Recently, Read Write Web’s Richard McManus penned a series of articles around ‘The Visual Web’, “meaning that images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online.”

I couldn’t agree more.  Speaking personally, Instagram started replacing Twitter as my social network of choice about a year ago.    More to the point, there is now a wealth of statistics to underpin what Richard is talking about.  This is specially when you consider that many of the biggest social media stories of the past year – Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest and now the likes of Socialcam – are visual.

Here are just a few of those stats:

• Most US and UK consumers now carry a device around with them allowing them to take and share engaging photos and video.   According to Comscore, most UK mobile phones are now smartphones.   The other day, Nielsen came out with research saying the same for the US.

• And more and more of those smartphone owners are using those features.  In 2010, 52% of photos in the US were taken with ‘single purpose cameras’, while 17% were taken with smartphones.   In 2011, that ratio changed to 44% / 27%.   Similarly, here in the UK, almost a third of consumers say their smartphone is the camera they use most often 

• As a result, we’re heading towards a point perhaps 1-2 years down the line where smartphones will account for the majority of pictures taken.   Indeed, the iPhone has been the most popular camera on Flickr for a while now 

• So there’s a huge growth in people taking pictures with their smartphones.  There is too in people sharing them.  At Christmas Instagram had 15 million users.   In March it was 25 million.   Now it’s 50 million, and growing at five million a week

• When it comes to mobile video, Socialcam has 36 million users, while Viddy has 26 million and signing up one million a day

• Tumblr, a blogging platform that lends itself more to images and less to 1000 word missives, is now the world’s largest blogging platform with 20 billion blog posts, 50 billion blogs and more than 120 million users.  Indeed, Tumblr will soon overtake the generic ‘blog’ as a term in Google searches

• Visual social networks are not only getting sign-ups, those signing up hang around.   Though I suspect the numbers have changed since then, at SXSW Instagram boss Kevin Systrom said 67% of users had logged in the previous day.

• Similarly, the latest emarketer figures show that worldwide, Tumblr and Pinterest users spent 89 minutes a month on their networks, compared to 21 minutes for Twitter users and 17 minutes for LinkedIn users.   Yes, Facebook dwarfs all of them with an average of 405 minutes a month / user, but I suspect some of that is due to people having Facebook on in the background during the day

• And speaking of Pinterest, it now sends more referral traffic to sites than Twitter despite being only 7% as big.     There is a debate about whether those referrals translate into sales, but I agree with the argument that it all depends what your Pinterest boards refer them too (i.e. whether they buy or not is really up to you).

So what should you do as a brand? Shift your social media strategy from being word to being image led – or at least change the mix between the two.   Related to that, develop a visual social media strategy.   Register your profiles on various visual social networks and figure out how you want to illustrate your brand.   Because if you don’t, millions of consumers will do so anyway.

Image – Sounds of the Sun

Related articles

• Why Socialcam Will Fail*(cloudave.com)

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• A Look Into 3 Social Video Apps: Socialcam, Viddy & Klip (readwriteweb.com)
• Why “Instagram For Video” Apps Will Go Big (readwriteweb.com)
• Pinterest drives more sales than Facebook: stats (econsultancy.com)
• Viddy Hits 26M Users, Is Valued at $200M [REPORT] (mashable.com)

The other week someone asked me what an agency such as Rabbit (where I work) should be focusing on going forward.

My reply, was previously organisations have been talking about a digital first approach.   In other words, concentrate on online channels and content 1st, which then filters into the offline world.   However now the priority has to be mobile first,  you cater in the 1st instance for people who may be consuming your content via their smartphones.

Sounds obvious enough, but some recent stats demonstrate the need to move from theory to practice:

• In February 2012, smartphone penetration in the five main European Union states was 48.9% – 54.7% in the UK .  Similarly, in the US, over half of all mobile phones will be smartphones in 2013 are now smartphones, according to Nielsen stats.

