A site dedicated to the visual web. Trends, stats, news & commentary.
I gave a talk at Digital Shoreditch 2013 on ‘Beyond Instagram, visual social networks to look out for.’
Many of the ones I highlighted are ones I’ve talked about on this blog, the presentation is embedded above.
Dan Zarrella put up a post showing that hashtags on Instagram do have a purpose when it comes to driving likes. Simply put, Dan found that Instagram posts with hashtags have a higher likes to follower ratio than those without any.
One of the (many) reasons behind the shift from digital to smartphone cameras is the near-instantaneous nature of being able to take a picture with your mobile.
However, that’s still too slow for Google Glass evangelist and A-list blogger Robert Scoble.
OK, so this is an ad, but a beautifully put together one at that. The point it is trying to make? Every day more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera.
Have you heard of SoMoVid? I hadn’t either until I read the expression on Adobe’s excellent digital marketing blog. It stands for social / mobile / video of course, and the point that Abobe was trying to make in its post was that video content outperforms all other type of social content when it comes to user engagement.
A year ago Silicon Valley website Pandodaily had this to say about the (then) just launched Snapguide - “Holy Crap this thing is pretty”, while also praising its time wasting qualities.
Its true, Snapguide looks great and it is one of those apps you can lose yourself in. I think in a space with a lot of ‘here today / gone tomorrow’ networks, it will succeed.
Earlier in the week, I spoke at Greece’s ‘Social Media Conference 13’ on visual social media, my presentation is embedded at the end of this post.
Beforehand, I considered the objection brands often have - will this add further cost and complexity to already stretched marketing budgets?
On the flight over to Athens, I noticed a little promotion British Airways was running, that showed it didn’t need to do either.
(Above - Vine. Will it achieve social media maturity?)
The other week I gave a talk to De Monfort University’s digital marketing and social media course. Afterwards, I was asked: Why should brands invest in a given social network, if it might not be around tomorrow?
Is there some criteria that measures social media maturity and suggests that the likes of Vine or Instagram have staying power?
It’s a good question and one that brands ask all the time. Isn’t it easier just to stick with Facebook and Twitter as they have both the numbers and the track record?
As a result, I’ve tried to offer up a definition of social media - or more accurately social network - maturity.
The first thing to be said is I really like Viddy. At the start of the year, I thought it could break through thanks to a fundamentally good - and I believe very mobile friendly - product.
Then Viddy turned down the chance to be part of Twitter, which launched Vine instead. Bad move (see the chart from Techcrunch below ), as the latest figures show Vine stealing market share from all the mobile video players, but Viddy in particular.
No wonder Viddy’s CEO got the boot.
True or false? With global digital camera shipments plummeting, digital photography is heading only one way - in the directions of smartphones.
It’s largely true of course and the stats support it. But there are exceptions to the trend. In particular the manufacturer of 80s style LoFi cameras, Lomography has seen its business grow every year even as the digital camera industry shrinks.
And even though Lomography champions an analogue lifestyle, the brand has built market share through a text book exercise in online community management.
For example:
