The link between social media, crowdsourcing, creating targeted audiences, generating buzz, and greater online distribution of media assets is beginning to transform the PR and Media Relations industry. While this has been in a growth mode in the US, its rare to see it being acted upon in Europe.

Yesterday, Usain Bolt the fastest man in the world, took part in a charity event on the organised by watchmaking brand Hublot, for whom he is an ambassador. He was on the starting line in front of the Hublot’s Headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland pitting himself against 10 child athletes. Hublot had agreed to donate 10,000 US dollars for each child who reached the finish line before “Lightning Bolt”, and ended up paying $100,000 USD to the Usain Bolt Foundation. LABEL vigorously supported the event in creating new channels and online communications through social media channels, assisting the WorldTelevision ENG, video streaming and media relations team to further the reach and awareness event.

LABEL spent time ahead of the event researching and connecting with influencers, Usain Bolt fans, track and field bloggers , watch bloggers and developing the links to existing fan groups on Facebook for track and field , Usain Bolt and Hublot.

In support of the live event a rigourous set of twitter streams were targeted at influencers and media so they were aware of the event on a day when three seperate news items involving Usain Bolt were reported in the world’s media. One of the basic stratgeies employed is that of frequency and consistency of messaging in both buildup, during and post period of an event. This prolongs the news and captures a long tail audience who is both interested in Usain Bolt and Hublot, while delivering and distributing a set of compelling media assets. While everybody may not see it on the day or tune into a live event, the residual effects of well executed tagging and referencing  will ensure that search results will give it greater audience overtime.

Check out some of the videos from Usain Bolt’s charity race against 10 children at Hublot’s HQ in Nyon, Switzerland.
The Race - http://ow.ly/27xrY
Event Highlights with Hublot’s Ambassador Usain Bolt  http://ow.ly/27xt6
General views from Usain Bolt’s charity race at Hublot  http://ow.ly/27xub
Usain Bolt interview http://ow.ly/27xvH
Interview with Hublot CEO, Jean-Claude Biver http://ow.ly/27xxh

The most important reason for the meteoric growth of Social Networks is something called “The Network Effect”.  This equates to a tipping point when the value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it. In the past year,  we have witnessed one such rising star, Facebook ( but it begs the question is it the only one? ). It took 5 years for Facebook to reach 150 million users and then a further 8 months to double that number. Today, according to Facebook Statistics,  it has 400 million users. In 2009 we saw Facebook become almost ubiquitous in every conversation swirling around Social Media and social networks. It was the year in which Facebook exploded into a  global phenomena, dominating the Social Networking market worldwide as it became an international social network giant. While its dominated the english speaking press and displaced MySpace its not the only Social Network in the world.

To believe that Facebook or english speaking social networks are the only “players in Social networks” worldwide would be nothing short of one sided owed to very narrow perspective of the hyper connected world we live in. According to Wikipedia, there are some 1.5 billion members worldwide. Across the world there a number of  culturally, language, local and regionally driven social networks , that both singularly and accumulatively pose the question whether Facebook can dominate the world in Social Networking. As  startling as it is, the ” Facebook Network Effect” is not only a Facebook phenomena and  its also occurring across other Social Networks in the world , albeit with different speeds.

So lets look at some of the Facebook statistics and the insights they bring.

Facebook Top growth by country – Dec 31st 2009

Facebook usage by % population of  country – Dec 31st 2009

Demark and Norway while not in the top 25 countries reveal even high % population penetration

Norway             Facebook users =  2,256,080                        % population = 48.5%

Denmark          Facebook users = 2,262,260                          % population = 42   %

Some of the insights coming out of Facebook’s 2009 growth are :

• The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base
• The 55+ audience grew enormously at 922.7% in 2009
• Facebook’s largest user base, US, grew from 42 m to 103 m in 2009, a 144.9% growth rate
• SE Asia reprsents and huge growth potential – Indonesia grew to 14.1 m a 1536.7% growth rate , Philippines grew to 8.4 m a 2046.8% growth rate in 2009
• Taiwan’s user base grew to 5,490,300 a 4763% growth rate in 2009
• Facebook accounts for 7% of all time spent online in the U.S, 111.9 million US  visitors in December 2009 double that of December 2008
• In Orkut’s biggest markets (Brazil, India ) Facebook saw growth ( number of users  and number of  users relative to population, however, is still very low )
• Facebook has almost colonized Europe and it is extending its domination with more than 80 millions users at the start of 2010
• Facebook is growing well in Africa amongst the internet connected population

A review of  State of Social Media World from the international perspective shows some other great observations of the growth and importance of Social Networks across the globe.

Italian Vincenzo Cosenza’s  blog , Vinco,  publishes a visual map of the worlds social networks upon which can see the changing  geographical spread of social networks. Facebook in the past nine months has seemingly homogenised the map somewhat. However,  our research indicates that in some countries the map may not be correct and it hard to get an accurate number of the exact numbers. In  India , Orkut still ranks as the number one social network , and while Facebook enjoyed good growth and made inroads into the Philippines and Indonesia, Friendster still dominates the SE Asia region. So the light green spread of Facebook indicated on Vincenzo’s map remains relevant in the Americas, Europe, Australia and Africa. It is worthwhile noting that in the South East African countries there are new social networks being created that we predict will compete significantly against Facebook in countries outside of South Africa.

