A recent study by Garry Tan shows that Tumblr is the most popular social network among people aged 13 to 25. Garry surveyed 1,038 people from two age groups of 13-18 and 19-25, and in both cases the results showed they use Tumblr more often than Facebook. Twitter came third, but while it’s a clear 3rd runner among 19-25, teenagers use Instagram almost as often as Twitter.

This is interesting, because these two age groups are a favourite target for advertisers worldwide. From foods, drinks, clothes to gadgets and toys, flashy ads seek 13-18yo approval and urge them to influence parents purchases. Similarly, ads influence 19-25yo to spend their first money in a particular way and affiliate with the brand.

Therefore, all the fascination advertisers have nowadays with Facebook is already a misfire, and companies are ignoring a very big audiance on Tumblr. At the same time, this is great news for Tumblr and their strategy of slow and subtle monetisation is paying off, while not alienating their users, they introduce innovative income streams.

What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. The service allows users to post multimedia (images, videos, links and quotes, text) to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs, like or reblog their posts, as well as make their blogs private. Anonymity and nicknames are at the core of Tumblr, and this is probably one of the key advantages over Facebook, easily recognised by the tech-savvy teenagers and young adults of the 21st Century. You can find me on Tumblr at f055.tumblr.com

Tenth Grade Tech Trends: My survey data says says rumors of Facebook demise exaggerated, but Snapchat and Instagram real

↬http://blog.garrytan.com

Branch cofounder Josh Miller’s recent post about how his 15 year old sister uses the Internet blew me away with its observations the other week. I’m 31, so young enough to [...]

In July 2012, Nielsen published a report proving that mobile traffic from surfing the web increased by 82%, traffic from mobile apps rose by 85% and PC traffic dropped by 4%. This shows that if you are a business owner, your target audience is on mobile. You can’t just have a website. It has to be a website with proper user journey, great experience and it has to load as fast as Google, otherwise your clients will go to other sites that load in a few seconds instead of minutes. Moreover, the site has to have a mobile version. It can’t be a squeezed version of the online site, it must be a proper mobile version with smaller icons, good menu layout etc.

When you will be going outside of your cosy flat, take a second and look around. On the streets, people walk with their noses glued to smartphones, the same happens in buses or the metro. On top of that they most probably are using social networking apps during that time. According to Nielsen, consumers increased their social app time by 76% over the last year. People pin, like, comment, tweet and now, since social media gives more opportunities for advertisers, they are exposed to recommendations of your products.

In the old times, customers saw an ad displaying the best features and incentives of a product. Now, thanks to social media, consumers see, who amongst their friends trusted the company by liking its products or the website. They can also read an info about friends visiting certain places, eating some special dishes or buying products. The recommendation part is extremely important, because we trust the judgement of our friends and want to belong to the same group as them. This pushes customers to visit the place, buy same dish and try out the product their friends liked.

Recently, I was preparing my presentation for a social media seminar and found a perfect example of how social media influence the sales funnel. In Poland, since about 4 years Orange, a telco company, cooperates with movie theatres to boost ticket sales and text message usage. On every Wednesday you can send a text to a certain number and get a 50% discount for your movie tickets. Over time the model evolved so you could use a mobile app to generate such codes increasing the data traffic.

The idea became so popular that this cinema chain decided to remake the promotion, but for Tuesdays. However, they didn’t use mobile apps to generate discounts – they used social media instead. The result was amazing! There were 6x more customers using Facebook app than customers downloading the mobile app. The amount of active users generating coupons via the Facebook app was 30,000 per month:

At the same time, there were 1,000-5,000 installations of the mobile app:

These numbers convinced me even more about the importance of social media. Thus, when you are designing your sales strategy – think social, otherwise your success could be six times smaller.

In case a user disagrees with the new TOS, he can’t just opt-out. He has to either delete his account or make it private. Instagram community exploded.

They were especially outraged by point 2), using their photos in ads. The wording of the TOS was not clear whether they would be used only inside Instagram or sold outside. Some “smart” people tried to diffuse the tension saying IG will never have the right to sell the user photos outside because of the US copyright law, 17 USC §106 to be exact. But the damage was done.

Nuclear Explosion

Throughout the day many people instagrammed screens of the new TOS, bidding farewell to their once-beloved service, bashing IG or simply putting black shots of protest. I saw several good photographers doing just that and deleting their accounts. It should be noted that the biggest outcry came from pro and semi-pro photographers, and celebrities like Wil Wheaton who wondered if this means his, and other stars’ images, can be used to endorse products without their knowledge or compensation?

