Traditionally, the Super Bowl is the biggest night for TV advertising, but Sunday night’s Super Bowl was a big night for digital, too. Trends from the 2011 Super Bowl were back, with advertisers releasing ads online prior to the Super Bowl in hopes of increasing viral spread and integrating mobile ads with the TV campaigns. In fact, this year over half of advertisers released ads online before the game, looking to draw on Volkswagen’s success last year. And mobile upped the ante from last year’s Anheuser-Busch iAd with a QR code in Go Daddy’s spot, linking to discounts off Go Daddy products. But this year, the digital showing went even further.
Mobile
Shazam announced just before the big night that the entire Super Bowl, the halftime show and many of the ads would be Shazamable. Viewers could Shazam the Toyota spot for the chance to win two Camrys, download an MP3 from Bud Light, watch a music video from Pepsi, vote for their favorite ads, access music content during the halftime show and check out stats about the plays and players during the game. While QR codes connect print to the digital world, Shazam is blazing the trail for connecting TV and audio to digital content. Shazam has not released exact participation stats, but has noted that with “millions” of viewers participating in the Super Bowl integration, 2012 will be “the year of the Shazamable TV ad.”
Chevy invited fans to “experience Super Bowl Sunday in a whole new way” with the Chevy Game Time mobile app, which allowed viewers to play trivia, take polls and enter to win one of 20 Chevrolets or other prizes.
This year, the Super Bowl was streamable both online and from mobile devices. Verizon cut a deal with the NFL to exclusively stream the Super Bowl on iOS and Android devices with the NFL mobile app, and for the first year the game was streamed on computers. Live streaming is a testament to the changing landscape of TV: the Super Bowl is the biggest moment for TV every year, and yet it’s recognizing the growing trend of streaming TV online. The live stream had 2.1 million unique viewers, making it the most-watched sports game online. While there were limitations (such as a lack of live commercials), online streaming allowed for embedded live streams from Facebook and Twitter, further enhancing the experience with social engagement.
Social Media
And speaking of social, perhaps the biggest story of the night was in social media. Viewers are no longer relying solely on their witty Super Bowl party friends for commentary, but are turning to the second screen for live running commentary about the ads, halftime show and plays. At the end of the game, Twitter saw 12,233 tweets per second, setting a record for the highest tweet frequency during a live sports event.
Brands were prepared for viewers’ connection with Twitter, and hashtags got their fair share of airtime in the TV spots. Audi’s #SoLongVampires, Bud Light’s #MakeItPlatinum and Jack in the Box’s #MarryBacon hashtags all looked to increase engagement on Twitter. Coca-Cola’s polar bears even used the hashtag #GameDayPolarBears to comment on the game from Twitter and point users to more polar bear content on YouTube. In most cases, including hashtags in the spots seemed to work, as #MakeItPlatinum and #SoLongVampires became trending topics in mere minutes.
Coca-Cola saw success on social media even before kickoff with its Facebook event app, which asked fans to RSVP to watch the Polar Bowl – a live stream of the Coca-Cola polar bears’ reactions to the game. Before kickoff, 32,000 people had RSVPed, and the live stream received so many views that the Coke team had to add six servers to accommodate the traffic. Its Twitter feed received a whopping 12.5% increase in followers before the game even started.
The Super Bowl’s social media integration went beyond Twitter and Facebook into the location-based arena with Pizza Hut and Amex’s Foursquare offer. By checking into “Super Swarm Sunday,” Amex members got $5 off any food ordered from Pizza Hut.
The Takeaway
The 2012 Super Bowl is leading the way for digital to further enhance the TV entertainment experience and enhance engagement with advertisers. TV spots are no longer simply 30–60 seconds of impression time; they can be the beginning of an engaging experience with a brand that lasts far beyond those few, short seconds. Instead of looking at TV advertising in a silo, it can be used in conjunction with digital to begin an engaging customer journey.