• Most in the UK had used an app (52%) a mobile browser (52.6%), and though the mobile games space is growing with 37% having played a game, 39% had accessed social networks via their mobile

• Depending on who you believe, mobile Internet will overtake fixed PC Internet use in either 2014 or 2015. (infographic from Microsoft above)

• In April for the first time in 40 months, social network apps overtook games.  Analytics company Flurry says mobile users spent 24 minutes each a day on games and social networks, with social networks slightly ahead.    Overall users Flurry tracked spent 77 minutes a day with mobile apps – so over an hour a day

• A related study published in the Telegraph, found that smartphone owners make *fewer* telephone calls, spending five hours a week surfing the Internet on their devices

• The UK study by Recombu.com found that smartphone owners spend more time sending emails, on social media and shopping online…and less time reading books, exercising or watching TV

• That latter stat ties into an Ofcom one I use quite a lot about the most essential form of media among UK consumers.   Among 18-24 year olds, the TV is now the 3rd most essential media (after mobiles and PC+Internet) and another piece of research this week said that 41% of 18-24 year olds (1/5 of all adults) had abandoned live TV

• In fact, a lot of that reading now happens on Tablets.  “Tablet is the new PC” says a Forbes blog post – Gartner is predicting a 98% increase in tablet sales in 2012 to 118 million units

• In March 2012, mobile devices accounted for 10% of traffic to online retail sites.  Separately, a study by SEO Agency Spy said that 54% of UK consumers had made a purchase via their mobiles, while only a minority (35%) would never consider it

• A study involving 34,000 people worldwide by browser Opera found that in some countries almost half of new Internet users are mobile only.   Bear in mind that Opera pulls its data from its own users, and that Opera’s main focus is now mobile devices, but this is still significant

• Though high-end digital camera sales are expected to remain strong, the bottom end of the market will suffer as more and more people use their smartphone as their main camera – digital camera shipments are expected to decline 4.3% in 2012

So what’s the conclusion?   In two, at the latest three years, mobile devices will be the main way of connecting to the Internet.   Younger consumers are already doing so, and various activities ranging from social media to online shopping are increasing on smartphones.

Smartphones are becoming the primary camera for more and more people coinciding with Instagram reaching 50 million users, while smartphone users are not only always connected but engage in content snacking as this US report says 

In other words, what they consume may not be different, but how they consume it, how long for, how they share it and how they view it will be.  That’s something we need to be ready for now.

Related articles

• Comscore’s 2012 Mobile Future in Focus Report – ten take outs (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• New Stats to Get You Moving on Mobile (deluxesmallbizblog.com)
• Mobile Internet will soon surpass PC internet usage! (trak.in)
• Opera claims 56% of users are mobile-only Web surfers (slashgear.com)

In the wake of Facebook’s $1billion Instagram buy earlier in the month, one comparison that did the rounds is that Instagram will be to Facebook like YouTube is to Google.  A stand-alone (ish) network, that is the clear leader in what it does (so for YouTube online video, for Instagram mobile photography).

However, while YouTube may be the 800lb gorilla of video sharing, a few networks have managed to carve out their own roles – on positioning as opposed to numbers.   Vimeo for example, is a fraction the size of YouTube, but a lot of creative industry professionals prefer it for the interface, the community and the quality of content.

Though I don’t think anyone is going to catch Instagram on numbers for now, I similarly believe there is an opportunity for a ‘Vimeo’ to sit alongside Instagram’s ‘YouTube.’   Not everyone has been thrilled by Instagram turning from a 15 million user network at Christmas to a 50 million user one today, for example Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller quit the service citing the changing “signal to noise ratio.” 

So who will benefit?  There are easily a dozen Instagram like networks in existence, and it’s too early for the community to coalesce around one.    From the initial chatter, I believe four possible candidates are Via.me (which welcomes Instagram users with a banner on their site) Streamzoo, EyeEm and Tadaa.

Tadaa – growing by word of mouth

Tadaa is one I’ve seen a number of my own Instagram friends move to, and having played around with it for the past fortnight, I thought it worth doing an overview of it.   This is especially since Tadaa by and large hasn’t been included in the ‘Instagram alternatives‘ type articles published since the Facebook deal.

However, from what I can see 1st hand, Tadaa is a network that has been growing almost totally by word of mouth, without the oxygen of free publicity and I was keen to get some insights from Tadaa founder Niko Schoppmeier

The network and app

Tadaa is run by a team of five from Hamburg, meaning there is a parallel with the early Instagram that for a while also only had five staff.  Right now it is an Apple only app.   Again I had echoes from the early Instagram:  Niko told me Android was a possibility, but they wanted to do it right.

