Facebook? Twitter? Microsoft tops social media use

(Reuters) – Twitter and Facebook are the bane of many bosses, but a new survey has found that employees at Microsoft Corp are the most social media-savvy in the world.

The survey, the first by sales and marketing contact database NetProspex, ranked the top 50 companies based on their social network membership, frequency of social media posts on Twitter and other blogs, and the friendliness or connectedness of a sample of employees for each organization.

The NetProspex Social Index was determined after an analysis of more than 100,000 business executives from the Fortune 1000 companies in the first quarter of 2010.

“This report shows that in today’s business environment, employees throughout many of the country’s largest corporations are using social networks,” Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex, said in a statement.

“This presents a new opportunity for sales and marketing prospecting and lead generation, as strategies adapt to encompass the landscape of social networks.”

The survey found that almost half of companies analyzed have employees throughout their organization on social networking sites, with Microsoft leading the way.

Not surprisingly, the list was dominated by technology and software companies, while online retailers such as Amazon.com and eBay claimed two of the top five rankings.

Google and Walt Disney Corp rounded out the top 5, while Microsoft’s rival Apple ranked number 10.

Microsoft’s tech-savvy ranking comes almost a week after the company launched two new phones — the Kin One and Kin Two — aimed at the youth market and which will enable users to use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts with ease.

(Writing by Miral Fahmy, editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Facebook? Twitter? Microsoft tops social media use

future of corporate social media

Blogout! ’09 Blogout! ’09 aims to help make sense of the social media landscape in Singapore. It is an event to celebrate bloggers’ independent voices, emergent forms of social, web technology and to create change for their organizations, communities and society. Corporate + Open Track Open Track Date: 6 & 7 March 2009 7 March 2009 Time: 10.30am to 5.30pm Venue: 8Q, Singapore Art Museum – 8 Queen Street, Singapore Fee: $90/per person (extended to 3 March 2009). Thereafter $120. Free, registration required Gather 4 people that are a confirmed attendee, and you will get the 5th ticket FREE! Hey, the 1st 50 to register & Pay are entitled a chance to win in the lucky draw. This promotion is not applicable for payment made on-site. Please contact Belinda Ong at +65 6220 6643 or email to belinda@firestarter.com.sg Register now! For detailed program: http://tdm.sg/events/blogout Why attend? There’s something for everyone at Blogout! this year. If you are an executive or business owner who wants to see how social media can work for your organization, you definitely do not want to miss Day 1 (Corporate Track) where we feature some of the best speakers and practitioners in the social media scene. Find out more here… Key Speakers Jon Yongfook Yongfook is an award-winning web producer, a blogger (of 10 years!), a proponent of permission-based marketing and a big believer in metrics-based approaches to solving online business problems. A programmer-designer-marketer living in Tokyo. He specialises in usability, platform development and online marketing. He’s the creator of open source lifestream software Sweetcron and the recipe sharing website Open Source Food (now known as Nibbledish), which was acquired by Tsavo Media in January 2009. He helps companies improve user experience, to increase conversions and revenue, assist companies reach new markets, and building online applications to solve a business or communication problem. Melvin Yuan Melvin is Director, Digital Strategies Group (Asia) at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. He’s a co-founder of Scoopasia.com and member of the Social Media Collective and The Digital Movement (Singapore). He is dedicated to helping PR practitioners understand the new world that we live in and to bridge the gap between the wired-world business objectives of today and the traditional PR methods that we’ve been used to. Joel Postman Joel Postman is senior partner and chief enterprise social business strategist for Intridea, a Washington, D.C. based developer of Web 2.0 applications including the popular microblogging platform Present.ly. His background includes a decade of Fortune 500 corporate communications leadership, four years as the speechwriter to the CEO of Sun Microsystems, and experience in print and broadcast news. He is the author of SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate, published December 2008. Joel lives with his family in the Santa Cruz Mountains. To the extent that he could be said to have grown up. He did so in the Silicon Valley, and first lived there before the discovery of silicon. He is also an experienced Zamboni driver. Register today! For detailed program: http://tdm.sg/events/blogout ———————————————————————— Proudly brought to you by: Supported by: Venue Partner: Official Blog Community: Prize Sponsors:

STB gets S$90m boost, SINGAPORE, Marketing, Online advertising, Social networks, Industry bodies, Government, | Market-interactive.com

• STB launches new global marketing campaign
• Part of S$90 million initiative
• Includes social networking

Singapore – The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has announced full details of its S$90 million initiative which includes a new global marketing campaign under the tagline “2009 Reasons to enjoy Singapore”.

