Social Landscape Review: Q4 2012

What a year it’s been! 2012 was filled with platform changes, behavior shifts, and brands executing brilliantly in social and mobile. We saw exciting IPOs, billion dollar acquisitions, streaming Presidential debates, an incredibly social Summer Olympics, Korean viral sensations, and averted the Mayan Apocalypse thanks to Old Spice and a former Philadelphia 76er. All in all, 2012 was truly a fundamental shift in the way users consume, engage with, and publish social content.

Never before have social technologies played such a key role in popular culture, from elections and government upheavals, to global sporting events, to hurricanes and natural disasters. Part of this is the maturation of the social platforms and technologies, and part of it is the widespread adoption of mobile devices for social networking and digital consumption, which actually hit the tipping point in 2012; more users are interacting with Facebook, Twitter, and other digital/social platforms via mobile devices than are users via desktop computers, and this will only accelerate in 2013.  Below are some of the key highlights from the final quarter, and we’ll break down why they were impactful and how brands can be leveraging the landscape shifts. Enjoy – and here’s to 2013! (And for a full year wrap-up, also check out our Social Landscape Reviews from the first quarter, second quarter, and third quarter.)
October

• RedBull Stratos gets 8 million concurrent streams (10/14): Constantly one of the leaders in the social space, RedBull creates another huge win for its brand with the Stratos event, held in October. By now, everyone knows the records Felix broke – highest jump from a platform (128,100), longest distance freefall (119,846), and maximum vertical velocity (Mach 1.24) – but there was one additional record that came from the event: 8 million concurrent users on a YouTube stream. As the Dachis Group Campaign Performance Monitor shows, RedBull saw massive lift across the board with this event, which generated roughly 61.6 million social impressions.
• Sandy photos shared at a rate of 10 per second (10/27): The largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Sandy impacted millions of people from Florida to Maine and caused an estimated $64 billion in damages in the US. 2012 was a year of societal resonance on social media, and this storm was no different. At its peak, users were sharing a photo of the hurricane and its damage every 10 seconds on Instagram. When it comes to the individual platform, Instagram is now clearly beyond the point where people consider it for beautified pictures of food; they are snapping Instagram shots to convey emotion and congregate around topics and events that matter to their communities and society, as a whole.

November

• Instagram launches web profiles (11/5): The embodiment of the mobile-first evolution, Instagram, rolled out web profiles for users. In this seemingly retroactive move, users can now find each other and their content on the web, outside of the native mobile experience. This appears to only be the maturation of the social platform, as web profiles would be considered table stakes for most, but it does now give brands active on Instagram more of a social presence on the web than they’ve had before and will absolutely have a positive impact in search results.
• Google Now gains traction (11/19): If you have a new Android (Jellybean 4.1 or higher), you need to start playing with Google Now. Released earlier this year, this app is being touted as the next evolution in, well, how people interact with computers. These devices have been approaching the true personal assistant in recent years, with Siri hitting closest to home because of the voice feature. Google Now takes it a step further by learning who you are – sports teams, commute routes, purchase histories – and feeding you tips, ideas, and recommendations. Very excited for Now in 2013; let’s see how this evolves.
• Dikembe Mutombo Saves the World (11/26): In a wonderfully executed campaign playing off the Mayan Apocalypse, Wieden+Kennedy and P&G teamed up to create Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World, an 8-bit advergame for Old Spice. Highlights include the PSY song, Gangnam Style, election humor, Random Turkey at Thanksgiving, your cursor being a giant wagging finger, Science the Bear, and, of course, the horribly entertaining voice of philanthropist and former NBA star, Dikembe Mutombo. While advergames are a longstanding tactic of digital marketing, humor, replay value, and genuine fun nature of this execution are second to none, and brands still have an opportunity to ‘play’ in this space. Increasingly, though, to do so, such games will have to be inherently more social and mobile-centric than this; however, Old Spice absolutely hit the hockey-stick virality that brands dream of. The game is no longer accessible, but we will always have fond memories of Dikembe and the several weeks before the world did not end.