Shock Wave

Privacy is a hot subject nowadays, and so the info travelled from industry & tech blogs, to mainstream media, landing even on BBC. Lists of “Instagram alternatives” flooded the blogs, starting a Flickr renaissance. Photo-copying services appeared instantly, like FreeThePhotos, which already copied 250,000 shots from Instagram to Flickr. Even I, a long time instagramer, decided to finally renew my Pro subscription to Flickr and cross-post my shots. Several awesome IGers I was following disappeared completely. And I finally tried Flickr’s iOS app and I must say it’s great.

Instagram lost a big portion of trust. So they had to explain themselves, reassuring users that their photos will not be sold. Or used in ads. And while the first clause wouldn’t be legal anyway, the second one was a step back by IG. I am sure if not for the community outcry, this clause would stay in the TOS allowing Facebook-like ads.

The Fallout

This sort of “wording mistakes” may have gone by easier, except for the really bad timing for Instagram. It’s odd to release such a bomb just before Holidays. It’s even weirder if you consider the recent moves by the competition. In the last 2 weeks Twitter and Flickr announced the addition of photo filters to their apps, Flickr mobile app got a major (and impressive) overhaul, professional photo community 500px introduced its own mobile app, DropBox acquired SnapJoy photo aggregator and earlier this quarter Tumblr published its Photosets app for easy sharing. Instagram is no longer the absolute leader in mobile photography, but it still had the greatest community. How about now?

The first hit was the sellout to Facebook, many users got concerned (and rightfully it seems) about IG next monetization moves. The second disturbance came from the rise of quality mobile photo apps for professionals (i.e. Flickr and 500px). This week’s crisis is Instagram’s third strike. The service lost a lot of respect and hippie charm. They are starting to talk business now. And looking back at startup history, it seems that such a moment is the peak of the service. Once monetization strategy takes over, decline begins: Facebook lost its cool, Twitter lost its developers, Google lost its “free”…

I’m not judging here, we are all in it for the money. But there’s a pattern here, and I don’t like where it’s going.

PS. Some say all the drama is due to Facebook “Move Fast and Break Things” ethos. I say all this is due to being a bit dicky towards your users.

Did you know that today you can probably choose from 10 billion different products and services in New York City versus 300 items available in a traditional hunter-gatherer society some 500 years ago? – estimates Professor Eric Beinhocker from Harvard University.

Nowadays, the consumer is flooded with product options, and on one hand he expects to have a wide choice, but on the other hand he is overwhelmed with too much information. The way to deal with such a problem is to use new technologies like smartphones, social media, location services and internet. The new resources bring help to an overwhelmed customers, who uses these innovations to make research and get fast feedback from their friends. The model in which this process is done is called SoLoMo – a Social-Local-Mobile way of purchasing goods.

In the past, consumers were usually recognising a need for purchase when they were physically in a store, seeing a product placed somewhere close to other often-bought items. Alternatively, they were watching or hearing about the product from friends or traditional media. Today, we have tweets on Twitter, posts or sponsored stories and offers on Facebook, product pictures on Pinterest and ads on YouTube. As a potential customer, you go to social media sites to hang out with friends, play games and you end up seeing adverts of products, places and services liked by your friends. This is an extremely powerful “need creator”. Why wouldn’t you want to try the products or visit the places that have recommendations of some of your trusted friends?

As a second step, customers tend to search for more information about the product and its company. A task which is extremely simple with smartphones in their hands. They check if the company supplying the product has a website, a FanPage, is it present in social media. They are also interested in how popular and active the company is in social media, how many likes, followers or pins it has. Research shows such presence positively influences customers’ opinions. In fact, the lack of online and social media presence makes potential clients change their minds about the purchase.

Moreover, there are many online websites comparing usefulness and quality of products. And since smartphones with internet connection make it so simple to browse the web, customers evaluate their alternatives when they see fit, even in stores. After this step, part of the customers buy the product in an online store, while the other part seeks local info about the product, like where is the nearest store selling it for the lowest price. This brings us to the Local part of our SoLoMo model.

RocketFuel published an infographic based on few studies done by themselves, Economist Intelligence Unit, Google and eMarketer from 2011 and begining of 2012. They state that after seeking local information about business, 88% customers take action on their purchase on the same day. 67% go to the physical store and purchase the product. Among the remaining 33%, some go to a local store just to try the product and make a final decision about buying it, but 9% purchase the product via their smartphones, while being in the store! Clients who left the store after trying the product tend to purchase it online (23%), although some of them make their purchase via smartphones (16%).