“STB is currently working with more stakeholders including airlines such as Singapore Airlines, travel agents, travel portals such as Zuji, attractions and retailers to develop more offers. It also hopes to attract more partners throughout the year.”

In another crucial part of the new marketing campaign, STB will also leverage online media and viral marketing channels such as Facebook to launch promotions. ‘Fly on US’ is the first major online promotion and offers S$500,000 worth of free air tickets to Singapore, as well as S$10,000 cash to be won monthly.

http://www.marketing-interactive.com/news/10845

Circos Helps Consumers Search for the Good Life -itsReal

Circos Helps Consumers Search for the Good Life

Concierge-like search engine connects consumers with premium lifestyle experiences

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Sep, 2008 – Today Circos relaunched its search engine Circos.com, helping consumers find personalized, premium lifestyle experiences online. By tapping into the collective knowledge of people across the Internet, Circos condenses user-generated content into meaningful tips about hotels, restaurants, and other relevant brands. The updated site is live at http://www.circos.com.

There are millions of insights and shared experiences distributed across the Web in individual communities, blogs, and forums, but it’s nearly impossible for a high-end consumer to locate the right insights and tips for their personal needs. Conventional Internet search relies on site statistics and popularity, leaving many answers buried under layers of irrelevant Web pages or worse, overlooked altogether……

……The new Circos.com features multiple ways to find the perfect hotel or restaurant. A concierge-like guided search experience at http://www.circos.com/guided_search/ walks you through your search with a simple three-step process. Circos’ “search by personality”

feature connects you with the previous experiences of others just like you. This means self-professed hipsters find the edgiest urban hotel, while high-end diva foodies are shown exclusive restaurants with the most attentive staff and service.  APLINK Note: WOW…

MORE….

Circos Helps Consumers Search for the Good Life.

Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss | chrisbrogan.com

Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss

1. Social media tools like blogging, social networks, and social bookmarking are more effective in reaching the millions online than a traditional website.

2. Blogging can act as a way to reduce customer service calls (if there’s helpful how-to information on the blog).

3. Cost of implementing a blog is free or cheap. No more than $100 for a year of hosting. And most software is free. (There are some benefits from professional blogging software, but for most people, free is plenty fine).

4. Social networks are now used frequently by your customers, your prospects, and your competitors. Connect with people, learn their business needs, and respond more simply and flexibly.

5. Social media provides robust tools for listening, ranging in price from free to inexpensive, to reasonably expensive. Even the free tools help an organization find out who’s talking about them, so they can choose to respond.

6. First steps can be simple, like establishing a blogger relations process to go along with your press relations process. You might find bloggers who will want updates on your space, and even this is a good first step.

7. Internally, social media tools can be used to help with status information, training, project collaboration. Most tools like blogs, twitter-clones like identi.ca, etc can be set up internally instead of used on the public web, for more privacy.

8. Building an online social media component to most marketing and PR efforts ensures a better reach for the media created, and potentially better tracking through clicks and other metrics captured online versus in traditional media (like TV, newsprint, magazines, radio).

9. Blogging helps a business differentiate and establish a thought leadership position.

10. Using social network sites helps in customer prospecting, HR background checks, product marketing, and community awareness.

11. Building a social network group (either on someone else’s platform or around your primary site) encourages customer retention (a huge metric for lots of companies).

12. Another way to help is to find other companies or organizations, either in your vertical, or similar, and present information on how they’ve used social media.

Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss | chrisbrogan.com.

Recruit.net strategy evolves targeting social media micromarkets

Recruit.net Powers Ping.sg Newly Introduced Job Search Function..

Recruit.net’s marketing strategy evolves targeting social media micromarkets with job channels powered by Recruit.net’s award winning technology platform..

