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What 2012 holds for social media

January 3rd, 2012

We’ve already taken a detailed look at how outsourcing of social media could increase in 2012, but how else is the industry set to change in the coming year? There’s a lot to be expected in 2012, from Facebook’s impending and much-anticipated IPO, to seeing how the Google+ and Facebook rivalry will finally play out.

With the three heavy hitters – Facebook, Twitter and Google+ – taking up most of the social media space, it’s hard to imagine a new company coming into the picture and taking people’s attention away from existing services. Instead, we’ll probably continue to see services that plug into the existing environment, like Flipboard and its many competitors, which have capitalized on how social media has become a tool for the curation of current events and news. While the news aggregator space is overcrowded as it is, other tools may come to the forefront in 2012, capitalizing on social media as a tool to be used in politics, particularly with the US presidential elections on their way, and in education.

At the same time, new networks, like Path, have seen impressive growth rates, and with its focus on the mobile experience, 2012 may have a lot of good things in store for the unexpected service, but will it last? We take a look at these questions and more in the following list of 5 predictions for what 2012 holds for social media.

Facebook and Google+ will go head to head for the number one spot

When Google+ first launched, we all got our fill of the huge variety of GIFs which showed the new social network running over, slapping or beating the crap out of Facebook in a boxing ring. All joking aside, 2012 should be the year we finally discover who is going to win that match.

The competition between Facebook and Google+ is just getting started, and only one social network can come out on top. While there is certainly room for both in the social networking world, it remains to be seen if Google+ will be able to catch up with, and surpass, Facebook.

2011 was already a pretty heated year for both social networks. If anything, Google+ has forced Facebook right onto its toes, and the leading social network has been hard at work churning out new features, such as Friends Lists, not all of which have gone down completely well with its users, like the Timeline.

We’ve asked the question, will Google+ replace Facebook, looked at how Mark Zuckerberg was quick to dismiss Google+ as any real threat, only to eventually make the slightest of concessions about Google’s social networking power, saying:

“Yeah Google’s a great company and I think we want to look at and learn from everything that they do. But at the same time, people have shared a lot on Facebook and have already told a lot of their life story on Facebook. And we think that we have by far better tools for doing that.”

So what about the coming year? The competition between Facebook and Google+ is bound to become more fierce, but there’s the potential for that competition to shift away from the end-user and head straight for the advertisers. After all, these are money-making ventures that provide their services for free. That’s not to say that the end-user won’t benefit. In fact, the end-user has everything to gain from the heated competition to bring advertisers into the fold.

Advertisers want nothing to do with a site with dwindling popularity, so Facebook and Google are bound to keep throwing new features at us, upping the stakes, in an attempt to keep their current users engaged, and attract even more.

Google+ has its work cut out for it, but with the company releasing very little information on the social network’s growth, something it certainly isn’t obliged to do, it leaves us with quite the guessing game as to what the coming year will bring.

Rob Enderle sums up coming battle between Facebook and Google in one simple phrase, saying:

This is a fight for survival for Facebook — and for relevancy for Google. What happens in 2012 will make the difference between whether there is a Facebook by the end of the decade and whether Google can become truly relevant outside of search.

If Enderle’s predictions are true, 2012 is a year that could very well decide the fate of these two social networking giants, and even if we don’t see any concrete results in the next 12 months, the year will certainly set them on the inevitable path of success or failure. Which path each company will be on is anyone’s guess.

Mobile social media will come into its own

Path’s second attempt at finding its audience, repositioning itself as mobile-only social network available for both Android and iOS, is a great indicator of one of the main points of focus in the world of social media in 2012. In the space of 2 weeks, Path’s userbase grew by at least 800%, based on calculations of users who had signed up using their Facebook accounts. In the past two weeks, the growth has slowed slightly, having added another 200,000 users via Facebook, for a total of 500,000.

As a mobile-only social network, available so far on only two platforms, iOS and Android, the figures are telling. People are more than happy to keep their social media experience based around their smartphones. With the ability to take and share photos, check-in to locations and share status updates all from the convenience of a handset, a lot of the focus will shift to improving both the smartphone and tablet experience that the major social networks offer.

Not only will Facebook, Google+ and Twitter be constantly finding new ways to improve and enhance the mobile experience each social network offers, we are bound to see a slew of new mobile social networks that address niche needs.

