Fascinating. According to this article by Dan Macsai, Hubspot’s viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella “spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets” to formulate “The Science of Retweeting.”

There is a lot of interesting information that I’ve been curious about in Dan’s analysis. I especially like the Time of Day graph - good stuff. The afternoon tends to work better for me too, and I can honestly say that I’ve personally contributed to the Friday, 4pm spike. Who doesn’t like to do a little tweeting before the weekend?

To top off the sweet analysis, from the little interaction I’ve had with Dan, he seems like a really nice guy. Dan also (apparently) has a book coming out called The Social Media Marketing Book.

Just trying to archive all these really amazing resources out there. Using social media as a market research tool is something I think all social media geeks are familiar with.

It’s that whole “listening” thing that is pretty much the first step of every simple social media strategy. It’s what you do after you listen - that’s the key.

And by listening, you learn something new about your audience everyday. You potentially save millions in market research that might not even be as good as reading your collective feeds.

And if you are really listening, you learn something new about yourself, everyday.

I absolutely love the social media community. I used to “like” them a lot. I think I have learned today that I really love them - they are my peeps!

This is a really nice looking publication that covers a ton of information about social media and how large organizations like the Red Cross can use across their organization and local chapters. Well done!

Social media is here to stay,” says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center. “Online social networks are more than just a fad among the younger generation. They’ve become an integral part of our personal and professional lives. They’re an effective way to keep in touch with people, connect with friends and family, and network with colleagues. Social media will also transform marketing as we know it. They’re powerful communication tools, and are becoming an essential part of successful marketing strategies.

According to this study, 43% of the online community uses social networks. My biased statement is that number sounds a little low, but according to PEW Internet & American Life Project (PEW), it could be a little high or we’ve seen a huge boom in folks trying out social networking since January 2009.

PEW reported that 35% of the online population used social networking sites in January 2009: http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/Generational-differences-in-online-activities.aspx.

Right now, I’m searching, digging, far and near for any definitions, visualizations, expressions, opinions of social media.

My primary audience is someone that may use social media but doesn’t even know it. Or someone that “doesn’t have time for it” or doesn’t care to have time for it. Or better said, I’m really investigating ways to bring social media down to earth.

Right now the idea called web 2.0, social media, whatever you want to call it… it’s on a pedestal, as it should be. You may have heard that it is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate - it is. You may have heard that it is changing the way we do business - it is. You may have heard that it is a social revolution - it is. And you just may have even heard that it’s a fad - it’s not.

But here’s a key point for me with the new participatory web - it is much easier for an individual to launch themselves full-throttle into the social media opportunities with very little barriers, and dirt cheap.

Like anything else, when you start adding groups of people… it gets sticky. The bigger the group, the stickier it gets. So what do we do? How can we get people to get it? Talk about the million dollar question. Ask me tomorrow, and I may have a different answer. But today is my answer is that you can’t, you cannot make people “get it” that fall into one of the primary audience categories I listed above.

Hear me out. Now there are some gifted folks out there who can articulate what social media means in myriad of ways to just about anyone. Those geniuses, the books, the conferences - all good! But until they actually do it for themselves, they will never truly “get it.” They will just be impostors in a new world of communication where transparency is currency.

Enter the presentation, “Social Media is…” a conversation. And you know what? If you had to pick one word, just one word, I’m pretty sure many in the field would agree - social media is a conversation. Take away the “social media candy,” take away the technologies - what do you have? People. People talking to other people. People expressing themselves to the world, to other people, to groups, to organizations…

And how are they expressing themselves? For every person that has a distinct personality and specific interest, there is a unique place and way for that person to communicate what they are passionate about. And it’s their preference how they want to do that and what online tools make sense for them.

Does it really matter which platform, whether it is this blog software or that one? Microblogs or full-out blogs? Photos or videos? For organizations, marketers, strategists - yes, to some degree it does matter and for varying reasons.

But in general, for your everyday person just trying to figure out their own version of the definition of social media, I really don’t think it matters all that much. So going back to the conversation analogy… if you are expressing yourself online in our days, whether through comments, posts, photos, videos - WHATEVER! And you are exchanging information with people, discussing, you know having a conversation…. then you know what social media is…. to you. So if social media is a conversation, then it just might be one things that means something different to everyone.

This video was just posted to our Facebook page - thank you Rachel White!

I wanted to share this with the entire City Year community, especially our 2009-2010 corps:

The message in this video is very clear and relative to what you are doing. And it is at the heart, the core, of our program. You are about to go into classrooms all across America. You will be a tutor. You will be a mentor. You will make a difference to students. You will change their lives. And you, yourself, will change and grow as a person. You are on a journey, a marathon, and the work that you are going to do is not easy. It’s going to be hard, and it’s obviously not about the money.

I want to say to all of you, inspired by this young man, Dalton Sherman…

I BELIEVE IN YOU City Year corps!

Please believe in yourself. Believe in your team. Believe in your students. Believe in your community. Do you believe in me?

Please share this inspirational message. We want to hear from you.

Tell us why we need to believe in you. Tell us what this message means to you and the journey you will soon embark on. Tell someone else that you believe in them. City Year Alumni and Community: please feel empowered to chime in and share your thoughts and experience.

You can share your comments or upload a video to our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/cityyear.

If you want to share a blog post or video post, with our entire City Year community, you can send it to post@cityyear.posterous.com. The subject line is the title of the post, the email body is the text of the post, and you can attach pretty much any media that you want, see http://posterous.com/faq for details.

Just keep it clean. I’m not even going to put all the rules in here because I believe in you.

With Gratitude and Respect,

Michael Messina
Your (Online) Community Builder at City Year

This was provided courtesy of Wendy Harman. Thank you!

I was curious to compare web traffic of emerging microblogging sites (Alexa), from popular microblogs Posterous, Tumblr, and twitpic to emerging microblogs like whrrl.com and tweetphoto.

Of course Posterous and Tumblr are a little more “bloggy” but if people are going to twitpic and commenting more, how much does it matter which service you use? It gets more complicated as the organization and goals get bigger. If you are an individual - why not test them all out?