“South Africa has shown for years that social networks in Africa will be run over mobile phones in the future. Mxit in South Africa, a mobile social network application with more than 5 million members, lets one engage in a community independently from location and time.

According to Appfrica, South Africa has 1.1 million Facebook members, Morocco 369,000, Tunisia 279,000, Nigeria 220,000, Kenya 150,000,and Mauritius 60,000. It is also Appfrica who presents an interesting little project, where Ugandans can interact Facebook through their mobile phones: Status.ug is a completely mobile gateway for Ugandans to also interact on Facebook. Appfrica estimates around 60,000 Facebook registered members in the Kampala area. Erik Hersman wrote on his blog about Sembuse, East Africa’s first mobile social network “Sembuse is a mobile social network. It’s a way for East Africans to connect with each other via short messaging, cheaper than normal SMS messages (much like it’s counterpart Mxit in South Africa).” # extract taken from The Next Billion – The Rise of Social Network Sites in Developing countries by Christian Kreutz

In other parts of Africa Facebook continues to grow the following table showing user numbers in Africa was complied by Possicon from the  Webtrends Nigeria blog

Around Africa

” Egypt has overtaken South Africa as the largest country with Facebook users in Africa, though Facebook penetration in Egypt is much lower than south Africa, it show that there is room for more growth. For now, South Africa’s Facebook users seem to have reach climax as the growth rate is almost flattened. With the table above, Tunisia has the highest penetration up 11% from last November of 45%, given the number of internet users in Tunisia, the growth might not last for too long before it stops. Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria are the top countries in terms of Internet users and as such, we should expect growth from these countries. Morocco has just 12.4% of its internet population on Facebook while Nigeria with 9.4%. Ghana also shows a good Facebook penetration but insignificant as its internet users are still hinging below 1 million mark.” # extract taken from Web Trends Nigeria

Using this map and a number of other sources LABEL .THE Brand.intelligence company came up with a conclusive picture of what the regional and local competition is for Facebook around the world.

Facebook’s Regional and Cultural Competition as of 31st Dec 2009

• Qzone – 200 m users as of 31.01.09 , reportedly 300m as Dec 2009 , Main land China- more that 150 m monthly active users
• Myspace – 130 m users – 115 m monthly active users, 15 languages  has some 5 million artists and bands on MySpace Music and has plans to increase the development as a entertainment content network
• Friendster - 115 m users – 61m unique users per month and 19 billion pages views per month  predominantly SE Asia Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India
• Orkut - *100 m users – 48 languages – 51.09 m user Brazil , 20.02m users in India , 17.28m user in US.
• hi5 - 80m users – 50 languages, main demographics 18 – 34 ( 67% of users )  *15m Mexico, *10.5m Thailand, *7m Peru, *7m Portugal, India, Latam , big interest in developing social games and entertainment content
• Vkontakte - 61 m users- Russian (cyrillic ) speaking world inc. Eastern Europe , is a Facebook clone.
• Cyworld -  *16.2 m  users – 33% of total population of Sth Korea , 90% of Sth Koreans in their 20’s are members of Cyworld.
• Bebo - 40 m users – languages  English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Polish
• Maktoob- 36 m users, Middle East,  bought by Yahoo , Aug 2009 combining 16m Maktoob users with 20m Yahoo users, originally an email service that has extended into social network and news content
• Hyves – 9m users , The Netherlands only , 53% of total population of The Netherlands are registered users
• iWiW – 4m users, Hunagry only, 40% of total population of Hungary are registered user through invite only

Sources : Alexa, Google,Kohl, Orkut, hi5, NYtimes, Techcrunch, iwiw blog vkontakte.ru, Maktoob
* Estimated user numbers

The numbers are significant and tell us that language, culture, location are strong determinants in the Social Network world. What is obvious is that while MySpace lost its dominance in the english speaking world it has a very special offering in music and youth culture that means its still a powerful force in social networks.

• QQ, leader in China, is possibly the largest social network of the world (300 millions active accounts)
• MySpace has lost its leadership everywhere (except in Guam)
• VKontakte is the most popular in Russian (Cyrillic language) territories
• Friendster still dominates SE Asia , while Facebook has seen high growth in this region in 2009
• Orkut ( owned by Google)  remains dominant  in India and Brazil with Facebook making small and growing progress
• Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania
• Maktoob ( bought by Yahoo in 2009) is the most important Arab community/portal and growing very fast , 6 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21.8 million a year later
• Cyworld, Hyves, iWiW, One, and other language or country specific social networks have user numbers that are very high % of population and maybe hard to compete with

The following chart is a ranking provided by Vinco on what  social networks dominate in , what are arguably, the top ten Social media markets worldwide. The interesting note we have here is on the emergence of Twitter. It still has a long way to go for worldwide acceptance , however, it is important to note Twitter has spawned over 50,000 apps that tie into the service.

