Majority of Users Say S...

Need a shot of the milk of human kindness? Spend a little time on a social network and your faith in humanity will be renewed. So sayeth the majority of the 2,260 adults who responded to the latest Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project study. “ The tone of life on social networking sites ” takes a look at people’s perceptions about their interactions on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. 85% of adults said that their experiences were mostly kind. 68% went so far as to say that they had an experience that made them feel good and 61% felt closer to another person thanks to social media. And how about this? 39% said they frequently saw acts of generosity by others. Frequently! By comparison, only 13% of adults said someone was mean to them. The same number reported ending a friendship thanks to a social media faux pas and 11% ended up with family problems. The worst of the bunch, a mere 3%, said they got into a physical fight due to an experience on social media. Incredibly, 3% was also the percentage of people who got in trouble at work due to a posting. Teens had higher instances of negativity with 25% saying social media led to a face-to-face argument and 22% saw the end of a friendship. Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information. Watch Your Language To go along with their more negative bent, teens also reported higher instances of foul language and offensive images. 34% of Millennials used the word “frequently” while only 17% of GenXers noted offensive content. Logic would say that older people find more things offensive, thus would have the higher reported percentage, but the opposite is true. That tells me that the Millennials are simply hanging around with more people who present this type of content. What’s interesting is that the survey shows teens are more likely to get involved when things turn ugly. 61% of teens said they would defend a person who was being attacked and / or tell the offender to stop. 45% of adults said they’d ignore the behavior. Teens also took the higher number when it came to thinking twice about posting. 55% said they decided not to post something that might have made them look bad. Only 45% of adults made the same decision. This could mean that teens are more concerned about how they appear to others. Or it could mean that Millennials are simply smarter about social media usage having grown up with Facebook as a part of their life.

Mark Zuckerberg’s 6 Ing...

