This post first appeared on Memeburn and was written by Michelle Atagana. Memeburn is an award-winning site based in South Africa that tracks emerging technologies primarily in emerging markets, including the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. SiliconFilter occasionally features relevant posts from MemeBurn.

Social media penetration is on the rise in emerging markets. A recent report from research and analysis site, eMarketer.com, looking at three studies from Pew Research Center, TNSDigitallife and Brazilian-based F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi on social media usage and how it is aiding brand awareness in emerging market territories.

Last year eMarketer estimated worldwide social network ad revenues would surpass US$8-billion by the end of 2012, allocating just under half of that figure to the United States. “Non-US revenues were expected to grow faster, as marketers attempt to increase brand awareness, market share, and profits in fast-growth countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) and beyond,” says the research and analysis site.

Social media penetration in large emerging market regions such as the BRIC territories and countries Mexico and Indonesia, currently ranges from 56% to 86% of internet users, according to Pew Research Center’s “Global Digital Communication: Texting, Social Networking Popular Worldwide”. The highest figures go to Indonesia and Russia, at 86% for each in May 2011, up from 63% and 76%, respectively in 2010 — though F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi research reveals Brazil’s internet penetration reached 93% as of August 2011.

Pew’s research further finds that in some markets, especially those with relatively low overall internet penetration, social network usage is higher than the US’s 60% of internet users. Notably in the past year, social media usage in Egypt has grown from 18% in 2010 to 28% in 2011.

A key point revealed by these studies is the way social media is being used in these regions and what it means for the emerging world. Last year’s social media revolutions may have woken the world up to the role social media can play in times of unrest, but also showed how important social media can be when it comes to consumer behaviour.

According to the TNS “Digital Life 2011″ study, social media marketing is more effective in emerging markets than more established ones. The study shows that users in “BRIC, Indonesia and Mexico were more likely to view social networks as a good place to learn about and buy brands and products than users in developed markets like Canada, the UK and the US”.

eMarketer explains the difference in growth between emerging markets and developed markets using an “experienced consumer” analogy. According to eMarketer, developed market users “are accustomed to third-party eCommerce sites and payment methods, and look to social networks mainly for keeping up with friends. In emerging markets, eCommerce is untested and new; and knowing the person or brand, even virtually, can engender more trust among users.”

The report speculates that the reason emerging market users engage more with brands on social media is due to “higher levels of trust” in these regions, which allows social networks to play a bigger role in the purchase cycle. Online shopping is still a relatively new idea in most emerging markets, being able to engage with brands on social media platforms helps build user confidence.

In the TNS report, Larry Bruck, senior vice president of global media and marketing operations at Kellogg Company, says “Digital is a business enabler, not just a marketing enabler.” Using the emerging world as example, Bruck explains that social media, not just online media, provides an opportunity to foster new business for savvy brands.

Just about nine month ago, Microsoft launched its own IE6 Countdown site to track the demise of IE6. Over the last year, the worldwide usage of IE6 has dropped 6 percentage point. It's worth noting, though, that around the world, 7.7% of all Internet users are still using this completely outdate (and insecure) browser.

The majority of these users come from China, where IE6 still has a whopping 25% market share. In virtually every other country, Microsoft's old browser now holds under 5% of the market.

Younger and Older Adults Turn to Text Messaging

There is a clear delineation between how often young adults and older users utilize their text messaging plans, though. The actual numbers for adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are actually quite staggering: they reportedly send 3,200 text per month on average and clearly skew the average number in this study. Virtually all the younger users (95%) in this survey use text messaging on their phones.

It’s not just the younger adults who use SMS. Even those over 35 still send close to 26 messages a day on average (here, too, the most active users are skewing the numbers – the median is 10) and even those over 65 still send 4.7 SMS messages per day (median of 2).

It’s worth noting, though, that these numbers are self-reported (do you know exactly how many messages you sent last month?). Overall, self-reported data is often somewhat unreliable, so I would take this data with a grain of salt. What’s clear, though, is that texting is about as mainstream as it gets today, but it’s definitely not growing as rapidly as it was just a year ago.

This guest post was written by Kyle Brady.  Kyle is a young political scientist and writer interested in everything from domestic politics to foreign policy to political theory, currently living in San Jose, CA. He blogs at kyle-brady.com, contributes to assorted publications, and is writing a book on the modern political scene in America. Socially, Kyle can be found on Twitter, on Google+, on Facebook, and via email.

