Want to start winning with social media? Start listening. When I say listening I don’t mean reading the posts on your Facebook wall. I mean start monitoring and measuring the social web to see what people are saying about your TV show, advertising, brand, or products. Today, top companies are using social media for more than broadcasting brand messages. They’re beginning to incorporate the predictive capabilities inherent to “big data” by putting the voice of the consumer as expressed in social data, at the center of their decision making. Why? Social data allows marketing professionals to collect real-time intelligence on their audience – be that viewers or consumers – and make less data-free decisions.

Social Data Makes Media Buying Decisions a No Brainer
The power of social data as applied to marketing decisions is perhaps most impressive in the areas of media planning and buying. During the advertising sales season known as the Upfronts, Networked Insights advises broadcasters, brands, and media agencies on how to best align audiences and media. We explore this in greater detail in the eBook: New Audience Insights from SocialTV.

Conversations viewers are having across the social web about TV shows, advertising, brands, and products can be segmented and mined to uncover some remarkable insights. For networks that are announcing new television shows and securing advertisers we help:

• Identify brand affinity by TV Show
• Uncover hidden audience segments
• Isolate risky advertising decisions before brands buy
•  Understand program rankings and maximize the value of all dayparts

Media fragmentation and targeting technologies are changing how companies are growing audiences. Creating scalable hyper-segmented strategies is becoming increasingly challenging if you’re not tapped into real-time data. The good news is analytic tools are catching up to meet the demands of consumers and brands in today’s demand economy. SocialSense is Networked Insights analytic platform that allows companies to stay in-sync with their audiences through a dashboard view of the real-time data that matters most.

Read more in the eBook: New Audience Insights from SocialTV to see just how Networked Insights works to make broadcasters more efficient and brands more effective with their advertising investments.

Quarterly and annual reviews provide some idea of how the money is being spent, and frequency, reach, target rating points, media impressions and clip counting are among the longstanding measures of marketing effectiveness. But these are becoming less and less informative as the world moves at Internet speed.

Now CMOs can create the same level of visibility into their marketing spend that other operational areas have done for years. The efficiency of marketing – especially spending on advertising – can be improved by analyzing customer “conversations” carried out across social networks and other channels. Advanced techniques and capabilities are available now to capture the pulse of the marketplace as never before.

Armed with this information, CMOs can work with their CFOs more closely to identify — really, for the first time — the minimal effective amount of spending needed to drive the greatest market awareness. This new form of “marketing intelligence” can dramatically reduce “spray and pray” spending and contribute more effectively to earnings per share improvement. In this way, both CMOs and CFOs will understand and track — with far greater accuracy — marketing’s accretive value to the enterprise and shareholders.

Download our new report to learn about the emerging role of social media analysis.

Food lovers everywhere are drooling with delight that Hidden Valley Ranch, America’s best-selling salad dressing, has released a “new thicker, creamier version” of its popular dressing. In an attempt to dominate our tables and take market share away from Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Hidden Valley has launched a new campaign calling the condiment “the new ketchup”, a topping and dip for everything.

With 15% of ranch dressing used on foods other than salad and vegetables we thought we’d take a deeper dive and examine the expressions of ranch dressing lovers from across the social web. We put our conclusions together in two fun lists, 10 food items people like to dip in ranch dressing, and five ranch flavored foods people love.

Top 10 Foods to use Ranch Dressing

1. Pizza
2. Buffalo Wings
3. Salad
4. Fried Chicken and Chicken Fingers
5. Hot Dogs
6. Chicken Wraps
7. Carrots
8. Pizza Rolls
9. Celery Stick
10. Broccoli

Top 5 Ranch Flavored Foods

1. Doritos Cool Ranch
2. Baked Lays
3. Ranch Sunflower Seeds
4. Pringles
5. Corn Nuts

Finally, we can’t talk about Ranch Dressing without thinking about Melissa McCarthy’s Saturday Night Live skit where she plays a disturbingly obsessive fan of Hidden Valley products.

For marketers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs, the annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive is a highlight in the digital world and this year didn’t disappoint. With surprise visits from Jay-Z, to well hyped app launches and star studded panel conversations, the week amongst the world’s best and brightest was inspiring so I thought I’d share my takeaways for those who didn’t participate.