1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

“Greater availability of social networking services both inside and outside the firewall, coupled with changing demographics and work styles will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications. During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.”

As in the social network space direct emailing between people has dropped as people prefer to message each other as static email type messages or as IM working directly within the social network interface. The broadcast of messages appears as news feeds either to all persons in a network or as news specifically based upon an individuals interests, affinitities, or information needs has eaten into email’s dominance of electronic messaging and communication in the consumer world and will continue to do so. Interestingly, one enterprise social networking system we recommend from Telligent has a email client bridge at the moment that allows a “cross function”  between an email client and the an enterprise community/or social platform. It integrates to the MS exchange  email client allowing it to  act as social publishing interface when the enterprise user prefers not to enter the social network but still have its postings and interactions visible.

“Gartner recommends that organizations develop a long-term strategy for provisioning and consuming a rich set of collaboration and social software services, and develop policies governing the use of consumer services for business purposes. Companies should also solicit input from the business community on what collaboration tools would be most helpful.”

2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.

The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter, has led many organizations to look for an “enterprise Twitter,” that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features to support internal use between employees. Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.

One such enterprise Twitter like microblogging  stream is Yammer, which at LABEL, we use as insight, research, and broadcast channel that doesn’t spam through our email system and allows for quick response and interaction between interested parties.

“However, it will be very difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president for Gartner. “When limited to a single enterprise, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream enterprises are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.”

We do differ to Gartner in our thinking. Where we see their use is in smaller defined interest groups inside of large enterprises. The enterprise microblogging services  will be picked up as quick information exchange platforms between collaborating and social groups within an enterprise. This is clearly illustrated by the growth of groups within communities and networks as centres of specific interests or needs.

3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.

I think this supports the adage we often adopt in recommending social media activities with clients be they consumer facing or in the enterprise. It not about the technology , but about how people use the technology. Start with the people equation first, not the technology equation and the adoption of these tools will ultimately succeed. We advise our clients to stop, listen and learn, create an engagement strategy that supports the business and communication objectives of before concentrating on the what and how of the technology. The answer is clearly underscored by the observation we have of IT companies making consumer facing websites or working out consumer engagement strategies in terms of digital marketing they just don’t do it very well, they deliver a platform not a communications solution and a strategy.

“When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value. Through 2013, IT organizations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70 percent failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives. Fifty percent of business-led social media initiatives will succeed, versus 20 percent of IT-driven initiatives.”

“Enterprises will need to develop entirely new skill sets around designing and delivering social media solutions. Until this happens, failure rates will remain high. A dearth of methods, technologies and tools will impede the design and delivery of social media solutions in the near term. But long term, enterprises will realize that social media is not a “hit or miss” activity naturally prone to high failure rates, and that a calculated approach to social media solution delivery must be an IT competency.”

4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.

” As we move toward three billion phones in the world serving the main purpose of providing communications and collaboration anytime anywhere, Gartner expects more end users to spend significant time experiencing the collaborative tools on these devices. For some of the world, these will be the first or the only applications they use. The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use. Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decades-old platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm.”

5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

The practices of Social Media analysis and the growing number of tools that are examining dialogue, sentiment, and the semantics surrounding consumer expression in participatory media can be applied as useful methodology for examining the interaction patterns and information flows that occur among the people and groups in an organisation or company. Gartner says “However, when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations.”

“Before undertaking a social network analysis, Gartner recommends that the organization ensure that it has the trust and buy-in of the people it hopes to include in the analysis in advance. Issues of privacy and confidentiality must be addressed and a determination needs to be made regarding how the information will be used and communicated. Establishing the ground rules upfront will encourage more open and honest participation and reduce the resistance to ongoing relationship monitoring.”

IKEA’s Facebook Propagation Planning Campaign has used the concept of tagging in an online competition to support the opening of a new store. Some call it a genius use of one of Facebook’s inherent functions. While some of the best campaign strategies in Facebook are simple, and nothing should be simpler than using the default “tagging” tool on Facebook to help create a bit of buzz for an online competition. Users were drawn to the new Facebook profile page of the store manager, who’d uploaded pictures of his new showrooms in a store Ikea was due to open.

“People were told that the first to tag their name on any item, would win it. With the way tagging works on Facebook, the moment you tagged anything, everyone in your network instantly knew what was up for grabs! Subsequently, thousands and thousands of people were flooding the Facebook page in search of freebies!”

Nespresso makes excellent use of Facebook Connect, Facebook Share and Facebook Fans for its latest commercials featuring George Clooney and John Malkowitz. This is an very well executed integrated campaign that combines traditional TV with the choice of an episodic conclusion online ( that’s not necessarily new ), and then adds the full Facebook services into the online site to ensure and viral distribution via Facebook Friends and Fans. The campaign, while not visible on the online site in the US due to the protection of George’s image, is in full swing across other parts of the world and Nespresso is working its Facebook fan base in a totally engaging way surrounding both its product, coffee machines and its iconic George Clooney commercials.