Sony Electronics, it sponsored an effort where a popular YouTube personality and fan of the show, Courtney, had all access to the show, filming her in and around the backstage and offscreen activities of the musical acts.Despite success digitally, reports suggest that Fox did not meet the lofty ratings guarantees promised to advertisers in traditiional TV metrics. Media agency analysts say Fox promised around a 6 rating among 18-49 viewers, with advertisers paying some $400,000 for a 30-second commercial during the upfront market, and less during scatter market activity."X-Factor" through December 11 had a 3.9 among 18-49 viewers for its Tuesday performance show and a 3.7 rating among 18-49 viewers for its Wednesday results show.But the show's numbers have been good enough to give Fox an overall major spike in the fall, versus its usual slow start to the season. A Fox spokeswoman said sponsors like Verizon and Pepsi have been happy with "X-Factor." On the digital front, Wilcox says, "X Factor" sponsors were enthusiastic: "We are all high five-ing at the moment."While Wilcox says there has been a lot of learning in season, there has been one strong takeaway for the digital activities show going into season two: "It has a positive effect on loyalty."
Affectv engineers are working on a series of products to make advertising more social. The company plans to launch the image-sharing widget Slingpic in January and social banner ads for publishers in February, according to Glen Calvert, the company's CEO. Data comes partly from companies supporting URL shorteners and video-sharing sites. Slingpic will pull in bits and bytes to make images more social, whereas social ads will target through banner ads like-minded friends. Calvert said that similar to Facebook Likes or Google +1s, Affectv will build out a series of tools that identify friends in a social circle who have a similar view about specific advertisements or formats. Media companies will continue to move up the funnel, which Calvert believes will make it easier for brands to invest in online advertising. This should enable brands to better analyze conversations and response rates. Calvert points to U.S.-based Media6Degrees, or Md6, as a rival to the U.K. company. Now nearly a year old, Affectv began providing social targeting, analyzing how users connect and share content. The technology tapped by companies like ESPN looks beyond browsing behavior to infer social signals, such as connections to users and frequency, trending links and sentiment to target content and ads. For example, Affectv can target ads to consumers taking photos at live sporting events who tweet them to followers. That's the idea of a recent ESPN campaign. The action by the consumer taking the photo confirms that he and those he tweets are interested in live sports events. It takes an offline activity and targets ads online via display and pre-roll ads. Social networking ads account for more than one in four U.S. display ad impressions -- 28% in October, according to comScore. Five percent of all ad impressions viewed in the U.S. were "socially enabled," allowing users to click through to Facebook or other social-networking sites. Although more than a quarter of display ads are seen on social networking sites, the category only attracts 15% of U.S. display ad dollars, the data firm estimates.
Facebook continued to dominate the social media landscape in 2012, but Google+ and Twitter introduced advertising and LinkedIn led the way to Wall Street with a successful IPO. To discuss these developments and look ahead to 2012, Online Media Daily asked Jordan Bitterman, senior vice president and social marketing practice lead at Digitas, for his views on the dynamic space. OMD: Facebook’s latest overhaul, including features like Timeline and Ticker, as well as Open Graph apps, encourages brands to create their own apps for the platform. How do you think that will play out next year as these features fully roll out?Bitterman: Publishers and app developers have real incentive to build into the Facebook graph. In doing so, they put themselves at the center of a highly sharable environment that provides both exposure for their brand and earned distribution for their content. While this immediate opportunity will create huge momentum for continued use of the platform, both consumers and brands are questioning whether the resulting abundance of push updates will create the dynamic of over-sharing -- and ultimately, burnout. On balance, we see strong growth, but will keep a firm hand on the tiller to make adjustments as necessary. OMD: A number of social media properties have started brand (or company) pages recently, including Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Google+ and newsreader app Zite. Will a Facebook Page still remain the anchor for social media marketing efforts? Bitterman: With 800 million users and legions of committed brands, Facebook has a huge head start. This will translate into another fruitful year for Facebook’s sales force. As the other platforms develop their brand page offerings, with new functionality and the possibility of streamlined graphics and coding standards, others will gain steam. For example, Twitter recently rolled out its brand pages, which made the site more consumer and brand-friendly. While these brand pages likely won't pull followers away from engaging their favorite brands on Facebook, interaction with a brand for the users -- and ultimately, marketers -- will be greatly enhanced. Overall, social brand pages give marketers options to connect with an audience, and numerous factors such as content, participation and listening will be increasingly critical for marketing success. OMD: What, if any, developments (or non-developments) in social media this year surprised you? Bitterman: We were surprised by the lack of true adoption of Google+ after an initial burst. With all of the resources at their disposal, we don’t count them out by a long shot, but integrating G+ into other parts of the Google ecosystem -- as they intend to do --– would be wise. 2012 feels ripe for a breakout in this area. We are pleased with the speed in which brands are embracing