Marketing Trends

Celebrities draw crowds
In today’s increasingly fragmented media world, with short attention spans and diminishing brand timbre, it’s kind of refreshing to see that some things never change. This was illustrated by the many high profile speakers who were both keynote speakers and panelists.

Launching an app at SXSW is hard
Highlight, a mobile networking app, seemed to grab everyone’s attention well before SXSW even started. It may have fizzled once users experienced the battery drain it caused while running in the background. Win or lose, what’s clear is the competition for new companies is fierce and the breakout apps of years past are proving tough acts to follow.

Seamless integrated brand experiences are critical
With the growth rate of mobile devices and tablets, we’ve entered a time where the consumer’s expectations for consistent experiences with brands and networks are higher than they’ve ever been. Maintaining a constant high quality presence is quickly becoming the standard.

In an always-on world, everything is old news in digital marketing
The thirst for knowledge, answers, tips and insights remains high amongst marketers at SXSW. I often wonder if in today’s hyper connected world, when information finds me at every digital touch point, if one can really learn anything new at a conference. While I still believe you can learn from unique perspectives, what’s clear is the rate at which we consume media and information has changed us and made us smarter. Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate how we interact at these conferences and look for new ways to connect, discover and explore.

Technology Trends

Marketers are talking more than ever
Digital professionals are connecting offline unlike ever before and I believe this is due to the powerful combination of social networking tools, the rate of change/evolution, and the need to stay on top of trends to uncover what’s working and what’s not.

The future is small screen experiences
Next generation products will be mainly on tablets and mobile phones. That’s the world to design apps and technologies for if you’re building tomorrow’s next big thing. For now, marketers are faced with asking themselves how long they can afford to not look at a 360 degree digital experience. The clock is ticking.

Leverage technology to keep today’s real-time consumer at the center
Social media listen, monitoring, and analytics is a game changer for marketers who need to track the pulse of the modern consumer. While a brand’s audience might be armed with social media and mobile devices, today brands are building bridges and accelerating business processes with social data and real-time analytics.

Consumer Trends

Social accelerates pop culture trends
Social media is proving to be an incredible cultural engine driving trends, memes, and messages further and faster than ever imagined. We’re just beginning to see the impact and understand how it happens. We’re establishing new rules and new norms as we adapt to a more connected and digital world.

Engaging more than ever before with TV and brands
Consumers want to talk back. They want to interact. And they want to share. Next generation winners and losers for both brands and networks will be defined not by quality of experience or branding alone, but how well you engage your audience. Making your brand the signal in the noise for consumers is the new mission in media.

Using social media tools to share, broadcast, and curate
Much of what marketers are experimenting with is about enabling advocates to carry your message for you. While lots of lip service is paid to the concept of influencers, the truth is a brand can’t know who and how to spread their marketing most effectively without a lot of cost. It’s cheaper to build an army of fanatics through inspiration, content and platforms that make viral possible.

Event Highlights

HBO’s Girls – Incredible launch and presence with blended offline and online marketing activities. Clearly stood out despite the noise.

American Express – Bold, daring, and dominant marketing. Innovative team that’s pushing technology to redefine the brand and company positioning.

Samsung – Well executed events and marketing campaigns for their target consumer. If your challenge is to take on the coolest brand in the world, these guys are quickly becoming formidable.

Social Media Week New York is back, and I’m excited to connect with some of the sharpest minds in marketing, advertising and social media. Networked Insights CEO Dan Neely will participate in a social TV panel where he’ll discuss how networks and brands are leveraging social data to improve decisions related to audiences, content and marketing..

Take a look at the marketing and advertising presentations and panels that I can’t wait to check out during 2012 Social Media Week:

Keynote: John Bell, Global Managing Director at Ogilvy, on The Insidious Plot to Socialize the Enterprise

Looking forward to seeing: John Bell

My question for the presenter(s): Business intelligence provides corporations visibility into business performance through data. With the number of social data and analytics providers growing, what factors will accelerate adoption of social intelligence, allowing brands to better understand the world outside their business and the data they own?

