Maya Swedowsky
In this week’s Nielsen Online Webinar, “Consumers in Control: Social Media Strategies for Retailers and Brands,” I will be highlighting two key social media opportunities for Retailers: listening and engaging.
No one can deny just how prevalent social media has become, from Facebook to Twitter, its meteoric growth is hard to ignore*. But why is it absolutely imperative that retailers pay attention and get involved? The answer is simple, and dates back to pre-Internet days: the purchase consideration process has always been a social endeavor. Before the advent of social …

What does a “Day in the Life” of a technologically savvy mom look like?
Nielsen Online recently hosted a webinar (listen and follow along below) focused on Power Moms based on the recently launched “Power Moms Initiative” in conjunction with Nielsen Life360. The goal was to get a more intimate view of moms’ use of digital tools through groundbreaking video ethnographic research. As part of the study, a select group of women from around the country revealed how they use their “digital toolkits” to juggle careers, manage demanding family schedules, streamline …

Melissa Davies
The Pew Internet & American Life Project today released the results of its latest survey into how and when Americans use the Internet to gather health information. In The Social Life of Health Information, Pew reports that Americans are turning to an increasingly broader array of online and offline resources in their search for health information.
Highlights from the report include:

83 percent of online adults have looked on the Web for health information. (Since 2002, Pew Internet Project surveys have consistently found that 75-83 percent of Internet users look online …

Melissa Davies
The FDA announced yesterday that it is launching a Transparency Task Force, charged with “making useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision-making more readily available to the public in a timely manner and in a user-friendly format.” The task force will seek public input on how the FDA can be more transparent, including identifying “new technologies for informing the public.” To this end, there will be a public meeting on June 24, 2009, to solicit recommendations.

While online media’s “favorite child” status may have diminished somewhat over the last few months due to a new social media darling, its tremendous growth potential provides a ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak environment.

Moms control 85% of household spending, and are worth more than $2 trillion to U.S. brands. But are marketers really listening? It is time to move beyond creating messaging for moms and start listening to moms.

Charlie Buchwalter, Nielsen Online
Having been to just about every ad:tech show during the last 10 years, I have to say that the show in San Francisco this week was one of the best ever. The Moscone West venue was great, the keynotes were superb, and sat through a number of panels with top-notch panelists and moderators. And there’s nothing better than reconnecting with some of the great friends I’ve made over the years in the interactive space.
The folks at socialmedia.com hosted the ad:tech Chairman’s reception Monday night, and I gave …

Chuck Schilling
Zynga is to Facebook as Clownfish Is to Sea Anemones
Social Networking is all the craze and Online Games are the guilty pleasure of almost half (46%) of all active web users, so it was only a matter of time before someone put the two together. Zynga, only a year old, focuses specifically on adding social elements to casual online games. Just as the symbiotic relationship between clownfish and sea anemones produces mutually beneficial results, so does that between Zynga and Facebook. Although Zynga offers games on other social networks, …

By Pete Blackshaw, Nielsen
2008 was a newsworthy — albeit, topsy-turvy — year for marketers and researchers. Importantly, social media evolved from experimental sideline to a mainstream attraction. Twitter saw huge growth rates, Barack Obama rewrote the rules of digital marketing, and user-engagement, and “service is marketing” Zappos.com re-wrote new rules for building brands and rewiring e-commerce. Facebook trended upward, MySpace held steady, and reputation-broker Wikipedia continued marching to the top of Google search results.
Brands like Tide used social media to squeeze extra value out of Super Bowl ads, and Comcast (full …

Social networking sites like Facebook.com, MySpace.com, Xanga, Bebo and online video sites like YouTube head InternetSafety.com’s list of ”Top 10 Online Time Wasters.”
But where does most of this time wasting occur?  At work, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported Tuesday, citing new research by Nielsen Online.
According to Nielsen, the greatest number of Internet videos are watched on weekdays between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. — when most people are at work.