Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Trend Watch: Social Media in the UK 2010 [Video]

This is a little video produced by Ireland-based PR firm Simply Zesty that explores the state of social media in the UK.

The video includes some interesting social media stats and other demographic information, including: 85% percent of the UK population is online and they spend over 6 hours on social media sites every month, nearly 60% of them read blogs and 64% have their own profile on a social network.

Infographic: Professors’ Use of Technology in Teaching

The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement surveyed approximately 4,600 faculty members at 50 U.S. colleges and universities in the spring of 2009 to see how they are using new media and social technology in their classroom.

Based on these findings, it doesn't seem like too many professors' are integrating technology into their classroom. What do you think? Do these results surprise you?

Thanks to Dale for the heads up!

Related: In Google We Trust: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web Content

Infographic: Generational Breakdown of What People Do Online

View large at images.businessweek.com

2010 Social Media Matters Report: Majority of Top Media Destinations Are Social

According to research conducted by BlogHer and iVillage “2010 Social Media Matters Study,” co-sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Ketchum, social sites are now a frequent destination for nearly three-quarters of Internet users.

Social Media Matters 2010

Respondents’ top daily media activities were social as well. Watching television is still on top, but Facebook was the next most common media destination visited every day.

The study found similar rates of usage among men and women, and pegged the percentage of weekly social media users at 73% of the online population.

via www.emarketer.com

Here are some of the other key findings in the 2010 Social Media Matters Study:

• Blogs trail only search engines as the preferred media source for product-purchasing information for BlogHer users.

• Among BlogHer users, 96 percent read blogs weekly or more often.

• BlogHer users are more active than average women across the board on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.

• As for iVillage users, message boards and forums were second only to conversations with friends and family as the preferred source of product-purchasing information.

• 73 percent of respondents from the iVillage community said they share topics on message boards and forums that they would not share on social networks. Of those, relationships (61 percent), health (45 percent), and work-related issues (39 percent) were the top topics they would not share on social networks.

• 31% higher than the total online population for Gen X generation

• 3.6 percent of iVillage community members post on message boards or forums every day.

Related: Millennials, Men Watch Most Online TV

Weekly Wrap: Oprah's Mobile Apps, Facebook Open Graph 101, Mobile Gaming Soars, Foursquare Marketing, Teen Texting Stats, Youth Media iPad Apps & More!

Oprah Launches Oprah Mobile Apps: The application, available for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Google Android platforms, offers video clips and previews from Winfrey's talk show, ticket alerts, weekly polls, and articles and photos from Oprah.com, The Oprah Magazine and Oprah Radio.

I have no doubt that Oprah's legion of smartphone carrying fans will make this app a hit! [Venture Beat]

Publishers Guide to Facebook Open Graph: Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself. In this post, we summarize what Facebook announced and ponder the impact this will have on everyone. Related: Facebook Social Plugins [RWW] [Facebook Developers]

Youth Media iPad Apps to Know: With more and more magazine, publishing and TV execs exploring the potential of creating interactive, social apps for the iPad, we thought we'd point to a few of those getting an early start for our latest Ypulse Toolbox. Related: 5 amazing iPad e-books for kids  [Ypulse] [CNET]

Mobile Gaming Soars on Smartphones: Mobile gaming is more than ever a tale of two devices: feature phones and smartphones. The U.S. population playing games on regular mobile phones fell by 35% last year to 29.5 million, while the number of smartphone gamers shot up 60% to 21.4 million, according to a new comScore report. [MediaPost]

7 Quick Steps to Foursquare Marketing: Marketing using Foursquare is beneficial because although a small user base, they are loyal.  It also takes up almost no time, so the ROI can be high. Foursquare marketing is most appropriate for brick and mortar businesses (people physically walk into your store to make purchases), but anyone can be taking advantage of Foursquare. [Real Time Marketer]

Millennials Want Social Sites to Delete User Data: Debunking the oft-repeated assertion that young people don't care about privacy, new research shows that Web users between the ages of 18 and 24 are highly protective of certain information about themselves. [Online Media Daily]

Mom’s Guide to Those Facebook Changes: What do these changes mean? And what should you do if you don’t like the prospect of automatically sharing your activity with everyone you know on Facebook? Related: Facebook Safety Resources for Parents, Teachers & Teens [GigOm] [Barking Robot]

Teen Texting Stats: Anne Collier, author of the must read NetFamilyNews blog and co-founder of ConnectSafely, has a great analysis of the Pew Internet report on teen texting. [NetFamilyNews]

Weekly Wrap: Foursquare Nabs MTV & VH1, Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter, Saving the Google Students, COPPA & Youth Marketing, Free iPad eBooks & More!