Keynote: Jeff Dachis, CEO, Chairman & Founder of Dachis Group followed by Panel: Big Data and Bigger Conversations: Measuring Your Brand’s Social Performance

Looking forward to seeing: Jeff Dachis

My question for the presenter(s): Awareness, advocacy and mindshare are great, but they are values you measure after a campaign is launched. How are you seeing brands use social data to pre-inform decisions, uncover trends and enable predictions related to marketing and advertising?

What Real Time Marketing Really Takes

Looking forward to seeing: Emily Steel

My question for the presenter(s): At Networked Insights we frequently tell people real-time is relative to the decision cycles of the business and marketing activity. I’m curious to hear how Beth Waxman-Arteta see’s marketers adapting pushed by interactive marketing and social media. Social media data allows marketers to get feedback about marketing and advertising in real-time. Is this making marketers more agile or are more traditional mass marketing tactics winning?

State Your Case: Research vs. Social Analytics

Looking forward to seeing: Craig Hepburn

My question for the presenter(s): How does Nokia leverage social data to improve product development, marketing and customer service? What are the obstacles to social media marketers evolving from tactical to strategic roles?

Keynote: Gabe Zichermann on The Business of Fun: How Gamification Will Change Your Organization followed by The Future Of Gaming, hosted by PSFK

Looking forward to seeing: Gabe Zichermann

My question for the presenter(s): What industries, products or marketing programs best lend themselves to gammification marketing techniques?

Socializing the News

Looking forward to seeing: Anthony De Rosa & Elizabeth Heron

My question for the presenter(s): For Anthony – Where can someone get good Chinese takeout in SoHo? For the panel – Is social media changing what news and topics get covered? Are hybrid media outlets influencing traditional news coverage?

Every year the Super Bowl draws millions of viewers to what is arguably America’s grandest event. Along with the game itself, the spectacle encompasses both pre-game programming and the “lead-out” show that airs immediately following the post-game festivities. Media sellers promote the before and after slots to advertisers as valuable brand opportunities. However, for media buyers and brand managers, the benefits gained have to justify the costs.

One factor in determining whether such buys are worth it is knowing that you’re reaching your desired audience. But gathering audience intelligence beyond traditional demographics is an expensive and time-consuming process – an exercise that only adds cost to what is already the largest ad spend of the year.

One way to save money and still achieve optimum reach is to advertise on the lead-out show. While trending toward family-friendly programming, lead-out shows have historically retained a good share of viewers from the Super Bowl. Last year, the lead-out show was “Glee.” Two years ago, it was “Undercover Boss.” This year, it will be the first episode of a new season of “The Voice.”

“The Voice” was last summer’s breakout hit, largely because of its social TV integrations that connected all the judges, performers and viewers in a real-time feedback loop. This real-time conversation enabled many second-screen experiences for viewer interaction, on Twitter and beyond. At the same time, these experiences opened up even more opportunities for brands to integrate with and obtain significant reach.

Both in raw numbers and from a social media perspective, “The Voice” shows promise as a cost-effective opportunity. But is it in sync with your desired audience? Networked Insights’ Audience Sync uses proprietary real-time analytics and topic discovery tools to show you who is talking about your product or service across the entire social web. Audience Sync can also slice those same conversations in real time based on consumer traits, hobbies and behaviors, breaking audiences into segments such as “extreme gamers,” “moms” and “millennials.”

To demonstrate some of the counterintuitive insights this process can discover, we put “The Voice” through Audience Sync. The top results were predictable. TV fans identified as millennials and moms, particularly those who watch “American Idol,” contributed the largest share of conversations. Expectedly, both groups are target fans for “The Voice.” However, surprising conversations came from sports fans, not only of football but also tennis and NASCAR, as well as gamers. All of them like Cee Lo Green, one of the show’s judges.

Audience Sync offers many other opportunities to increase your knowledge in real time of how your audience behaves and interacts socially. This capability also allows you to optimize your strategies for buying (are you truly reaching who you want?) or selling (are there unexpected audiences that open the door to nonconventional brand sponsorships?). You can use this rich data to understand your online consumers. Or, if you don’t, your competitors will.