In fact, it looks like an iPad app will see the light of day 1st, something Instagram never got around to.

The basics of the network are similar to Instagram.  You put a photo through third party or the in-app filters, you upload it, you geo-tag it (optional), you share to Facebook and Twitter (again, if you want), and you add a comment.    You then follow other users, see their posts in your stream and have the opportunity to like and comment on their images.

However, there are also a lot of differences.  For starters, the navigation is unlike Instagram’s and (from comments I’ve heard) it isn’t to everyone’s taste.   Secondly, you can’t ‘@’ someone in Tadaa or use hashtags.   Both these are under review and Niko told me hashtags is possibly the number one user request.

On the plus side though, you can repost images and also reply to a post with your own image.     Also the in-app filters are infinitely superior to Instagram’s, tying in with Tadaa’s premium positioning (see below).

Finally, Tadaa has something called ‘Tadaa dollars’, basically a score that measures your likes and influence (like Klout, I personally tend to ignore it).

The numbers

Not surprisingly, Tadaa wouldn’t give away any numbers.  Niko did however mention that the network had seen two recent peak periods.   One, in early March when they released version 4 of the app and got a lot of good press in their native Germany.

Here Nikko let slip that they got 150k new members     The second wave, and this was global and much bigger, came post Facebook / Instagram.   At the time, Tadaa also put up a note saying its servers had briefly been down due to the stampede of sign-ups.

The one impressive number however comes around engagement.  Apparently 20% of users post more than 10 images a day.   Compare that to Twitter, where only 25% of users are even moderately engaged.

What’s the vision, and what is the potential for brands?

When I put the Vimeo analogy to Niko Schoppmeier, he agreed.   Time and time again he emphasised Tadaa’s role as a high-quality network for iphoneography enthusiasts as well as semi-professional photographers.

That I think makes Tadaa interesting for brands if the aim is to generate high level content and to tap into a community of super-engaged users.   Any competition or promotion does however need to factor in the point that standards on Tadaa are high.

Finally, the ‘reply’ function on Tadaa is useful, especially given the lack of hash-tags for the moment.  This means people enter a competition or challenge by replying to a master image.

Tadaa’s future success – the community is key

Niko correctly pointed out that Instagram might also have had five staff members at one point, but that this was only half the story, with the other part being how a community grew up around the network.

That’s something I’ve noticed within Tadaa and it is something that will be key to its success.   The numbers are still relatively small, but as I’ve mentioned, they are engaged.    There are also embryonic user groups and accounts starting up, for example the lndtadaa group now runs a challenge every week.   These groups will potentially serve as the glue that keeps the most committed users there.

As a result, though it’s not made as much noise in the tech press as other Instagram competitors, Tadaa is an interesting player in this space, and one to watch.

(I’m dirktherabbit on Tadaa as well as Instagram, find me there!)

Related articles

• Instagram sharing on Twitter is blowing up(royal.pingdom.com)

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• Tadaa Vs Instagram (littlelindiline.wordpress.com)
• Apple’s Phil Schiller drops Instagram after Android launch, blames ‘signal to noise ratio’ (theverge.com)

Over the past eighteen months Internet security company AVG (disclosure – Rabbit client) has been carrying out research to see how technology has changed childhood, beyond recognition from someone who grew up twenty or thirty years ago.

With five waves looking at kids from birth across eleven countries, the end result is a fairly extensive piece of research.   Ten key stats are as follows:

1 – 81% of children under two currently have some kind of digital dossier or footprint, with images of them posted online. In the US that rises to 92%

2 – Though the average digital birth of children happens at around six months, a third (33%) of children have information and photos online within weeks of being born. In the UK, 37% of newborns have an online life from birth, whereas in Australia and New Zealand the figure is 41%

3 – A quarter (23%) of children have had their pre-birth scans uploaded to the Internet. This figure rises to 34% in the US, while in Canada the figure is even higher at 37%. Fewer parents share scans of their children in France (13%), Italy (14%) and Germany (15%)

