One of the ways to spot trends in social media is to compile year-end lists. What were the top conversations? What were the most shared posts? Unless you work for the largest consumer brands, this top-level trend data, although interesting, may not be the most relevant to your business. But this is the perfect time to start searching and planning what conversations will be the tops in your industry. Creating and sharing content can help your company be part of those conversations online.

Twitter Hot Topics

Instead of presenting its top 10 most tweeted topics, Twitter compiles its data by category on its Hot Topics page. Below are the top entries from 10 of the most interesting topics. While sharing news is an important part of Twitter’s appeal, much of the conversation focuses on pop culture events and celebrities.

1. Hashtags: #egypt
2. World News: Mubarak’s resignation
3. Soccer: Wayne Rooney
4. American Football: Dallas
5. Television: Pretty Little Liars
6. Movies: Thor
7. Actor: Charlie Sheen
8. Actress: Elizabeth Taylor
9. Music: Rebecca Black and Friday
10. Food: McLobster

Social Media Marketing Takeaway: Even though the top topics are pop culture and celebrity-related, the best way to separate the signal from the noise is to build a Twitter following that is relevant to your business. This way you will get more relevant incoming messages and your outgoing messages will spread to more interested followers.

Facebook’s Most Shared Posts

Facebook created a year-end list that highlighted the platform as a means for sharing third-party articles with your network. These are the 10 most shared posts by US Facebook users. This list contains tragedy, family stories and zodiacs and shows why consumer companies have been successful connecting with their fans on a personal level on Facebook.

1. Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami (New York Times)
2. What teachers really want to tell parents (CNN)
3. No, your zodiac sign hasn’t changed (CNN)
4. Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps (CNN)
5. (video) – Father Daughter Dance Medley (Yahoo)
6. At funeral, dog mourns the death of Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan (Yahoo)
7. You’ll freak when you see the new Facebook (CNN)
8. Dog in Japan stays by the side of ailing friend in the rubble (Yahoo)
9. Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines (Yahoo)
10. New Zodiac Sign Dates: Ophiuchus The 13th Sign? (The Huffington Post)

Social Media Marketing Takeaway: When connecting with customers on Facebook, make sure you understand what they talk about and share on the social network, and what they expect from brands. This recent survey offers some insights on the topic.

LinkedIn’s Most Popular Stories

LinkedIn is a much more business-focused social network, so it’s no surprise that the list of most shared stories on LinkedIn is also business-focused. While all of these stories are from mainstream publishers or top blogs, it does show the kind of articles people share on LinkedIn. They are career-related, with a dash of technology, and many offer how-to’s in the form of lists.

1. 9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money (Inc.)
2. Steve Jobs and the Seven Rules of Success (Entrepreneur)
3. Steve Jobs: How To Live Before You Die (TED Talks)
4. The World at Seven Billion (BBC)
5. Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By (Harvard Business Review)
6. 5 Things to Do Every Day for Success (Fast Company)
7. Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy (Yahoo News)
8. The Org Charts of all the Major Tech Companies (Humor) (Business Insider)
9. Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile — Literally (Mashable)
10. 5 Ways To Keep Your Rockstar Employees Happy (GigaOM)

Social Media Marketing Takeaway: Even though it is the smallest of these three major social media networks, it is easier to promote business-related content. Leverage your employees and encourage them to share company blog posts with their networks for some extra oomph.

What other takeaways do you have from these most popular lists of topics and conversations on the major social media platforms? Do they confirm or refute your own company’s experiences?

Much has happened since back in 2009 when Read Write Web’s Marshall Kirkpatrick initially experienced our platform and said it’s a “machine that eats tweets.” Since then, we’ve added additional products, features and enhancements, experienced the Salesforce acquisition and felt the epic growth of social media, to name a few. Yesterday, when Read Write Web announced their top 10 cloud apps of 2011, it was exciting to learn that Radian6 was selected as number three.

Much like social media, cloud services grew in popularity in 2011. As shared in Read Write Web’s article, “Certainly 2011 was dramatically different from 2010 for businesses for one critical reason: In a very short time, suddenly true scalability for every IT service appeared within their reach.”

To research the list, Read Write Web looked at the stream of social data to learn of the conversations around cloud apps. Which services were talked about most? Were the conversations favorable, especially when it came to customer service? The results are in.

We appreciate being considered and ranked in this list. We’d also like to congratulate Heroku, another Salesforce-acquired company, who took the number one spot on the top 10 list.

Facebook moved our cheese again by launching Facebook Timeline – a complete redesign of the individual profile we’ve all become accustomed to (since the last major change). Timeline was announced at the annual Facebook f8 conference in September, but just rolled out to the masses on December 15.

Anytime Facebook makes even a slight adjustment to its platform, users share the good, bad and ugly while navigating through a maze of new features. Since we knew there’d be buzz about the change, we took a look at what people said between December 14 and December 21. Below are the insights from our analysis.

Facebook Timeline is a Trending Topic

There were 209,017 conversations about Facebook Timeline during the first week of its announcement. 71,411 (34.2%) of these conversations (tweets, Facebook status updates, blog posts, news articles, etc.) took place on December 15 alone with overall buzz simmering significantly in the following days. Told ya there’d be buzz!

Is Sentiment Positive or Negative?

The vast majority of the web made neutral commentary about Timeline, sharing impartial observations about the new layout including the ability to tell your life story through photos. On the other hand, the approximate 20% of the web with very strong opinions about the new Timeline skewed slightly more negative (58.4%) than positive (41.6%).

The Good: What do people like about Timeline?

The tag cloud below gives you an idea of what people were talking about when discussing the Facebook Timeline in a positive light.

• The cover. People love the new bundle of pixels they can use to express themselves, and they love The Oatmeal’s cover, too.

The idea of a cover on #facebook timeline, awesome. I love it. No more weird sized DPs. A square thumbnail and a picture you want to flaunt.

— Adam Fredieϟ(@AdamFredie) December 21, 2011

So creative. RT @Oatmeal: Had a little fun with the cover image of my Facebook timeline this morning twitter.com/Oatmeal/status…

— Al (@aebaxter) December 22, 2011

• Time traveling. It’s kind of cool to see – in an organized format – who you’ve met, where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished and how you’ve changed over the years.

Facebook Timeline has given me an opportunity to reflect on how awesome I am at Facebook and life in general.

— Hisham Rana, MD (@hrana) December 22, 2011

Facebook timeline is awesome! Looking back on things I said in 2007…it’s just embarrassing.

— kaitlyn kiss (@kaitlynkiss) December 22, 2011

Looking through my FB Timeline (deleting random things), and remembering how awesome it was to graduate HS on my 18th birthday.

— Victoria Gaytan (@victoriagaytan) December 21, 2011

man, i’m up to 2006 in my facebook timeline, and @wbonds and i had some awesome wall convos. #imisscollege

— tiffany clemons (@tiffclemons) December 21, 2011

For the first time ever: Major social network re-designs have been successful. New Facebook and Twitter are awesome and more organized.

— Erika Esola (@emesola) December 21, 2011

• Novelty. And some users are embracing the change with excitement.

I have to admit though….Facebook Timeline is very cool.Like,have you seen the ‘Life Event’feature?VERY USEFUL!

— Brittany N. Edwards (@KissMeNicholasJ) December 22, 2011

I’m using facebook’s timeline and it feels weird yet awesome

— AbigailRegina (@rgnrgna) December 21, 2011

Facebook Timeline is kind of awesome. Yes, I said it. I may be a social media strategist but man, I wish I had time to poke through it …

— Téa Smith (@tealou) December 21, 2011

The Bad: What don’t people like about Timeline?

When speaking negatively about the “New Facebook,” the web didn’t hold back on the how much they disliked the change.

• It looks like Myspace. The new customizable Facebook cover appears to be taking people back to their glittery GIF days.

RT @erik_GXs: The new Facebook looks like the old Myspace. #dead

— Jessica Gomez (@_Jessicagmz) December 22, 2011

the new facebook is awesome if you love myspace.

— j chris newberg (@thechrisarmy) December 22, 2011

• It’s confusing or frustrating. So much so thatpeople were using words rhyming with duck, ducking or bull spit to express their thoughts.