Download our Media Optimization Guide >>
Make Every Ad Perform Like a Super Bowl Ad

Now that we have the most boring sports weekend of 2012 out of the way (come on, who could stay awake for the Australian Open, and the Pro Bowl – really?), it’s time to crank up the Super Bowl hype. Advertisers are certainly obliging. Some are already previewing the game spots that they’ll be spending $3 million to air.

Feeling left out of the action because you can’t spring for that kind of scratch? Not to worry. Just a couple of clicks will take you to Networked Insights’ Media Optimization Guide, Super Bowl XLVI Edition, a treasure chest of ideas that can help you make every ad perform like a Super Bowl ad

Topics the guide covers include using real-time social data to understand your audiences and deliver them relevant content. We reveal how you can reach NFL fans without an NFL budget, and how you can overcome a media lockout. The guide also has tips on leveraging social data to understand a TV show’s audience before it airs. And, it takes a look at how you can improve your TV marketing with real-time audience intelligence.

The guide has some entertaining information on two aspects of the big event – the halftime show and the program that NBC airs immediately after the game – that are stories unto themselves. All I’ll say is with what we’ve been hearing ahead of Madonna’s appearance, I can’t wait for the social chatter as her performance grows nearer and once she hits the stage (prediction: it isn’t going to be all bouquets). And, if you’re doubting that The Voice is going to keep football fans tuned in postgame, you might be surprised by who’ll be rooting for Team Adam, Team Blake, Team Cee Lo and Team Christina.

Finally, throughout the guide you’ll find examples of how Networked Insights tools make all these insights possible – Audience Sync, to discover who is talking about your product or service across the entire social web; Content Sync, which taps real-time data to better understand target audiences; and Media Sync, which enables networks, brands and agencies to leverage real-time data to uncover where their audience is consuming media. Together, they provide a playbook for you to unleash Super Bowl-power advertising.

Download our media optimization guide >>
Make Every Ad Perform Like a Super Bowl Ad

Media lockouts are common among large scale event based broadcasts because they capture the largest TV audiences. Many brands are effectively locked out from the start because they can’t match the media budgets of larger competitors. For locked-out companies, embracing creative techniques to uncover alternative media options is essential. The good news in today’s fragmented media landscape is that your brand can navigate around a lockout if you tap into the media consumption trends of your target audience. The challenge is to develop a plan to reach this audience that is grounded in consumer behavior rather than gut-based decisions.

Networked Insights analysts helped one of our clients and its media agency develop a plan to end-run a high-profile lockout during a critical product launch. The well-known consumer electronics brand was trying to reach a premium sports audience, but a competing advertiser had locked it out of a major televised sports series. To help our client find another route to reaching the same target audience, we conducted social media analytics across a global audience to determine what shows the target audience watches and engages with during halftime or after the locked-out game. The information we uncovered enabled the client to pay lower rates for shows delivering the same or greater target rating points within its sports audience than the locked-out sports series.

Networked Insights has helped brands facing both event-specific and perpetual lockouts. Our Media Sync taps into social media channels to unearth the real-time media consumption trends of target consumers. As brands embrace more adaptive marketing techniques, consumer data in social media will become a beacon for many marketing decisions. Today only the most creative, resourceful and forward-thinking companies incorporate real-time data into their decision making. As access to real-time consumer data grows, others are bound to join them.

Download our Media Optimization Guide >>
Make Every Ad Perform Like a Super Bowl Ad

National Football League broadcasts deliver a premium audience and provide an opportunity to reach many people at one time. But a downside for advertisers is the cost associated with adhering to mass-marketing techniques. As media has evolved, so too have the behaviors of the audience. How can brands and agencies keep up with target consumers who appear to have better technology than the marketers trying to connect with them?

TV analysts from Networked Insights examined shows that NFL fans discuss across the social web to identify more economical alternatives for reaching the big game’s audience. Shows like “Fringe,” “The Office,” “Community,” “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” were among the most mentioned. For brands and media buyers, this discovery supports more informed decision making. The result is a more efficient media plan that maximizes the effectiveness of your spend.

