Twitter, the social media service that lets us share our thoughts in 140 characters or fewer, has grown so diverse among its users and its content that we apparently now require assistance finding exactly what we’re looking for.

As a result, we now inhabit a world with “Twitter search engines,” the latest of which is CrowdEye, a search engine launched yesterday that was developed by former Microsoft employees Ken and Becca Moss from their home office.

Ken Moss, who has been working on CrowdEye since September, ended his two-decade long distinguished career at Microsoft late last year to, among other things, pioneer this venture.

As a result, the Mosses have embarked on a mission that has actually yielded a pretty cool product.

Twitter users can now search and browse through Twitter status updates, and hone in on their unique interests by filtering results. CrowdEye also shows the most-tweeted topics within a search.

As of the launch, Moss said he’s “happy with the response to CrowdEye” and elated to see feedback comparing it to other Twitter search engines like Topsy and OneRiot.

It’s definitely worth checking out. You can do so at http://crowdeye.com/

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It isn’t often that you hear a major news organization use the “word” regret when it comes to discussing their ventures in mobile marketing.

For USA Today, however, there is regret. And plenty of it.

Given the popularity of their iPhone app, USA Today regrets that they made it available as a free download.

Hoping to buttress their revenue by taking major steps into new marketing ventures, USA Today apparently feels that they have a gold mine… without the gold.

According to publisher David Hunke in an interview with the Associated Press,”I’m not sure we realized what we had. I think that’s a value readers will be willing to pay for.”

The iPhone app, which has only ben available since late December, has captured the essence of the print edition of USA Today (and is much cooler, by the way) and supplements ths paper’s news stream with a host of bells and whistles ranging from social media elements to GPS based features.

The announcment by USA Today may come as a lesson learned to other news carriers aiming for similar success in the mobile realm.

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Look carefully at who may soon add you as a friend on Facebook.

It might just include a poke from the Pope.

In an attempt to ostensibly reach a younger generation of Catholics, the Vatican has started using Facebook as a networking site for the religious faithful.

www.pope2you.net is now available and offers an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook,” and another that provides access to the Pope’s speeches on their iPhones.

Although it may seem an unorthodox move, it isn’t the first of its kind.

In 2005, a program called Azan was created and made available for download which essentially served to remind Muslims of their five important prayer times per day.

Now the Catholic Church will similarly give the mobile realm their “blessing.”

Sorry, I had to.

“We recognize that a church that does not communicate ceases to be a church,” said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s Social Communications department. “Many young people today are not turning to traditional media like newspapers and magazines any more for information and entertainment. They are looking to a different media culture, and this is our effort to ensure that the Church is present in that communications culture.”

The new apps are now available in Italian, English, Spanish, French and Dutch.

Something worth downloading this weekend when I’m in line to see “Angels and Demons.”

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MocoSpace, the mobile social networking service, is growing at an incredible rate despite no partnerships with major carriers and an emphasis on simple feature-phones instead of smartphones and mobile apps.  This winning combination has helped the four-year-old startup create a six-million strong loyal userbase in no time flat.  

While everyone else in the mobile space is focusing on new-age technologies such as feature-rich smartphones, app stores and carrier partnerships, MocoSpace has quietly gained a viral following relying only on word-of-mouth from its users to grow very quickly.  The formula, according to its founders, is very simple- younger users are much more apt to use mobile social networking than the rest of the population, so this is the demographic they’re after.  In addition, this young demographic is not the one that uses expensive smartphones, instead relying on simple feature-phones with simple web browsers and the most basic of functionality.  

About 80 percent of MocoSpace members are younger than 30, according to vice president of marketing Jim Gregoire; 50 percent are under 24, and a quarter are teens.  It’s a group of mobile users who can’t necessarily afford the latest, greatest smartphones—and who may not even own computers—but who are nonetheless highly social, and who want to interact with peers around the corner or across the globe.  MocoSpace serves them through a combination of, on the one hand, classic social-networking features like profiles, comments, friend lists, and chat, and on the other, digital content like photos, music, and videos, both user-generated and professional.