Two Super Bowl Moments Land in Twitter’s Record Book
Sarah Allen
Super Bowl XLVI isn’t only America’s number one TV event of the year; it also now claims two of the top three spots on Twitter’s most-tweets-per-second list. Twitter reaction reached 12,233 tweets per second (TPS) at the end of the Giants vs. Patriots game and 10,245 TPS during Madonna’s half-time performance Sunday night, trailing only the release of the Japanese movie “Castle in the Sky.”
Point-Know-Buy
M. Les Boswell
Online exploration no longer means sitting in front of a glowing monitor while we parse out Google search results. Smart devices are emerging as knowledge compasses that serve to enhance reality. With smarter applications, our devices are getting better at contextualizing information to boost real-world exploration.
Millennials Look to Digital Word of Mouth to Drive Purchase Process
Stephanie Wierwille
Millennials are much more likely than their older counterparts to rely on anonymous recommendations and reviews when making purchase decisions. Where 66% of Boomers reported turning to friends, family or colleagues for purchase advice, Millennials were split 50-50 for turning to friends versus trusting digital user-generated content. They’re also more likely to share their own purchasing experiences – both positive and negative – with the masses.
Mobile Brings Transparency to Prescription Pricing
Mimi Wilfong
As healthcare costs, like almost everything else, continue to increase, customers are looking for the best value when it comes to purchasing their prescription drugs. Spurred by the discovery that pharmacies negotiate prices independently, Brad Bangerter decided to launch LowestMed, a mobile and web app that can help users to find the best price on medications in their area. By entering the medication you need, LowestMed searches your local pharmacies and lets you compare prices, holding healthcare more accountable for its pricing.
Facebook Users More Likely to Receive Than Give
Scott Luther
Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that users are far more likely to receive likes, tags and friend requests than to give them out. This norm is the result of the 20%-30% of power users driving interactions on the platform. But, according to Prof. Keith Hampton, the author of the report, ”the striking thing is that there are different power users depending on the activity in question. One group of power users dominates friending activity. Another dominates ‘liking’ activity. And yet another dominates photo tagging.”
Free Digital Lockers Have Wide Appeal
Nick Daigle
A recent PwC study indicates that a large majority of consumers (90%) are open to the idea of storing digital media online. Among the age-group segments of the study, the oldest (ages 50-59) expressed the strongest interest compared to the youngest (ages 18-24 and 25-34). Among most respondents, 68% expressed their adoption of cloud-based storage services would be affected if it were not viewed as “free.” Other top factors driving adoption include the provisions of unlimited storage and access from anywhere at any time.
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Have you ever been on a site where cryptic labels or jargon were used for the navigation options? Or have you ever resorted to entering a Google search instead of exploring a site because the content was scattered and not organized in a way that you found intuitive? It’s highly possible that these sites were designed with little consideration for the user and user input was not collected during the life cycle of the project. Spending time with users or performing user research was probably viewed as overhead or a “nice to have” rather than incorporated into the overall project budget. Often, user research is not viewed as mission-critical and instead is seen as a step standing in the way of getting the project completed on time.
Fortunately, there are ways to include user research without blowing your budget. A simple yet eye-opening approach to gather user input is card sorting. The beauty of the card sort is to see how representative users of your site would naturally organize content from your site.
There are two primary types of card sorts:
- Open card sort. Users are given a sample content list and asked to create groups as they see fit and label the groups they created. This is typically done for a new website project and conducted before the information architecture has been finalized.
- Closed card sort. Users are given a sample content list as well as predefined groups that they will need to use to group the content into. This may be done to validate assumptions made after an open card sort or to refine existing categories (e.g., top navigation options) during a website redesign.
Card sorting is flexible and easy to administer because it can be conducted in person or remotely. And all you need is either a set of index cards or an online card sorting tool. Index cards work well because users easily work with the cards by spreading them out in any manner they choose as they begin to assemble the groups. However, there are some online tools that are effective in emulating the experience you get with index cards:
- Optimal Sort is one of the most popular card sorting tools. It has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. And you can also benefit from some analysis reports that are automatically generated by this tool. Here is a video on how to create an Optimal Sort study: http://vimeo.com/14204460
- iCardSort is an iPad app that was created to replicate the feeling of physical cards.
