Engaging Consumers via Social Media Makes Them More Likely To Buy and Recommend

(contributed by Pat)

The folks from Chadwick Martin Bailey, Inc. share with us the findings of their new research which shows consumers engaged through social media such as Facebook and Twitter are over 50% more likely to buy and recommend than before they were engaged…

In a recent study of social media usage it is clear that consumers who are Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand are more likely to not only recommend, but they are also more likely to buy from those brands than they were before becoming fans/followers.

Study: Twitter Is Not a Very Social Network

(contributed by Manuel)

Over on ReadWriteWeb Frederic Lardinois tell us how Twitter users don’t like to return the favour…

According to a group of researchers at Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Twitter is not a very social network. After analysing over 41 million user profiles and 1.47 billion follower/following relationships, the researchers concluded that only 22% of all connections on Twitter are reciprocal.

What’s even more interesting than the small number of user pairs is that 68% of all Twitter users aren’t followed by a single person they are following. As the researchers rightly note, this makes Twitter more like a broadcast medium than a social network.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests Are YOU ready for the biggest Sports Event on Earth? by Andreas von der Heydt
• Angus suggests The Psychologist’s View of UX Design by Susan Weinschenk

Congratulations to our very own Scott Bryant for being selected to speak at this year’s UX Australia conference!

Facebook’s F8 developer conference

(contributed by Melissa)

Here are a few really interesting links which I found so far on the F8 conference.

• A good summary: New Ways to Personalize Your Online Experience
• Showcase: Explore how sites integrate Facebook
• General conference info
• Watch keynotes live

Twitter’s developer conference

(contributed by Manuel)

At Chirp, the official Twitter developer conference, Twitter shared some revealing stats about its site, users, and growth that had previously been kept under wraps.

• Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users
• New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day
• 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month
• 75% of Twitter traffic comes from outside Twitter.com (i.e. via third party applications.)
• Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API
• Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day
• Twitter’s search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day
• Of Twitter’s active users, 37 percent use their phone to tweet
• Over half of all tweets (60 percent) come from third party applications
• Twitter itself has grown: in the past year alone, it has grown from 25 to 175 employees

You can also see some snapshots from the presentation.

The Quick List

No waffle, just links.

• Pat suggests Projective Techniques: Eliciting Deeper Thoughts by David Jacques
• Lexi suggests Pirate Google by Michele Goetz
• Pat suggests Why YouTube doesn’t get more agency money – and what they should do about it by Mark Pollard

Technology First, Needs Last

Don Norman stirs things up with…

I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.

(forwarded by Angus)

A Rebuttal to Technology First Needs Last

Todd Warfel replies to Don Norman’s post…

Technology didn’t drive these innovations, it was merely the road. The driver was an opportunity for invention and design research was right behind the wheel.

When both sides of a debate are highly respected experts, it makes for an interesting read!
(forwarded by Angus)

Short-Term Memory and Web Usability

Jacob Nielsen reports …

The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations

(forwarded by Angus)

My big list of 24 Web Site Usability Testing Tools

Craig Tomlin shares his list…

In the past few years, there has been massive growth in new and exciting cheap or free web site usability testing tools, so here’s my list of 24 tools you may need to use from time to time.

(forwarded by Angus)

Make the logo bigger! (the song)

In the finest tradition of Spinal Tap comes this mock-metal song Make the logo bigger, sure to raise smile on the face of anyone who’s had to deal with clients who want their logo…just that little bit bigger. (Warning: make sure you turn down your volume before playing the song)

(forwarded by Angus)

iPhone app for The Independent (UK)

Over on Econsultancy, Graham Charlton reviews the latest newspaper website mobile app…

The Independent iPhone app is a departure from some other newspaper apps, as it is designed to allows readers to download all the articles while they have a decent 3G or wi-fi connection, and saves them for reading while offline.

An interesting approach.
(forwarded by Sophie)

Surrender! Foucault and Twitter

Ian Delaney laments the direction in which social media may be taking us…

Some of my early hopes for social media, that it represented, like Kevin Kelly reckons, some kind of renaissance for socialism in the western world, are starting to run dry.

Do we blindly accept “social media networks as empowering, democratic and all about spreading fresh ideas”? Delaney says “The reverse may be the case: any given information about ourselves donates some portion of control to another party”. It’s the “dark side of social networking” he says. An interesting philosophical read to break up the mountain of practical posts, articles and reports we read day in and day out.(forwarded by Chris)

A summary of user research methods

Lastly, on his personal blog, our own Patrick Kennedy summarises a whole bunch of useful user research methods…

In this article I give a quick overview of the methods I commonly use, broken down in to main categories:

• Direct user contact—where the researcher does very much interact with users, or members of the audience as I prefer to call them
• Indirect user contact—where the researcher does not actually interact with members of the audience

I’ve found Ross Dawson’s piece on Tapping the power of Social Media: 6 steps for marketers to be a very useful primer for marketing-focussed clients and colleagues who wish they knew more about this whole “social media” thing. Here’s a taste:

1. Participate and play

The only way to understand social media is to participate. Don’t just open Facebook and Twitter accounts. You need to play extensively with a wide variety of tools and discover how they are being used. If you think you don’t have time, think how much time you’ll have if you cannot work effectively in a world increasingly driven by social media.

The other five steps are:

2. Discover relevant conversations
3. Identify influencers
4. Build a relationship with influencers
5. Don’t make half-hearted efforts
6. Find experienced guides

What tips or info do you refer people to when you want them to find out more about things that lie “in front of the wave”?

The results of a three-year Digital Youth project have been released by the University of California. It seems like an impressive ethnographical study.

Here is an extract from the summary report (PDF 83kB):

Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher and her research team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use to date.

They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. The research finds today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or playing video games. The researchers explain why youth find these activities compelling and important. The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression. These activities have captured teens’ attention because they provide avenues for extending social worlds, self-directed learning, and independence.

I don’t think the findings are hugely surprising, but they are very interesting and do support other research that has surfaced in recent years with regard to how “gen Y” use online media to extend friendships and interests and engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online.

There is some great content on the project website, but there could be better use of multimedia in terms of communicating the findings (there is some video on the McArthur Foundation website though).

[Thanks to Christo who first posted this to the Antrodesign mailing list]