marketing as service. (Digitas defines this as developing experiences with utility built-in.) OMD: Will there be a standard metric for measuring effectiveness in social marketing campaigns? Is one needed? Bitterman: Digitas has been working both on our own and with industry partners to solve the equation. Generally, however, trying to measure effectiveness in social is analogous to doing so in brand and direct marketing: Every client is different and every client situation is different. The value of a fan or a follower depends on what you intend to do with them once you acquire them. The value of a connection on one platform is different than the value on another. Ultimately, we are making great progress toward standardization, but it will be a marathon in getting there -- not a sprint. If anyone says differently, don’t believe them. OMD: For Digitas clients, what proportion of their digital budgets goes to social media, and what portion to earned or owned media versus paid advertising? Bitterman: Investment in owned and earned channels is adopting rapidly. Hype is driving part of this shift. Brands are also realizing that in the social age, working media simply doesn't work well on its own. Still, even at strong growth multiples, it’s challenging for clients to take the plunge. The paid media ecosystem –- and the associated metrics -– have been an established driver of objectives for decades. For the next ring of dollars to move to line items beyond paid media -- owned and earned live in this column -- innovator brands such as American Express and P&G will have to show the way. OMD: Do you have any thoughts on what trend(s) in social media might emerge next year?Bitterman: Driven by the opportunity for exponential ROI gains, brands will embrace social commerce more fully in 2012. Consumers will become more comfortable buying through technologies on networks, and the technologies themselves will become more mainstream and reliable.Social will prove to be the “killer app” that drives mobile growth and adoption. Two-thirds of Americans are on Facebook and three-quarters visit social networks regularly, yet smartphone penetration is at just 50%. Social will be a force to push that figure higher.Investments in initiatives that stretch beyond paid media -- so-called 'non-working media,' such as development costs for brand pages or social applications -- and the buildout of the content that populates those experiences, will continue to scale as innovative case studies demonstrate an effective path forward.
Social media created a lot of buzz and controversy in the past several years. But the main question remains: “Does it have an impact on sales?” And what effect does it have on marketing? Two studies that were done this year aim to answer this question. According to Ogilvy’s recent study “Does investing in social media create business value?” social media indeed has a strong impact on sales as well as brand perception. It found: Social media exposure is directly linked with increases in sales. Integrated social media (social content + one or more channels) exposure is linked with significant increases in spend and consumption. For example, social media + PR exposure was associated with a 17% spend increase compared to the prior time period without these. *Those exposed to social media + PR increased their spending by 17% over the previous time period. *Those exposed to social media + TV were twice as likely to buy. *Those exposed to social media were 7 times more likely to spend more. *Social media + OOH exposure was linked to 1.5X higher likelihood of increase in spend. *Exposure to multiple channels was most often associated with sales impact. *Integration matters. Exposure to social content was most consistently effective when it was combined with exposure to other types of media channels. Social media is the top driver of impact. Out of 20 channels analyzed, social media was number 1 or number 2 in magnitude of impact on spend and consumption. Social media exposure is directly linked with changes in brand perception. Social media by itself is particularly effective and appears to be most effective at rapidly impacting brand perception. As marketers we consistently ask ourselves what value social media brings to us internally. According to eMarketer, a recent study by CMO Council and social CRM firm Lithium aimed to answer those questions. The study found that in addition to building loyalty among customers, social media outreach has influenced marketing operations. Of those marketers surveyed, 55% said social media improved customer listening, engagement and conversations, and another 55% said it opened new avenues to gather and further market insights. Five percen said it helped lower the cost of customer service. Done right, social media does have a positive impact on business value, as well as helping marketers build meaningful approach to relationship-building with their customers. There are two sides to the ROI. The hard numbers in one. And if you measure it right, you will see increase in sales through social media -- like Dell saw on their @DellOutlet account. Or there will be a reduction in costs, which multiple brands are seeing as they introduce blogs and communities that help answer questions with higher accuracy than your customer service ever could. But there is also the soft side to it. Although that is where the value is very hard to measure, this is the most important, the most emotional, the most lasting attachment you as a marketer can help build for your brand. I believe that social brings enormous amount of value to us marketers. In addition to the reasons listed above, it also helps change our sometimes ‘drive-by’ thinking and allows us to focus on building long-term relationships. At the same time, it urges us to shift to agile, real-time marketing. In the new social economy the best marketers are those that are not spending more than a month to build a campaign and are savvy enough to take advantage of hot trends and opportunistic approaches. Successful marketers are also those unafraid to reach into the wisdom of the crowd and co-create their brands together with their customers.