While online card sorting tools can give you the flexibility to conduct the study without a moderator, it’s beneficial to have a moderator there to gain a deeper understanding of the user’s rationale and interpretation of the content. So as users organize content into what they deem are the logical groupings, they are asked to describe their thought process through a think-aloud protocol. This gives insight into their mental models and answers the following types of questions:
- What do users find easy to organize?
- What do users find difficult to organize?
- How do users describe the content or what do they name groups?
- How do people want information grouped – by subject, process or content type?
- Do they understand the content?
- What content would they organize into more than one group?
- Were there any patterns (e.g., similar content groupings or labels)? Or what were the areas of high disagreement across users?
With answers to the questions above, the team will be better equipped to design an experience that is positioned to meet the needs and expectations of your target users. Integrating user research approaches like card sorting can act as useful checkpoints, but, more importantly, provides the team with valuable insights that will make them better advocates for your customers and help create a positive experience for your brand. This is a technique that is best conducted early in the process – ideally before wireframes are created or before any development begins – when there is less risk to the project at large. With simple card sorting exercises, incorporating user research into the overall project shouldn’t be a daunting overtaking and is actually fairly easy to integrate.
More on Card Sorting
- Interview with card sorting guru: http://www.infodesign.com.au/uxpod/donnaspencer
- Definitive guide: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_sorting_a_definitive_guide
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Tales from the Post-PC World: iPads Outsold Desktop PCs in Q4 2011
Brian Kress
On their quarterly earnings call last week, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook revealed an interesting stat: that iPads outsold desktop PCs in Q4 last year. While the PC market as a whole still outpaced the iPad’s land grab, the desktop number is important when you focus on user behavior. The iPad’s approach of mobility and touch is meeting new, and apparently huge, needs. Smart brands will be focusing on how to serve those same needs in 2012.
New Google Privacy Policy Combines User Data from All Google Services
Nick Daigle
Google has announced its plans to consolidate its more than 60 product-focused privacy policies into one. Included in the policy are the new ways it will gather, store and leverage user data. The information provided to Google through its various channels, including search, Google+ and YouTube, will basically merge. This gives Google a more personalized vantage point into the individual habits of consumers. It’s also another signal that the “New Google” has arrived and that it aims to create “one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google.” The new policy will take effect in March.
Free Apps Win Out Over Paid Downloads
Sarah Allen
Of all the apps downloaded in 2011, it is estimated that 96% of them were free. While most of these apps are monetized through advertising now, it is expected that in-app purchases will grow over the next few years to make mobile apps more profitable and that the “freemium” model will continue to be popular.
Twitter Now Able to Limit Sensitive Content by Country
Scott Luther
Twitter has announced that it has developed the capability to censor individual tweets within geographical areas, allowing the service to comply with local expression laws. Twitter says it will attempt to notify users when a tweet has been blocked, but content will only be limited from view within the country rather than blocked outright. At this time, this tool is not in use in any countries.
Facebook Wants to Own Your Social Graph
Stephanie Wierwille
Facebook’s Open Graph allows apps like Spotify and Foursquare to share users’ experiences with their Facebook friends on the news feed in real time. Last week, Facebook introduced 60 new apps that integrate with Open Graph. This opens up the opportunity for information and experiences to be shared with a larger base. Pinterest, Hulu, TripAdvisor and Foodspotting are just some of the apps that are taking advantage of Open Graph.
Gift Cards Too Heavy? Juno Wallet Could Be the Solution
Mimi Wilfong
Are all those holiday gift cards weighing down your wallet? Juno Wallet can help. This mobile app for Android and iOS lets you store all your gift cards and PINs on your phone, alleviating the need to carry those cards with you. Users can also earn Juno Credits and Juno Points, which are given to users as incentives for logging in to the program. In the last 30 days, there have been over 220,000 installs of Juno Wallet.
