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Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, will be ringing the NASDAQ Bell Friday morning from Menlo Park, California to celebrate their IPO. Facebook’s IPO will be the biggest of any tech company in history, with an estimated valuation around $100 Billion. There have only been three other U.S. companies that have had an IPO of over $10 Billion. (AT&T, GM, and Visa) Naturally, with a company that has well over 900 million users, there will be a lot of conversation regarding their IPO. Here at Loudpixel, we decided to take a closer look at what people were saying the week prior.

Posts of note:

• Eduardo Saverin Renounces US Citizenship – New York Times
• Zuckerberg Wears Hoodie to IPO Meeting - Bloomberg News
• Facebook’s First Job, Post IPO? Fix Its Mobile App - Mashable
• Facebook’s IPO already oversubscribed - Reuters
• Pay To “Highlight” Your Facebook Status Updates – TechCrunch

Have you ever tweeted an airline or an airport with a question or concern? In this week’s Loudpixel Hangout, the team is talking about the rise of mobile customer service and the industry that could set the standard for everyone.

Articles of Note:

• How Do Airports Use Twitter?
• A Tale of Three Airlines on Twitter

I’m not an athlete or sports fanatic by any means but last week, news that someone I have always admired, Pat Summitt, would be stepping down from her position as head coach of the University of Tennessee’s women’s basketball program grabbed my attention. After first announcing in 2011 that she was diagnosed with Early Onset Dementia, Alzheimer’s type, Summitt made the decided to move into the role of “Head Coach Emeritus” in order to focus on her health. Coach Summitt’s performance in a game was as captivating as the performance of her players. She exuded strength, control, intelligence, and respect, and symbolized those attributes for players, industry pros, and fans across the country. While Summitt will continue to serve the Lady Vols in an advisory capacity, she took a big step in confronting the seriousness of her disease by relinquishing her current role. In doing so, she brought her reality to the forefront of media coverage.

In the midst of last week’s tragic celebrity news (Dick Clark died of a heart attack; Levon Helm succumbed to throat cancer), I was curious as to what kind of attention a celebrity’s public medical struggles brought to related national causes. Summitt’s story opens up questions about her diagnosis of Early Onset Dementia, Alzheimer’s type, a disease which is hard to pinpoint without the help of genetic counseling or testing. Her announcement of her resignation as head coach on April 18th did in fact cause a spike in general conversation referencing Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia. The spike carried through the 19th and tapered on the 20th (additional spikes seen in the graph on April 11th and April 22nd were generated by a tweet from @UberFacts suggesting the use of marijuana as a preventative supplement).

Perhaps the more interesting data was the spike caused by Summitt’s announcement in relation to her specific diagnosis. As inferred from the chart below, daily conversation referencing Early Onset Dementia, Alzheimer’s type, is relatively low, and while Summitt’s announcement only increased conversation about the disease for a couple of days, the story is out there and may serve to promote awareness in the future.  Any time a celebrity (particularly those who are generally regarded with high esteem) announces an illness, it reminds us that no one is exempt from life-altering health issues. The good news with stories likes Summitt’s is that often foundations and awareness campaigns emerge from personal experiences (Summitt has established the Pat Summitt Foundation Fund). For researchers who are working diligently to find cures or alleviants to rarer conditions like Early Onset Dementia, the publicity that comes from celebrity initiatives could make a significant difference in funding. Never underestimate the power of a celebrity, especially when that power can be used for good.

Data for this article was gathered using Radian6 software.

This month, Social Times published an infographic about how mobile devices have redefined media consumption. Our team got together to discuss the findings and how they might impact the future of content.

(This one ties in nicely with Lesley’s post on timing social media last week)

Using social data to target consumers is nothing new, but how do you feel about syncing your finances to your social media accounts? That’s the latest push from American Express, and they’re hoping you’ll buy into it. In our latest Hangout, the Loudpixel team discusses the pros and cons of the Link, Like, Love program from AMEX which links your social accounts and credit cards to give you targeted deals.

Articles of Note:

• