social media

For years, I’ve maintained that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, Inc., has had his eye on a singular goal: becoming the global version of China’s WeChat. WeChat is China’s most popular messaging app, with 1 billion monthly users. China’s population is 1.4 billion people, which means approximately two in three Chinese are on WeChat. But WeChat […]

Ad Revenue “It’s every bit as certain as death and taxes.” (Meet Joe Black, 1998) . . . And I’d add “holiday advertising.” Q4 2018 proved yet again that advertisers ramp up their media budgets in Q4 to get consumers to buy those holiday gifts. Facebook, Inc. (inclusive of its family of products: Facebook.com, Instagram, […]

Facebook’s tumultuous year made approaching the social giant’s Q4 2018 earnings call complicated, to say the least. Days before the call, news hit that Facebook is consolidating the back-end tech of its family of messenger apps. Why? Then, a story breaks that Apple is pulling a Facebook app that invites users to share their phone […]

Like the opening sequence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the social media landscape is getting “flipped-turned upside down” by the ascendance of stories. Well, that may be a bit dramatic, but they are certainly starting to make waves. Stories are growing in popularity as a mode of sharing and consuming content on social media. […]

Brandwatch and Crimson Hexagon, two social listening platforms, announced their merger today. The company will maintain the Brandwatch name with Brandwatch Founder and CEO Giles Palmer at the helm. At Forrester, we’ve been pushing for the next evolution in the social listening space. Our recent evaluation, “The Forrester Wave™: Social Listening Platforms, Q3 2018,” found […]

In the past few months, my colleague James McQuivey has written several blogs about the exciting times we live in. In these posts, he focuses on how technology is fundamentally changing the way we interact with the world around us and how that change is grounded in evolution. His research shows that our uniquely evolved […]

Facebook’s Q2 2018 earnings call was not well-received by investors as evidenced by the stock’s 19 percent price drop equating to the largest-ever loss in market value in one day for a U.S. traded company. But if you’re a marketer looking to forecast your spending on social advertising over the next several years, Facebook’s latest earnings […]

Facebook’s Q2 2018 earnings call was not well received by investors as evidenced by the stock’s 19 percent price drop equating to the largest-ever loss in market value in one day for a US traded company. But if you’re a marketer looking to forecast your spending on social advertising over the next several years, Facebook’s latest […]

What you’ll hear from the press this week: Facebook missed its earnings for the first time since 2015. But in our world, 43% YOY increase in revenue and 11% YOY increase in DAUs and MAUs is still a solid performance. Facebook continues to diversify by augmenting its core Facebook social network with ancillary products (Instagram, […]

Fifty-three percent of business and technology decision makers and influencers tell us they want to better leverage social listening technologies to understand customer requirements and achieve their firm’s goal of addressing rising customer expectations.* This shouldn’t come as a surprise; social listening platforms (SLPs) offer a unique window into customers’ lives, opinions, and preferences. SLPs are heavy hitters in the martech stack and are […]

Fifty-three percent of business and technology decision makers and influencers tell us they want to better leverage social listening technologies to understand customer requirements and achieve their firm’s goal of addressing rising customer expectations.* This shouldn’t come as a surprise; social listening platforms (SLPs) offer a unique window into customers’ lives, opinions, and preferences. SLPs are heavy hitters in the martech stack and are […]

We didn’t think the Cambridge Analytica story could get any darker, but clearly it has. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy, with clients fleeing the firm after improper data harvesting and suspect targeting practices for election manipulation were revealed. The article disclosed that Cambridge Analytica had been planning to […]

Q1 2018 earnings for Twitter, Facebook, and Snap largely showed minimal impact from the recent data privacy crisis. There were no surprises: Twitter is building off its Q4 2017 momentum, Facebook continues to grow its user base, and Snap is still going through an identity crisis. For the most part, the financial markets seem to […]

Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before the U.S. Senate didn’t sway us from our previously posted perspective, at least in terms of what Facebook’s fiasco means for marketers.  If you are looking for more catastrophizing around the near-term death of social marketing, you’ve come to the wrong blog post. What did catch our attention: how poorly the […]

I would like to introduce myself as a new member of Forrester Data’s data science team. Before joining Forrester, I studied economics at McGill University, where I developed a skillset in quantitative analysis and knowledge of the incentive-driven behaviors fueling today’s consumer-driven economy. I am excited to utilize what I’ve learned in my studies to […]

Social selling is one of my B2B Marketing and Sales team’s top inquiry topics. We’ve also helped numerous clients plan and execute effective social selling programs. Given this and the recent report that Mary Shea just published, New Tech: B2B Social Selling Tools, Q1 2018, I thought now would be a great time to touch […]

Shame on Facebook. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has exposed the social network’s egregious misstep. Here at Forrester, we are furiously fielding inquiries about what this failure to protect user data means. Most questions are immediate and tactical in nature. These questions are certainly pressing so let’s address them. But then let’s discuss the bigger questions that […]

Snapchat recently launched a product redesign to the dismay of power users and relief of Snapchat newbs. Its original ephemeral messaging and scavenger hunt of a UX appealed to an exploratory young audience. The app’s overhaul is a classic case of a company losing sight of what’s most important: the core customer. Snapchat has prioritized […]

Facebook made an announcement yesterday titled “Making Ad Metrics Clearer” that says, in part: We’ve heard that businesses want more insight into our measurement tools and metrics. So today, we’re introducing new labels on some of our metrics to clearly show how they are calculated . . . The centerpiece of its announcement is new […]