Understanding how social marketing drives consumers to the top of the search funnel should appear as No. 1 on the Marketing New Year's Resolution List for 2012. Paid social can drive brand search to the top of the funnel, improving brand conversion percentages. It may seem counterintuitive, said aimClear Founder Marty Weintraub, but at the Search Insider Summit earlier this month he described how to drive people to the top of the search funnel through social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. The results mean better brand conversions. The social graph identifies people who make commitments, and identifies religious followings and those passionate about specific things. Weintraub, author of "Killer Facebook Ads," suggests tapping that information and studying each channel's internal search signals to understand the nuances. Analyze the conversation, and the conversations taking place along themes in social media. This, he said, becomes the inventory -- the audience segment. When marketers can't determine the themes within each community, he points them to the search footprint -- the URL -- to identify how to find it. Look for conversations and theme conversions. Find the "other" targeting signal outside things like "job," "Likes," and "interest." Some Facebook members with outdated interests admit to being served relevant ads. Weintraub believes Facebook considers "other" factors outside the job, Likes and interests. He suggests creating shadow interests to test targeting. "That 'other things' [category] scares me," he said. "Out of hundreds of millions of impressions, I can click through three-tenths of one percent without hardly trying to make the ad and say something clever that speaks to my demographic. Somehow it still works because I think Facebook targets things they don't tell us about." Weintraub said search marketers who are jumping into social marketing should focus on generating high impressions and low click-through rates among the 800 million active users, of which 350 million access the network through their mobile device. For every 10 million impressions you might only send through 1,500 visitors, but they are the ones who care about products. These are the social site members who will convert. For those who want to view the entire presentation, click through to "Mining Jewels Hidden Deep In Social Media and Search History." Video streaming by Ustream
Fox's "X Factor" may not have hit the ratings heights as promised to advertisers, but from a digital and social media perspective, the singing competition show was a home run.Although post-analysis data is not complete, Don Wilcox, vice president/GM of brand entertainment for Fox Broadcasting, says "X-Factor" soared on many digital levels."We really wanted to rethink digital extensions, marketing and sponsorship," he says. "We tried to embrace an open, distributed, multiplatform approach. Digital became a high priority for us -- much more than in the past."As it turned out, "the buzz was undeniable," he says. Almost every week since it debuted, "X Factor" regularly shows up in the top-five TV show results when it came to overall social media buzz.For major brand sponsors of the show, it was a pretty good deal. Sponsors of the show -- including Verizon, Pepsi, and Sony Music -- got a multiplatform ride: traditional TV and online. (General Motors was primarily a sponsor for the traditional TV show). "The good news for the sponsors is that we took them along for the ride," he says. "The brands were so tightly coupled with the content. There was a natural ownership."A plethora of marketing efforts included deep Facebook and Twitter efforts. Some of the biggest individual sponsors included Pepsi Choice Performance -- where fans could vote on the song choice, wardrobe, dance style, and set style. "Fans designed that spectacle," says Wilcox. "This is not something I've never seen [for a entertainment competition show]."For Verizon, it employed "touch voting," where customers with an Android-enabled phone could just tap a musical act's visual/photo to vote for them. It proved to be one of the most popular functions, says Wilcox. Verizon also sponsored live views of backstage proceedings.For Sony Electronics, it sponsored an effort where a popular YouTube personality and fan of the show, Courtney, had all access to the show, filming her in and around the backstage and offscreen activities of the musical acts.Despite success digitally, reports suggest that Fox did not meet the lofty ratings guarantees promised to advertisers in traditiional TV metrics. Media agency analysts say Fox promised around a 6 rating among 18-49 viewers, with advertisers paying some $400,000 for a 30-second commercial during the upfront market, and less during scatter market activity."X-Factor" through December 11 had a 3.9 among 18-49 viewers for its Tuesday performance show and a 3.7 rating among 18-49 viewers for its Wednesday results show.But the show's numbers have been good enough to give Fox an overall major spike in the fall, versus its usual slow start to the season. A Fox spokeswoman said sponsors like Verizon and Pepsi have been happy with "X-Factor." On the digital front, Wilcox says, "X Factor" sponsors were enthusiastic: "We are all high five-ing at the moment."While Wilcox says there has been a lot of learning in season, there has been one strong takeaway for the digital activities show going into season two: "It has a positive effect on loyalty."