Path is not the only mobile social media app which has demonstrated impressive growth recently. iPhone app Oink, which we reviewed here, gained 150,000 users in the space of just over a month.

While globally smartphones account only for 27% of the mobile market, penetration rates in Europe and the US are far higher, at 51% and 63% respectively. Elsewhere in the world, the figures are on the rise, with predictions of Android’s penetration tripling in Asia. With this kind of growth, the mobile market is an expanding world of potential for social media, and at this point, it’s anyone’s game.

Social media will become a natural extension of journalism

Social media has made significant strides in the world of journalism, and in the world of citizen journalism in 2011. This year we’ve seen Twitter break major news events, as was the case, for example, with Osama bin Laden’s death. We’ve also seen how social media has been used as a tool by activists on the ground, from the streets of New York to Damascus, broadcasting the story long before it reaches mainstream media. In 2012, social media will simply become a natural extension of the journalistic field.

We’ve already heard a little bit about the plans mobile livestreaming app Bambuser has for 2012, to work closely with mainstream media outlets as a means of validating news stories without the need for a correspondent on the ground in the midst of the events. The predictions for Bambuser can be seen as a prediction for social media and mainstream media as a whole.

As Alfred Hermida puts it, “2012 will be the year social media gets boring,” at least as far as the field of journalism is concerned. We’ve marveled this year at the use of social media in journalism, and in 2012, we will simply focus on using it as a tool, rather than talking about using it as a tool.

However with the field of journalism embracing social media so completely, there are bound to be negative repercussions on the industry in 2012. We’ve already gotten a taste of the negative effect social media has had, particularly in the form of job cuts, as demonstrated by CNN’s most recent cutbacks. 2012 could very well hold more cutbacks due to the complete and utter mainstream use of social media as a reporting tool.

The normalization of social media will extend much further than journalism. Some of these services have fast become household names, becoming standard tools of the marketing trade no matter what industry you’re in. With this mainstreaming of social media, we’ll probably see the slow and quiet death of add-on tools like Klout, which depend entirely on the novelty of social media. Once that novelty wears off, people are much less likely to feel the need to measure and grade themselves on tools which are simply an everyday part of our lives.

The year of the social media IPO

There is probably no other IPO that has been more anticipated in the social media world, or possibly even the tech world, than the Facebook IPO.

Predictions have already been made for months about Facebook’s $100 billion IPO, and we’ve already taken a look at how that figure fits in existing tech company valuations. But what does that mean for 2012? For starters, when the social media giant goes public, we can expect a slew of new angel investors in our midst.

Facebook isn’t the only social media company with its IPO slated for 2012. Yelp has filed for an IPO of $100 million, trailing a distant second to Facebook’s predicted IPO, but the two companies are leading the biggest IPOs for Internet companies since 1999.

All eyes will of course be on Facebook, and while the exact figure is yet to be known, either way, going public is bound to mean good things for the social networking giant, and may be a much-needed advantage it will have over Google, giving it instant access to the influence needed to cement its reputation as the number one social network available today.

Twitter embraces advertising and brands

Twitter has already been slowly pushing small adverts into our timelines with sponsored tweets, and advertising on the social media site is bound to become more obvious in 2012.

In August, we took a look at what exactly Twitter needs to do to get businesses and brands on its side, and with the launch of Google+ pages, the outlook for the microblogging site wasn’t entirely positive. 2012 has to be the year that Twitter figures out once and for all how to interact with advertising and with brands. And if it wants to be taken seriously, in the face of some pretty fierce competition with Facebook and Google, Twitter is going to have to step it up.

While brands have been able to use Twitter as a customer service and marketing tool, up until recently, brands have not been given any extra tools, setting their accounts apart from the everyday user.

While third-party services like Twylah, reviewed here, have given brands a way to harness just a tiny bit of that Twitter power in their online presence, 2012 will be the year we see Twitter offer a unique experience to its loyal brands. Twitter has barely scratched the surface with the launch of brand pages, which we took a look at here. Twitter’s offerings are pretty meek in comparison to the robust features afforded to marketeers already using Facebook, or delving into the newer world of Google+.

Twitter has to up its marketing game in 2012, and it’s safe to assume that is exactly what it intends to do. The trick will be to find the right balance between advertising and marketing needed for a profitable business, while also retaining the features and atmosphere that has made it the incredibly popular tool that it is today.