Editor’s note:  Contributor  Ashkan Karbasfrooshan  is the founder and CEO of  WatchMojo .  Follow him @ashkan . Leadership guru Warren Bennis asked whether leaders are born or made. When asked if Wall Street would accept a young Mark Zuckerberg in his early 20s as CEO, Facebook investor Peter Thiel said: “Well, we’ll wait until he’s over 25 to file”.  Wise move, considering that Mark’s title on his business cards read “I’m CEO, bitch”. This week Facebook filed its S-1 to go public.  Mark is 27.  How Mark managed to launch a social networking site after Friendster had crashed during MySpace’s zenith has been widely chronicled .  What’s been less discussed is how Mark mastered the six requirements to succeed, namely Ambition, Vision, Determination, Execution, Luck and Timing. Ambition “The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe”, Russian Proverb The foundation and building block of any successful person is Ambition, or the desire for personal achievement. People are driven by success, recognition, respect, money, power or fame. If you believe everything in The Social Network , Mark launched Facebook to level the playing field at Harvard and to succeed at getting girls.  Success is relative, subjective and fluid ; over time Mark’s definition of success grew to match his brainchild’s imprint. Wearing your ambition on your sleeve will get you cut off at the knees, but ambition is required to succeed; the challenge is channeling it properly and managing your emotions around it.  When the Winklevoss twins first hired Mark to build their social networking site, Mark never revealed his ambitions to build his own site.  It was only later – far too late for the Winklevoss – that Mark revealed his true ambition. Vision A design glitch allowed MySpace users to customize their profiles.  But that mixed blessing created a cacophonous environment which made users welcome Facebook’s clean interface. Facebook wasn’t visionary in any revolutionary sense of the word.  Where Facebook deserves credit was that Mark et al. recognized the need for a real directory of people, not merely users.  Before Facebook it was nearly impossible to actually find people, you could “google” them but finding the person you wanted within one search wasn’t a given.  We now take it for granted, but that extension of people search and connecting them was certainly evolutionary , and it’s worth noting that most successes are not radically new but extensions and improvements of existing paradigms. The critics may note that Mark sometimes lacked charisma.  In this context, charisma is a subset of vision:  it allows you to convince others to buy into your vision, but charisma in and of itself is not a requirement to succeed, it’s an accelerant or amplifier.  In Mark’s case, he has had the good fortune to let Facebook’s massive growth rates do the talking for him. Execution “Stay Focused, Keep Shipping” , Mark Zuckerberg When you look back to Facebook’s functionality when it launched, it was bare bones.  Facebook has added features while scaling users, literally changing jet engines at 30,000 feet without missing a beat.  It’s easy to laugh at missteps like Beacon or the privacy dossier and fail to appreciate the velocity at which Facebook has evolved and grown. Determination To quote President Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Back in 1995, Steve Jobs added: “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance”. Determination, drive, tenacity or persistence is the most important variable, demonstrated by  Mark through his: relentless coding early on to launch Facebook to catch the Winklevoss brothers off guard; adding colleges; attacking MySpace; defending against the subsequent lawsuit from the twins;  repeated encroaching into people’s privacy (which remains one of Mark’s Achilles heels).  But, to his credit, he has repeatedly not cared or believed in himself enough to charge ahead no matter what.  Mark is a constant reminder that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission . So those were the first four traits: largely innate, can be learned, and things you can control.  But without the next two, you won’t succeed. Luck “A great fortune depends on luck, a small one on diligence”, Chinese Proverb In sports and in business, luck can be your best friend or your undoing. Let’s face it: Mark’s had a horseshoe up his butt.  Luck made him run into Sean Parker, who introduced him to Peter Thiel, without whom as an ally and first outside investor it’s unlikely he would have remained CEO to this day. But you create your own luck, or when lady luck smiles down on you, you seize the opportunity. Timing Google wasn’t the first search engine, YouTube wasn’t the first video sharing site and Facebook certainly wasn’t the first social network.  Geocities, Tripod, Friendster, Tribe Networks, MySpace are just some that come to mind. Mark’s managed the clock all along: slowing down the Winklevoss brothers; launching Facebook on Harvard first to then expand to other colleges; relocating to California; refusing Viacom and Yahoo!’s offers; closing his deal with Microsoft. While the comparisons to Google’s IPO are understandable , Google ushered a new Internet Bull run whereas Facebook’s is coming at the tail end of Zynga, Groupon, LinkedIn, Demand Media and Pandora’s – none of which have fared particularly well . However, much like Google’s IPO made it the Internet stock bellwether, Facebook will become the de facto stock pick of individual and institutional investors, pushing demand to justify the lofty price-to-earnings and price-to-sales multiples. There you have it: success = ambition + vision + execution + persistence + luck + timing; with the first four being things you can control and the last two being externalities that you cannot. While I’ve praised and criticized him and Facebook, as a fellow entrepreneur, Mark is someone all builders look up to and admire despite his obvious mistakes – reminding me of the Michael Jordan quote: “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

comScore: As U.S. Smart...

comScore just released its monthly mobile numbers, which charts smartphone usage from U.S. consumers for the three month period ending in December 2011. For the period, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices, which is in line with the previous period’s usage. With respect to smartphone usage, 97.9 million (up from 91.4 million people in the previous period) people in the U.S. used smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers. Google Android continued to be the most popular smartphone platform with 47.3 percent market share, up 2.5 percentage points from September. Apple took the second position, growing 2.2 percentage points to grab 29.6 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 16 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.7 percent) and Symbian (1.4 percent). Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (no change from September), followed by LG with 20 percent share and Motorola with 13.3 percent share. Apple has 12.4 percent share of total mobile subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points), while RIM following with 6.7 percent share. As mobile phone usage increases and smartphone adoption grows, more and more consumers are actually using their mobile for functions other than phone calls. In December, 74.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device; ownloaded applications were used by 47.6 percent of subscribers (up 5.1 percentage points), while browsers were used by 47.5 percent (up 4.6 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 3.8 percentage points to 35.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 31.4 percent of the mobile audience (up 2.6 percentage points), while 23.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 2.9 percentage points). Google just revealed in its fourth quarter earnings, Android has been activated on over 250 million devices, up 50 million since November of last year. But iOS is growing as well. Nielsen reported recently new smartphone buyers are more interested in the iPhone (particularly the 4S) vs. Android phones.

