"People who have a negative experience with a brand tell four times the number of people [on social media] as people who have a positive experience with a brand," according to Optimedia CEO Antony Young.  This seems entirely plausible, especially when customer relations is lacking: basically complaining (bashing a brand) provides a psychological release which the consumer is denied elsewhere when they can't get their problem addressed.

The kind of metrics which are available for social media, including "number of fans, or number of likes" is still "barely enough to convince a big media agency to buy," according to Young. This gets back to the whole issue of metrics and ROI -- the 800-pound gorilla for media planning, which is notable by its absence in social media.

While media are clearly proliferating, advertising budgets aren't expanding appreciably -- and this makes the job of allocating dollars to various media  more difficult, according to Antony Young, CEO of Optimedia, who's talking with MediaPost editor-in-chief Joe Mandese about the growing need for communications planning. "We're dealing with large sums of money, usually not enough," Young notes, and that means that "when you put dollars in one area -- say, social media -- you have to take it away from somewhere else." What thismeans is that media planners need a more sophisticated understanding of the way multiple media work in …

Given the progression of smart phone technology, that could well happen. Well, users won't exactly be creating the weather. But they may be creating weather-related content. That's what The Weather Channel CEO Mike Kelly suggested might be the next generation of mobile technology, which he said would give smart phone users the ability to report their barometric pressure, and maybe even things like local temperature, and even wind speed. "Can we turn every person with a cell phone into a weather forecaster or observer," Kelly asked OMMA Global attendees, answer himself: "Possibly?"

That sure seems to be the case based on what Mike Kelly, president-CEO of The Weather Channel is saying during his afternoon keynote at OMMA Global in San Francisco. To illustrate how popular weather is as a mobile app, Kelly showed the trend in TWC's mobile download apps. It went from 200,000 in 2008 to 4 million in 2009 and 30 million in 2010. Through February, Kelly said TWC has already downloaded 35 million mobile apps to date. What's driving it? Well, the weather. Kelly showed research indicating that weather is the No. 1 source of information on …

61 million Americans now own a smartphone, equalling 20% of the population, according to various online sources

when he has to demo a smartphone app on the big screen at an industry conference. For the record, Steve Horowitz of Coupons.com appears to have lovely fingers with healthy skin and clean, well-cared-for nails.  Great work Steve!

hallelujah!  And thanks to SocialVibeAds for sponsoring the free wifi.

I'm always fascinated, and sort of annoyed, by Apple's decision to strategically not attend industry functions. Steve Horowitz, CTO of Coupons.com, recalled that Apple doesn't even have a presence at the World Mobile Conference, despite (or I guess because) their mobile devices are currently the cutting edge -- so good, I guess, that they don't even have to talk about or sell their features to other industry players. I'm sure this tech snobbery is justifiable from some strategic PR point of view.... but honestly it just looks like prissy, baseless conceit to someone who isn't an Apple fanboy or member of the cult …

Interesting stat suggesting mobile access correlates with increased engagement: Facebook users who access the site through mobile devices are twice as active on the site as the average user, according to Steve Horowitz, CTO of Coupons.com