Six Reasons to be Skeptical of the 'Digital Natives' Discourse: Almost all of the claims of the net gen discourse are in popular media and if they are based on research, it is proprietary and full methodological details are not provided. All of the sound research that refutes the claims is published in scholarly journals and has been subject to peer review. [Net Gen Skeptic]

Saving the Google Students: For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read. [LA Times]

Weekly Wrap, Foursquare Edition: Meet Gatsby, Fresh off the heels of hooking up with Bravo TV and Harvard Foursquare signs a similar deal with MTV & VH1, Microsoft adds Foursquare data to Bing Maps & a really cool visualization of Foursquare check-ins at SXSW. [Iconoculture] [Mobile Entertainment News] [Mashable] [TechCrunch] [SimpleGeo]

10 Reasons Students Are Tuning Teachers Out: You’re teaching to a generation of students that can access more information more quickly than any other generation. Don’t tell students that you don’t want to figure out how to use the internet or that you don’t answer email. You’re putting yourself into a category you don’t want to be in. [GYJoe]

US Census Bureau Adds Mapping App to Facebook: In an effort to reach out to young people, the U.S. Census Bureau is launching a huge nationwide campaign incorporating social media, broadcast media and print to encourage people to fill out their census forms this year. [Inside Facebook]

Ypulse Interview| Jamie Tworkowski: Jamie is the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms, a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury and suicide. Related: MTV Poll: Generation Stress [Ypulse]

Preparing Your Content for iPad: Platform-specific considerations and UX Guidelines for web content in Safari on iPhone OS devices, with specific information for iPad. Also, iPad to Offer 30,000 free eBooks at launch. [Safari Technical Notes] [Apple Blog] [UX Magazine]

Marketing to Kids | A Time for Playing by the Rules:Whether it’s Quiksilver, Monster Energy Drinks or ESPN X Games, the look and feel of the typical action sports-related website is young, edgy, authentic. Action sports marketers need to be aware, however, of the panoply of laws that regulate marketing to kids, including the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [GroupY]

Quote O' The Week: “I hate being thought of as a product. I am not a doll, and people want to treat me that way. I’m older now. I have an opinion. I have my own taste.” - Miley Cyrus on why being a Disney pop princess is so difficult. [Gossip Girl] [Barking Robot]

Blogging, academia, and the new public intellectual: John Holbo admits he and his fellow pioneers have lost the “revolutionary fervor” of blogging’s early days. “I’m fortunate to be at the top of the food chain, to have these bully pulpits where I can stand up and know thousands of people will hear me,” he says. “But we all thought blogging was going to transform academic life, and that didn’t really happen.” [Cal Alumni Association]

Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter: Language is forever changing -- and forms such as tweets and text messages are no less valid than any textbook version, says the linguist David Crystal, whose latest book encourages children to engage with the possibilities of their lingua franca. [The Independent]

More People Are Watching TV While Surfing the Web: This is some decent news for the TV industry, since the fear is that Internet time is eating into boob tube viewing. Overall, TV viewing is up 1%, year over year, according to the report.  [Business Insider]

Why Apple’s iPad Can’t Succeed in Schools (Yet): You see, tablets-as-books is a great idea until the battery dies, and then the student has no textbook and no computer. She will have to plug-in to a power outlet if she wants either of those things back. Related: A Kindle in Every Backpack [The Apple Blog] [Barking Robot]

Video: Teens Share How They Consume Digital Media & TV

Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) about young people's media use.

It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth.

This video explores the powerful force that media can be in the lives of teens and tweens. The three young people who are profiled explain what types of media they use—such as smart phones, computers, TV, video games—how much time they spend with media and what impact it has on their lives.

Related: Daily Entertainment Media Use Among Teens Up Dramatically From 5 Years Ago 

Seven Actionable Marketing Trends

Expanded Version - Seven Actionable Marketing Trends

View more documents from Helge Tennø.

Demographics of Teen Content Creators

The information in this presentation examines how teens create and communicate, both in school and in their personal lives.

Teen Content Creators

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

These slides were shown at the public forum The Power of Youth Voice: What Kids Learn When They Create With Digital Media, a public forum presented by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Writing Project, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, on November 18, 2009.

Media Usage & Consumer Spending: 2004 to 2012

Estimates for time spent were derived using rating data for television and cable television, survey research for radio, mobile, out-of-home media and yellow pages, and consumer purchase data (units, admissions, access) for books, home video, in-flight entertainment, Internet, newspapers, magazines, box office, recorded music, video games.

