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!)

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A piece of research from the Brookings Institution (thanks @kenyanpundit for the link) finds that, at least in politics, when it comes to gee-ing up supporters, online video works best.  However, if you are going to trash someone, stick with TV.

Though all eyes are currently on the US Presidential election, the Brookings Institution carried out its study in 12 countries worldwide.

The Brookings Institution found that anyone likely to watch a political video on YouTube was younger, richer, more educated, more likely to be interested in politics – and more partisan.   In other words, you don’t trawl the world’s largest online video site to help inform your point of view.  You look through it to find political content that already confirms it.

The other factor, is that you can run political ads on YouTube for free, meaning lengthy missives to supporters that would cost you a fair amount of money on TV have a home there.

TV is different.  You are more likely to find wavering voters, and ones less interested in politics on telly.  And it costs money, so you need to make it count.  As a result, though 22% of YouTube ads involved a character attack on an opponent, for TV that figure jumped to 38%

The Internet – an organisational tool

Both in the US and UK there has been a certain amount of “see, I told you so!” type reactions to findings that TV not the Internet informs public opinion when it comes to politics  

In fact, the Brookings Institution findings point to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Internet is good for in political campaigns:

“The internet is not mainly a tool for politicians to communicate directly with voters, even though voters are free to peruse campaign websites if they wish. Instead..the internet serves as a tool for campaigns to inform other members of the broad political elite, including journalists, commentators, activists, and opinion leaders.”

More to the point, it serves as a place where you can recruit volunteers, raise cash, and disseminate campaign material.   Your campaign website or Twitter account will by and large not change minds.  The TV debates still serve that purpose.

Men more engaged with online video

At the same time, a separate Comscore study in the UK shows that unlike the social media arena as a whole, online video is an area dominated by men.  Men are far more engaged with both content videos, as well as ad videos.

Top image – boutmuet

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Research out by Pew shows that when it comes to the major US hard news story of 2012, the Presidential election, voters prefer tried and tested news sources.

Only one in twenty (6%) Americans hears about the campaign from Facebook, and while 20% get election news from online news apps or websites, 36% get it from cable TV.Similarly, 41% of Twitter users ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’ get election news on Twitter, compared to 40% who never do.

Two observations about this study:

Pew headlines it by saying “Twitter, Facebook play very modest roles.”

I would add the words “so far.”   Pew’s research also shows that younger age groups who are most likely to get news from social media, have so far been turned off by the campaign

Secondly, we’ve yet to have the set piece events of the election, the live Presidential debates.   The recent US Superbowl showed how social media and live TV now goes hand in hand with 10,000 tweets a second being sent in the closing minutes.

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A study of branded online communities by ComBlu (via marketing charts) shows that organisations are deploying bells and whistles rich media within online communities, but are increasingly ignoring the human aspect – using advocates and so-called ‘super fans’ to make sure the message gets heard.

Over 90% of branded communities feature a funnel of ‘new’ content – i.e. almost every brand has some kind of system in place to get material out to the community, while 80% deploy media rich content.

However, less than half of brands surveyed now have a community manager to look after those communities, with the % dropping from 51% to 48% over the past year.    One would have to wonder why – whether its a sign of budget cuts or a community job being subsumed into a wider marketing function.

Not only that, ComBlu points out that the use of advocates (normally marshaled via a company super fan programme) in online branded communities is very low – at 20%.    ComBlu points out that this is a huge missed opportunity for brands as advocates who will fight a brand’s corner out of their own good will are

• 70% more likely to be seen as a reliable source of information (they don’t directly work for you per se)

• Increase conversions by 166% through content amplification and referrals

• Reduce the cost of overall product support by 60% – they effectively do a lot of it for you

• Are 50% more likely to create content that influences a purchase

• Are 83% more likely to share information

ComBlu says super-fans are “the core of engagement and help bring others into the brand fold” – wise words.

Over eight in ten branded communities have integration with other social media assets, it’s surprising that 20% don’t.

However, ComBlu points out that in many cases this is nothing more than streaming Twitter feeds and Facebook posts onto community sites – but few bothering with other feeds such as YouTube, Foursquare, LinkedIn or Slideshare.

In contrast to a one size fits all approach, research by Edgerank shows that certainly when it comes to Facebook, smaller, niche communities show much higher engagement levels

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The other week I talked about Nielsen figures showing that in the US at least, the older you are the more TV you watch.   However, that doesn’t mean that the television is being abandoned completely.