This shows just how important smartphones, social media and location services have become. Furthermore, it proves there is another part of purchasing process – the social media moment – that needs recognition. This moment is called the “Zero Moment of Truth”. I on the other hand prefer to look at it from the perspective of clients presence, so SOcial-LOcal-MObile – SoLoMo – fits better as a description of this new purchasing model.

Instagram is undoubtedly the most popular photo sharing site on mobile devices. According to ComScore it had 22.7M unique visitors in July 2012. Instagram was first launched on iOS (Apple mobile operating system). Soon, it gained huge audience and launched its app also on Android, where PicPlz (application based on identical idea) was pushed a side and forced to quit not much later. Instagram has many users whose day can’t go by without checking what’s new on Instagram and posting few photos while they’re still there.

I also use Instagram and love how easy it is to make my ordinary camera capture into something eye-catching and stylish. Now there is also a way, actually there are at least 6 ways, to bring those incredible photos to life.

1. Instaprints

With Instaprints you can order your Instagram photos as pictures, postcards or even posters. On top of that, you can order other users’ photos. Apart from users who buy their pictures as posters, post cards or prints, there is another big part of this community – the sellers. Being an Instaprinter you can sell your Instagram photos to others and benefit from your artistic eye.

2. Stickygram

Stickygram gives you the opportunity to have your favourite Instagram photos made into magnets. Stickygram allows you to order 9 Instagram photo-magnets for $14.99. Soon after the order your nice and shiny magnets are delivered to your doorsteps.

3. Instaprint

Instaprint.me is a location based photobooth for Instagram. This gadget I can see fitting perfectly on events where guests can print out their current moments and have both virtual and real Instagram experience at the same time.

4. Coastermatic

Would you like to have a nice and round sandstone coaster with your favourite Instagram picture on it? Coastrmatic is where you can get it. For $25 + shipping you can have four Instagram coasters. All you need to do is connect your Instagram account, choose four pictures and wait for the result to arrive in your mailbox.

5. Postagram

Postagram is a mobile post office with postcards made out of your Instagram photos. You can choose your photo, add some wishes, the address of recipient and voilla! Your postcard is ready to be send. The picture will be printed on a thick paper with 300dpi resolution, so the quality is very good. The cost of sending such a postcard is 0.99c in US and $1.99 if your recipient lives in another country.

6. Touchnote

An Instagram postcard. The Touchnote idea is identical to the Postagram one, but their postcards resemble the old-fashioned cards. Where Postagram prints only on one side of the card, Touchnote makes your Instagram pictures big, covering the whole front of the card. On the back there are your wishes and the address of the recipient, just like in an ordinary postcard. The cost of sending one postcard is 1.49 $/£/€ depending on where you are located.

The technology is advancing faster than everyone can imagine. Few years ago only a few people had printers. Now everyone has one at home, and some decided to move forward and use eReaders and tablets instead of printing papers. But there is a new printer on the horizon, which can be a real game changer: the 3D printer. The 3D printer can make custom-shaped objects within relatively small time and out of metal or plastic. And probably in the future out of wood as well. This would mean IKEA could use printers instead of big stock hangars and customers could create their dreamed furniture, cupboard handles and decorations with just a few clicks.

Imagine walking into an IKEA store, and instead of seeing every exposition and every decoration hidden in the different parts of a huge store, you simply sit with the consultant and discuss your needs. The consultant can even be a virtual one for simple shopping. You take a virtual tour on an IKEA computer, through all the available designs, and choose things you like. Next, your order is being printed and you simply go to pick it up. If you feel like creating something unique, there’s no problem. You use the same computer to easily create things you would like to have, like a new vase with colors fitting your walls, an original mug for your partner or a special plate set with your custom design.

Moreover, with 3D printing you could easily make furniture that have measures fitted exactly to your space. It happened to me in IKEA that the wardrobe I wanted to have was too wide and I had to resign from it. With a 3D printer IKEA consultant could have helped me design a similar furniture, but with the dimensions I needed. The furniture would fit my apartment, not the other way around.

Going one step further, IKEA could also make a website where you could create your dreamed furniture and decorations, and order them online. This would mean you only sit in your comfortable chair with a cup of nice coffee or tea and make your dreams come true. Next, you wait a bit and IKEA delivers your order to your home. No time wasted in traffic trying to reach the shop, you can buy things even in your pyjamas, and IKEA increases its customers satisfaction, simultaneously decreasing the time spent serving their customers.