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Dot429: A Fast-Growing,...

When it comes to networking, there is no shortage of ways to connect with other professionals to talk shop. LinkedIn has become the most popular professional networking platform, with over 100 million users using the site to post their work experience, look for jobs, and connect with prospective employers. Facebook, too, has its own professional social network in BranchOut , or you can try startups like Identified or just go for some good old fashioned meetups. Yet, when it comes to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, there traditionally haven’t been many substantial resources for gay professionals to network and make business connections, especially with other gay professionals. So, in mid-2010, Bill Stewart and Richard Klein co-founded dot429 to help address this problem. Tagging itself the “Gay LinkedIn,” the San Francisco startup set out to build a platform that would offer gay professionals a more robust alternative option to networking on LinkedIn. While discrimination and intolerance remain entrenched across the planet, dot429 Founder and CEO Richard Klein tells us that the LGBT movement has been on the brink of a new era, as it transitions “from acceptance to cultural leadership.” Klein said that, as a result, gay professionals are increasingly looking for richer ways to help connect their careers and their lives, and both the community and the country at large are at a point where a network facilitating this kind of connectivity has the chance to make an impact. And in that sense, dot429 is aiming to be more than just the “gay LinkedIn,” as its service has become a hybrid: Part social network, part LinkedIn, part events company and publishing platform. Klein says that there is a need — not just for the LGBT community — to capture the networking happening on LinkedIn and connect it with offline environments, which is why dot429 is playing host to “produced, polished, and professional” live events intended to connect content and people both through work and in their offline lives. It’s a similar idea to the one that inspired Meetup.com , and many others. Klein also sees a lot of opportunity for in the market for a startup like dot429, owing in part to the virtual absence of any large national competitors. While there are strong local groups, and organizations like Startout (a non-profit focused on LGBT entrepreneurs) as well as the U.K.’s Jake , which targets professional gay men, many of these are offline-focused. But, Klein says that, in the end, he sees these groups as collaborators, rather than competitors, working behind one cause. With its mission and market opportunity, dot429 was able to raise $500K in seed funding in 2010, and is in the process of raising a multi-million series A round. The startup’s community has also been growing fast, and today stands at over 60,000 people, something that has not gone unnoticed by brands, as dot429 has struck partnerships with prominent brands like FIAT, Saks Fifth Avenue, Infinity, and General Motors — to name a few. These partnerships have become an increasingly important source of revenue for dot429, and Klein says that the startup is in the process of bringing on whole slew of others. In terms of monetization, the CEO says that the team is also considering introducing a premium membership which, among other things, will provide comped entrance to its live events and a benefit card While there’s always been opportunity for startups that serve niche audiences, their businesses have to offer a value proposition, or a unique advantage, that serves that niche better than the mainstream option (or network or app). And thus, Klein says that the goal with dot429 has been to create something more sophisticated than what’s already out there, as in bringing the next generation of social networking to the LGBT community. Beyond connecting online and offline networking, Klein says that the startup will introduce a mentoring section later this year to match mentors with mentees, along with an online collaboration tool. The startup is also undergoing a major editorial redesign (the site has both video and eMagazine components), and has brought on “an editor from a pulitzer prize winning paper who has written for the New York Times and New York Observer” to lead the editorial department. dot429 is hoping that by combining content with networking connections, it can fill a void in the marketplace at the right time, while leveraging technology to deliver its content and services more efficiently and effectively — to a community that is increasingly active online, on blogs, and social networks . Klein is also quick to point out that dot429 is not exclusive to the LGBT community, as it has a number of “straight allies” (over 10 percent), who have joined the group to show their support for equality. Fabulis, once a social networking site for gay men, pivoted into Fab.com and began focusing on online flash sales of design items, showing that gay men weren’t necessarily overly enthusiastic about having their own social network — they were content to use Facebook and already-existant options. Kleing believes that having a separate forum for this type of community-specific networking is important and in high demand, however. Bringing this networking online (and eventually to mobile) has the potential to be even more powerful, and dot429′s growth seems to be corroborating this. For more, check out dot429 at home here .