There are a lot of other predictions we have for social media in 2012, including an Android version of the Instagram app, an increased influence on search results, thanks in part to Google’s +1s, and an increase in multimedia in social networking. With smartphones on the rise, sharing photos, video and audio from your smartphone straight into the world of social media is fast becoming the norm.

Source:http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/01/02/what-2012-holds-for-social-media/

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How to: Outsource Your Social Media in 2012

December 30th, 2011

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One search of “Social Media Budgets 2012” brings up a host of articles related to marketers increasing their social media budgets for the coming year. While the numbers will tell you that more money is heading into this area of engagement, they won’t tell you exactly how marketers will go about accomplishing their goals.

According to the 2011 Social Media Marketing Report, 28% of marketers outsourced social media duties, a figure that doubled from 2010. If this trend is on par, or even slightly less, that would mean about half of all marketers will outsource some or all aspects of their social media activity in 2012.

But doesn’t the person in charge of your company’s social media have to reside in-house? Isn’t the point of social media to engage your audience with relevant and useful company related items? How do you put your company’s message in the hands of someone who may or may not know a thing about your brand?

The answer lies in establishing a clear plan of action, a lot of trust, and a little bit of luck.

All hands on deck

So far, you’ve created a number of social profiles, and generally add an item or two a day (or week). Some items have been rock stars, others have fallen flat. You’ve put some work into these projects, but haven’t been able to fully commit, thus the reason you’re outsourcing in the first place.

Just because you’re bringing a new party on board doesn’t mean that it’s hands off for you. When shifting responsibilities, it’s vitally important that marketers be deeply involved in the transition. Your new social media manager is experienced in their area, but they still need to know a lot more about your company before they can start generating the results you want.

Speaking of results driven campaigns, the more specific you can be with your new hired gun, the more targeted results you’ll achieve. Start with macro goals and drill down into the micro details. Don’t be afraid – talk ROI with your social media manager. Talk about YoY growth. If they don’t know what you’re talking about – it’s time to start looking for another candidate.

In addition to the existing accounts and networks you’re active in, this is the time to discuss with your social media manager what additional opportunities might be available. Remember, these professionals make their bread and butter from knowing about every social aspect under the sun. If you’re paying for it…put it to use.

Phrasing and Tone

Perhaps one of the most often overlooked elements to any social media campaign is the phrasing and tone. Think of your social media manager as the head writer of your favorite television show. This writer directly influences the overall feeling of the entire show. Sure, it might be difficult to transform a drama into a comedy, but I’m pretty sure Grey’s Anatomy has pulled this off. Oh wait, it’s still a drama? Every organization has it’s own specific way of presenting things. No two people can have the exact same phrasing and tone styles, but any writer worth their salt can quickly emulate another’s style and fold it into their own.

If you have existing social media material, point your new hire to this and see what their thoughts are on both the message, and how it’s presented. If you don’t have any existing social media material, now’s the time to drag out those marketing collaterals and have your social media manager read through every last word of it.

With that said, also be open to new ideas. Your existing material might be bang on for those B2B trade shows you’ll be hitting later this year, but with the immediacy and interactivity of social media, is there a way to retain the phrasing and tone, but still present the organization in a human to human light?

Need the info

As with any outsourced project, your social media manager is going to need a whole lotta info. Are you planning on a new product release in Q2? Let your social media person know about it ASAP. Got a roadshow planned for this summer? Now’s the time to let your social media person know. Basically, if you, the marketing person, knows about it, your social media person should know about it.

Likewise, your social media manager should have the opportunity to get to know key staff members and have a broader view into your company. They’re very likely to ask managers to tell them a bit more about their employees, as you’ve probably got a great number of “Our employees are what make us awesome!” content pieces waiting to happen. Think Tom’s amazing burger recipe – perfect for a 4th of July blog article. Or better yet, “Think you can beat Tom’s burger? Create a video and show us how”, etc.

If your social media manager is within suitable travelling distance, you might want to have them stop by the office at least once a week for the first few months. This will give you an opportunity to provide ongoing feedback (see below), and the new hire a chance to see the day-to-day operations, people, products, etc. Hint: If they don’t show up with a camera and snap at least a dozen “in action” shots, you might have the wrong social media manager.

If your outsourced social media manager is on the other side of the country/planet, try to schedule a weekly Skype call that will give both you and your hired gun a decent chance to talk more about the company.