Affectv engineers are working on a series of products to make advertising more social. The company plans to launch the image-sharing widget Slingpic in January and social banner ads for publishers in February, according to Glen Calvert, the company's CEO. Data comes partly from companies supporting URL shorteners and video-sharing sites. Slingpic will pull in bits and bytes to make images more social, whereas social ads will target through banner ads like-minded friends. Calvert said that similar to Facebook Likes or Google +1s, Affectv will build out a series of tools that identify friends in a social circle who have a similar view about specific advertisements or formats. Media companies will continue to move up the funnel, which Calvert believes will make it easier for brands to invest in online advertising. This should enable brands to better analyze conversations and response rates. Calvert points to U.S.-based Media6Degrees, or Md6, as a rival to the U.K. company. Now nearly a year old, Affectv began providing social targeting, analyzing how users connect and share content. The technology tapped by companies like ESPN looks beyond browsing behavior to infer social signals, such as connections to users and frequency, trending links and sentiment to target content and ads. For example, Affectv can target ads to consumers taking photos at live sporting events who tweet them to followers. That's the idea of a recent ESPN campaign. The action by the consumer taking the photo confirms that he and those he tweets are interested in live sports events. It takes an offline activity and targets ads online via display and pre-roll ads. Social networking ads account for more than one in four U.S. display ad impressions -- 28% in October, according to comScore. Five percent of all ad impressions viewed in the U.S. were "socially enabled," allowing users to click through to Facebook or other social-networking sites. Although more than a quarter of display ads are seen on social networking sites, the category only attracts 15% of U.S. display ad dollars, the data firm estimates.
Each day, more than 150 years worth of YouTube videos are watched on Facebook, an increase of 2.5 times the amount viewed a year ago. What’s more, every minute Web users are sending more than 500 tweets containing YouTube links, tripling over last year, according to stats from YouTube. Indeed, video is growing more social. Plus, YouTube has said that 100 million people take a social action each week on YouTube, which could range from likes to shares to comments. Given the symbiotic links between social media and online video, how can brands and marketers boost their video performance with social tools? Mark Robertson, founder of ReelVideo and the Web site ReelSEO , shared some best practices. For starters, brands may find it effective to drive video viewers to social channels with links and information in the video on the brand’s social presence, or even with bonus videos or footage on a brand’s Facebook page. That can increase exposure and brand awareness, he said. “If the viewer then engages with the brand on social channels – on the video site like YouTube and on other social channels – it will likely assist the video’s performance as well as many SEO signals [which] are now tied to social interactivity,” Robertson said. Annotations in the video can also drive views and interactions because they can encourage social actions, such as liking a page. “Content owners can remind and encourage YouTubers to thumbs-up, subscribe, etc., which can increase social interaction within YouTube,” he said, adding that YouTube has even said that its search algorithm favors videos that drive traffic to other videos, playlists, channels, or subscriptions via linked annotations. Brands can also drive social fans to video with regular and easily accessible videos on a social page, or can incentivize existing social fans with additional video, such as exclusive clips. “Content is key with social in that the video content brands expose to social audiences could be uniquely created for that audience,” Robertson added. Don’t forget to keep the videos short. Videos between 15 seconds generate the most clickthroughs in the social world, followed by videos just over 60 seconds, according to Jun Group stats.