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Tablet and E-Book Reader Ownership Nearly Doubles Over Holidays
Alex Kenney
Between mid-December and early January, the share of adults in the U.S. who own a tablet and/or e-book reader surged from 18% to 29%, according to Pew Research. This was in part driven by Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet being introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets just in time for the holiday gift-giving season, with some versions falling well below $100.
Map Apps: The Race to Fill in the Blanks
Nick Daigle
With the advent of bigger supermarkets and hub airports, there came a need to navigate them. Usually, experience or physical maps were necessary to maneuver the countless aisles, floors and terminals. Now, many of those same stores, airports and malls offer patrons a way to navigate without partaking in a daunting and sometimes painful perambulation. And in the end, instead of stumbling upon their final destination, consumers are helped to their flights, holiday gifts and grocery items by their brand.
What’s Next for Digital Coupons?
Stephanie Wierwille
Digital coupons and daily-deal couponing sites have seen unprecedented growth in the past few years because of the economic recession and increased consumer interest in mobile. While businesses are not always profitable in the long run with coupon maven Groupon, several new platforms are developing that build on current digital coupons to encourage social sharing and mobile usage, incorporating the ongoing social-local-mobile trend.
Accounting for Half of Spending, Businesses See Strong Results in Paid Search
Scott Luther
eMarketer reports that current results for paid search across Google, Bing and Yahoo! are generating increased clickthrough rates year over year in 2011. Bing and Yahoo! report higher cost per click in 2011, showing that more businesses are running campaigns through these search engines, while Google’s average cost per click was slightly down toward the end of the year. Also of note, in Q4 2011, 6% of paid search clicks were generated through smartphones, and tablets accounted for an additional 4% of clicks.
Cadbury Pioneers Product Launch Using Google+
Mimi Wilfong
Cadbury became the first brand to launch a product via Google+ when it released its Dairy Milk Bubbly candy bar last week. It was quickly followed by Facebook and Twitter mentions. The bar’s wrapper is Blipper-enabled, showing Cadbury’s willingness to experiment with new augmented-reality digital capabilities.
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You don’t have to be in advertising to know technology moves quickly. Even last year’s “tech laggards” now have a smartphone and Facebook page. So what’s next? As we look forward into 2012, trends in technology continue to ripple through the ad industry. Whether it’s “swimming up the social stream,” talking to your smartphone or “Shazamming” the song in a commercial, companies scramble to stay relevant as digital pushes further into the center of the advertising world. We invite you to dive into our Top Ten Digital Trends Report for 2012 and catch a glimpse of what is just ahead.
Mobile Apps Versus Mobile Websites | John Tornow
If you’ve experienced an app attack at all in the past year, we understand, especially since most everything is going mobile these days. But what’s it going to be in 2012…the mobile app or the mobile web?
http://trends.clickhere.com/mobile-apps-vs-mobile-websites/
Taming the Social Stream | Scott Luther and Sarah Allen
Too much content, so little time – why many social platforms are creating features to help users filter the influx of information. So in an effort to help you filter your content feed, we’ve highlighted our top topics for 2012.
http://trends.clickhere.com/taming-the-social-stream/
Reuniting the SEM House | Derek Louden
Most of us are familiar with the saying “two is better than one.” But when it comes to search engine marketing, does it make sense to manage SEO and PPC campaigns separately anymore?
http://trends.clickhere.com/reuniting-the-sem-house/
Advertising in the Dust of the Digital Revolution | Amanda Plewes and Sarah Allen
Digital or traditional…what’s your final answer? Don’t choose just yet, because you may not have to. The lines have fully blurred and a new time has come.
http://trends.clickhere.com/advertising-in-digital-revolution/
Creativity + Technology: Walking Hand in Hand into the Sunset | Jayr Sotelo
Ever notice how the tech people still seem to be put in a quiet silo to play with their gadgets? Even though ad agencies have undergone all sorts of change over the past decade, there is more to be had. A new model is emerging where creative plus technology truly equals innovation.
