Social Networking Adverture

Recently I had an opportunity to do a deep dive in Social Networking and do a S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on in particular Twitter and the opportunity Microsoft has with #T.

In doing this deep analysis I had an incredible opportunity to meet and learn from some amazing people at Microsoft and outside (LiliCh, Mhurst, Dhardt, Bubba from Facebook, StGarrity:) , DennisPi, and many others).

Anyways net-net here are some of the interesting findings:
- Social Networking is the #1 thing people are doing on the internet today - it accounts for ~27% of internet usage time (surprisingly Games is #2, and then Search)
- There is a higher % of people in non-North American countries participating in SN
- Twitter has the highest % of new users month over month (even after looking at drop off rate)
- Social Norms for Tweeting (my favorite :)) - don't overtweet (i.e. no more than 5 times a day), never follow more than 300 people
-Twitter Search is the *realest* time search available (time and location wise)
- T has an open API that is enabling 3rd parties to monetize through leveraging of the data


There are some definite opportunities in this space , and it will be interesting to see how this ecosystem evolves.

Lilian