Matt Rhodes

Earlier this year we reported on how Russia is the fourth largest social networking market in Europe. Data from TNS showed that use of social media and social networking in Russia is widespread, making it the fourth largest market in Europe for social networking behind the UK, Germany and France. In part this position is driven by strong local social networking sites, principally Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники), which reports some 30 million registered users, and VKontakte (В контакте) with some 28 million registered users.

We are big fans of the work of Michael Wesch at FreshNetworks and have previously posted about his great presentation: An anthropological introduction to YouTube. His latest presentation builds on this and looks at the impact that social media sites such as YouTube has on society and also how society is influencing them.

This week, ESPN, a US sports cable TV network, appeared to tell its employees that they could no longer use Twitter except to Tweet about ESPN. A few hours later it turned out that things were not quite so simple as ESPN released its internal social media policy. Whist perhaps a little direct in its choice of wording and phrases, this policy is a good example of what every firm should have.

Last year we highlighted a great presentation from Paul Isakson on the future of marketing and advertising, where his argument was that advertising was dead and the future was marketing. This week, Isakson updated this presentation and theory for 2009, with an equally good presentation on what’s next in marketing and advertising.

We wrote last week about the rise of social web literacy – how people are having to get used to a new way of communicating and a new way of using language to share information and ideas. It’s not just the technology and tools available to us that are different, the real change comes when people use these tools, adapting what they say and how they say it.

This week has seen Twitter launch Twitter 101; a guide for businesses of how to use Twitter. We’ve looked before at how organisations can use Twitter, and this guide covers the basics as well as showcasing a few cases studies of what some businesses are doing.

There are some great examples of brands using social media that we use a lot at FreshNetworks. Not because they necessarily get everything right, but because they show what works for them and why, and they help to give ideas and inspiration to others. We’ve looked at some such examples before with how organisations can use Twitter. The cases of Dell, Starbucks, Nike and others are great stories and there is much that we can learn.

It wasn’t the invention of the printing press per se that caused a revolution; it was when everybody learned to read.

This extract from Antony Mayfield’s excellent WOMMA presentation on social web literacy sums up nicely my thoughts on social media tools.

As we’ve written before, right now, in the current economic climate, it’s a great time for brands to innovate. In fact it is those brands and organisations who innovate now who are more likely to be on a faster growth trajectory when the economy starts to improve.