This Week in Social Media – 6/26/2013

A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.

Each week, I compose a newsletter for our team that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, social media, mobile, communications and marketing in order to keep our wider team up to date on changes, newsworthy items and content that might be useful in their jobs. These are those links. 

If you have additional links, sources or ideas that might be helpful, I'd encourage you to add some via a comment below or tag me in Google+. And if you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links in the This Week in Social Media Magazine. 

Key digital trends from the first half of the year, the tablet wars, worldwide social network usage, Chinese microbloggers are a sad lot, the inconsistency of Facebook ads, why fans really like you, Klout gets inside your company, the FTC wants Congress to do something about marketers and big data, real-time analytics at Wimbledon, what influence means and more - it's This Week in Social Media.

Industry

• Social networks continue to expand globally, with nearly one in four people using social networks worldwide.

• When it comes to video content, the world has changed: time spent watching video on mobile devices has doubled in the last year.
• This should seem obvious by now, but brands with poorly performing mobile experiences annoy customers.
• Here's a quick glance at the current state of the tablet wars. Apple and Android seem to be struggling for dominance. 

• eMarketer held a webinar on key digital trends, a midyear update. Some highlights:

• Mobile users make up 78% of the U.S. population

• 57% of mobile users are smartphone users

• 203MM U.S. consumers access media on multiple screens monthly, outnumbering the single-screen audience 2.5 to 1

• Tablet owners pay equal or more attention to their tablets when they're watching TV

eMarketer Webinar: Key Digital Trends, a Midyear Update from eMarketer

• According to a new report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China's microbloggers are mostly young, under-educated and poor. It might make brands think twice before spending an inordinate amount of time on such sites.

The Platforms

• Based on looking at more than 1 million ad units, Salesforce Social.com has determined that there is a wide variance in the price and performance of Facebook ads, both by ad type and by industry. At either end of the spectrum is automotive, with an average clickthrough rate of 0.03% and a cost per like of $1.13 - the fourth most expensive by industry.

• While the headline of the Daily Dot's article ("The great defriending of Facebook") is an attempt to grab attention, the underlying premise of the article is that your friends' content is getting pushed out at the expense of updates from Pages you subscribe to and paid content, and that it's not going to end well.
• Facebook is working on a news reader. This is not something in response to the Google Reader phase-out, but a longer term project that the team has been developing for a year.
• Facebook continues to have a strong foothold in Southeast Asia. The question is: how does that affect other platforms in the region? Squar, Myanmar’s first homegrown social network, is setting out to beat Facebook
• We've been told that people become Facebook fans of brands to get deals and discounts. Turns out that's not true. Trumping that preference is "to support the brand I like."

• In addition to video, Instagram may include messaging in its platform.
• Twitter is testing image previews on its web interface, meaning that users won't have to click through to see an image.
• Is Google betting against the future of the TV commercial? They'll be launching a pilot program this fall to educate brands on successful YouTube content strategies.
• Yammer is partnering with Klout to determine influence of employee advocates.

Legal/Regulatory

• Federal Trade Commissioner Betsy Brill is calling for Congress to create new legislation around data privacy. This may impact marketers and others dealing with personally identifiable information.

Metrics/Measurement/Big Data

• While there is much promise to big data, there's also a downside.
• When it comes to big data, sometimes the numbers can be misleading. Here's how Robert McNamara found out the hard way.
• IBM is demonstrating the power of analytics with real-time data-driven souvenirs at Wimbledon.

Content

• Stuck for what to post? Here are 8 sources of Facebook content for brands.
• Here are 12 Google Chrome extensions to help discover content.
• Brand journalism is a term that's being thrown about in addition to content marketing. But what is it? Spend three minutes to find out.
• Long form content is not dead. Far from it. Here's what happens when publishers invest in long-form storytelling.

Bookmarks/Read-Watch-Listen Later

• How does influence work? Some thought about how much control you actually have about your decisions from Adam Alter, assistant professor of marketing and psychology at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Commentary

No commentary this week, as we're between the Go Further with Ford trends conference and vacation. Two links to keep you interested, though:

• A summary of some of the content that came out of the Ford trends conference, captured on Storify.
• Remember "The Homer"? This was the car created by Homer Simpson when he was put to work by his half brother Herb, CEO of Powell Motors. It turns out someone has actually built it.