Amazing statistics: how much time do you spend on social media or blog?

• SEO still dominates for marketers, with B2B (57%) and B2C (41%). This makes the biggest impact on their lead generation goals. 
• 56 % of college students said that they would not accept a job offer or would find ways to evade policy if a company banned access to social media.
• ONLY 15 % local business fans are in the city where this business is located.
• 245 million Internet users in USA
• 80 % of all Internet users reach social media or blogs.
• 50 % of adults use social-networking sites.
• More and more adults use MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Only 29 % IT professionals said that they have a good protection from enterprise social network use.
• 44 % of companies track employees' social media use.
• 84 % of young professionals get interrupted by social media at least once while trying to complete a project. 
• You can have extra 24 min of attention when you're posting not on Twitter but on Facebook.

Mobile phone or toothbrush?

Do you know that more people own a mobile phone than a toothbrush?!

Other interesting facts about social media:

• The majority of social media users spend their time online because of staying in touch with current friends and family. 
• A little bit less people use social media for connection with old friends they've lost touch with.
• 33 % of people prioritize social media freedom over salary in accepting a job offer. 
• 30 % people would rather text than talk. 
• 43 % of online consumers use social media.
• 64 % of Americans stream mobile video at work.
• 73 % of people think that employees overshare.
• From all planet, 4.6 billion people have mobile phones and only 4.2 billion have toothbrush. 
• 37 % purchase using their smartphones. 3 times many as those who use tablet for this.
• For 90 % of social media users Facebook is the best, then Twitter 77 % and Youtube 42 %. 

8 exciting facts about SOCIAL MEDIA

8 remarks:

1. 30 % business-to-business marketers are spending millions of dollars annually on social marketing programs but they are not tracing the impact of this marketing
2. The rise of Netflix price caused 805,000 paid subscribes
3. Restaurant consumers who use social media dine more in that restaurant and usually become return customers 
4. Tablet owners consume a greater variety of news on their devices. Tablet's visual interactive features encourage people to explore
5. LinkedIn has 64 million users in North America
6. Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Notre Dame - top schools for social media
7. 80.8 % smartphones and tablets users research products and only 41.4 % purchase them
8. 40 % of bloggers consider themselves as a professionals 

Twitter statistics of 2012

The main facts about Twitter:

• It is interesting that Twitter now has 100 million active users!
• 34 % of marketers have generated loads using Twitter
• Tweets that include verbs have 2 % higher shareability
• 40 % users don't tweet and just seeking what others are saying
• 55 % use twitter via their mobile device
• Interesting content and humour makes people retweet 

Facebook statistics of 2012

According to www.digitalbuzzblog.com, it's impressive that Facebook has grown to more than 800 million active users, adding more than 200 million in a single year.

Other main facts about Facebook:

• The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages, events and groups. 
• 56 % of consumers recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan on Facebook.
•  3.5 billion peaces of content are shared each week on Facebook. 

State of the Blogging World 2012

This is statistics of United States but this happen all over the world!

The main facts about blogging:

• 60 % men and 40 % women are writing blogs 
• The main blogging platforms - Wordpress 43 % and Blogger 35 %
• 31 million bloggers in USA
• Only 8 % of bloggers earn enough money to support their family
• 9 % sustain their lifestyle, blogging 4-6 hours a day
• 2 % make $150 K blogging from exotic locations, spend 1-2 hours a day
• 81 % never make $100 from blogging 
• 42 million blogs
• 329 million people view a blog
• 500 000 new posts a day
• 400 000 daily comments
• 60 % of businesses have their blog
• 35 % are active in their blog (at least one time a month)
• 65 % haven't updated for one year or more
• ENGLISH is the main language (66 %)

State of the Blogging World

Op-ed style article: second example of op-ed (part 2)

Op-ed style article

Another chosen op-ed style article is named Thanks for Not Sharing by R. Cohen (The New York Times, December 6, 2012). In this article the author sarcastically analyses the absorption of the unwanted shared personal information and images that is spread over the social media. First of all, in this article we also can find strong and persuasive arguments, original ideas and strong opinion that should be in a good editorial. But this op-ed article is good for his title as well, which is a little bit shocking and attention grabbing. It is said that readers have short attention spans and it is necessary (when writing editorial) to attract readers with a strong headline that emphasizes your central message. Also, a title should be catchy for readers to grasp the idea quickly. In this op-ed article (as well as in the first example) the title is the first introduction to the argument and it makes editorial to be really good written.

