Andy’s Social Media Year in Review: 2011
I’m a big fan of year in review lists, and this year, I got a chance to compose my own list! 2011 has been a huge period of social discovery for me — I worked as an online community manager for an online retailer earlier this year, and in September I started working here, at Reusser Design, as a social media strategist. I’ve had time to experiment, tweak, learn, and make mistakes. And I like to think I’ve had a few revelations along the way.
If you are a social media professional, or really even just follow me on Twitter, none of this is a groundbreaker to you — I’ve expressed my thoughts pretty well as I went along. But this could be a useful summary if you can or want to use social media like I do — enthusiastically.
Most useful social media service: Twitter
I really ramped up my Twitter power usage when I was an online community manager. This was my main method of customer outreach and discovery, and I learned a lot about targeting keywords to monitor, detecting trends and interaction rates — and most importantly — paring down my thoughts and words into 140 characters or less. I learned and accepted that Twitter isn’t meant to be a medium for meaningful conversation, but a great conversation starter, and one that allows users (both marketers and personal tweeters) to look out into the world and find lots of content that’s relevant to their interests.
There’s an online community for just about everything — wooden pencil enthusiasts, typewriters, underwater basket
Most fun social media service: Tumblr
I’ve had Tumblr for a long time — I signed up just four months after it launched in February of 2007, and I’ve loved it ever since. While I admit it isn’t the most useful platform for a business, it is just a great way to be a fan and to celebrate your fandom. I follow blogs about Doctor Who, office supplies, fashion, NPR, general memes, politicians, celebrities and friends. I’ve started blogs about sweatervests, alternate universes, and more. It’s messy, it’s casual and it’s wonderful. And after I installed a browser extension called “missing e“, it’s gotten a lot easier to navigate the Dashboard, Tumblr’s internal community interface. Tumblr, Y U NO buy them out and integrate this into your dashboard natively?!
Prettiest SM interface: Path 2
Path has been around for a couple years, but only last month did they completely change their interface. And change it they did! It’s quick, it’s pretty, and it’s simple. Our lead designer, Aaron Bushnell, blogged about the “+” button to add a status update, a picture, a check-in, or what-have-you. And their website features a huge video that really makes it come alive, but stays simple.
The trouble is, I don’t find Path particularly useful or fulfilling in any ways other than as a pretty interface that integrates with some of the more establish mediums: Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, or Tumblr. It’s fun to have a little elite network of maybe 20 or so friends who are “in the know” on Path so I can share pictures and check-ins with them (I’m talking to you, @theamazingben), but I think its exclusivity is it’s downfall — it limits users to just 150 friends. I understand their reasoning, but I’m not sure I agree with it.
Most Impactful: Instagram
Instagram, the iPhone-only photo sharing app, has been around for only since October of 2010, but as of August of this year, had 150 million users! While there are those out there who are not a fan of morphing your photos with filters to make them look like vintage film cameras, I think they look great and can really convey the personality of the photographer.
It’s a cliche to say that a picture’s worth a thousand words, but Instagram really puts that theory into practice. I can follow everything from cute cat photos from a friend of mine to photos by ABC World News foreign correspondents. And with great, smart integration into Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare, you can reach a broader audience with it, not just those who use iPhones.
And according to Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s CEO, they’re working on an Android app!
Most Disappointing: WordPress
I want to be careful here, because I use WordPress A LOT. My personal blog is in WP, my pencil blog is in WP, THIS blog is in WP, and sometimes we develop in WP. It’s still one of the most cathardic social mediums for my journalist’s soul, as I can share my long form writing in the most uninhibited way possible.
I should preface it by saying that WordPress really does a lot of great work, and if you use a self-hosted WP blog it lets you tweak to your heart’s content. The nice thing about it is that self-hosted WP blogs (distinguished from the WP-hosted blogs as WordPress.org rather than WordPress.com) is that they’ve always been free and open source.
While they haven’t necessarily made their intentions clear, WordPress seems like it’s moving WP.org to more of a WP.com way of business. They have a new service called Jetpack, which will integrate your .org blog more with the .com service, and on the .com service, they’re charging more and more just to use anything more than the basic blogging functions. New users who want to integrate their WP.com API key into their WP.org blog (To use the spam-blocking plugin, or to get detailed site stats) have to pay. It’s starting to feel a lot like the antiquated TypePad or the expensive SquareSpace blogging platforms.
That being said, I’ll probably keep on using it, barring any major changes or new blogging platforms. I simply have more control over my blog than, say, Tumblr, and the themes are WAY prettier than anything you can find on, say, Blogger.com.
To wrap up
You’ll notice some of the big players isn’t on here — Facebook and Google Plus, to name a couple. That’s not to say that they haven’t innovated or been extremely relevant. I just don’t think they’ve really caught my attention like the media above.
What did you use most in 2011? What do you think think 2012 will bring for you?
Posted December 31, 2011 at 5:00 pm by Andy Welfle