Social Networks

The Verdict: Should Your Brand Pursue a Presence on Google+?

Google+ is in many ways Google's final opportunity to capture a substantial share of consumers’ social media activity, and Google is betting the farm on it.  This company is in the midst of pulling apart their array of web products – including Blogger, Gmail and YouTube – and is slowly but steadily rebuilding each with Google+ functionality baked in. For brands, Google+ pages represent one piece of this larger puzzle, but they have limited functionality right now, and the audience is small and niche-focused.  This scale makes Google+ certainly worth continued observation from the sidelines, but in deciding on whether to set up shop with a page right now, brand teams should answer the following questions.

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Changes To Google Reader Drag Us Kicking and Screaming Into The Google+ Era

Until recently, it’s been easy to dismiss Google+. Frequent discussions have occurred in the hallways at the @NMSosphere weighing the viability of Google’s upstart social network and whether it has the long-term capabilities for competing with the sacred social media cows that are Facebook and Twitter. “No,” people cried – there’s no time for another social network largely made up of tech-savvy millennials with dubious extensions for brands and products. “Yes,” others argued, noting that Plus’ easy-to-use interface would allow for better segmentation (with Circles) and could potentially be a haven for application development, free of the strict guidelines and rules of the Facebook platform.

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How To Trick Your Friends Into Thinking You Are A Professional Photographer

I come from a family of professional photographers. My grandfather had his own photography business in the 1970s, and soon enough my mom was helping out at weddings and other events. My dad and sister are also avid photographers – my sister used to be the assistant photographer to the Supreme Court. Suffice to say, I have been surrounded by intimidating Nikons and Canons for as long as I can remember. Do I know how to shoot a striking photo? Not so much.

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Eye on Innovation: A Mid-Year Update

The NMS team has been on tour the past several weeks, visiting clients to brief them on spanking new social media developments – from the smallest emerging platforms to the elephants throwing their weight around. And while everyone is curious about what’s up with Google+, a multitude of movers and shakers warrant an update to our social media watch list.  

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Google 360: How Google+ Can Win the Web

Google’s long-rumored, awe-inspiring Facebook-killing social network behemoth was revealed on Tuesday: Google+. And it’s pretty OK. Good even. The suite of tools forms the building blocks by which Google hopes to stitch together a social graph to compete with Facebook’s. Google has managed expectations admirably, and Facebook still existed as of Friday afternoon. But Google+ is more than it seems. The foundation Google is laying has potential to merge the social and static web until they are practically synonymous.

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Initial Public Overpricing: Should We Bank on the Social Media Bubble?

My Dad (Doug David/”The Doug”) wanted me to work in a field that he didn’t know anything about.  Now The Doug knows about stuff: he knows the news, knows the literature, knows the nature, knows the media, knows the finance... that kind of stuff. The Doug knew social media was being heralded as a game changer.  He knew about the argument of its role in revolutions;  knew it was controversial; and knew that a decent amount of people used it.  All good stuff, but he wanted to know if it had the juice to be sustainable.  When I took the job at NMS last year, he wanted to know: what kind of confidence did the market have in the social media industry?  

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The Social Traveler

My job here at NMS involves frequent travel and it’s a lifestyle I’ve come to embrace. Reflecting back on a busy quarter of numerous trips across the country, I have seen that the same forces changing the way we communicate are also changing the way we get from place to place. With a mobile web always at our fingertips, the world is adopting social media to discover, consume, and process information in new ways.

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How the Wine World Poured Itself Into Social

Whether sharing a bottle with friends or paired with a 10 course dinner, wine is often the drink of choice for social gatherings. So it comes as no surprise that the most social of drinks would eventually embrace the world of social media.  Social networking sites, blogging and the rise of mobile apps are changing the way people buy their wine.

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