How to Web 2011 also included a panel entitled The API effect: social media layers. The panel was hosted by Martin Bryant, european editor at The Next Web. His guests were Max Niederhofer – founder of Qwerly, George Lemnaru – co-founder of eRepublik, Konstantin Hristov – founder and CEO of Favit and George Petre – product manager for social media products Read on →
Past articles
Cohort Analysis – Measuring engagement in time
What is cohort analysis and why are we choosing to cover this topic? The answer is simple: because it is a fairly easy and rigorously applied procedure, which few grasp apply wisely. The idea is quite simple; build, test, measure, iterate, test, measure, iterate, test, measure. Doing it every day, aren’t you? 
The Wikipedia definition of “cohort analysis” goes as such: “A cohort study or panel study is a form of longitudinal study (a type of observational study) used in medicine, social science, actuarial science, and ecology. A cohort is a group of people who share a common characteristic or experience within a defined period Read on →
Le Web 2010 liveblogging: Social media trends and opportunities for 2011
Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analist and Partner Altimeter Group, spoke about “Social media and big business: trends for 2011″.
The year of 2010 is according to Jeremiah the year of social business formation. Jeremiah thinks 2011 will be the year of social business integration. For internal goals in 2011 social strategists will focus on measurement of ROI. They are currently using engagement measurements – fans, friends, etc. Companies will be focused on integrating social media with their corporate website. 76% of the corporations are going to spend money in the brand monitoring area according to Jeremiah’s statistics.
The biggest area of growth in 2011 is social media staff hiring. Jeremiah thinks social media boutiques will soon be bought by bigger corporations who need a social media expert.
Jeremiah’s advice for corporations as far as social media is concerned:
1. Hire correctly and properly for social media – don’t hire social media gurus and ninjas but social media program managers who will integrate social media correctly;
2. Pragmatically integrate social media on the corporate website then aggregate and curate. You’ve spent so far to get people to corporate website and now you shouldn’t be linking them away with no integration strategy;
3. If you’re going to invest in advertising invest in advertising that leverages social graph;
4. Developed an unpaid army of brand advocates – get your customers to do the work for you. Invest in advocacy programs that scale. You can never hire enough community managers to respond to your customers;
5. Invest in scalable systems like SCRM and SMMS (social media management systems);
6. Learn to measure using the right ROI.
You can find Jeremiah on Twitter at @jowyang