Singapore, May 5th 2008, Recruit.net, an award winning tech company that operates a network of trilingual job search engines across Asia Pacific, has launched a new job search function at Ping.sg, Singapore’s leading blogging community site. With the new function, community members are able to search for ten of thousands of jobs through a single click at Ping.sg. The Recruit.net job channel allows for users to find tens of thousands of Singapore related jobs from hundreds of websites in a single search through Ping.sg: http://jobs.ping.sg/

Innovation – Passion – is Singapore Alone – itsReal

CoSpace Yebber Geek Terminal ping.sg twinity recruit.net social media breakfast TheMediaSlut HypoCol Wellness Community  TDM

It is hard to believe that I packed in SO much into the 168 hours I had available last week. Forget about sleep – well almost. There is a buzz in Singapore and the 9 identified keywords – tags above are just a fraction of things that were revolving around APLINK  last week. Is this only happening in Singapore – I doubt it very much.

What is not able to be said here is even more astounding as to the level of opportunities and possibilities that are emerging daily – Singapore being the HUB for all this activity.

As a run down of last week, CoSpace was launched – wow, yebber turned ONE and held a unique and BINGOMATIC event at the Mint Toy Museum – thanks for the WebCam from the lucky draw, Geek Terminal becomes even more of a hub for entrepreneurs, ping.sg climbs the Alexa Rankings, twinity new T-shirt design launches and gets a public audience – watch out for MEETME when walking around Singapore – recruit.net books into facebook – the Media Slut – well she just keeps getting more evil, My client Hypocol doubles international online sales through Social Media Programs and takes its first bite of virtual worlds – TDM kicks off events planning – and finally the Social Media Breakfast – we crawled out of bed to reach the venue at around 9am – it was funny as NO agenda was set – we were given a “tagging” kit and the rest was up to us – from the video – you can see that the 40 or so managed to tag and get to know each other – i think i got across my waking and dreaming passion virtual worlds proposition.

Today is an appointment free day – my business partner is packing for New York to see what APLINK might be able to do to  share across the US how Innovative and Passionate Singapore is about social media, virtual worlds and business – hmmm one day in the very near future.

Is your Media Monitoring missing something ?

Are you seeking insights into what might be being said about…
your company, your products, your services or your competitors on the Internet.

– If yes, Harro Research can find out for you.

Harro Newsletter March 2008
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

– Singapore continues to capture headlines across the world. These range
from sovereign funds buying into global banking franchises UBS &
Citibank to Mas Selamat’s inexplicable escape from police custody.

– Social Media continues to grow with countless sites lead by
individuals creating a form of on-line presence. We see these sites as
gaining credibility because the creators are making investments into
their web properties. This could be from site upgrades, to purchasing
their own domain names, registering with various search engines, and
communities.

– Facebook traffic tapers off. Is this the end of Facebook? Not likely.
You can now place ads on Facebook.
– Linkedin has updated its user interface. Are they following the
Facebook layout?
– Ning claims to be a virtual world? Well, it all depends on what people
perceive as a virtual world. Ning definitely has a growing community.

– Introducing a soon to be launch virtual world Twinity.com. This is a
virtual world funded by Germans, and builds upon the successes and
failures of Second Life. Twinity is about REAL people, REAL places, and
REAL events. Its invitation only for now.

– Are social networks the new search engine? Because of a global
increase in online media, search engines are struggling to remain
relevant. This has sprouted off countless vertical search engine. In a
parallel universe, social networks started facilitating community-based
interactions. They are strong in providing relevant news and events to
their community. This is something that search engines lack. In the
future, we will see social networks become a the mainstream of
information management supported by search engines.

– Andrew Peters has joined Harro to lead sales & marketing. Andrew hails
from Australia/NZ and has mastered the art of internet-awareness. Andrew
also leads niche communications platforms like Twinity, the Internet
Association in Singapore, and countless other communities.

– Harro.com gets a new look. As the Harro business evolves, we
communicate our business focus to the public. Harro is about Research,
Monitoring, Syndication and Reports. We maintain strict practices of
research confidentiality and information distribution.

– Bloggorazzi.com has been created as a home for the social media
aggregation platform. Although this plays an important part of our
business, our focus is increasingly on what clients are looking for.
There is also a wealth of tools, methods and resources that assist us to
understand the media. Bloggorazzi is a valuable platform.

——————
Andrew Peters | Harro Research

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