Staying in sync with the media choices of your target audience enables you to know with certainty that your message is being delivered. Networked Insights’ Media Sync enables networks, brands and agencies to leverage real-time data to uncover where their audience is consuming media. Pairing Media Sync with our Content Sync, which taps real-time data to better understand target audiences, eliminates much of the marketing guesswork, enabling you to deliver relevant content to target audiences where they’re consuming media.

As companies adapt to more agile marketing techniques, real-time consumer data will be the compass that guides decision making from launch into the “always-on” marketing world where more and more brands live. The ability to leverage social data to improve decisions across the enterprise will distinguish elite companies in the 21st century.

Download our Media Optimization Guide >>
Make Every Ad Perform Like a Super Bowl Ad

Marketers are used to planning campaigns a year in advance and many are going to have trouble reprogramming themselves to think about the fact that campaign planning needs to start happening closer and closer to real time. For example, the back-to-school phenomenon is well understood by lots of brands and campaigns are built around the generally accepted beginning of this season. But what if your customers are starting to talk about back-to-school shopping a month earlier than  usual? The swift and nimble marketers, the ones who can be flexible in the face of changing information and trends, are the ones who will be successful.

Social-media analytics allows marketers to be proactive, to listen to the good things people are saying and mold their campaigns based on this information. But they can only do this if they are willing to give up some of the illusion of control that planning a year in advance gives them. This positive listening is a sharp contrast to PR’s negative listening — reacting to crises after the fact. This kind of behavior is in PR practitioners’ DNA and they’re well-versed into how to sift through brand mentions for the useful nuggets and then act. Likewise marketers must learn to take advantage of their tools by putting their brand insights and trend analysis into action.

The Super Bowl might be the world’s greatest match of football titans with one of the world’s largest audiences, topping out at around 111 million tuning in for the game. But only slightly half of the audience are there to watch the actual football game according to a new report from Lightspeed Research who surveyed over 2000 Americans online and found that nearly as many viewers were interested in the advertising as they were in the football.

The kingpin who started the advertising revolution on the Super Bowl was none other than Apple – with their “1984″ ad, which launched the Macintosh computer. They reportedly got $150 million dollars in media value from that one Super Bowl spot because of the commentary on ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC and others. So, for our third year running, we set out on a quest to declare a winner of the Super Bowl from a different perspective: the brand that got the most media value (what we term Social Lift) from their advertising on the Super Bowl.

We are defining this Social Lift as the increase in buzz from a baseline we took before the Super Bowl (Jan 1 to Feb 4) compared to Super Bowl and directly after the Super Bowl from Feb 6 and 7. And the other dimension we measured was the efficiency of spend, which is the total media value divided by the estimated spend on the ads. The numbers were averaged to create an index. So a “2″ is twice as efficient in creating social lift per dollar spent as the average ad in Super Bowl 2011.

And this year’s winner is … Teleflora! This is their third “Insighty” in as many years.

• Like any good mix of paid, earned, and owned assets — which is the secret to maximizing efficiency of media spend — Teleflora placed only one ad, but leveraged social conversation around that to achieve the highest efficiency of spend.

• In contrast, Chrysler had the highest social lift — 377% compared to Teleflora’s lift of 178% — but they had to spend a lot more to get it, which still places them a respectable ninth in the efficiency field. In these days of carefully watched budgets and increasing marketing expectations, efficiency is the name of the game.

• Sentiment is always a factor, and Teleflora did well with 79% of comments positive. The negative 7% focused mostly on the edgy remark about the “nice rack” of the engineer’s girlfriend.

• Best sentiment: Volkswagen had the highest positive sentiment at 89%. They also ranked third in both social lift and efficiency.

• Bailout fallout: Chrysler had the highest negative sentiment of the top 10 — tied with Best Buy at 19%. Most of that focused on griping about the auto bailout and the cost of a Super Bowl ad.

Download the full report: A Lambeau Leap Into Social Lift.

The article highlights a major shift in the advertising world where paid, earned, and owned assets are increasingly being coordinated to maximize synergies between the three. This is exactly the area we have been working in over the past year, helping clients determine the minimal effective media spend that is going to achieve the maximum impact in the market with no waste in dollars. This translates into efficiencies of 10% and more in their media spend by creating social lift, the buzz about your ad and brand that adds earned value to your media buys.

