Hyphen Digital’s News Watch Week Ending 6/12/2009
Hyphen Digital’s News Watch
by Kathleen O’Connor – Week Ending 6/12/2009
California to Save Paper & Money by Using Online Textbooks (Slashdot)
In defense of his decision to use online textbooks, Governor Schwarzennegger argued that the youth are the first to accept the latest online technology and that the internet is the “best way to learn in classrooms.” Starting in August of this year, California’s math and science classes will be using online textbooks that have passed an academic standards review.
So What? We are living in a time where Wikipedia caused the end of Microsoft’s Encarta because Encarta’s information quickly became out of date. Textbooks are expensive and school budgets rarely allow a school to buy an updated version each year. Within one school year the information inside the textbooks will most likely be outdated. Using an online textbook, the content can be updated as new insights and discoveries to covered topics are unveiled.
Healthcare Industry Insight: This is a good case for our industry to utilize existing content and start developing content for online.
Twitter’s Growth May Have Reached Its Plateau (Mashable)
Twitter saw a steady growth in their number of users over the past year. It appears that this growth may have stopped as they only saw a 1.47% increase in unique users between April and May. This does not indicate an end to the Twitter “craze,” as the number of monthly visits to the site has increased by nearly 7%.
So What? This is typical of social networking sites according to Hyphen’s learnings from the 2009 Social Networking Conference. Sites reach a “natural” level where the number of new users equals the number of users leaving the site. An example of this is YouTube. YouTube saw a slight decrease in the number of unique users between April and May yet comScore has given YouTube credit claiming they are a large contributor to the large increase in video viewing in the US.
Healthcare Industry Insight: When launching a social networking site for the healthcare industry understand expectations.
AT&T is Disclosing All in Their Updated Privacy Policy (New York Times)
AT&T knows extensive information about their customers, including such things as what websites they visit and their vacation destinations. The updated privacy policy let’s their customers know in detail what they are tracking. For example, they detailed how they drive users to ads that are relevant to the user’s location while searching and/or browsing the internet. The Privacy Policy also provides more details on how they are assisting the government with their wiretapping practices.
So What? In the age of social marketing it is important to be transparent. Facebook is a good example of how not being transparent can backfire. In February, they updated their privacy policy without notifying users. Once Facebook users found out about the updates they became infuriated with the company. In an effort to regain the trust of their users, Facebook offered a democratic way to update the privacy policy. All users had the opportunity to review, comment and vote on any changes before they were made. Companies need to stay transparent to get, and keep, their users trust.
Healthcare Industry Insight: When drafting a privacy policy for any site we develop it is important to be transparent.
Vanity URLs are Finally Coming to Facebook (Mashable)
Major social networking sites such as Twitter and MySpace already offer vanity URLs. For example, when searching for Hyphen on Twitter you can navigate to http://twitter.com/HyphenNY to reach our Twitter page. Facebook is now allowing user profiles and fan pages to have vanity URLs. The only drawback is that only profiles and fan pages with 1,000+ friends/fans are eligible for the vanity URLs. Individuals can have their vanity URLs too on Facebook — like www.facebook.com/JohnSmith.
So What? This will help users search and find people and brands more effectively on Facebook. Fan pages and profiles with fewer than 1,000 friends are not out of luck thanks to SocialToo; a Twitter application and survey site that now offers vanity URLs that redirect to user’s profiles. They will be expanding their offerings to fan pages in the near future. SocialToo is also offering analytics on your vanity URL page on such measures as number of clicks per day and visitors’ geographic locations.
Healthcare Industry Insight: Many pharmaceutical and healthcare companies are creating Facebook fan pages. We may want to encourage them to use vanity URLs as a part of their social networking strategy.
Interesting Links:
This site follows “People at real-world events in real-time.” The site chronicles major events in real time pulling feeds from such social networking sites as Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. This allows visitors of the site to receive updates on major conferences and events in real-time.
Dell made $3 million (and counting) from Twitter (New York Times)
Dell has used Twitter to get word out about new products and to post coupons. Since 2007 they have directly attributed $3 million of their revenue to Twitter.
Google Wave Guide (Mashable)
Google Wave is Google’s latest project. This guide will give you more insight to the tool that gives real-time updates through email, chat, wikis, and social networking. To help you grasp the technology prior to its launch click on the link above. To receive updates on Google Wave you can signup here: http://wave.google.com/.