The service is completely free, relying solely on ad-revenue, and is designed to be accessed from the most simple of web-browsers on the most simple of devices.  This forumla proves that keeping up with technology and the masses isn’t always the best way to go.  There’s a lot to be said about sticking to the basics.

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Webcredible, a user experience consultancy firm, conducted a mobile Web-usage poll recently to find out what areas of the mobile Web are seeing the most traffic and user interaction these days.  Unsurprisingly, email and social network interaction are among the most visited.

The research polled more than 1,100 online users between February and April 2009 on what they used their mobile phone for most, with the exception of calls and text messages. Checking email and social networking came in as the most popular activities with 39 percent of mobile Internet users mostly using email and over 16 percent favoring social networking.  Just under 16 percent of mobile Internet users said they mostly downloaded ringtones.

The poll has been conducted in the past, and the new results show a clear indication of the evolution of the mobile Web over short periods of time.  Almost two years ago, for example, the same poll was conducted between August and October of 2007 which showed that downloading ringtones came in at the top spot with 43 percent.  During that particular poll, only 21 percent of respondents said they checked email regularly, and social network interaction didn’t even register.

Read the rest

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Parks Associates today conducted an interesting seminar or the state of social media, a topic encompassing social networking and media sharing, among other spaces. Coming away, I can’t help but think that social media and mobile technology’s futures are intertwined: One helps to grow the other, and the improvement of one naturally results in benefiting the other.

First there’s the fact that, as Parks vice president and principal analyst Kurt Scherf put it, Facebook has taken on “a much more Twitter look.” That is, social networking seems like it’s becoming more about text or other small items that can easily be viewed and manipulated on a phone. At the same time that social networks are becoming more user-friendly on handsets, cell phones themselves are becoming more social media-friendly, with better Internet access and movability on the screen.

More proof of enmeshed evolution: One of the drivers to social media monetization is the “widespread ability of CE devices that facilitate the creation of social media, such as digital cameras and camcorders.” At the same time one of the most popular social media activities of mobile users is sharing their media with others–35 percent of those surveyed said they share pictures with friends using their camera phones, taking and photos either to friends’ handsets or to an online sharing site.

Thus mobile technology is one sure way to monetize social networks– least, it is for service providers. “We’re seeing mobile operators rapidly embrace (better technology for social media on phones, to monetize) years of investment in their networks,” Mr. Scherf said. ” Social network users are more likely to subscribe to data plans and are less likely to change carriers.”

Operators, then, are deeply interested in better user interface design for social sites; some outstanding examples include Verizon Wireless’ SocialLife platform, the Orange World portal, and SK Telecom’s Sky Buddy in Korea. Cellular providers are also looking to drive more mobile revenue through improved monetization tools like location-based services and gaming. (Lets hope that after social media companies help carriers realize greater revenue, the carriers don’t attempt to penalize them for “overuse” of their networks, they way they once seemed poised to do to SMS marketers.)

These combined efforts are sure to pay off. Parks Associates expects that U.S. social networking ad spend will grow to between $1.59 billion and $2.86 billion by 2013. I imagine that mobile will contribute greatly to these revenue figures.

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Marketers on social networks should worry more about ads that are mobile rather than behaviorally-targeted.

ABI Research said this week that in its recent survey of social network users, 46 percent said they visited their site of choice using a mobile phone. The two largest networks clearly dominated these users, with 70 percent going to MySpace and 67 percent visiting Facebook. More than half said they use their mobile login to check messages and comments, and 45 percent said they update their status using their phones.

While mobile social networking is on the rise, behavior-based ads on social networks are heading downhill. This week’s apparent shutdown of Adzilla, a Canadian ad targeting services company, comes soon after NebuAd decided to delay more roll-outs of its ad targeting platform. Meanwhile the U.S. Congress continues to study the controversy surrounding these kinds of ads, which has consumer advocates worried about privacy issues. And at the moment, even marketers don’t agree about what should be considered best practices in this space. Read the rest

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