Reno Social Media Think Tank

The number of people creating blogs in the US will reach over 35 million by 2012—roughly 16% of the Internet population.

More importantly, by 2012, more than 145 million people—67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once a month. That is up from a readership of 94 million in 2007, or 50% of Internet users.

"Furthermore," adds Mr. Verna, "the rates at which blog readers notice and click on ads suggest that they are a well-primed audience."

Other notable findings from March 2008 include: 73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. 84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer). 47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer). The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes. The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

I believe we’re going to shift back to thinking customer service and community management are the core and not the fringe.

A social media release is a Web 2.0 format for the traditional press release (see creative samples)

“The social media release is a way to turn the press release into a blog post with all the functionality that you would expect from a blog post.”

“a way to Webify the content of the release,”

The company combed through its popular instant-messaging service – responsible for roughly half of the world’s IMs – and found that even its most distant users are pretty well connected. With 30 billion instant messages sent by 180 million people in June 2006, Microsoft found that the average social chain between two strangers is only 6.6 steps. And 78 percent of pairs connected within 7 degrees or fewer.

But for those who hold dear the notion that information on the Web will forever want to be free, it's early yet. Keep your eyes peeled for publications whose Web sites are sprouting nonbrowser apps, refining their content, experimenting with new reading devices, bulking up their databases, and above all, publications that are listening to the man from Google

It doesn't understand what users want in order to give them what they need.

Is the iPhone App Store software as content or content as software?

They make me laugh or provide useful information

Someone who is consistently informative 23.0% - Someone who is consistently funny

28.7% - They tweet too much

The most common way viewers find a video (45.13% of all views our sample) is direct navigation to a video site (i.e. going to YouTube and running a search or clicking around the featured or related videos).

To those trying to unlock a formula for making a video go viral, perhaps this gives some clues: reach out to bloggers and optimize a video's meta-data to ensure it ranks highly on intra-video site plugs.

Now Skittles.com has gone one better by turning its entire site into a massive social media experiment. It is possibly the bravest move I have yet seen, in terms of a global brand getting into bed with social media and social networks.

Skittles hasn’t bothered to filter the results in any way, so swearing is acceptable, and there’s no moderation.

Econsultancy’s experiment was based around the hunch that most of the social media activity relating to our brand was positive, and in some way reinforces our credibility.

Want to quickly make your friends feel cheap and less than human? Start using automated responders to thank them for what they do or share!

If I choose to connect with someone, it requires an explicit action on my part. I know I'm doing this. It's the same for the person who chooses to connect back with me. Because I see this immediately as a status update or similar notice, I don't need an additional, automated response saying something like, "Hey, Dave, thanks for following me! I look forward to hearing from you!" C'mon

The unchecked use of auto responders undermines this trust, just as questionable claims and pitchmen undermined the credibility of advertising.

One thing all podcasters and producers will need to keep in mind is a lesson to be learned from traditional media … always plan for the next thing.