Mediaboss Marketing

Jeff Lu Crunch Network Contributor

Jeff Lu is a vice president at Battery Ventures.

More posts by this contributor:

Deepak Ravichandran Crunch Network Contributor

Deepak Ravichandran is an associate at Battery Ventures.

More posts by this contributor:

Social networks may be the most valuable and durable types of businesses powered by network effects, the phenomenon of products or services becoming more powerful the more people use them. The social-networking companies in our recently launched Network Effect Index a group of current and formerly public consumer-Web companies valued at $1 billion or more outperformed the S&P by over 170 percentin the last five years, the most of any business category in the index.

This is one reason the imminent IPO of social/mobile app Snap, which thrives on network effects, is being so closely watched. Another is that Snap the parent of the ragingly popular Snapchat service, and a company expected to be valued at roughly $20 billion at its offering represents the first credible threat to the Facebook social-networking colossus. Interestingly, Snap has grown by following a path very different than Facebooks so much so that we believe Snap ultimately could be valued less like a traditional social network and more like a hardware-software company, like Apple, or a media business, like Comcast.

Still, whether Snap can continue to draw users away from Facebook and also compete with Facebook-owned Instagram, which just launched a photo and video story feature similar to Snaps, will be a key story line to watch.

Snap has seen blistering growth since its launch in 2011, racking up more than 160 million users. The chart on the left, below, shows quarterly growth in Snapchats daily active users (DAUs) over the last two-and-a-half years. Next to it, however, is another graphic showing how the launch of Instagrams Stories feature in the summer of 2016 appeared to slow down the number of Snapchats net, new daily active users.

So how did Snapchat take off so quickly, and chart such a different course than Facebook? Three main ways

Facebook (along with its Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger businesses) acts as the social system of record for your life. It stores your photos, keeps track of your relationships and the places you visit, monitors which products you like and your views on the latest news and so on. While this has created some value for consumers (and advertisers), theres also been an unintended consequence: If youre on Facebook, your life is now permanent for the world to search. Just ask recent college graduates looking for a job, or criminal suspects whose Facebook profiles are quickly ransacked by journalists.

This focus on permanence opened up an opportunity for a more whimsical, fun service (Snap) to promise not to document anything about you online. Through Snap, users take photos or videos with their phones and then send the Snaps to another user and the Snaps disappear in one to 10 seconds. Not surprisingly, 60 percent of Snaps users are 13-24 years old.

Having content disappear lowered the barriers to create content, which increased the amount of content for users to view on Snap. This drove engagement, and further accelerated the content-creation flywheel. Whats more, the fleeting nature of the service appealed to one of our basic emotions: the fear of missing out. FOMO drove people to check their Snaps at incredibly high rates, as nobody wanted to be the one to miss out on something cool.

It is interesting to note that while the ephemeral nature of Snaps service drove it early on, the company found that disappearing photos and videos had their limits. The company last year launched Memories, a personalized and permanent album of favorite Snaps and Stories to bridge this gap and create stronger network effects and stickiness among its users. It will be up to Snap to navigate this ephemeral/permanent balance.

Snap, by its nature, is extremely authentic. It encourages users to take photos and videos in-the-moment and post them without filters. The camera is the app, and capturing moments and sharing them quickly not taking 10 different shots to find the most flattering pose is the core action. Friends and family can see the real you without worry about judgement or consequence.

Will Kim Kardashian and DJ Khaled be the stars of tomorrow? They seem to have discovered the major to success on Snap.

Facebook and Instagram, by contrast, sometimes lack authenticity. The perfectly posed photos and airbrushed visages of celebrities can look contrived and fake. Even Instagram, which is very popular among millennials, acts more as a biography of your life, a permanent public record with decreasing authenticity.

On Snap, meanwhile especially after the launch of Stories new celebrities such as reality-TV star Kim Kardashian and DJ Khaled, a rapper and record producer, have recently gained mass followings. DJ Khaled uses Snap to communicate with his more than six million followers on topics ranging from leadership to oral hygiene to party planning all with no production costs. Fans love being able to peer into the real, unfiltered lives of these celebrities, and stars build stronger relationships with their fans.

The other reason for Snaps success is its singular focus on mobile video, an emerging content category that is drawing more and more viewers. Mobile video represented close to 50 percent of all online video views in 2015, up from less than 5 percent in 2011, according to the Ooyala Global Video Index. More users watched college football and the MTV VMAs on Snap than watched those events on TV.

Facebook, on the other hand, was founded years before Snap as a service based on text and photos. The mass adoption of mobile phones obviously disrupted Facebooks traditional desktop interface. While Facebook eventually re-architected its core News Feed experience for the mobile world, Snap reimagined the use case of teens who grew up on mobile phones, and how they would use phones/cameras to document their lives. This, combined with the ever-low cost of mobile data, made mobile videos cheaper and easier for everyone to share; mobile video has almost become the default content type on social media.

