Bring on the trumpets

Every day there is something new to look at, something new to try, and somewhere new to post stuff. In the past two weeks I have signed up for at least 15 new social networking services, covering everything from blog formats, posting sites, linksharing sites, twitter clients, twitter add-ons, twitter look-a-likes and more.

One thing that sticks out for me is how hard it is to make noise about new services, and how hard it is to get people to notice something. Even if they do, what are the chances they will stick around.

I'm sure every one of these start-ups has at least one board member or marketing guy (wait, that's me) like the guy in the video below who wants more noise, more attention and more fanfare when things launch, but I wonder when it all becomes such a symphony of cacophony that we recognize it as a tune. And the tune goes like this - hey, people, do whatever. It's all good. Maybe not yet.

Bring on the trumpets.

Poke more than one in four. Many tweets on the wane.

A report from eMarketer today rolled up research from Synovate and Universal McCann basically clues us in that more than half of adults across the world don’t know what a social network is, 58% to be exact.

Based on surveys with 13,000 people in 17 countries, the study investigated online behavior and attitudes towards social media and networks. The good news, methodologies aside, was that at least 70% of Americans know what a social network is, which is much higher than the overall average. Canada however has a higher percentage of adoption. Overall membership in the Synovate survey stood at 26% of all adults with variance between countries with high membership rates that seems to pattern in a way that would be consistent with the network effect - more friends online means more adoption.

More interesting to me was the size of the dissatisfaction in the market that was expressed as the % of respondents who were losing interest in social media. Not only was it somewhat surprising that since this is still a relatively new phenomenon and therefore seeming to wane in interest very fast (one would call this a fad), but more importantly that the intent of those who were aware to join a social network was less than the percentage of users who were losing interest.

What is your take on this study?

Not everyone is pokable, that's for sure. And, I know that this will impact attitudes towards it.

* Countries in the study: Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, UAE, USA

Sporty Explosions from Quiksilver

Quiksilver shows that they still know how to draw an audience online - and that they know how to get the attention of the YouTube generation with this latest viral hit. If you can't find some surf in your locale, these surfers have found a way to make it happen. The volume and langy is a bit hot in this video - you were warned ;-)




Do not try this at the cottage.