Back to the work week! Without further ado, here’s what the Social Mashup has in store for you this week: LinkedIn introduces ‘Classmates’ tool, the LA Kings debut gamification, IBM and USC join forces to analyze MLB fan sentiment, and social media on mobile devices soars.
LinkedIn Introduces Classmates Feature
LinkedIn has debuted a new feature called Classmates that allows you to connect to alumni of your colleges and universities. Once you choose a university, you can see where your classmates work, what they do and where they live. Through the feature you are able to see your connections and send them messages directly through the feature.
The new tool makes it easier to connect to old alumni. Your profile will automatically filter in the universities you currently list and populate with classmates that attended school during the same years you were there. With all of the data information collected by LinkedIn, this is just one new way they are offering you a new means to search your connections and create a deeper network around you.
L.A. Kings Introduce Gamification to Engage Fans
While gamification has become widely popular in other industries, the L.A. Kings may be the first to use it in the sports industry. The Kings are have partnered with Bunchball, a gamification company, to create “The United Kings Family.” Fans will have the chance to earn points through various social media and online activities such as watching videos, posting on the King’s website and sharing news through their social networks.
As fans accumulate points, they will earn online badges and trophies and those with the highest scores will be seen on a digital leaderboard. Earning points will also unlock certain elements and rewards like signed merchandise, personalized messages, behind-the-scenes videos, private tours and more.
Gamification allows the team to reward fans and personalize the brand. The importance of this may be seen when a team may not be playing their best. The gamification element then keeps fans intrigued and engaged by allowing them to interact and receive exclusive content and prizes.
USC Students and IBM Analyze MLB Fan Sentiment
IBM and USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab have teamed up to measure fan sentiment during the MLB World Series. Millions of tweets will be analyzed to assess social media engagement through the USC Annenberg Social Sentiment Index compiled by students with the help of IBM’s Social Analytics technology.
The students will determine “social media MVPs” with the goal to find insights through Twitter users to better understand the sentiment of both players and teams, and show how analytics can help recognize vital trends. During the National League Championship Series, the students analyzed over 1.5 million baseball-related tweets finding the overall sentiment rankings among NLCS players with any positive and negative nuances.
The studies showed that Chris Carpenter of the Cardinals had the highest number of tweets and received a 61.5% positive and 21.6% negative sentiment. David Freese, the NLCS MVP, had 768 tweets of which 89.3% was positive and 15.4% was negative, making him the winner of the most positive tweets.
The collaboration is key to strengthening students’ skills and showing that the technologies can provide valuable insights to public opinion. Director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, Professor Jonathan Taplin, said,
We’ve known for some time how important statistics are in baseball, and today they’re an even bigger part of understanding not only player performance but also the views of loyal fans. The fans understand that the highest paid player is not necessarily the MVP. The Social Sentiment Index enables our students a unique opportunity to gain valuable knowledge in the use of advanced analytics technologies and apply it to real world settings to understand how this new information can benefit a variety of industries.
Social Media Usage Through Mobile Explodes
As most of us know, social networking and smartphone usage is growing and the two combined is increasing at an even faster rate. According to new data from comScore, 72 million Americans used their mobile devices to access their social networks or blogs during August. This is a 37% boost over the same time last year.
The research suggests that almost one-third of all U.S. mobile phone users access their social networks from their device and that 40 million Americans do this nearly every day. Mark Donovan, comScore SVP for mobile, said that smartphone users are more active on their social networks via mobile, with three out of five accessing their networks each month.
Facebook has seen a 50% growth in mobile usage year-over-year to 57 million. Twitter however, has received the most substantial growth with a 75% increase in monthly mobile users to 13.4 million. LinkedIn is also growing at a steady pace with 5.5 million monthly mobile users, 69% more than last year.
The greatest change seen has been in users accessing their social networks via mobile apps, jumping 126% since the same time a year ago. Over 38 million people used a social networking or blog app in August.
While the growth of apps is increasing, the adoption rate is taking a bit longer. The most common form of accessing a social network or blog remains the browser.