4 – More small children can play a computer game than ride a bike. 58% of children aged 2-5 know how to play a ‘basic’ computer game. For the UK and France that jumps to 70%. Even 44% of 2-3 year olds have the ability to play a computer game. By comparison, 43% of kids 2-3 can ride a bike

5 – There is no tech gender divide between young boys and girls. As many boys (58%) as girls (59%) can play a computer game or make a mobile phone call (28% boys, 29% girls)

6 – More than half (51 percent) of 6- to 9-year-olds use some kind of children’s social network such as Club Penguin or WebKinz. However, 58 percent of their parents admit they are not well-informed about their children’s online social networks

7 – Despite Facebook in theory barring access to the under 13s, in Spain and Italy most are on at age ten, in the US, US, UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand it is 11, while in Germany most ‘graduate’ to these sites at 12.  Across all countries children reach so-called social media maturity at 11

8 – A majority of parents in the USA (61%), Spain (61%), Italy (54%) and Canada (54%) admit to secretly accessing their teen’s Facebook account without them knowing.

Across all 11 countries, 44% admitted to doing this with mothers (49%) more likely to check up on their teenage kids than fathers (39%). Though 48% of parents of 14 year old children access their kids’ Facebook accounts, a significant (40%) number of parents of 17 year olds still do so.

9 – A majority of parents in Spain (65%) and Italy (57%) fear that what their teens’ post on social networks now will harm their college, career or dating prospects in the future. In the US (40%) and Australia (42%) around 40% are concerned, while UK parents are somewhat more relaxed with only 30% being worried about their teen’s digital footprint.

10 – UK parents in particular give their kids’ teachers high marks with 59% saying that they do a good or very good job of preparing teens’ for digital adulthood, compared with 21% that feel they do a bad job.

A majority of Spanish (54%) and Australian (53%) parents likewise rate teachers as good or very good, while US parents (49%) are more ambivalent. Italian parents however (35% good job / 39% bad job) believe that when it comes to the Internet, the Italian schools system is failing their kids.

The full results and reports are over at avgdigitaldiaires.com

Anyone who knows a bit about what we do at Rabbit (where I work), will know that a lot of it is in the aviation sector.   As a result, I was interested to see this infographic that Shashank Nigham of SimpliFlying shared the other day.

Accompanying a report by the Airports Council International (the airport trade body ), it shows that 77% of travellers pass through European airports that are active on social media.   So far so good, but actually once you delve into the report a little bit further you find that European airports are less progressive than you might first think.

First of all, that means a quarter have no social media presence whatsoever, a surprisingly high statistic.   Then it turns out over a third don’t have a Twitter feed.   And of those that are on social media, 89% use it for corporate communications, 87% for crisis communications (which makes sense) but only 51% for everyday customer service.

In other words, once you break the stats down, less than half of European airports have customer focused social channels.

Does it matter?  Absolutely, both our first hand experience as well as some hard evidence shows that social media, Twitter in particular, is now the first resort of many travellers when making themselves heard.

For example, another infographic from Simpliflying and Eezeer points out that 99.8% of tweets received by airlines are about service issues that would normally be handled by call centres – flight delays, baggage enquiries and the like.

Nielsen has a table out distilling the results of Global Trust in Advertising survey.   Worldwide, 50%+ of us trust the following kinds of brand recommendations:

Personal recommendations from someone you know (90%), consumer opinions online (70%), editorial content (58%), branded websites (58%) and emails you’ve signed up for (50%).

All other forms of advertising have trust ratings of less than 50%, including TV ads (47%), TV product placement (40%), social media ads (36%) and sms mobile advertising (29%)

A few observations:

Straight forward PR via editorial endorsements in newspapers certainly matter, but it’s interesting to see that information posted on a brand’s own website is just as believable for consumers.   Of course, a newspaper or magazine still carries the extra weight of third party endorsement

Seven out of ten of us trust consumer opinions posted online.   That’s opinions very often from strangers and note the wording – opinions not reviews

Trust in standard above the line advertising is now below 50%.  In the past two years, trust in TV advertising has dropped by 24% and trust in newspaper ads by 25%