http://trends.clickhere.com/creative-technology/
Watching TV, Tweeting and Chewing Gum | Alex Kenney
Multitask much? Well, so do consumers, now more than ever. So how do marketers connect with people doing six things at once? Read on to learn tips and tricks to create engaging cross-platform experiences for your brand.
http://trends.clickhere.com/tv-tweeting-and-chewing-gum/
Real Artificial Intelligence Has Arrived: Voice Recognition | Colin Hogan
The time has come…
You: “What’s the big deal with voice recognition technology?”
Siri: “Click the Read more link below to find out.”
http://trends.clickhere.com/real-ai/
The Next Big Step for Digital: The Internet of Things Gets Real | Brian Kress
Internet connectivity is almost always at our fingertips. Literally. And advertisers are finding even more ways to make products and devices interactive. Read more to get inspired on ways to really bring your product or service to life!
http://trends.clickhere.com/next-big-step-for-digital/
The Responsive Web: A Web Fit for the Future | Matt Carver
Look to your left and right. You’ll probably find a smartphone, tablet and laptop all in near proximity. For marketers, that used to mean a separate site for each device, but with the emergence of responsive web design, there is now a holistic solution we’d recommend investigating.
http://trends.clickhere.com/responsive-web/
Buying Audio and Video | Cheryl Huckabay
Digital changed the game, in more ways than we may have expected. Check out this article to learn why television and video and radio and audio aren’t necessarily synonymous terms anymore.
http://trends.clickhere.com/audio-and-video/
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Shazam! Super Bowl Ads Go (More) Digital
Mimi Wilfong
If you plan on watching the Super Bowl this year, make sure you have your phone handy. One-third of this year’s ads will be Shazam-enabled, allowing users to capture part of the ad and be directed to a branded interaction.
Observations from CES 2012
Brian Kress
For those unable (or unwilling) to sift through the never-ending stream of new tablets and ultrabooks, Greg Satell has put together a nice collection of thoughts and observations from CES 2012. Among them: the growth of the Internet of Things and a reimagined Web ecosystem.
Google Incorporates Social Content into Personalized Search
Scott Luther
This week, Google began delivering social content within the primary search results for Google+ users, elevating the importance of items that a user has shared or been exposed to through their network. The update is aimed at serving users more personally relevant content; however, it is also instigating a debate among major industry rivals about the prioritization of internal results over the open Web.
Facebook Rolls Out Ads to News Feeds
Stephanie Wierwille
Last week, Facebook began the slow rollout of Featured Stories – sponsored ads within users’ news feeds. Continuing the trend of personalizing online ads and search results, a “Featured” story is a paid ad that includes content from a page or person to which a user has connected, where “Sponsored” stories are simply paid ads. Featured stories increase the reach of stories that would naturally occur in the news feed, and can be used to give a page’s content more visibility among its fans or to promote the page to friends of fans.
Apple Store, Amazon Offer Best Mobile Retail Experience
Alex Kenney
According to a new report from customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results, the Apple Store and Amazon provide a significantly more satisfying mobile experience compared to other retailers. ForeSee explains their success in part because they have trimmed down the mobile experience, while still providing much of the same functionality found on their websites.
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Let’s face it – at one point or another, we’ve all had a bad user experience. For some of us, the memories appear in the form of a blinking red “12:00” on our VCR. For others, it’s the lid of your piping hot coffee cup that seems to crumble, popping off just as you pull out of the drive-through. For many of us these days, a bad experience can be an irritating remote control layout, while for others it’s called airport signage. And while we all have come to grudgingly accept commercials before a $15 movie, we all still feel somewhat victimized.
More often than not, we ask ourselves, “How could the designers have gotten this so wrong! I could have done better myself!”
