Polis, the journalism think-tank at the LSE, has published an in-depth report looking at the value of social media to journalism, specifically public service broadcasting, and it highlights how Twitter has come to dominate news.

As the report puts it, Twitter plays a more important role in newsgathering than Facebook, which is much more about discussion and far less about breaking news.

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent puts it this way: “There is no question, if you are not on Facebook and Twitter, you are not getting the full story”. Read More »

In a blog post Twitter has announced that it is to discontinue support for TweetDeck’s trio of non-web apps, TweetDeck for iPhone, Android and AIR, and that afterwards these clients will be pulled from their app stores and stop working shortly after that.

The focus here seems to be on Twitter as the platform and not as apps. Don’t despair if you’re a fan of TweetDeck, which Twitter paid $50m for two years ago, it isn’t going away. It is though going to be different as TweetDeck lovers are left with the web-based version of TweetDeck –  TweetDeck for web and TweetDeck the Chrome app.

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If your business is selling mobile-related products (ringtones, games, apps, accessories and so on), you probably want to reach consumers when they’ve just bought a new mobile phone. They’ll still be  excited about what it can do, and are more willing to try new stuff.

It’s possible with Google AdMob to target people who’ve just activated a new (Android) phone, using in-app ads, either text or image-based. We wanted to see how effective this is, so we’ve just completed a study into how click throughs and conversions compare from new phone users (within 14 days of activation), to those using other devices.  Read More »

Recently, Facebook announced its new graph search tool, which allows users to search through interests, locations and recommendations of Friends and connections. While some may be heralding this as a threat to Google or a sign that Facebook will soon dominate in search, it is by no means the end-all and be-all. Marketers should think of graph search as a new tool to better reach their audience – one that needs to be employed with existing SEO practices rather than working in competition.

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