Related articles

• The Dirty Secret: Why TV Ad Spend Still Beats Mobile Ad Spend (bostinno.com)
• Report: Paid Search As “Trusted” As TV Product Placement Ads (marketingland.com)
• “Paid, Owned and Earned Media” Interview Part 1 with Market Edge’s Glenn Engler (randallbeard.wordpress.com)

The Rabbit Feed on Instagram – 2.0

Yesterday afternoon (UK time) Instagram for Android finally saw the light of day.    The result?  Three million new sign-ups over night.   On Monday when checking the latest Instagram numbers for a presentation I counted 28.7 million odd.   Today at Noon (London time), the total stood at 32 million – 32,104,009 to be precise

What does this mean for Instagram, will this trajectory continue?  Yes and no:

Just because Android is here, we can’t assume numbers will double.   It’s more important to look at user behaviour as opposed to handset sales, and the fact is most activity on the mobile web comes from people who have Apple devices

As a result, Instagram may not hit 60 million this year – but 50 million is entirely realistic

However, whether we are talking 50 or 100 million, Instagram is now the world’s biggest mobile only social network (aside from a number of China specific networks which have more users).   It is now in the top social media tier and if brands haven’t considered their visual social media strategy they need to start now.

At Rabbit we’ve put together a “Rabbit Feed” guide to Instagram, giving brand marketers who may not be that familiar with the network an introduction along with some suggested next steps.   It is embedded above and you can also download it here.

(Re-posted from my original article up at Rabbit)

Related articles

• Instagram for Android Released (gramfeed.com)
• Instagram for Android now available in Google Play (intomobile.com)
• Instagram For Android Hands-On: Hello, Old Friend (gizmodo.com.au)
• Instagram For Android Is Finally Here (myp3r.wordpress.com)

Over the past few years there have been a range of studies showing that once they are online, citizens of countries such as Indonesia, Argentina, Russia, Brazil and the Philippines are more likely than their Western counter-parts to be active in social media.

For example:

• The countries with the highest Facebook penetration as a % of the Internet population are The Philippines, Israel, Turkey, Chile and Argentina

• The most active Instagram fans (members of the IGers groups of super-users) are in the Philippines, Brazil and Turkey

• Who spends the most time on social media?   Once again, it is users in Israel, Russia, Argentina, The Philippines and Turkey

• And though the Netherlands and Japan lead in Twitter use; Indonesia, Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey and The Philippines are also in the top ten list

The latest Ipsos / Reuters study very much chimes in with these findings.   It tells us that an average of 62% of people in the 24 countries surveyed (a mix of G20 and others like Saudi Arabia) that use the Internet also use social media, with Indonesia (83%), Argentina (76%), Russia (75%), Sweden (72%) and South Africa (73%) leading the way.

Both the UK (65%) and US (61%) are mid table, ahead of France (50%), which is near the bottom of the list.

What is the take-out for brands?

First of all, when doing business in emerging markets, social media should be on the agenda.   Yes, proportionally the Internet population is smaller, but these are also likely to be the consumers with some degree of spending power.

Secondly, the stats about the time spent on social channels suggests that social media users in emerging markets are more likely to have an active, as opposed to a passive role

And, related to that, they are also likely to represent users with a reasonable English language proficiency and a willingness to explore sites internationally.   Hence ‘influencers’ from these territories may also be making an appearance on your blog or Facebook page in the US or UK, especially if a global brand is involved.

(Image – Indonesia, the country with the highest social media penetration as a % of the Internet population.   Via Rulhaf)

Over at AdAge, Comscore VP Andrew Lipsman discusses  a study by the Ehren-Bass Institute that showed that only  1% of Facebook fans actually engage with brands they follow on Facebook.

Essentially, the research said that 1.3% of Facebook fans like, post, comment, tag or share content from brands they follow.   In response, Andrew makes a parallel between measuring Facebook content by likes and measuring display ads by clicks, saying that by only looking at the 0.1% who clicked on the ad you ignore the 99.9% that saw it.

Secondly Andrew says that even a low incidence of likes can have a large impact citing previous research that showed “Starbucks fans and friends of fans spent 8% more and purchased 11% more frequently in-store than non-fans who were also Starbucks buyers.”  Note the emphasis on friends of fans as well as fans.