To a degree, you may be right. At the end of the day, one of the many challenges of experience design is a disjointed process where the product or service is touched by specialists who don’t talk to each other or who simply see their own specialty as being “priority number one.” They all may have even seen the creative brief or statement of work – but, based on their specialties, they all translated it differently. The engineer may see “elegant” as exquisitely crafted with the finest chips. The designer sees “elegant” as the most beautiful shape, color or texture ever to have graced the human eye, while the salesperson sees “elegant” as whatever the data shows as selling most effectively this quarter.
So, how do good experiences get designed? A great house requires an equally great architect, and in that same vein, the user experience architect role serves to create good experiences. As a user experience architect, the fundamentals of good experiences are embedded in the study of human behavior. Here are some basic tenets that can be universally applied to any user experience:
- Clearly define the end result of your product or service, the budget and the timeline at all phases. If you have more than one step in the process, it will be all too easy to lose sight of what’s being done, why it’s being done and how it will be delivered.
- Define and categorize your users. Understand their priorities, the environment they’ll be in when they experience your product and service, and what’s ultimately important to them. User experience architects typically work with strategists to create “personas,” which are behavioral models for groups within your target market. These personas are referred to throughout the project as a sanity check to make sure that the user is always top of mind on project direction.
- Understand your business goals and make sure everyone else understands them, too. Help the team understand roles and who drives at what point. You don’t want your engineer to design, and you don’t want your designer wielding a hot torch, but if both have ample opportunity to collaborate, the results can be wonderful.
- Test your work early and often with actual users. Understand and study reactions to your product and service, and validate the work done. User experience architects understand how best to test and what to ask in moderated sessions.
- Don’t leave each specialty to define and interpret the brand vision. Let your user experience architect work with the business analyst to clearly articulate the vision, through validated documentation that includes user-centric perspectives.
There is a method to creating a good user experience, regardless of whether it’s an e-commerce site or a multichannel marketing campaign. At the end of the day, your user experience architect can apply tried-and-true methods to advocate a positive experience for the user. Your customers will benefit from the constant advocacy of your user experience team, and you’ll find yet another key method for differentiating yourself from your competitors. We may not be able to save you from 20 minutes of commercials before the movie, but we can help create the right kind of experience for your brand and for your organization.
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World’s First Facebook Timeline Campaign
Stephanie Wierwille
While Facebook Timeline has yet to be released for brand pages, marketers are already leveraging the new design to connect with consumers. The Israel Anti-Drug Authority and McCann Digital created a Facebook page for a fictional drug addict, using Timeline to explore the two different paths a life can take: the decline as an addict versus success in staying clean.
Consumer Media Usage Across TV, Online, Mobile and Social
Sarah Allen
Nielsen recently took stock of consumer media usage across channels, and the results show that TV ownership is still most prevalent. Get the basics on how many people own other devices and use the Web in the article or download the full report.
IKEA Invites Facebook Group for a Sleepover
Scott Luther
After discovering a Facebook group called “I Wanna Have a Sleepover in Ikea” with nearly 100,000 fans, an IKEA store in Essex created a program where members could compete to be one of 100 people invited for a sleepover in the store. With product experts on hand, participants not only got a chance to roam the giant store after hours, they had a chance to test out the mattresses in action.
Do Social Media Postings Always Require a Brand Response?
Nick Daigle
Social media has birthed the age of customer-to-customer relationship management. When a question or complaint goes unanswered, other potential and current customers can make a decision from that lack of dialogue. And while customers say they are most likely to engage a brand for promotions, deals and discounts, they cited customer service as more important, according to the Conversocial study, ”The Consequences of Ignoring Your Customers.”
Wireless Bandwidth Dominated by Top Users
Mimi Wilfong
According to research firm Arieso, the top 10% of wireless users are consuming 90% of bandwidth. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of top offenders were utilizing 3G bandwidth to connect a laptop to the Web, followed by a third of users with smartphones, and just 3% were using tablets. Who’s responsible for the statistical gap? Europe, the United States and South Africa.