A study from Frank Magid Associates shows that only 1% of digital TV subscribers in the US have cancelled their subscriptions because they get everything that they want online (via MediaPost). In fact, only 2.5% of US media consumers use the Internet exclusively for video content.

Indeed, people who watch video via the Web seem to be entertainment junkies who indulge through a variety of different platforms.  Frank Magid associates says that “consumers using the greatest number of alternative platforms also tend to spend the most money on traditional subscription services.”

As a result, online video consumers are not so-called cord cutters.   Instead they see the Web as one element of their overall TV experience.

Earlier this year the UK regulatory authority Ofcom found that the most popular YouTube channels were variations of mainstream media properties.   And then there is the much talked about return of appointment or social TV where laptops or iPhones are used side by side with the television set to share the experience with a wider online audience of friends.

Image – From dhammza

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Does watching online content make you less likely to watch ordinary TV?   Not at all, says metrics group Nielsen (via Hollywood Reporter) and the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), which say that Web TV viewers are if anything “cord keepers” rather than cutters.

Nielsen surveyed a group of Americans that watch at least some TV or movies via the Internet on their TV sets.    The research showed that 84% were watching as much, if not more, scheduled TV.   And discovering a programme on the Web can then often result in you watching it via the normal means on scheduled TV – this was the case for 53% of respondents.

CTAM says that these results show how the Internet is often used to enhance someone’s enjoyment of a particular show, and not replace it with something else.   It also links into stats that show that the most popular YouTube channels are more often than not variations of what you will see on TV anyway.   According to Ofcom, in the UK that includes BBC Worldwide, X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – all mainstream broadcast properties.

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Media strategist and Business Week columnist Ben Kunz points us to global research from Forrester, which shows that while 31% of Europeans and Americans online are ‘conversationalists’, most are simply spectators watching from the sidelines.

Not only that but the % of active “creators” in the US, EU and Australia have gone down at the same time as overall (and so passive) social media numbers have gone up.

Ben’s conclusion is as follows:

“The implication is that as social media goes mainstream (Facebook is now the No. 3 website among U.S. adults age 45-54), more users are spending more time watching and less submitting.

“This may be good news for advertisers who seek to use social channels as a push medium for their message, and not-so-good news for those who believe everyone wants to actively engage in a two-way conversation with their brand.”

It also highlights the need to have a system in place to identify those creators and conversationalists, who everyone else is watching (and is influenced by).

The rise and rise of the mommy blogger

A lot of those participants and conversationalists are in fact mothers.   On The Wall Blog Gordon MacMillan has a piece out about the ‘rise and rise of the mommy blogger.’

In particular, Gordon makes the point that ‘mommy bloggers’ are sometimes just mothers that blog, it’s not the case that they will always blog about parenting matters.

According to this chart from emarketer, one in eight (12.1%) US mothers on the Internet will be blogging this year.   Similarly, a study from TNS at the end of 2008 found that UK mothers spend 47% of their free time online.

It’s worth re-emphasising exactly why mothers are so active on social media and this ties into a conversation I had the other day – how can you find the time to blog?

The flippant answer – don’t have a social life (I was talking to two 20 somethings who do).  The more serious answer – online social tools are actually pretty well suited for parents.

It works well if you have bursts of free time in 30 min segments here and there (like new mothers).    It also works for people who are sometimes awake at odd hours (again parents), and finally as a way of keeping in touch with an extended social circle when circumstances (so small children) might not allow you to.

The above post is one of the items on this week’s Rabbit Feed.  Every week at Rabbit we put together a weekly online digest, you can sign up to receive by email.

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Last year TubeMogul came out with research claiming that 53% of online video viewers move onto something else after the first sixty seconds – now Visible Measures has a similar study out claiming YouTube viewers “have ADD” (via AdAge – research report here)

As the graph above shows, 20% of viewers have found something better to do online after the 1st ten seconds, by the 30 second spot a third are gone, and by 60 seconds 44% have left (so slightly better than TubeMogul’s earlier research but still significant).

Visible Measures took this “controversial” Bud Light video ad as a case-study to look into the phenomenon of what they are calling viewer abandonment.   The drop off rate was higher than normal in the 1st ten seconds – I guess because it starts slowly with a guy buying some beer.   But once the punchline (i.e the point where he asks for porn) hits, more viewers than average were engaged.