Even a crude awareness and approach to manipulating these three key areas of marketing will yield results: toss a hand grenade in a pond and you’ll catch some fish, right? But leveraging social data can turn this kind of marketing into a science by directing the sequencing of paid, earned, and owned initiatives. Do you start with a contest launched with an online video (owned) and then follow up with advertising? Or do you launch with a conversation-starting paid ad, ride the earned lift… and then introduce owned assets into that conversation?

In addition, social data can help find those places where the audience gathers outside of a “premium” ad market like the Super Bowl ad (eg, those buys on YouTube and ESPN mobile that Volkswagen is making, mentioned in the Ad Age article). That allows a brand to reach that premium audience at a non-premium price. In this case, they are smart, repeat impressions building on the TV ad. But it also enables a brand to “steal the cheese” by grabbing that Super Bowl audience without buying a Super Bowl ad.

The huge cost of a Super Bowl ad highlights the need to create these media buying efficiencies. But the same dynamics can be brought to bear on buys throughout the year — and media planners and buyers can benefit from these savings year round. The rapidly approaching upfront season is a key time to use social data for big efficiencies.

If you’d like to get our take on how Super Bowl advertisers fared this year, come back to this blog on Tuesday, after the game. This will be our third annual report on Super Bowl advertising (which makes us veterans in the explosive new world of social media insights). This year’s post-game report will reveal which brands got the most social lift and ROI based on their spend.

In the meantime… Go, Pack, Go!

Here are the major points included:

• Value gained exploiting shows undervalued by Nielsen
• Hyper-segmentation approaches that go beyond “Adults 18 to 49″
• How smart ad buys and owned content can be leveraged for a bonus of earned social lift
• Successful branded integration ad for the Corolla
• How social can point the way to premium audiences at non-premium prices

If you attended the webinar and would like to revisit it or share it, you can download it here. And if you missed it, all the more reason to download!

1. Buy shows with high social engagement and low TRPs. Nielsen sets the value based on their metrics. Why not buy based on metrics from social media data? Since the TRPs don’t recognize the value of a highly engaged audience — but you do, or should — you can get that value for a bargain.
2. Benefit from the “social lift” that occurs when a highly engaged audience talks about a show online. Your brand can get talked about in the online conversation about a show simply because you advertise on that show. But a smart branded integration play can set that social lift on fire. Get clever and knit your brand into the show — and into the hearts of its most passionate viewers.
3. Get repeat impressions against your targets through multiple channels by understanding where the conversation is taking place. The biggest opportunity after the TV ad is in the digital space. We have pulled insights from  conversation on a number of sites where fans of a particular show, in a specific category, and using a brand name come to discuss. We typically advise on the best sites to place digital ads that will reinforce the TV ads or branded integrations viewers just saw on the show.

If you’d like to know more, sign up for our webinar “The Walking Dead: A Media Buying Guide for Brands.” On 1/19/2011, We’ll give in-depth examples, many drawn from AMC’s new hit show, to illustrate the points above.

We were producing “ratings” before the show even premiered by tracking the conversation in the weeks leading up to the first episode. We also measured engagement and reactions to the premiere and will continue to do so. There are a few reasons “The Walking Dead” caught our eye out of all the new and returning shows:

• AMC scored a big hit with “Mad Men.” Besides the critical acclaim and solid — if not massive — viewership, the show always scores high in social engagement. It topped our list of all shows for the season finale. We’re interested to see if AMC can do it again.
• “The Walking Dead” is a transmedia show. It’s based on the serialized graphic novel. Transmedia shows often come with pre-built social audiences who can quickly kick a TV show into overdrive.
• If this show does prove to be highly engaging, it will become one of the shows we recommend that our clients buy — for the  social lift and accompanying huge efficiencies of media spend.

Our report can be found on Slideshare: “The Walking Dead: Social intelligence report 1.”

A final note: This report uses the same templates and reporting mechanisms we’re using for clients to track their overall brand health and provide regular insights around their audiences, products, competitors, and more. This report just happens to be about zombies. If they start to buzz about the health benefits of eating organic brains, we’ll be the first to spot the trend.