For IKEA this could also mean the change in shops locations. There would be no need in having huge shops with stock in it. IKEA could be a small shop in the city center or the shop down your street with few consultants inside, who advise and print the designs.

Take a look what 3D printers can do now and try to imagine the amount of possibilities IKEA could give their customers by deploying such printers in use.

On March 7th, Apple held a keynote event unveiling its new iPad. Twittie was collecting and analysing tweets posted during this event. Having crunched almost 500,000 tweets and 6 hours after the event finished, we published the infographic. We also tweeted about it, of course. A couple of days later we were surprised to find that 20 hours afterwards, 26 hours after Apple’s event ended, Twitter itself tweeted a very similar graph. Check out the corresponding tweets:

[blackbirdpie id="177556634808229888"]

[blackbirdpie id="177875745119539200"]

Our graph seem to be more complete, having tracking additional iPad-related keywords, as well as Apple-related keywords for comparison. Maybe Twitter got inspired… ;) One way or another, we are happy to be the ones delivering the data before the world’s #1 real-time social network. Check out Twittie - innovative geolocation analytics for Twitter – and stay tuned for more infographics appearing on this special page.

We recently uploaded our first game to the Apple App Store. It’s called “Who Am I ???” and makes it easy to play the popular game of writing down famous people names on post-its and sticking them to others foreheads. The current player has to then ask yes-no questions to others, trying to figure out who he is. “Who Am I ???” makes it simple and fun to play, no pen and post-it necessary, just your iPhone or iPod touch.

Being it our first game, first mobile app, and first experience with the Apple App Store, we learned a lot, sometimes the hard way.

Our first mishap was missing the Christmas shipping deadline. We originally planned to release our app before the Boxing Day, when people unwrap their new iDevices and storm the App Store. But we started developing too late, and submitted our app just 3 days before the App Store closing for the holidays. First lesson learned – deliver your app for review at least 2 weeks before the popular dates, because everyone else will try to do it too, and Apple reviewers will have many many extra work. We kind of already knew that, but now we really know that there is no way around it.

The second mishap was to upload the app with not a fully tested In-App Purchases (IAP) module. We assumed it’s not working because Apple cache servers were not propagating changes we made. Reading the developer forums only reinforced that assumption. And, of course, App Store reviewers rejected “Who Am I ???” because of hanging during the IAP. Going back to the drawing board we learned that it in fact was our mistake, and Apple’s servers & cache works just fine. Another lesson learned – no matter how great you think you are, the problem is probably on your side, not Apple’s.

We really wanted to ship the app to start testing everything, and we were getting impatient. Even before the mishaps we decided not to spend too much time making the design crazy perfect, or code a lot of features. We picked core functionalities and nothing more.

After the mishaps we decided to drop IAP for now and just get “Who Am I ???” into the App Store. The lesson here is that you never know for sure what will be a success. And it was a good call to push the app as fast as we could, after a week of development, and without the IAP. We got accepted, and we started learning even more.

We begun experimenting with Apple’s sales and downloads reports, checking it every morning for new data. For the first week it was slow, between 100-200 downloads a day. But then all of a sudden it exploded to 500, 1K, 2K, and peaked at 3K. For the next week downloads were oscillating between 2,000 and 3,000 per day. It was amazing.

Turns out, we were a hit on the Philippines. We reached #2 in the Top Free Apps. All because of a legendary TV show that was running there for more than 30 years, featuring a variation of the post-it game called Pinoy Henyo. We got our first 5-star reviews. It was totally unexpected.

After such a reaction, we started working on some improvements and the IAP. We rolled them out into the App Store only after the whole hype fell down and we returned to the regular 100-200 downloads. Turns out not that many people update their apps. In our case, less than 20% got the new version so far. Another interesting fact is that despite the Philippine success, it’s the USA market that is generating the IAP sales. Final mishap we encountered is that the App Store hid our 5-star reviews after we uploaded the new version. So far we didn’t find a way to access them, they are just gone…

Overall, we are happy with the outcome. We didn’t promote “Who Am I ???” at all, and we never expected so much downloads so fast. We learned a lot during the process, and we became familiar with the App Store ecosystem and iOS development without using much time and resources. It’s often really good to release your product ASAP, before you put too much into it but not test in the real world. It will save you a lot of disappointment if your effort doesn’t pay back. You could call it an agile approach, a very popular method these days. On the other hand, the app success can be achieved with the “WOW effect”, so there’s really no general rule here.

If you would like to download and try “Who Am I ???”, get it for free on the App Store.