This Week in Digital – 10/2/2013

Facts about Twitter emerge from its S-1 filing, AdTrap may change the face of the Internet, Facebook and Cisco collaborate on free wifi with check-ins, Instagram announces the debut of advertising, Bing will serve images from Pinterest boards, UM's Wave 7 study indicates increased global engagement, real-time media maps from bit.ly and more, it's This Week in Digital & Social.

A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.

Each week at Ford, I compose a newsletter that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, social media, mobile, digital communications and marketing in order to keep the 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. And if you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links by subscribing to the This Week in Digital & Social Magazine.

Industry

• A study has found that helpful responses to negative feedback can dramatically increase purchase intent among future shoppers and that many reviews contain appeals for help and recommended improvements. (BazaarVoice) 

• AdTrap is being heralded as the device that could change the Internet. The Kickstarter-funded ad blocker works on most sites. (CNN)
• Social logins continue to be important, and Facebook leads the pack, with Google close behind. (Jainrain via Marketing Charts) 

The Platforms

• Cisco and Facebook are teaming up to create "Facebook Wi-Fi" that requires would-be users to check in if they want access to a brick and mortar's wifi. (TechCrunch)
• Facebook is expanding Graph Search to include posts and status updates, making it more functional within the platform. (PC World)
• An adjustment to Facebook's ad algorithm will allow users more control over the types of ads seen in their News Feed based on feedback. (Mashable)
• The battle for social TV rages on as Facebook will share data with the four largest television networks in America. (WSJ Digits blog)
• But here's a good indicator why Twitter continues to be the place people talk about the shows they're watching (vs. talking on Facebook about the shows they watched): Twitter had more users talking about Breaking Bad than the show's finale had viewers on Sunday. (The Next Web)
• Meanwhile, Twitter is putting more emphasis on embedded images, making the tweet itself more of a caption to enlarged images. (Engadget)
• Instagram indicated that in the next couple of months they'll begin rolling out in-feed advertising. Clearly sensitive to not harming their brand, they state "we'll start slow" and that the ads would seems as natural as the other content on Instagram. (Instagram Blog)

• Speaking of managing brands, here' how some Fortune 500 companies use Instagram to build their brand.
• And if you still need some tips, some of the experts can teach you a few things about using Instagram. (The Next Web)
• Bing is adding curated images from Pinterest to its search results. (CNET)
• Here's the Ultimate Pinterest Guide for Every Brand, including the oft-forgotten yet extremely important fundamental: engage with other users. (Fast Company)
• Ride-sharing app Lyft is expanding its reach to include Silicon Valley. (TechCrunch)

Measurement / Metrics / Big Data

• What's the benefit of big data? According to IT and business leaders, it's to improve the customer experience. (compTIA via eMarketer)

Legal / HR

• Social media updates may soon be off-limits for employers seeking more information about applicants in New York City. (Times Union via AP)
• Creating parody social media accounts does not violate the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, according to a ruling in Matot v CH. (Technology & Marketing Law Blog)

Content

• The 12 tenets of content creation as an infographic. I'll save you a click: listen, make a list, address every question, research keywords, pay attention to titles, talk about the competition, use the "vs" format, write about "the best," be clear and concise, keep on creating, and be fearless. (MarketingProfs)
• The Ideas Lab website is a bold experiment in brand journalism that is branded and owned by General Electric and run by Atlantic Media Strategies. (Nieman Labs)

Bookmark / Read / Watch Later

• Eight elements to help brands forge a stronger emotional connection with consumers include such things as typography, color, motion, framing/composition and personality, among others. (FastCo Create)
• Link shortening service Bit.ly has created a real-time media map showing the prominence of various publications by state. Select newspapers, radio/tv, magazines or online and determine which outlets get the best pickup in which markets. (Bit.ly)

• UM has released Wave 7 of its longitudinal study, an ongoing assessment of social media on a global scale and the findings are intriguing. UM surveyed 48,945 active internet users aged 16-54 in 65 countries and developed the following insights, among others:
• The need to be responsive and "always on" is greater than ever, with a 71% growth in Chinese microblogging platforms alone.
• Professional social networks have grown the fastest over the last year as individuals use them for career opportunities.
• About 70% of respondents showed concern over the amount of personal data online and 43% are supportive of brands using behavioral data for targeting purposes.

Commentary

This marks three weeks straight in which we've had a commentary piece about Twitter. Given their big news around their IPO, it's not surprising. This week, Twitter made its IPO filing with the SEC and there were some valuable insights to be gained from the 200+ page S-1.

Here are some of the most relevant facts:

• Trading symbol will be TWTR.
• Twitter has more than 215 million average monthly users worldwide, with about 1/3 of them in the U.S.
• About 75% of Twitter's revenue is from the U.S.
• The company is hoping to raise $1 billion with the public offering.
• Twitter is not yet profitable, bringing in $253.6 million in revenue in the first six months of 2013 and posting a net loss of $69.3 million over the same time period.
• 65% of its revenue is generated from mobile advertising.

In addition to outlining its breadth and reach, unique and relevant content discovery, the ability to break news and cover live events, and capability as a distribution channel, Twitter also enumerated risks inherent to the business, including:

• Competitive products that attract Twitter's users;
• Influential users that flock to a competing product or service;
• Inability to convince and convert new users;
• Users perceive a decrease in the quality of the content;
• Failure to innovate and improve products;
• Inability to present content that is useful and relevant to users;
• Users become disenchanted with the experience based on frequency, relevance and prominence of ads.

While the majority of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising, they also offer access to their stream of publicly-available data to data partners (commonly referred to as "the firehose"). Yet they make a comparatively passing mention of it and that portion of the business accounted for a mere 15% of their revenue in 2012 ($47.5 million out of $316.9 million total).

In an era when Big Data is more than just a buzzword and metrics seem to be more important than ever, I think it's odd that Twitter would continue to rely so heavily on advertising as main source of revenue. Certainly it's important, but if they make it too much a feature of the platform, they may sacrifice the very growth they're trying to simultaneously achieve - particularly when they note that growth and ad revenue are the two biggest challenges right now.

Image credit: Twitter