Adults 18 and older were the basis for estimates for newspapers, consumer books, consumer magazines, in-flight entertainment, out-of-home media, yellow pages and home video. Persons 12 and older were the basis for the estimates for box office, broadcast TV, cable TV Internet, mobile, radio recorded, music and video games. Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States/US Census Bureau

Related: 2008 Multimedia Audiences Summary

Global Youth: Win a Trip with Nicholas Kristof 2010

Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times Op-Ed columnist and co-author of Half the Sky, invites students to enter an essay contest to win a reporting trip to Africa, giving them an opportunity to blog for nytimes.com and to file videos to The Times and YouTube.

The contest is open to students at American universities – either undergraduates or graduate students – who are 18 years old or over. The application deadline is a minute before midnight, Eastern Time, on Monday, Jan 18.

So what is Mr. Kristof looking for? Here's the scoop from his blog:

You can apply either with an essay of up to 700 words, or a video of up to three minutes, or both. Send the essay to winatrip@nytimes.com.

Post the video on my YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/NicholasKristof, next to my own video invitation for applications. In either case, explain why I should pick you.

So what kind of a person am I looking for? The truth is, I’m not entirely sure – except that I want someone with excellent communication skills, who can blog and vlog (video blog) in ways that will capture the interest of other students.

If you’ve done blogging, vlogging or journalism, be sure to mention that. Ditto for anything else that makes you special or will make your voice more memorable.

What a fantastic and life changing experience! I would encourage any student who is interested in social justice issues (like global poverty) and sharing "the we stories" of people who don't have a voice to apply for this opportunity.

For those of us who are a wee bit beyond our college years and ineligible for this trip--you can still get involved by supporting the Half the Sky Movement, Charity Water or Oprah Winfrey's For All Women Registry. There are lots of ways to help people suffering from crushing poverty.

Even $5 dollars can change a life.

For you university students' who are interested in applying for this trip, be sure to check out Mr. Kristof's blog which has all the details, rules, info on the selection process and legalese from the NYT lawyers.

Good luck!

InfoGraphic: Live Tracking of Social Media

(Thanks to BJ Fogg for the heads up on this!)

Weekly Wrap: Social Media Revolution, iPhone Apps for Students, TV's Growing Pains, Family Friendly Horror, McDonald's Social Media Strategy, 3D TV, Kindle vs. Vook, Mobile Coupons & More

Social Media & Blogs Capture More Internet Time & Advertising: Americans have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend at social networking and blog sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace from a year ago, according to a new report from The Nielsen Company. Among those taking note of this trend: advertisers.  Estimated online advertising spending on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119%. [Nielsen Wire] [Computer World]

P&G, Timberland, Target Invest In College Market: Building an early relationship with consumers is a smart long-term strategy. As Forbes reports, Procter & Gamble has given students control of their brand in order to create brand ambassadors on college campuses. [Brand Channel]

Panasonic Enlists Hollywood to Promote 3D TV: In recent years, TV manufacturers have tried to entice buyers with thinner screens and crisper images. Now Panasonic is trying to portray itself as a force in the tech industry by taking the lead in spreading high-definition TVs that can handle both 2D and 3D images. Also related: A complete guide to 3D TV. [Business Week] [techRadar]

Pulling the Plug on Landlines at Iowa State: The Ames, Iowa-based university is in the process of pulling all such phones out of the dorms in favor of the cell phones that students have been carrying around with them for several years now. A campus survey revealed that 90% of students had cell phones and were using them in lieu of traditional telephones. [Campus Tech]

Move Over Kindle, Here Comes the Vook: A vook is a new innovation in reading that blends a well-written book, high-quality video and the power of the Internet into a single, complete story. Also, the NYT reports that publishing powerhouse Simon and Schuster are jumping on the vook bandwagon. [Vook.com] [NYT]

Growing pains: TV's Hold on Digital Media: Digital media has become a mantra in the venture-capital community. The term is on everyone's lips: from broadcasters looking to tap into new advertising revenues to technology gurus seeking to catch the new industrial wave. [Financial Post]

Michigan Public Schools Partner with Sprint to turn Cellphones from Classroom Nuisance to Valuable Learning Tool: For years, schools have mandated policies barring cellphones from the classroom in hopes of avoiding disruptions to a student's learning environment. Today, one school district in Michigan believes cellphones deserve a spot in the classroom. [TMCnet]

How McDonald's is Using Social Media: Here are a few great ideas from Heather Oldani, senior director of communications and Steve Wilson, senior director of global web communications on how McDonald’s is using social media at all levels of the organization. [SmartBlog]

Speed Round: Disney toons help it fly high overseas, Sam Raimi launches a family friendly horror label, check out this video: 'Social Media Revolution' (tip: kill the horrible music), American Girl's "Homeless" Doll sparks outrage, what college millennials watch on TV, Apple shares its own list of Apps for Students, Japanese mobile phone coupon usage, toys get the augmented reality treatment, and finally..."Jackass" star Steve-O has a new gig: spokesman for PETA. "Cut class, not frogs," says Steve-O to schoolkids! [Variety] [MTV] [YouTube] [KTLA] [Millennial Marketing] [Apple] [What Japan Thinks] [Crunch Gear] [ABC 7 LA]

Fall 2009 Internship: 'On-Air with Ryan Seacrest'

This college internship looks like a great opportunity for a college student interested in kicking off a career in social media, film, radio broadcasting and/or marketing.