Wonder if the lesson here is lose any hint of being subtle and hit them right between the eyes from the start…or alternatively obviously get it talked about so that people know what they are going to be seeing when they arrive.

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TubeMogul and Brightcove have come out with another online video report.   This one among other things shows that referrals from Facebook and Twitter are growing faster than referrals from search engines and that viewers referred from Facebook watch videos for longer.

The survey was taken among Brightcove customers, with a focus on media companies, and key stats include:

1 – Viewers watched 11.8 percent more videos per month in Q2 than last quarter.

2 – In Q2, across media verticals, the average viewing time per video stream was 2:00 minutes.   Note media verticals, not run of the mill YouTube vids, where the evidence is still that most people switch off after a minute.  Also worth noting – videos on broadcast websites are watched the longest.  Which comes back to the point of the delivery mechanism being less important than the content for consumers.

3 – “The online video content of media companies has an average completion rate  of 38 percent per video view.”   In other words, 2/3 of videos on media websites are not watched to the end.

4 – By the end of the year, Facebook will be only second to Google in driving video traffic.   Right now, 64  percent  of referrals still come  from Google, followed by Yahoo (11.9 percent) with Facebook on 4.3%.   So Brightcove and TubeMogul seem to be saying that by late 2010, Facebook’s share will be 10%+

5 – Finally, showing that referrals from social networks (ie via online friends) are ultimately of a better quality than from search, Facebook and Twitter users on average hang around watching online videos the longest.  For brand videos, Facebook viewers stuck around for 1.25 minutes, compared to a measly 52 seconds for Yahoo

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More stats from the 377 page (UK) Ofcom Communications Markets Report, in particular ones that reinforce the fact that TV-led campaigns or properties are very often more effective when combined with online.     Three findings in particular (with graphs)

1 – Live, scheduled TV carries a low attention threshold. Compared to other forms of media, consumers are least likely to give live TV and radio their undivided attention.     Social media and print have medium attention scores, while games and downloaded video content rank best when it comes to consumer focus (hence the wisdom of spending money on in-game promotions).

2 – We’re now more likely to ‘media stack.’ 20% of media time is now simultaneous – very often involving TV + the Internet and mobile phones.  Among the under 25s that proportion rises to 29%.  16-24 year olds managed to fit just over nine and a half hours’ worth of media into a little  over six and a half hours of actual time.

3 – The most popular YouTube channels are variations of mainstream media properties. It’s a myth that we want to spend our time on YouTube watching home made ‘world’s funniest animal’ type videos.   Instead, much as we do on TV, we want to see content with high production values, involving recognisable names.

Where’s the proof that TV + online work in tandem works?  Here are three random examples:

1 – PHD and Medialets developed a True Blood iPhone ad to support the last series.   Though we can question whether HBO’s 38% increase in viewers was down to the mobile campaign, the best click-through rate of 8.73% that the campaign achieved was way beyond the usual display ad rate of 0.02%.

2 – Speaking of click-throughs, Coke achieved one of 6%, when it ran a Promoted Tweets / Twitter World Cup campaign.   Running a World Cup promo while people were tweeting about matches made sense – Twitter saw a clear spike in activity, including a record for the number of tweets per second during the recent tournament.

3 – One of my favourite examples is this one:  US broadcaster Oxygen piloted a “real time viewing party” called Oxygen Live around one of its hit shows – Bad Girls Club.   This pulled in comments and conversations from several networks such as Twitter into an online hub while the show was airing.

Oxygen Live kicked off 30 mins before each show started, meaning that it was trending on Twitter 5 mins before each episode and there was a consistent increase in viewers over the hour.   In fact in the US West Coast when they *didn’t* run Oxygen Live, ratings were up 9% among women aged 18-49.   Once Oxygen Live launched that ratings then saw a much bigger increase, up to 57%.

And as far as a successful example of integrating TV advertising and an online campaign goes….Old Spice anyone?

As a final point, it’s worth noting that two of the new social networks that have created a buzz over the past few weeks, Miso and Glue, have a model that’s directly related to people checking into entertainment events and TV programmes, as opposed to locations.

We’ve got a more detailed summary of the Ofcom report in the latest (agency) Rabbit feed, the html version is here.

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