Approved

When you bring a new employee aboard in-house, there’s always that obligatory period of checking in with them to see how they’re getting on, and how the work that they were hired to do is progressing. The very same is true for an outsourced social media manager.

Before signing on the dotted line, create an approval process for your new manager. This will allow you to still have power over what messages are broadcast and which you’d rather refine (see above).

Naturally, as your relationship with your social media manager develops and both of you become familiar and comfortable with an established message, the approval process can be relaxed or done away with altogether.

This is also a great time to see if you’ve made the right hire or not, specifically if you’re in a trial period. By reviewing and approving all of the new work, you’ll have a pretty good indicator if your social media manager is capable of adapting their phrasing and tone to match your message, as well as see what creative ideas they come up with right out of the gate.

Feed it back

This is the most crucial element to any project, outsourced or not. If your new hire is opening eyes, turning heads, and generally getting the “Holy cow!” reaction from your colleagues, let them know about it. Conversely, if the, “Umm? Really?” mill is starting to churn, nip it in the bud and talk to your social media manager about it immediately.

If the feedback is negative, be sure to include specific sentences, phrases, even words that weren’t quite meeting the mark. A good social media manager will have an ongoing list of dead-items that shouldn’t be approached again, or at least in a radically different way. Likewise, if the feedback is good, include specific examples of what you liked and how it was presented. Both positive and negative feedback for your social media manager will only help to point them towards what you’re after.

Outsourcing any project can be a risky venture. There are a number of variables involved that have to be calculated, and any risk mitigated. But by establishing and maintaining an open and honest feedback loop, creating real and obtainable goals, and setting guidelines from the very beginning, outsourcing your social media activities can be a great way to free up a bit more time on your plate, as well as bring in a creative, outside opinion.

Source:http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/29/outsourcing-your-social-media-in-2012/

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Ajit Balakrishnan: A guide to the social media wars

December 15th, 2011

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By now it looks as if the spat between the Government of India and US-based social media companies is going to develop into one of our great media spectacles, big enough to push the “2G scam”, the “Bellary mining scandal” and other staples of Indian cultural life to the inside pages of our newspapers and off our TV talk shows.

The government representatives say they are acting in the interest of National Security, and the US-based social media companies say they are fighting for Freedom of Expression. The US Embassy in Delhi has pitched in as well, sending out a “media advisory” drawing attention to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech last week at The Hague. Without mentioning the ongoing spat in India, she declared that “when ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices, the internet is diminished for all of us”.

The last time tempers flared like this was in December 2004 when the CEO of an internet auction site was arrested for allowing a user to sell a 2:37-minute video clip of a Delhi schoolgirl performing oral sex on her classmate. It was pointed out that India’s Information Technology Act, originally conceived in the context of our rising IT outsourcing industry, was perhaps inadequate for the e-commerce era. The government appointed a committee to update the IT Act (disclosure: I was named a member), and (second disclosure) I was the person responsible for inserting the section about “intermediaries” into the new IT Act. This did not require a flash of genius because, by then, American and European e-commerce laws, sympathetic to the plight of the poor Web shopkeeper, had already protected him by naming him an “intermediary”, a mere conduit through which buyers and sellers discovered and transacted with each other. He need take no responsibility for what was being sold in his shop. His responsibility only lay in removing items from his shop if anyone objected.
Unfortunately, it is not just e-commerce and online media entrepreneurs who have benefited from the wonders of the internet. Terrorists, purveyors of hate, child pornographers, sellers of snake-oil charms and others have also discovered that anything they did in the brick-and-mortar world could now be done on the internet at a fraction of the effort and many times the effectiveness. In addition, the anonymity and cross-border reach of the internet could do further wonders to their trade. Obviously this was bound to throw law enforcement authorities throughout the world into a tizzy and make political leaders feel powerless. Last August, when mobs were vandalising British cities and co-ordinated their efforts using social media tools, David Cameron, the prime minister and the leader of the Conservative Party – that centuries-old upholder of civil liberties – wondered aloud in the House of Commons “whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services”.

In February this year, the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus”by Amina Abdallah Araf al-Omari started gathering a large international following during the uprising in Syria. Amina’s description of her participation in street protests was carried in prestigious media outlets like CNN, The Guardian and The New York Times. Then, in June, Amina’s cousin, Rania, posted a message that Amina had been snatched by armed men on a Damascus street. International campaigns were launched to get her released. The “Free Amina” Facebook page had over 10,000 members; activists tweeted using the hashtag #FreeAmina. All very well — except that Amina was soon discovered to be a man, Tom MacMaster, a student at the University of Edinburgh. Episodes like this point to the new challenges of identity and veracity that lie ahead for all of us true believers in the tremendous potential of the internet.