The (Technological) Dark Ages of Political Discourse

In previous ages, even as recent as the turn of the Millennium, the job of politicians was considerably easier: what blogs and social media services existed were all but irrelevant, cellphones were still primitive and uncommon, and email was just beginning its rise to mainstream popularity.  During this period, politicians of any level, local, state, or federal, had limited ways to interact with their constituents: in-person meetings, letters, and phone calls.  The result of this was a restricted style of communication, isolating the politicians from having frequent bidirectional conversations with their constituents and preventing the general public from having their voice properly heard.

What happened during these eras when only professional journalists could hold politicians accountable, interest groups had a nearly uncontested voice, and the average citizens could write all the letters or make all the phone calls they liked, to no avail?  Only the largest controversies ousted politicians from power, and even that did not always happen consistently.  Without groups lobbying in the actual best interests of the public, Big Business (and all other groups with the “Big” moniker) was favored both in policy and practice. Voters were considered informed if they even knew of the candidates they were choosing to elect, much less what the politicians stood for.

These were the first two-hundred and twenty-four years of the United States.

Modern Technology Arrives in Politics

While the last few years of President Clinton’s Administration saw the beginning of greater public accountability and increased expectations for constituent interaction, the modern era of technology-influenced politics didn’t truly emerge until George W. Bush took Office.  During President W. Bush’s Administration, blogs came to have a larger voice and greater power, email emerged from its slow birth, and online social tools began to receive notice, as primitive as they were.  By the end of 2008, Facebook and Twitter were key portions of the election cycle, and were making their way into the halls of government, while blogs and online publications were taken much more seriously as a vehicle for opinion generation and constituent communication.

Today, halfway through 2011, politics has evolved even further.  Politicians not only communicate via broadcast media and through speeches and press releases, but also bi-/multidirectionally through social media services, websites, email, and interviews for all sorts of media organizations.  Citizens can now reach their local Congressman or Senator through any number of ways, and may even receive a response.

Not Without Consequences

This hasn’t happened, however, without negative effects.  As a direct result of greater accountability, greater access to information on issues and voting records, and greater communication platforms, politicians are constantly working toward their re-election, ever pandering to their voter base.  This is easily demonstrated by the striking political stances taken only for election posturing, the constant manipulation of consequence and blame, and the general degradation of political discourse.

Even more intriguing, the same forums that have helped politicians better interact with their constituents have also proven to be a significant source of problems.  Numerous politicians have resigned as a result of their online behaviors – an even more have been forced into positions of embarrassed apology.  Whether the offense is an inappropriate remark to their staff, untoward conduct, or simply inexplicable awkwardness, the stark reality is that politicians are finding it harder than ever for their private lives to remain private – and to hide those things they would rather the world never discover.

Exploitation and Fear

Social media and technology have brought about this change, not any other aspect of Western life.  Just as the printing press was a medium for politicians and royalty to both simultaneously fear and exploit for its ability to advance and affect the realms of politics and political discourse, social media is cultivating the same mixed emotions within the hearts of modern politicians.  The difference today, however, is that the general public has access to social media, email, and the Internet, but not everyone was previously able to publish newspapers, manifestos, or pamphlets.

In Part II of this series, the effects of a larger, more powerful constituent voice will be examined.

What is Spotify?

Spotify is a streaming music service that offers on-demand music streaming. Unlike customizable Internet radio services like Pandora, Spotify allows you to pick and choose exactly what songs you want to listen to. Spotify offers a catalog of over 15 million songs.

There are currently a number of similar services in the U.S., including Rdio, MOG and Rhapsody. What makes Spotify stand out is that it also offers a free, ad-supported version, while most of its competitors only offer short trials before users have to pay.

How Can I Get it?

Spotify is now open for business, but you either need to be deemed an “influencer” to get a free accounts or get a paid account (more details about those below). To see if you qualify for an invite, head over to Klout to see if you qualify.Klout is giving away about 100,000 free accounts this way. Just enter your Twitter or Facebook credentials and Klout will let you know if you qualify.

If you are willing to pay, you can skip the line and get an account at any time. If you want to wait for a free account but didn’t qualify for the Klout promotion, just give Spotify your email address and they will let you know when a space in the U.S. beta opens up.