Op-ed style article: first example of op-ed (part 1)

Expressing opinion

Op-ed style article - is a newspaper or magazine article that expresses the opinion. It can be op-ed editorial (which are usually unsigned and written by editorial board member) or an article written by writer who usually do not belong to the newspaper's editorial board.

Gamification History 1980-2013

Gamification is quite new as a business concept, but it's roots goes way back. A hundred years ago the Cracker Jack company started putting a Toy Surprise in every box. After this, countless companies have used games, toys and other kind of fun, as a way of selling products. They all have some kind of gamification, but it is not like we talk about it today - in terms of systematically thinking about how to make things more game-like and increase sales or motivate people.

30 Elements of Gamification

Game elements are your toolbox for gamification. They are extracted from games and used in different ways to make business practices more game-like. If you would look to all games you can think of, you will find a vast array of different paths, elements, templates and design patterns that can be applied to other games or gamification.

Gamification - the new way to think

Gamification - the new way to think

First time I have heard about gamification and gamified systems it at once got my attention. It's a new way of thinking. A new philosophy of life. According to gamification.org, gamification can be defined as:

The concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.

Shattered Glass: who wins fact or fiction? (Part 4)

Say truth or lie

Similarly to H. de Burgh, American professor of journalism D. Gillmor writes that there are four pillars of good journalism: thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency. These notions have a goal – objectivity. When a journalist obeys the rules of objective writing, only then he can be called as a professional journalist. “The best reporters I know always want to make one more call, check with one more source“, said D. Gillmor.

Shattered Glass: Investigative journalism as a ”muckraking-lite” (Part 3)

Tabloid-styled journalism

As it was mentioned before, investigative reporters are not satisfied about the situation of twenty-first century investigative journalism. Journalists must have a purpose to be free and fair watchdogs of society, but professors of journalism also state that now there are many tabloid-styled stories wrongly labeled “investigative”, which purpose is to entertain. These entertainment-oriented articles are what another investigative journalist J. H. Dygert has called “muckraking-lite”.

Shattered Glass: principles of traditional investigative journalism (Part 2)

Traditional investigative journalism

When we are talking about thorough facts checking, we are usually mentioning investigative journalism. While watching the movie Shattered Glass probably a majority of people raise a question: how healthy is investigative journalism when our practice moves into twenty-first century? Despite the fact that today there are more journalists involved in investigative reporting than ever before, many investigative reporters are not satisfied about the situation. Before proceeding in finding answers to this question, it is essential to define what investigative journalism is and what the main values of it are.

Shattered Glass: read between the lies of investigative journalism (part 1)

Theatrical poster

It is known that when filmmakers want to reflect journalism, they usually transform journalists into some kind of heroic action characters. For instance in a movie The Insider we can see a reporter who demolishes extremely bad conspiracy or in All the President's Men two enthusiastic journalists made a corrupt president to be compulsorily retired. Not in a few movies journalists are depicted as life-savers. In this regard, Shattered Glass is a unique movie which describes the story of a journalist on a far more human scale (it is also seen on a trailer). The film is based on real events and it develops the world of pressured national political journalism. 

Maybe not war, not culture but the Internet cements European identity?

We all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle because we are born into a certain family, nation, environment. We are different and unique but nowadays we have a strong connection with not only our own small communities but with whole world. As E. Shafak said, if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons, our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle and our humanness may wither. Communities of the likeminded are one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world.

So, the question is, how relevant is the overall idea of society’s culture in the globalized, de-territorialized world? Are we moving towards something universal, towards convergent communication culture? How relevant is the idea of ‘European journalism’? And what, actually, cements European identity?