Other disconcerting facts are starting to emerge. Social media appears to be all-pervasive and allows almost anyone to express their views. Yet, on social-media sites like Twitter, less than two per cent (that’s correct, two per cent) of the people who throng there actually express any views of their own by making postings; 99 per cent merely “follow”. Even more disconcertingly, a large number of these posts come from public relations firms acting for celebrities or from “bots”, computer programmes that do automated posting.

This tiny base of participation in social media makes many of us worry. Ismael Peña-López, a professor at the School of Law and Political Science at Spain’s University of Catalonia, says it best when he asks whether the internet is creating a new class of “e-Aristocrats”, a tiny group composed of “supra-national economic elites”, who are adept at using social-media tools but whose views and opinions may have no correspondence with the rest of the population. This contrast is magnified in countries like India where internet access, particularly broadband, is still the preserve of the well-to-do.

Source:http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/ajit-balakrishnan-a-guide-tosocial-media-wars/458520/

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Social Media Outsourcing Pitfalls

December 14th, 2011

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If you’ve been a social media marketing holdout, give it up. It’s time to admit defeat. Social media is here to stay and the stakes will be even higher once Facebook goes public in 2012. If you’ve spent any time looking at the Facebook and Twitter pages of small businesses, it’s easy to conclude that there’s not much happening there—a few followers (friends and family, no doubt), a few random postings/tweets. Those are the ones that don’t have the time or the know-how to do it right. If you’re like most businesses and don’t have the time, the interest, or the expertise to make social media marketing a worthwhile project, outsourcing is an option. If you decide to go that route, how can you begin to know which agency has the right social media package for your business? That’s what you’re about to find out!

PACKAGE INCLUDES DAILY ACTIVITY ON FACEBOOK & TWITTER. THAT MEANS…

Who knows? It’s a pretty common sales pitch that’s wide open to interpretation–it can mean that everyday, the agency will look at your Twitter and Facebook account and let you know if there’s anything new. Or, it can mean the agency will post on multiple social media sites, let you know when you need to interact with followers, report how many followers you’ve picked up, look at your competitors’ activities and so on. There’s a huge gap between those scenarios. If there’s a promise of daily activity, make sure you know exactly what those activities will be.

YOU KNOW YOUR BUSINESS BETTER THAN ANYONE

Will the social media marketing consultant listen to your input before the Tweeting and posting begins? They should! And, they should have a system for communicating with you. That system should NOT be email. Look for a firm that has an efficient system where you can submit your ideas, links to articles, photos or anything that you’d like to use for your social media campaign. A ticketing or task-based workflow system is ideal for social media projects. That way, you have a record of your input and can measure it against what the agency is actually posting and tweeting.

AFTER THE TWEETING AND POSTING

You cannot expect that the agency will handle everything. Do you really want them to post replies and interact with your prospective customers? Probably not. Go into this knowing that you will need to get involved in customer conversations. Your social media consultant should closely monitor the activity and quickly notify you when your presence is required. This too requires a task-based system where the consultant can log notifications and keep track of follow through. Timely responses are critical in social media. A good social media package will have a task-based system to track the history of communications between you and your consultant.

One more thing…call and talk to a consultant at the social media marketing agency before you sign up. Call more than once. You do want to know that you can pick up the phone and talk to a real person when you have questions or concerns. That applies if you’re outsourcing SEO, PPC or any online marketing task.

Source:http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-outsourcing-pitfalls-0106651

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Outsourcing the job of muzzling the media

November 8th, 2011

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A comment posted to London’s Guardian newspaper said it best: “Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.” The writer, somebody called “edensasp,” was referring to news that Wikileaks — the online whistleblower that has been embarrassing governments and corporations worldwide by disclosing their secrets — was suspending operations.