Where did 2011 go? How did Pinterest, Bo.lt, and Sonar change how we interact with media, and with each other? What happened to Anthony Weiner and Osama Bin Laden? When did “+”join “@” in the digital lexicon? In a year where I visited eight countries and read 95 books, I also managed to pen nearly 50 columns, and I reread them all so you don’t have to. Several themes emerged, with quite a few posts about startups, shopping, mobile social media, Google, and events. The year also brought its share of failures and disappointments to learn from. Here’s 2011 in review. Startups In January, we looked at how OneTrueFan extended check-ins to websites. It was subsequently acquired by gamification company BigDoor. Bo.lt made publishers squirm by letting anyone doctor webpages, and Sonar made some mobile users squirm by making it easier to find people near them. In August, we checked out what made Pinterest so addictive, and it only gained momentum since then, with Hitwise recently reporting that its traffic rose 4,000% in the past six months. The year ended with two more relevant features. The previous column presented the first-ever Berky awards for social innovation, starring many startups, along with Google, which acted more like a startup this year than any time since it went public. The week before, 16 resolutions for vendors provided advice that I wish was heeded more often. Just after the column was published, one visiting startup was so off-kilter that I thought it would go 0 for 16 until the head of business development pulled out his dongle (sorry, there’s no way to say that without a double entendre). Shopping Social commerce went mainstream in 2011, at least in terms of marketer awareness. Unlike gamification, this isn’t a fad; it’s part of a lasting shift in consumer behavior. Social shopping was featured in April’s “Five Social Trends To Get Excited About Today” and later in “The Seven Types Of Mobile Social Commerce.” Recommendations are an especially important driver of social shopping, as certain people appreciate more than others (“The One-Percenters Of Recommendations”). At times, social media wasn’t given its proper credit for its role in how people shop. “The Infinite Moment of Truth” aimed to fix that, building on Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth.” Mobile Well over half of this year’s columns significantly featured mobile. If you want to brush up on mobile trends before 2012, consider some of these highlights: “Mobile Marketing Is Exploding, So Get A Strategy,” “Ten Social Local Technologies For Marketers,” “The 'S' In 4S Stands For Social,” “Facebook's Little 'M' KOs Three 'Ws',” “Ten Mobile Social Trends For 2012,” “20 New Confessions Of A Foursquare Super Mayor,” “101 Types Of Mobile Social Alerts,” and “The 7 Social Stages of NFC.” Google It’s amazing in retrospect that the one company most often featured in this series is still trying to find its footing in social media. That’s part of the fun, and it’s why Google inspired a column roughly every six weeks. Sometimes the focus was much bigger than Google, such as in “The Infinite Moment of Truth” mentioned above and “Keep It Strategic, Stupid.” This month brought the first post in quite a while on YouTube. And then there were five about Google+: “Your Google+ Strategy Calculator,” “Your Google Plus FAQ,” “Why Google+ Matters,” “Why Google+ Doesn't Matter,” and “What You Won't Like about Google+ Pages.” For a social service with relatively tepid consumer interest in brands’ pages there, was this justified? I have no regrets, as the way Google infused the social layer with its other offerings may forever change marketers’ perceptions of treating social media as a silo. Events The universe is expanding, according to Hubble’s Law. So is the universe of events that marketers supposedly need to attend. It’s hard to top SXSW, which merited two columns each with its own metaphor: first, the Tower of Babel, and then a Petri dish. Other highlights included the Consumer Electronics Show, the Shorty Awards, Social Media Week, Social Week, and MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit. Then there were global events that united many more of us. When America’s most wanted terrorist was killed, it created an opportunity to reflect on how social media contributed to our awareness of the event. Failures and Disappointments Did I get more cynical this year, or was there more to be cynical about? It will be hard to ever top the epic failure of Representative Anthony Weiner, unless there’s a Senator Don Keeshlong setting up a Google+ Hangout with his webcam aimed below the belt. I may never get to have as much fun writing a column than when writing the headline, “Don’t Be a Weiner.” As for other blunders, Netflix will recover from its horrible year far sooner than Weiner will. Foursquare’s all that’s left of the check-in field, so it was a good year to see why some people stopped using it, and what happened to all the other check-in apps; the latter post came a month before Facebook acquired the ailing Gowalla. When I disliked MyLikes, it led to a rare rant on why “I Am Not A Social Publisher.” Fortunately, some bad ideas are short-lived, as discussed in “The Wrong Route To Social Commerce.” People Social media is, of course, all about people. My first column of 2011 paid tribute to my social family. I then checked in on our future bosses – the digital natives, many of whom I continued to meet during guest lectures at universities. Thanksgiving was then an opportunity to share who I’m thankful for. As I mentioned then, it’s only because you’re reading this that any of these posts matter, so I can’t thank you enough. May 2012 bring you success and fulfillment. And if anyone must be publicly humbled in the year ahead, may he or she have as perfect a name as New York’s former Congressman.