For Snap, this strategy proved fruitful. Combined with the launch of Stories in 2013, network effects took over and propelled video views to rival that of Facebook (see chart above). Basically, Snap was hosting around 10 billion daily video views early last year, compared to eight billion for Facebook, despite a user base one-eighth the size of Facebooks.

Snap needs to out-innovate its competitors to stay cool and relevant after its offering. In keeping with its Los Angeles roots, Snap is currently the sizzling nightclub on the social-media circuit. The problem with hot nightclubs, though, is that they eventually fade in popularity.

Put another way, Snap needs to make sure its users parents dont get on the app which is what happened as Facebook matured and younger users shifted to services like Instagram. A full 30 percent of Snap usersspecifically cited their parents not being on the service as a reason to use the app over others.

Snaps Spectacles rival the fashion houses of Prada and Gucci in design and fashion. Famous designer Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel and Fendi shot this picture.

The other major innovation lever Snap could pull involves interaction with the real world and artificial reality. As users continue to pull out their phones, Snap can create experiences to interact with physical and virtual places and items. The trendy Pokmon GO game proved there is excitement around bridging the digital and physical worlds through mobile phones, the key medium for Snap users. Snap has already begun this work with its augmented reality Lenses feature, which lets users create whimsical faces based on existing videos.

One final new area of growth for Snap is a possible content marketplace and distribution channel. Already companies like Tastemade, ESPN, E!, CNN and others are distributing high-quality, mobile-first media through Snap. With the average user spending 20 hours a month in Snap, its not a stretch to see more millennials unbundling their cable services to consume more content on Snap, and spending less time with Comcast or Netflix.

Snap is one social network that definitely continues to innovate ephemerally, authentically one Snap at a time.

Read the original here:
Snap: Rewriting 'Art of War' for social networking by not documenting anything - TechCrunch

Washington Times

Parents need to get a grip on social networking - Washington Times Washington Times A chicken in every pot. A television in every home. A cellphone and computer in every child's hands. Parents, dear parents, please get a grip on social ... and more »

Read more from the original source:
Parents need to get a grip on social networking - Washington Times - Washington Times

The Supreme Court weighed a North Carolina law banning sex offenders from using social media. Matt Hoffman reports. Buzz60

The Supreme Court cast doubt Monday on a North Carolina law that bans sex offenders from social media websites.(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

WASHINGTON The Supreme Court argued Monday that social networking websites have become such an important source of information, including President Trump's daily tweets, that evensex offenders should not be barred from social media.

Displaying their familiarity during oral arguments with such platforms as Facebook, Snapchat and LinkedIn, several justices said a North Carolina law that makes it a felony for sex offenders to access them appeared to violate the First Amendment.

It didn't help state officials that their case focused on Lester Packingham, whose sex crime in 2002 resulted only in two years of supervised probation, but who was arrested eight years later for celebrating the dismissal of a parking ticket with a Facebook post that began "Man God is Good!"

That appeared to go too far for at least five of the court's eight justices, who noted that social networking sites have become a major part of "the marketplace of ideas," in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's words.

"Increasingly, this is the way people get ... all information," Justice Elena Kagan said. "This is the way people structure their civic community life."

Although North Carolina's law goes further than most states, a victory for Packingham would represent a ringing defense of free speech rights for some of the nation's most reviledcitizens the estimated 850,000 registered sex offenders.

The state's senior deputy attorney general, Robert Montgomery, likened the law to a 1992 Supreme Court decision that forbids politicking within 100 feetof a polling place. He noted that social networking sites are used to gaininformation in more than 80% of online sex crimes against children.

"These are some of the worst criminals, who have abused children and others," he said.

Thirteen states defended the North Carolina law in legal papers as a weapon against the illicit use of social networking sites, which they said areused in one-third of Internet-related sex crimes resulting in arrest.

"There's a concern here for the safety of children," Ginsburg acknowledged, as some of her colleagues notably Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer searched for a more limited way in which states could protect victims without infringing on basic free speech rights.

But they found it difficult to defend North Carolina's law, passed in 2008 as a way to add "virtual" neighborhoods to the physical locations such as schools and playgrounds from which sex offenders are barred.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites offer a range of services beyond social networking. Kagan said they are an important channel for political information and conversation, including the president's proclivity for tweeting newsworthy musings.

Asthe youngest member of the court and one who spent time as dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan, 56, demonstrated the most intimate knowledge of social media -- at one point noting that the law's exceptions for chat rooms and photo-sharing sites created "a constitutional right to use Snapchat but not to use Twitter."

