FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Social Media Summary - 2/23/09

Welcome to the latest Social Media Summary, covering the last couple of weeks. Below are some highlights from interesting news in social media that illustrate changes and trends in the industry.

In a recent report released by Forrestor Research, more than 60% of baby boomers “actively consume socially created content like blogs, videos, podcasts, and forums”. The number of boomers responding actively to content found on these sites has also doubled from 15% in 2007 to 34% in 2008. These are interesting statistics, since a continued rise in boomer participation would mean greater representation on public forums, challenging the typical assumption that the online community skews heavily toward Generation X and younger demographics.

Bebo, a social network owned by AOL that ranks #1 in Ireland and New Zealand, has recently implemented a “life streaming” function to the site that aggregates activity from multiple social networks into a Facebook newsfeed-like page. Life streaming isn’t a particularly new concept since sites like FriendFeed have already explored ways to provide a consolidating service for multiple social networks. However, Bebo’s implementation of this service is driven by another factor - AOL’s desire to turn its existing instant messaging network into a full fledged social network. Whether or not this succeeds in making Bebo more popular in the United States remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: in the race to lure users away from Facebook, some social networks are betting on making themselves one-stop aggregators for people’s digital lives.

This year’s broadcast of the Academy Awards was accompanied by a fairly impressive social media component, including a Youtube channel and live blogging. The most interesting site for me, however, was done by the video and movie site Jaman, which featured a mashup of its live video stream of the event and a Facebook status update column that allows you to watch and provide commentary with everyone on Facebook or just your friends while watching. This service was made possible by Facebook Connect, which shows how Facebook has managed to turn itself into a portable profile. Jaman’s mashup also demonstrates how simple combinations of services can drive people to the site by simply facilitating conversations. If I wanted to chat about the broadcast with my friends online, Jaman offered an easy alternative to watching on my actual TV while constantly reloading Facebook to see what others were saying.