• It’s creepy, awkward or embarrassing. You can add a photo and an entire story about the day you were born. Some people aren’t comfortable with that, just as some people aren’t comfortable going back in time to discover buried photos from middle school or mushy wall posts from an ex-girlfriend.
  

  the new facebook made me even more embarassed than i was about my awkward stage #middleschoolsucks

  — Emilee Abraham(@emmyabe) December 21, 2011

  The awkward moment when youre looking through your new facebook timeline and posts from your ex are there! WTF! #delete #biarch

  — fuimaono-sapolu (@Eliota_Sapolu) December 21, 2011

• It helps or hinders stalkers from stalking.  People either don’t like that the content they’ve uploaded to Facebook over the years has surfaced for others to more easily see, or that their stalking habits are on hold until they figure out how to navigate Timeline.

RT @ambiyo: Stalker’s comment on the new facebook layout: “too easy..”

— Teddy Setiawan Kho (@ted_kho) December 21, 2011

the new facebook time line business makes it WAY harder to stalk people!

— Sydney Bard (@sydneyhbard) December 22, 2011

RT @jecaloca Hating the new facebook timeline. It’s not stalker-friendly!!!!

— Judge Jossel Du (@_jdu) December 22, 2011

As you can see, the initial feedback is all over the map. We think the negativity will fizzle as users get more comfortable with Timeline. How about you? What do you think?

Have you updated your profile to the new Facebook Timeline yet? What do you and your friends think so far?

In case you missed the swirling buzz among the Twitterverse late last week, Twitter made some major changes to their platform. We’ll bring you up to speed and let you know what all of it means.

The Redesign

So there’s a new New Twitter.

The redesign simplifies connecting with others and discovering new topics of interest with four new tabs:

• Home – The stream of tweets from all the users you follow. With one click, photos, videos and threaded conversations expand in the feed for easier digestion.
• Connect – The evolution of the recently launched Activity tab. Includes your direct messages, @mentions, retweets, new follows and stories about people favoriting your tweets or adding you to lists.
• Discover – Access trending topics, links to popular media, recommended people to follow, a friend finder and interest browser to find additional accounts to follow. The Discovery engine learns about your preferences as you use Twitter.
• Me – A redesigned profile page with your name, bio, website, tweets and media gallery.

Brand Pages

Facebook has them. Google+ just launched them. Now businesses can have a Twitter Brand Page, too. Twitter partnered with 21 brands to launch Pages – Pepsi, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola being a few of them.

The new Pages give brands a customizable header image and a free featured tweet, and make it easy for Page visitors to easily @mention the brand or access their lists and favorited tweets.

Brand Pages will roll out to other brands over the next quarter.

Embeddable Tweets

Much like YouTube videos, you can now embed tweets into your website or blog. Within the embed, your visitors can follow the author, @reply, retweet, or favorite the tweet in one click without leaving the page. One way we might use the Embeddable Tweets feature is incorporating your related comments into our blog posts.

RT @leweb: Radian6 Stats of #LeWeb 2011 Day 1 are on our blog >> bit.ly/u3xOYX #sm <= great example of sm analytics in action.

— Neville Hobson (@jangles) December8, 2011

#Hashtag and @Mention Twitter Buttons

Added to the embeddable Twitter Button collection are the new “Tweet #Hashtag” and “Tweet @Username” Buttons. Click the Tweet #NewTwitter Button below to share this post with the #NewTwitter hashtag!

Tweet #NewTwitter

The 5 Key Takeaways of the New Twitter: What it all Means

Takeaway 1: More Twitter Users, More Tweeting

• The new focus on discovery makes Twitter a stronger contender for information gathering. The activity feed also allows users to feel more connected to the people they follow by giving users a better idea of how their tweets impact others, making Twitter much more appealing to the once hesitant user.
• Embeddable tweets and new buttons will allow people to share the Twitter experience far beyond Twitter.com and social media management applications, bringing new people to the network. There could be a big boost in the current 100 million Twitter users, actual active users and daily average tweets.

Takeaway 2: Your Twitter Strategy is More Important than Ever

• More users means more discussion about brands. Brands who aren’t on Twitter now have a designated home waiting for them to arrive.
• Brands already on Twitter have to now think smarter about their approach, what content they want to spotlight in the featured tweet, and when to incorporate advertising. Twitter advertising will become more appealing, as promoted trends and promoted tweets will draw more attention to brand messages in the Discovery tab.

Takeaway 3: Focus on Multimedia Content

• Make. More. Multimedia! Because videos and images are previewed within the discovery feed and on Brand Pages, businesses need to shed extra light on creating rich media content will make tweets stand out.

