Did you know? Featured in WITI Keynote Tomorrow -- Social Media Statistics!
In preparing for this week's WITI keynote, I found some great factoids!
First, over 1/5th of the world’s population are online - that's over 1.2B people. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet! WOW!
If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest population.
45% of Facebook’s audience is now 26 or older, with women over 55 the fastest growing group!
Between February 2008 and May 2009, the Twitter community grew by over 4,000% to an estimated 20 million+ users. In December 2008, over 14 billion web videos were viewed by 150 million online Americans, an increase of 13% over November ‘08!
People with more than twenty connections on LinkedIn are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.
All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees!
Send me your factoids!!!
Mini Case #2: Personal Branding in a Social Media
Personal Branding and Networking with Social Media:
One of the top issues that I see as I mentor a folks is in how they network. I started thinking about how my networking as changed, blending the in person with the online. Interesting note, from IDC study, more women than men use social media and networking for work and personal but from Time, 63% of Twitter users are male!! Interesting -- another blog on that later!!
I considered some examples on Networking through social meida to learn from what others do.
Some Examples:
Top 10 for your Personal Brand and Social Media!
- Determine what personal brand is! Make sure your avatar, blog, words reflect that personal brand.
- Listen first. Use a set of listening tools to understand the area of domain of your personal brand. Follow the social media leaders in those domains whether that is Tim O'Reilly on technology or Obama on politics (he is no longer active! Disappointing!) For instance, the most popular technology blog is TechCrunch as of January 2009. If you are a technologist, this would be one to keep your eye on. If you are a dog lover, perhaps it is http://www.dogster.com/
- Determine your personel wheel of influence. Know who will personally be your tippers in influencing your brand. I recommended in my book on Marketing 2.0 to develop your Personal Wheel of Influence.
- Select your Tool Of Choice! Get started online based on your interest in the tool for you. You must be active, so to be active, you need to love the interactions! There are over 150M active users on Facebook in over 170 countries. Is your tool of choice MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook or all of the above!
- Be interesting and relevant- open up on who you are! Always ask is what I am doing right now online consistent with what I want my personal brand to be. To show relevance you really must keep up on the conversation. In my last seminar, people asked how much time I spend on blogging, twittering, etc. What I do is to book time on the calendar to read and explore, and then twitter and blog throughout the day. Because I love it, I keep up even on the weekends!
- Be Bold. Ask people to follow your blog or your tweets. From a set of Social Media stats, the number of followers for a active twitterer is 86,000!!! Also drive your awareness by using the tools like Google reader, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Del.icio.us.
- Dialogue! Comment on other's blogs, tweets, The better your comments are, the better you domain and skills will be demonstrated, opening up networking opportunities.
- Think about others. My grandfather always told me "do unto others what you'd have them do to you" so thank those who help you, link to others on your site, tweets, etc. It will come back to you tenfold. For instance, Mike Moran has assisted me in several areas and I have repricoated as he left IBM. (Check him out .. an incredible guy http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/blog/
- Use multi media. Videos of course can help your network get to know you in a different way than words can. YouTube has over 70M videos uploaded because people are inherently social creatures. Buy yourself a flip and get going!
- Start your own network! On LinkedIn for instance, I joined an author's group. I didn't start it but joined it! You can increase your networking via the tools you choose!
Let me know what works for you. Given the response, I'd like to study this one deeper!
Gaming as part of Marketing 2.0?!#
Playing Video Games Isn’t a Waste of Time, After All
This past holiday season, parents who buy Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, Nintendo Co.'s Wii, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 or the latest online game need not feel guilty. Turns out that young people – and adults – aren’t wasting time when they’re playing video games. We got the Wii!!!
Whether they’re tapping away on video game controllers or the keys of their computers in increasingly popular online games, today’s game players are acquiring the skills that companies increasingly value as the gaming generation enters the workforce.
In fact, the skills needed to succeed in gaming can help young people “to be more sociable, develop strategic thinking and become better leaders in life,” according to a book, “The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace.” The authors, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, say that games “deserve” a role in helping young people grow into adults because they require them to use different mental and social skills, often simultaneously.
With that in mind, thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM's new "serious game," available at no charge. We developed the game to help university students and young professionals develop a combination of business and information IT skills, important attributes needed to compete in a global economy.
Over the past two decades, IT professionals have had to break out of their comfort with proprietary systems as the industry moved to client-server computing and then to open computing. Today’s move to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is asking both IT and line of business professionals to acquire cross-over skills in each other’s domains. That’s why the game stresses learning activities that combine IT acumen with business skills.
Much like pilots who use flight simulators to learn how to fly airplanes, students of IT management studies who grew up playing video games can benefit from engaging in learning activities in the way they like to learn.
By interacting with the video game, students can make decisions about real-life business situations, such as re-designing a call center process. They can see the results of their decisions right away, and if they make a mistake, it’s much more private than “failing” in front of a classroom of their colleagues. Because a love of gaming is shared around the world, professors have told us the game can help to bridge cultural barriers.
The trend is spreading.
According to The Apply Group, a marketing consultant, at least 100 of the Global Fortune 500 will use gaming to educate their employees by 2012, with the United States, United Kingdom and Germany leading the way.
While it’s too soon to measure the full implications, there’s a new business environment emerging. If hundreds of thousands of players organize themselves to successfully complete specific endeavors during their “play” time, will they be content during work hours in organizational structures used since the Industrial Revolution, with central command and control? Chances are they’re more likely to want to work on virtual teams distributed around the world, undertaking multiple endeavors, taking advantage of the thought processes that succeeded for them in online gaming.
As employers, we cannot ignore the changing group dynamics. In fact, we should tap into the most innovative ideas to redefine the fundamental nature of computing. Just as games present us with situations that invite players to make choices, consider the advantage of using graphics and decision-making steps of games in business. Supply chain software and customer relationship software could allow decision makers to immerse themselves in the real-world simulations, judging cause and effect before making decisions.
The possibilities are huge -- and not just for business.
The application of serious gaming techniques in science, medicine and other industries could help us solve some of the world's biggest challenges.
The term “serious gaming” no longer is an oxymoron. Not just competition for employees’ attention, there’s endless opportunity if we harness the power of games to get work done.
Who else is going Gaming? Check out what we are doing!