What’s so Great About it?

A couple of things make Spotify stand out from its competition – besides the free tier. First of all, Spotify features a strong social component. Users can share playlists with friends or subscribe to other users’ public playlists (and see updates to these in real time). MOG offers a similar feature, but it’s severely limited in comparison with Spotify’s implementation. Spotify also integrates with Facebook and lets you discover what your friends are listening to on the service.

Spotify also offers great native clients for both Windows and OS X, as well as mobile clients for virtually all the major platforms, including iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian and the Palm Pre series.

Spotify uses a peer-to-peer architecture similar to Skype that uses a little bit of space on its users’ computers to cache popular songs and a little bit of every user’s bandwidth to serve these songs to nearby users. Thanks to this, songs play immediately, just like you would expect from your local iTunes library.

Talking about iTunes, Spotify also gives you access to your iTunes library right from its own app, meaning you don’t have to switch back and forth between the two.

Brilliant, But What Does it Cost?

Spotify offers a three-tier pricing structure:

Free: the free version will be limited to 20 hours of use for the first six months after a user signs up. After that, the limit will become 10 hours per month. No song can be listened to more than 5 times.

$5/month (Unlimited): the basic paid plan gives users unlimited, ad-free access to Spotify’s full library on the desktop.

$10/month (Premium): this plan includes full desktop access, as well as mobile access (which includes offline caching on the mobile device) and access to higher quality audio streams at 320 kbps (all songs are encoded in the Ogg Vorbis format). One important perk of this plan is also that you can use the service abroad for more than 14 days. In Europe, Spotify also often allows its premium users to get early access to some albums before they become available to other users.

The Washington Post’s efforts are a bit limited, though, as there are only 100 spots available for volunteers. The New York Times’ efforts, on the other hand, are open to anyone who would like to participate. Those who find interesting documents will receive credit from the respective organization.

MSNBC is teaming up with Mother Jones magazine and the non-profit investigative reporting organization ProPublica to cover the release, but has no plans to crowdsource these efforts.

Palin is obviously one of the more divisive figures in American politics today, so the release of these documents will likely spark a lot of discussion. Those in favor of Palin will probably argue that these crowdsourced efforts are just another attempt by the “lamestream media” to discredit her.

According to the State Department’s statement, the results were invalidated because “a computer programming error resulted in a selection that was not truly random. Since the computer programming error caused an outcome that was not random, the outcome did not meet the requirements of the law, and would have been unfair to many DV entrants.” The State Department does not think that foul play was the reason for this error.

The State Department will repeat this year’s lottery (hopefully with the help of an algorithm that is more random) and will post the new results around July 15, 2011. No new entries will be accepted for this new lottery and all the previous entries will be eligible for the new drawing.

It’s hard to overstate the impact this error will have on the individuals who thought they were getting Green Cards and were likely already making preparations to immigrate into the U.S. Every year, millions of people enter into the Diversity Lottery and given that only 50,000 Green Cards are made available every year, the chance of winning is slim (there are also quotas that make it harder for prospective immigrants from some countries to win).

WhatWePayFor gives U.S. taxpayers an overview of where their tax money goes. While the site is packed with great information, it’s not exactly easy to read. Google and Eyebeam are looking for static and interactive visualizations that make this data easier to understand. The data is available through an API and the jury will award $5,000 to the winner on April 18, the day taxes are due in the United States.

With regards to visualizations, just a few days ago, Google also announced that its Public Data Explorer, which until now only worked with a pre-set array of data, now allows users to import their own data sets to visualize them. While not directly related to this contest, it’s clear that Google has a long-term interest in making it easier for individuals and organizations to create better data visualizations.

The record labels are apparently scared off by Spotify’s freemium model and don’t want potential record buyers to think that music should always be free. Indeed, the industry has worked hard over the last few years (in between suing those who downloaded illegal MP3s) to wean people off the idea that all music should be available for free.

Officially, of course, Spotify still argues that its working hard to launch in the U.S. and looking for additional funding to finance this venture, but if the Telegraph’s source is right, then there is considerable doubt whether this launch will ever happen or whether Spotify will just remain an European company and cede the U.S. market to the likes of Rdio (itself founded by Europeans), MOG and similar startups.

(via: The Next Web)

Infographic byWordStream Internet Marketing