Takeaway 4: #MakeUseOfTheHashtag

• Twitter is encouraging users to use hashtags to provide context to their tweets, which will in turn improve the Discover functionality. Brands should consider contributing to the larger discussion of #populartopics to create brand awareness.

Takeaway 5: Plan to Scale Social Media Efforts

• Social media listening and management tools will be vital. Brands now have Twitter Pages, Facebook Pages, Google+ Pages, LinkedIn Pages and Groups, YouTube Channels and more. The ability to listen and engage across platforms in one place is the only way to stay ahead.

From a Radian6 standpoint, our development team is always assessing how Twitter changes can be incorporated into the platform. We’ll keep you posted as updates arise.

Have you explored the new Twitter yet? How do you foresee the changes impacting your personal or professional use of Twitter?

Last week we shared our tools of the trade on sampling data for effective analysis when dealing with large data samples. Gathering the right data, and using the right tools can save you time and precious resource in the long run. To do this we’re launching a range of webinars to help you make sure that you are getting the most out of Radian6. Understand key features of the system, how to use them and in return maximize the benefits.

Whether you are undertaking social media on an ad hoc basis or monitoring and engaging daily there are several ways in which you can optimize your use of the system. Our webinars are designed to help you make the most of the investment you have made. The 30 minute sessions will assist new users, provide best practice for existing users and present the latest upgrades and development for Radian6. Our weekly webinars will cover: (more…)

This year’s Oscars have been an active topic on social networks even before the nominees were announced on February 2nd. With high-profile nominees such as Avatar and Meryl Streep up against breakout contenders such as The Hurt Locker and Gabourey Sidibe, there is no shortage of opinion and posts.

MSN.com has created a destination for fans interested in following the social media trends of the nominees. The MSN Award Buzz page features visualizations of the conversations online and predicts the winners. The application tracks public mentions across forums, blogs, news articles, Twitter, and comments for nominees in the Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress categories.

Predictions for award winners are made based on the volume and sentiment of these mentions. The predictions are then compared to expert picks from MSN sources in a graphic that visualizes both the volume and tone of the posts. You can also explore recent and relevant posts from the social web.

Created for MSN by interactive agency Deep Focus and Radian6, MSN Award Buzz launched just after the nominees were announced and has been tracking all the online Oscar-focused conversations leading up to this weekend’s show. Deep Focus created the cool application and visualization while Radian6’s platform powers the collection and analysis of social media mentions and feeds the application.

The overall buzz surrounding the Oscars has really begun to pick up with the show just a few days away. But don’t worry if you can’t catch it all—the MSN Award Buzz application will continue tracking the pulse of the online space live throughout the award’s ceremony. Check it out and see how your predictions compare with those of the experts and the public.

Less than a week ago Google launched Google Buzz. We have been tracking its adoption this past week, and we believe it has already become an important platform for brands to use to listen and engage with their constituency.

Just two days after the launch, Google reported on their blog that there were over nine million buzz updates posted from mobile devices alone – that’s a rate of 200 mobile posts per minute. In addition, Google reported, “…tens of millions of people have checked Buzz out”. The launch has not been without criticism, but Google is responding rapidly to feedback and introducing changes to address user concerns.

One of the notable characteristics of Google Buzz is the high level of engagement it inspires in users. For example, Mashable’s blog post on the Windows Phone 7 launch received more than twice the engagement on its Buzz profile as it did on the main Mashable site, garnering 64 comments on Buzz compared with the original post’s 27 comments.

While Google Buzz allows users to push content from other sources connected to their Google Profile (i.e., tweets, blog posts from Google Reader, etc.), it also allows them to generate unique updates both from the web and mobile Buzz applications. This means, in order for our customers to continue receiving a complete view of the discussions about their brands, our social media coverage needed to quickly expand to include the Google Buzz platform. We are proud to say that, as of today, Radian6 monitors Google Buzz.

Public content on Google Buzz is flowing into the Radian6 system as we speak. To avoid polluting content in the system with duplicates automatically shared from other social networks, we are indexing only original content posted on Buzz either from the mobile or web interfaces. Re-posted items from Twitter or blogs will not be indexed since our platform already captures this content from the original sources. In the Radian6 platform, Buzz updates are classified as blogs since they resemble this media type the most with their support of long-form commentary and threaded comments. And, if Google Buzz continues to grow in popularity, we may assign it a media type of its own.