• The handshake. The high-five. The chest bump. The bro hug. The “social checkin?” SCVNGR introduces a “challenging” way to say hello.
• Social services (or lack thereof). Social networking sites are being likened to airlines and cable television when it comes to customer (dis)satisfaction. Is the commercialization of social media impacting the experience?
• Divisions are so divisive. Are separate business units for social media necessary?  A heated debate in the comments of an Adage blog post erupts.
• “Michael Knight, a lone crusader in a dangerous world. The world… of the Knight Rider.” Ford Motor Company unveils “AJ” (I prefer K.I.T.T.), the social networking car. We are a “David Hasselhoff” away from reliving the 80s?
• You don’t get to 500 million friends, without making a few enemies. Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t think much of the new Facebook movie. What?!? Yep, it’s called The Social Network and there’s a trailer.
• I pledge allegiance to the “emotional states” of America. Is the west coast truly happier than the east? Twitter study reveals the pulse of a nation.

• Hello ladies. How are you? Fantastic. Does your man look like me? No. Can he smell like me? Yes. Old Spice sets the social standard.
• It’s social… if you can pay. And it certainly won’t be anonymous.  The Sun Chronicle is now charging to comment.
• The @earlybird gets the worm. Or does it? Twitter tries to monetizing their growing traffic numbers by tweeting out deals. Will it work?
• Mobile users of Facebook are taking it to the street. Facebook has 150 million mobile users, up 50% from 3 months ago.
• I always feel like somebody’s watching me (but it’s my fault). Friends (and criminals, I suppose) can know your every move, but only if you let them. Geolocation is causing growing  concern about security in a mobile world.
• This land is your land. This land my land. However, it’s only your land if you have the proper documentation to prove you are a citizen. Despite the public’s willingness to blame immigrants for the nonexistent Arizona crime wave, most Americans are embarrassed by the nation’s “political class.”
• Looking for a job? Get ready to compete with recent college grads, over-qualified applicants, and an aging population on the verge of retirement (or so they thought). Get you and your resume through the virtual front door to the person doing the hiring.

Once again we’re going to first check in on the buzz around the players before going on to our ever-evolving coverage of the ubiquitous vuvuzela.

General Trends and Analysis

• Currently only 4 out of the top 10 most buzzed about players still remain within the tournament! However during the time that this data was collected, both the American and English teams lost crucial matches that removed them from the tournament. Needless to say, if some of those eliminated players manage to hold more dominance in online conversations then they did on the field, they could be solid choices as future brand endorsers.
• Lionel Messi’s recent birthday contributed to some his buzz this week. Fans proved that they loved him for more than his astounding athleticism as they wished him a happy 23rd birthday.

Sample Post…
“C’mon everyone, wish a Happy Birthday to #ARG footballer Lionel Messi, who turns 23 today.W00t! #worldcup” Read the post…

• The hot online gossip with Landon Donovan at the moment is that an unnamed woman has come forward claiming to have had his “love child.” Clearly instant celebrity status isn’t always fun.

Sample Post…
“Ok, so I’m reading reports that Landon Donovan isn’t officially divorced from his wife and may reconcile?” Read the post…

• Fans are also buzzing about potential future careers for their favorite players with the Premier and Champion’s League clubs.

Sample Posts…

“Oh. Manchester *CITY* not Manchester United is looking at Landon Donovan. This is perhaps the difference between the Lakers & the Clippers.” Read the post…

“@CMcArdle Fabiano is deadly. I would love if United bought him. Above any other player.” Read the post…

• Landon Donovan’s astounding last-minute goal against Algeria resulted in excited fans swarming Twitter, and causing the ‘fail whale’ to appear. As a result fans claimed that Donovan “broke the Internet.” However, as much as Twitter might see itself as the “kingmaker” of social media, it’s not. Because if we were to just base all of our opinions solely on Twitter-based conversation volume and how many times the ‘fail whale’ appears, we’d be missing what’s really happening across the entire spectrum of social media. This is evident in our top 10 list, which ranked Donovan this week in 6th place with over 1,500-related tweets, well below Lionel Messi, who holds 1st place on our list with only some 500+ Tweets; a mere third of what Donovan amassed!