Why? Had its leader, the mercurial Julian Assange, been indicted? Had the black choppers swooped in and taken him out? No, nothing that cinematic. It was the bankers. A handful of big money handlers decided they wouldn’t process donations to Wikileaks, it had exhausted its reserves, and it was going broke.
The fund cutoff started in December 2010. That’s when Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union, Amazon and Bank of America discovered their patriotic duty. At the time, five of the world’s top news organizations — The Guardian, The New York Times, El País, Le Monde and Der Spiegel — had begun publishing articles based on a remarkable trove of U.S. State Department cables shared with them by Wikileaks. The organizations had spent months sifting from among the documents, eliminating those they thought might cause needless harm. They then launched a barrage of articles derived from candid reports from U.S. diplomats that exposed official lies, both our country’s and dozens of others’.

But official lies have their supporters too, and there was a huge fuss. Because the secret cables were American — even if the people whom the secrecy protected often were not — U.S. politicians led the charge against Wikileaks. Assange was denounced as “a high-tech terrorist,” lawmakers demanded his head, and Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal investigation of his operation.

And so the money-handlers stirred to action. Within days Wikileaks was under a financial stranglehold, and it now says its revenues dropped from $140,000 a month to less than a tenth that. Why did the companies do it? PayPal, the flagship paymaster of the digital world, said it forbids payments to anything that “encourages” illegal activity, and MasterCard said its “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.”
Really? “Indirectly facilitating” an illegal act? Think about that. It’s a formulation a second-year law student could tear apart as not just unenforceable, but unintelligible. Doesn’t selling gasoline “indirectly facilitate” speeding? How much of what we consider normal commerce would escape that catchall? Shouldn’t Bank of America require you to apply for your next ATM withdrawal, just in case?

Besides, what was the illegal act that was facilitated? Nobody has suggested the publications that used the material acted illegally. And don’t we normally punish after conviction, not before? (Nearly a year later, Wikileaks hasn’t even been charged.)

The explanation was hogwash, of course. It seems obvious the money-handlers’ actions were political, not legal. The financial industry isn’t particularly popular right now, and in the wake of the worst banking meltdown in generations Obama administration officials had made a special point of denouncing the consumer finance sector for its furtive charges and extortionate rates. With regulation looming, tossing a bone to the Justice Department had to make sense.

And they’ve gotten away with it, largely because of the news media’s own deep ambivalence about Wikileaks. McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef recently reported that support for WikiLeaks was generally weak among U.S. journalists. A committee of the Overseas Press Club of America, she noted, had decided Assange was “not one of us,” the National Press Club wouldn’t comment on whether he should be charged criminally, and such renowned media champions as Floyd Abrams, who helped represent the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, and Lucy Dalglish, head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, question whether Wikileaks deserves the protections journalists warrant

Assange has helped arm his critics by releasing in September, without editorial review, the unpublished remnants of the 250,000-document State Department trove that the five news organizations had so carefully picked through last December

Still, the logic under which critics deny Wikileaks standing as a journalism organization is, to me, baffling. At considerable risk, it acquires information of vast public significance and makes it publicly available. Its disclosures have made headlines worldwide, and have been credited with helping nourish pro-democracy forces with solid information about their own corrupt governments. That sounds like journalism.

Some say Wikileaks has been secretive and irresponsible. If so, it has plenty of company. Any number of perfectly legitimate news organizations resist scrutiny and can be irresponsible in the stories they mangle, overplay or ignore.

That’s regrettable, but the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee a responsible media. It guarantees a media free of censorship. And the principle is the same, regardless of whether the censors are government apparatchiks or private-sector toadies who decided, out of self-interest, to pin a deputy’s badge on their lapels.

Source:http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/07/2491202_p2/outsourcing-the-job-of-muzzling.html

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InfoTech Releases 2012 Version of Media Management System

October 19th, 2011

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Some of the key new features introduced with this release include:

A New Prebuy Module: Allows buyers to construct various media plans for a campaign, compare the plans and identify which one best meets campaign goals, and activate that plan so buys can be placed.

Advanced reporting capabilities: Supports multi-channel marketing. Users can easily compare broadcast, online, mobile, print and other marketing channels.

Shortcuts: Automatically create and email PI payout reports to all stations and media outlets with active PI contracts.

“The 2012 release of MMS is part of InfoTech’s ongoing dedication to offering our direct response clients state-of-the-art applications,” said Derek Viglianti, InfoTech’s EVP of Marketing Systems. “We are constantly responding to client needs, while using the most advanced Web technology available.” Regarding future releases, Mr. Viglianti said, “We have many more features on the way, including reporting on iPad and other tablet devices.”

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/infotech-releases-2012-version-of-media-management-system-2011-10-19