Here's the scoop:

The On-Air with Ryan Seacrest radio show is looking for college students with strong writing/blogging skills and an innate understanding obsession with pop culture, specifically as it relates to social media.

Seeking multitaskers and proactive thinkers with good online research skills. Must be able to keep up in the fast paced environment of a live radio show. Strong writing, HTML, graphic design, video shooting/editing, on-camera hosting skills are pluses.

Duties include (but are not limited to) website content management, video content development, blog writing, celebrity guest research, social networking maintenance, red carpet coverage.

Click here to learn more about this opportunity.

Weekly Wrap: Girl Scouts Launch LMK, Texting & Teen Brains, Kia 'Soul Collective', Coca-Cola's Sounds of Buzz, Twitter & Mourning for Michael Jackson, 2010 Twilight Convention, Yodeling Mamas & More

Girl Scouts & Microsoft Launch Online Safety Site: LMK (text speak for 'Let Me Know') was created with help from teens and from industry experts, to provide teens with the know-how to safely navigate their digital life and help parents to understand what their teens are doing online. Which is a good thing, since a research conducted by Common Sense Media  found that most parents are pretty clueless what their kids are doing on social sites. [Girl Scouts of America] [Common Sense Media]

University of California 11th Campus Online? : The University of California's 10 campuses, facing severe budget cuts, may no longer be able to educate as many students as before. One surprising solution in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece: Open an 11th campus, online. Which, according to a new study reports that online education actually beats face-to-face classroom learning, might not be such a bad idea. [Chronicle of Higher Education] [Ypulse]

Kia "Soul Collective': In an effort to deepen their ties with youth, Kia has also launched a nationwide, youth-oriented program, titled "Kia Presents The Soul Collective." As part of the campaign, Kia is partnering with young and modern thought leaders, brought together to form The Soul Collective, from different disciplines including music, film, design, and gaming to show exactly "how they roll" through their respective mediums. [Barking Robot] [Kia Motors America]

Coca-Cola & BuzzNet 'Sounds of Buzz': Coke, BuzzNet & Stereogum are partnering together on a site that provides live concert & music festival updates, music videos, news & ticketing information. So, are you ready for American Idiot the musical? Also, PacSun, the premier surf clothing wear company, has a newly updated music site. Check it out, it's pretty sweet! [BuzzNet] [PacSun] 

Tweet O' The Week: "I swear one day I'll be able to convince some members of my family that new technology isn't just a fad." (via @plasticbagUK) [Twitter]

Texting may rewire young brains: Texting is not only a nuisance for teachers struggling to keep their students' attention - it's a brain-altering habit, according to a new study. Researchers say text messaging trains young people to be speedy yet sloppy. [The Globe & Mail, via @sydneyeve]

Troubled Teens Learn Culinary Lessons: Founded in 1982, the Teen Home serves girls who are pregnant or new moms. The facility can house up to 12 girls and their babies, many of whom have been ordered into state custody or are homeless. A juvenile-court judge has recruited a world renowned chef to teach them the culinary basics. [Salt Lake Tribune]

Yodeling Mamas: Yahoo! has launched 'Yodeling Mamas' a new parenting blog written by Yahoos who are moms, including--Jeanne Moeschler--one of my favorite Yahoos! She was a great advocate of the Yahoo! For Teachers & Ypulse Totally Wired Teacher Award. [Yahoo!]

Speed Round: UK Music research highlights the complexity of music consumption in 14-24 year-olds, the folks at @WebEcology analyzed expressions of sadness on Twitter when mourning Michael Jackson, Pew Internet reports that teens' use of mobiles has increased recently (but may not be as pervasive as you think), Twilighters are the new Trekkies, Time Warner and YouTube team up to carry Cartoon Network clips & ad sales, Gossip Girl is also making its way to YouTube, some are claiming that mobile phones have achieved more than other types of aid in Africa, Nissan hopes kids will Live Wired, Die Young and finally......Beloit College professors hope their annual 'Mindset List' is an antidote to ‘Boomer arrogance'. [UK Music] [Web Ecology] [Pew Internet] [Creation Entertainment] [Bloomberg] [YouTube Blog] [All Africa] [MediaPost] [USA Today]