December

• The New Myspace (12/6): It’s back for a third go-round, but will it stick this time? Now backed by investor and entertainment icon Justin Timberlake, MySpace is reborn as a music and entertainment social hub; an ambitious undertaking, but it seems to lack a focus that most emerging platforms need to hit a critical mass. Entertainment and media brands will want to keep Myspace on their radar in 2013, but the jury is out on whether this new UI – beautiful, but not so intuitive – direction, and leadership will result in enough platform acquisition, engagement, and retention for significant investment by brands.
• Twitter Photo Filters (12/10): In its apparent feud with Instagram (and strenuous relationship with the developer community, as a whole), Twitter makes a straightforward play and adds photo filters to their application experience. This feature, while extremely simple, is another attempt at keeping users in the Twitter ecosystem, rather than pushing and pulling data/content through the platform. The move is competitive with both Instagram and parent company, Facebook, as both have photo filter capabilities, as do many other networks and platforms, like Path.
• Facebook Gifts rolls out to US (12/11): The repositioning of Facebook Gifts from virtual to real-world products is one of our favorite plot lines of 2012, and it will surely have a huge impact in 2013, depending on how well Facebook is able to execute. At this point, Gifts has rolled out to all US users, and globalization will follow in 2013. With high-caliber partners like Starbucks (the perfect birthday gift for anyone in your extended social network? A fancy cup of coffee or three), expect for f-commerce to finally take off in the next twelve months.
• Twitter, Nielsen create the definitive Social TV Rating (12/17): This is one of the most exciting partnerships in the space in a long time. Essentially, Twitter and Nielsen will deliver a syndicated-standard metric around the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter, which is slated for commercial availability at the start of the fall 2013 TV season. Says David Poltrack, CBS Chief Research Officer “The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has generated a substantial ‘connected’ TV audience that is simultaneously watching television and accessing the Internet through these devices. This, in turn, will continue to create the opportunity for content providers like CBS to offer engaging interactive features for our viewers.  As this form of viewer engagement evolves into a mainstream activity, it presents ways for CBS to enhance the viewing experience for our viewers and our advertisers.”
• Instagram Changes Terms of Service (12/17): In one of the more overblown reactions of the year, Instagram changed its Terms of Service, then promptly issued a response and change to the language, based on user blowback. Essentially, Instagram made it clear that they own the content and data on their platform, which should be fairly clear to begin with. They also stated that part of their business model may be to use some of the content for advertising purposes, also, which shouldn’t be cause for alarm. Wouldn’t you want that  awesome picture of the Locos Tacos that you took the other month in a Taco Bell commercial, after all?
• Facebook Nearby (12/17): With this new product, Facebook takes yet another step into the local space, encroaching on Foursquare, Yelp, and others. That said, this space is no longer segmented by ‘social networks,’ ‘microblogs,’ ‘geo-location,’ etc. but rather an array of social platforms that play in various spaces. Facebook, even now, is still evolving in its ability to give users relevant content via mobile, and nothing is more relevant in that respect than who and what is around them at that moment. With the ability to find friends, places, and submit ratings and comments about businesses, local will be critical for Facebook in 2013. This battle of relevancy on mobile may be won or lost next year between Nearby and Google’s product, Now – more to come in Q1.
• Gangnam Style 1 Billion Views (12/21): On the day the world was supposed to end, something much better (or worse) happened. Gangnam Style by PSY surpassed one billion views on YouTube. While no one paid for any of those views, PSY still took home a reported $8.1 million this year, about $5 million of which was through brand endorsements including Samsung and LG.  For big brands, sometimes it makes more sense to lasso to a rising viral star, than to try to manufacture virality.

Did we miss any updates that you thought were notable from the fourth quarter of 2012? Let us know in the comments! Also, stay tuned for the first Social Landscape Review of 2013 at the end of March.