I’d raise another issue with the 1%  brand engagement figure.

The Ehren-Bass study involved the 200 largest brands on Facebook -  the Starbucks and Cokes of this world where a lot of the likes are purely incidental and quickly forgotten about.   There is in fact evidence that the larger your page, the less engaged your fans.

A PageLever study last year showed that the larger the Facebook page, the fewer the % that even *sees* items in your newsfeed

PageLever found that daily unique newsfeed impressions were 9.38 per 100 fans for pages that have between 1000-10,000 fans.    Once you go up to pages with a million fans though, daily unique newsfeed impressions drops to 2.79 per 100 fans.

Visibli came up with a similar study last year.   It  found that for brands and media organisations, pages with more fans received proportionally fewer likes per post (not the case though if you are an artist).  Engagement went down as likes went up

The other week Diageo marketer Philip Gladman said if you don’t have a million Facebook fans you should stick your budget in TV.   Leaving aside for the moment the issue of how far that TV money will even take you  the question should be why a million, and what are they going to do for you?

Arguably as some of the studies I mentioned have shown, working your way up to the big number may not always be the best tactic.   There may even be a case for keeping it small by breaking your communities down by product or interest group to get a series of smaller, but more committed groups.

Top image – Find your search

Related articles

• How Email Subscribers and Facebook Fans are Similar [INFOGRAPHIC] (contently.com)
• Visual, Interactive Content Gives Facebook Timeline Engagement Early Boost (searchenginewatch.com)
• The Evolution of Facebook for Brands (mashable.com)

According to a marketing magazine report, Diageo’s white spirits marketing director Philip Gladman thinks that if you are not going to get a million Facebook fans you should take your budget and “stick it in TV.”

It’s a reminder for those of us who work in the digital / social space that we’re sometimes still fighting the battles of 3-4 years ago.  And though he’s since slightly qualified his remark in a response (posted via the journalist who wrote the original piece, Gemma Charles), the fact remains that this sort of thing does still have some currency.

As a result, its worth replying to the sentiment if not the individual, with five points showing that a strategy solely revolving around the Television may not be the best use of money:

1 – Scheduled, live TV has relatively low attention levels compared to other types of media.   By comparison, computer activity commands high attention, with surfing the Internet on mobiles and social networking being somewhere in between.

In fact, only listening to music on a music centre or listening to the radio has a lower attention rate than standard, scheduled Television

2 – Indeed, in the UK over a third (36%) of us no longer watch live TV.    Out of those, 42% use a PVR like Sky+ or Virgin Media/Tivo.   I wouldn’t think too many of them waste the opportunity to fast forward through the ads

3 – When asked last year, what their most essential form of media is, all UK adults still put TV top.  But compared to 2009, TV was chosen by less than half.    And the picture was even more pronounced for younger consumers.  For the first time, adults aged 16-24 put using a mobile phone (28%) and using the internet (26%) ahead of watching television (23%)

4 – When they are watching TV, the chances are they are on the Internet at the same time.   The whole ‘second screen’ and ‘social TV’ concept is fairly well known, and in the UK, 74% of consumers with a broadband connection surf the Internet while the TV is on

5 – Though the rate of decline is nowhere near that of newspapers – and won’t be – the TV audience is slowly getting smaller and older.   A US study showed that from 2006-2001, CBS’s average viewer age rose from 53 to 56.   ABC’s went up from 47.4 to 52.3, NBC’s from 48.5 to 50.1, while Fox’s went from 41.5 to a still relatively sprightly 45.4

Of course the real answer is that it should never be either / or.   Almost no one who works in digital marketing is so blinkered as to imagine that digital should live in a silo.

TV does still command tens of millions of eye-balls.   But those eye-balls are getting older, the way they watch TV is changing, and very often they are doing something else.   Cue the perfect opportunity for social and TV to work together.

Image – Bamcat

Related articles

• Over 30 Per Cent No Longer Watch Live TV (itproportal.com)
• Why Internet TV could be hugely popular and change marketing forever (epiphanysolutions.co.uk)
• How social media users multitask while watching TV (lostremote.com)