Word-of-Mouth, Consumer Reviews and Social Media Influence
Jill Krumsick
Ninety percent of people believe brand recommendations from friends. Products that have more than 50 reviews experience 65% higher returns than products with less than five reviews. Users are 71% more likely to purchase when referred by social media. Check out this infographic to see more staggering stats on the importance of word-of-mouth and inbound marketing.
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In 2011, we saw major growth in tools for individual expression on the Web. No, this is not a post about the power of the so-called Mommy bloggers. This year, the democratization of media on the Internet focused on a new medium as content creators gravitated toward a more visual, more impactful medium than the typical blog format.
And it should not be surprising. The math has long been worked out:
One picture = 1,000 words
If we take this old adage about the worth of a picture as true, Instagram users definitely have a lot to say. With 15 million users having uploaded over 400 million photos in the year since the service’s launch, we’ve saved ourselves quite a bit of reading in 2011. It is also important to note that these users are solely posting from iOS devices through the Instagram network and on Twitter. We can expect these numbers are poised to grow even more rapidly with an expansion to Android devices and with Facebook instant-upload capabilities expected soon.
These snapshots are visual diaries that chronicle not only the events and sights that a user experiences, but emotions as well. The addition of filters after the picture has been taken allows the photographer the ability to infuse emotion and storytelling in a way that was previously only available to dedicated hobbyists. While many will lament the lack of craft that ready-made filters facilitate, the democratization of this ability will only serve to broaden the appreciation of the professional photographers who are elevating the medium.
But Instagram is only one example of a service that is taking advantage of this visual blogging trend; many others have attempted to catch the lightning in a bottle that makes Instagram so popular, both in mobile and on the Web. Within the mobile space, we have seen high-profile services like Foodspotting, Hipstamatic, Color and Path flood the social consciousness and make the act of picture-taking a social event once again.
Of these services, one that has shown particular merit in combining location-based sharing with this visual journaling is Path. The mobile social network is a companion app that registers location, music choices, musings, collaborators and photographs from the lives of its users. Limited to your 50 closest connections, this social service aims to create deeper connections and more honest sharing within networks.
Online, platforms like Tumblr and Pinterest have exploded in popularity because of their ease of use and ability to easily give others an inside look into our world. Compared to traditional blogs like WordPress or Blogger.com, Tumblr has gained significant ground over the past year in terms of unique visitors, visits and page views. Although trailing the more established blogging platforms in terms of total visitors, Tumblr users show more engagement with the content and view a significantly higher number of pages while on the site. Finally, while WordPress.com and Blogger.com have remained stagnant or declined, Tumblr continues to climb.
Likewise, Pinterest has rapidly grown in popularity among certain online groups, generating 6 million unique visitors in November despite an invite-only restriction. For a more in-depth examination of Pinterest, check out these profiles by Sarah Voges and Darlene Lo.
Both the simplicity of sharing and the emphasis on the user’s creativity are essential to these services’ adoption. Pinterest features dead-simple usability to create visual bookmarks for projects, inspiration and the ability to share boards with others. Tumblr is similarly designed for simplicity in getting started, choosing readily from free or premium templates to design your blog, and again in practice. Users are able to share text, images, videos and music through a streamlined editor, or find and consume blogs created by others through personalized streams. However, with less emphasis on long-form text posts, the creativity of the blogger is free to shine, leading to as many different Tumblr streams as can be managed.
Many factors have contributed to the rising popularity of these visual blogging services; among them, simplicity and self-expression are very important. But at a higher level, the idea that social networks are aligning to connect people with similar interests or passions in new ways has enormous implications for how brands can engage through social media. Rather than traditional message boards, forums or “fan sites,” there is now a broader range of interests being followed across the Web. As we move into 2012, we can expect to see visual blogging continue to grow in popularity, both in mobile and the Web, and we can also expect to see services start to leverage the vast amount of content that is created through this trend to “humanize” the web experience in new ways.
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