Only Justice Samuel Alito mounted much of a defense of the law, suggesting that it could be limited to core social networking sites rather than The New York Times or Betty Crocker. "There are still alternative channels," he said.

But David Goldberg of Stanford Law School's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, who represented Packingham, said Twitter hosts about 500 million tweets a day, and Snapchat hosts 10 billion videos -- statistics that are not replicable elsewhere.

Alito acknowledged the addiction of many users. "There are people who think that life is not possible without Twitter andFacebook," he said.

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2lNgr4Z

Read more here:
Supreme Court justices defend social media, even for sex offenders - USA TODAY

Posters and Social networking sites used to malign Hizb's image' Brighter Kashmir While distancing itself from the threatening posters and strike related information shared on social media networking sites attributed to the organization, militant outfit Hizbul Mujhadeen Monday asked people and Hurriyat leadership to help it ...

Read the original post:
Posters and Social networking sites used to malign Hizb's image' - Brighter Kashmir

A 2008 North Carolina law bans sex offenders from using commercial social networking sites like Facebook that children could join. The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether the law is so broad it violates the Constitutions free-speech protections. ( JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP/GETTY IMAGES )

By Emery P. DalesioAssociated Press

Sun., Feb. 26, 2017

RALEIGH, N.C.Fresh from a trip to traffic court, Lester Packingham Jr. celebrated his turn of good fortune by announcing to friends on Facebook that his pending ticket was dismissed without his having said a word.

No fine. No Court costs. No nothing. Praise be to God. Wow. Thanks, Jesus, Packingham wrote in a 2010 post that led to a lawsuit being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

Packingham, 36, was forbidden by a 2008 North Carolina law from using commercial social networking sites like Facebook that children could join. Thats because hes a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent liberties with a minor when he was 21. He served 10 months in prison.

A Durham police officer investigated Packinghams post and determined he used an alias rather than his real name. Packingham was prosecuted, convicted of a felony and received a suspended prison sentence. His lawyers say no evidence pointed to Packingham using Facebook or his computer to communicate with minors or that he posted anything inappropriate or obscene.

Now the Supreme Courts task is deciding whether the law, meant to prevent communications between sex offenders and minors via social media, is so broad that it violates the Constitutions free-speech protections.

The case reaches the Supreme Court after it was upheld by North Carolinas highest court in a divided ruling. The law addressed websites that might allow sex offenders to gather information about minors, the state court said. But dissenting justices argued the ban extends further and could outlaw reading the New York Times and Food Network website.

Lawyers arguing on Monday are expected to continue that dispute.

Groups including the libertarian Cato Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union argue the North Carolina law could bar sex offenders from online life that includes looking for jobs or reading the daily musings of President Donald Trump and is unconstitutional.

Everyday Americans understand that social media, which includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, are absolutely central to their daily life and how the First Amendment is exercised in America today, said Stanford law professor David Goldberg, who will represent Packingham at the Supreme Court on Monday.

Though the intent of North Carolina lawmakers may have been to block sexual predators from finding and grooming prey online, Goldberg said, the law goes further and makes it a crime for someone on a sex-offender registry to say anything about any subject on social media.

That goes way, way too far, Goldberg said. Its a crime to do anything, including what Mr. Packingham did, which was to say God is good because he was victorious in traffic court. Theres never been any suggestion that he was up to anything but exercising his freedom of speech.

Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana also have laws restricting sex offenders use of use of social media sites. Nine other states require offenders to disclose their online usernames and profiles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

We have to protect young people wherever they are, whether thats at school or at summer camp or increasingly online, said North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, whose office is defending the law. This North Carolina law keeps registered sex offenders off of social networking websites that kids use without denying the offenders access to the Internet. It just keeps them off of certain websites.

The laws supporters contend that it doesnt regulate what sex offenders say, just the time, place and manner of their speech, which most people understand through the legal maxim that you cant yell fire in a crowded movie theatre. The law doesnt ban offenders from using the Internet entirely, just social media sites like Facebook, said Louisiana Deputy Solicitor General Colin Clark, who wrote a brief supporting the law joined by attorneys general in 12 other states.

Theres nothing that a sex offender cant say on the internet. They just cant say it on Facebook, Clark said. His state, Nebraska and Indiana have had laws that federal courts ruled violated the free-speech rights of sex offenders. Louisiana amended its statute to comply with the court decision.

The vast majority of the more than 800,000 sex offenders nationwide are required to register their names, addresses and photographs on registries maintained by states, Clark said.

States are trying to come up with a practical solution to the practical problem of sex offenders being on social media and harvesting information about our children and then soliciting them online, he said.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

Here is the original post:
US Supreme Court weighs law barring sex offenders from Facebook - Toronto Star