We now cover approximately 4.5 million Google profiles and our system is automatically and rapidly building on this number, prioritizing the most active profiles. As Radian6 users already know, we index comments from blogs, videos, forums, pictures, and online mainstream news, and we will be looking to extend this coverage to include Buzz comments as well in the coming weeks.

The social web is growing at a rapid rate, and Radian6 is poised to keep pace with that growth and continue providing holistic views of the conversations happening around brands. It will be fascinating to see how Google Buzz evolves in the future, and we’ll be closely observing that evolution and adapting our platform to make sure the social media monitoring needs of our customers and community are met.

We’re so excited to announce that Microsoft has selected Radian6 as a social media monitoring tool supporting their Central Marketing Group. As a brand that is mentioned in 6% of all online postings per month, Microsoft has been paying close attention to user generated content for several years. Particularly to listening to and understanding buzz around their company and their products as well as engaging with customers for support, events, and product launches.

And at Radian6, we’re poised to help take them to the next level, delivering some broader and deeper listening capabilities to their core marketing and product teams.

Why Social Media?

Aaron Lilly, a Sr. Marcom Architect at Microsoft, explained that Microsoft sees immense value in the social space, because it helps the company connect more deeply with customers, prospects and enthusiasts on their terms and wherever they are online. This improved connection allows Microsoft to share the news and information on the company or products that their customers are asking for, where they are asking for it.

“Radian6 helps us discover where important conversations are happening online, so we can be part of them,” Lilly explains. “There’s a huge value in being able to have a rich, real-time dialog with customers across our diverse businesses.”

Lilly says Microsoft’s involvement in social media is both proactive and reactive. They’re proactively contributing to the dialogue about Microsoft by sharing information and providing access to the company through social channels like Facebook and Twitter. But they can also be responsive to the issues and conversations that happen around and about the company and their products, often helping to clarify a misunderstanding or offer quick and valid direction from the source.

Whether it be questions around the Bing search engine, or chatter about how Office is impacting the way people work, those discussions give Microsoft lots of opportunity to better understand how their community views their brand, products, and business, and lets them use those insights to inform future strategy.

Why Radian6?

Given the breadth and diversity of Microsoft’s businesses, and the volume of online conversations, the central marketing team needed a tool that could work alongside their existing tools and processes and that could not only handle the volume of buzz but also make sense of it all in a business context. As Microsoft builds out internal capabilities in social media through tools like Looking Glass, Radian6 provides global scale and depth capabilities today and integration opportunities for the future.

“For brands like Bing, Office or Zune, we have large inter-connected marketing and product teams,” says Lilly. “It’s really important that we’re all looking at the social conversations through the same lens. Radian6 provides both breadth of coverage and the depth to analyze and respond.”

We at Radian6 are excited about the possibilities working with the teams at Microsoft, and helping them make the most out of their social media strategies. Thanks to the Microsoft crew for bringing us on, and stay tuned as we share more about our work together in the future.

One of the characteristics that I admire most in people is initiative & proactivity – people who are always moving the yard sticks & getting things done. Be careful, however, when you ask something of @davidalston because this guy can execute faster than you can think. Seriously.

So last night we were talking about some new features we have coming out that we are quite excited about. So we say to David, “Hey, you should do something fun to drop a few hints about some features in the new Radian6 release.”

He says, “let me think about it” as he heads out the door for the evening. A couple hours later, I open my laptop to find Johnny Cache (note the spelling) singing The Social Media News!!

Does this qualify as a social media news release?

We’re more than pleased today to announce that we have recently closed our series B financing round, completed in December, of just over $6.5M.  This joins with our additional exciting news that Radian6 will also receive up to $2.9M from the Atlantic Innovation Fund which we will use to accelerate R&D in the social media monitoring, engagement and marketing space.

Momentum in the social media space is strong.  Many companies are increasingly adopting social media practices as a new medium for them to connect with customers.  They are discovering new ways to measure their efforts and to monitor their success.  And they are concluding that it’s really about the value of connections, not impressions that truly counts.

Indeed, we are seeing this wave of social media adoption continue to build in 2009 and we’re excited to continue to be a part of this momentum.