Vuvuzelas have refused to silence…
We’ve followed some of the stories behind vuvuzelas — from angry Coke fans to deep discussions about vuvuzelas’ cultural importance. This week we want to look at why tracing internet memes, such as vuvuzelas, can provide keys to uncovering potential audiences for your own brands.

Memes are important to follow because, though they don’t always add  new content to the conversation (what’s the content in a vuvuzela-referencing comment that just says “BUZZZZZZZ”?) they do add value. This is because memes are excellent at pointing toward where user awareness, engagement, and affinity hide; which is the secret recipe for communities with strong brand loyalty.

The off-topic sites with the most vuvuzela-related conversations were primarily male-dominated spaces around videogames! The top-ranking related site was penny-arcade, a videogame-based webcomic; another top site was twoplustwo, an online poker strategy site. Other listed sites included ign and gamespot (which are both videogame review sites) and steampowered and bungie (which are both videogame producers). Some great examples of attempting to connect with the vuvuzela-buzzing audience can be seen in both the iPhone vuvuzela app, and YouTube adding the ability to dub vuvuzela sounds over popular videos. So vuvuzela lovers aren’t necessarily football fans, Coke consumers, or nationalists; they are also  videogame enthusiasts, and a previously untapped market!

We’ll first check in on the buzz around players, and then continue our unraveling narrative about vuvuzelas.

General Trends and Analysis

• As the final matches of the first round are coming to a close the online buzz is trending away from the players expected to excel, and transferring instead to those who are actually placing the ball in the net. The ESPN best player rankings we quoted last week became nearly irrelevant.
• If your team is underperforming, not even a scandal can save your place in our top 10 list: Franck Ribery, the 7th most buzzed player last week, fell right off the chart this week. We may see him again once he finally gets charged for his role in a prostitution scandal in Paris.
• Wayne Rooney stays atop our chart this week due to his “slagging off” of the English fans for publicly booing his team’s poor performance. And because of his subsequent half-hearted apology for doing so. What can Rooney do next week to maintain his position in our top 10?

Sample post…
“What’s more annoying, that whining noise that Wayne Rooney makes or a Vuvuzela?” Read the post…

Recent buzz around the U.S. team

• This data was collected from just before the U.S. lost against Ghana, so the U.S. was riding high… We find the emergence of the humbling Landon Donovan and our boy from Texas, Clint Dempsey, claiming a foothold in the online buzz.
• Michael Bradley didn’t make our top 10 list, but his last-minute penalty kick to even the score with Slovenia earned him 12th place in our social ranking with a social index of 3.2. That’s only .1 short of Landon Donovan’s current score.
• Landon Donovan is becoming increasingly popular.

Sample posts…
“Landon Donovan is USA’s Chuck Norris” Read the post.

“Landon Donovan doesn’t kick the ball, it rockets toward the goal out of FEAR.” Read the post.

• Fans worry about Clint Dempsey’s temper after he was hit in the face by the Algerian defender.

Sample posts…
”Clint Dempsey just gave millions of fans heart attacks across America just now.” Read the post.

“DEMPSEY WTF are you doing? Relax for god sakes please!” Read the post.

And finally returning back to our continued coverage of the ‘buzzing’ Vuvuzelas…
Last week we discovered a group on Coke’s Facebook page advocating a boycott of Coke in hopes that it would help ban vuvuzelas (Coke is suffering some guilt by association because they had incorporated vuvuzelas into their World Cup advertising well before the instrument started annoying some fans). But this week, digging deeper, we’re actually finding rich positive sentiment for vuvuzelas that is outweighing the negative.

Many posting online see vuvuzela bashing as a kind of cultural imperialism, an attempt to impose Western football/soccer traditions on South African fans, who don’t want to be told what should and shouldn’t be included within the definition of the sport they all love. In fact according to the online conversations, banning vuvuzelas would be the equivalent of outlawing English chanting, or songs, during a match. Vuvuzela defenders note that the instrument has played an important role throughout the entire spectacle of this World Cup — from the vuvuzela day celebration in honor of the first World Cup to ever be held in Africa, to the vuvuzelas’ appearance at the newly reconstructed stadium in Soweto during the recent anniversary of the anti-apartheid uprising in Soweto 36 years ago.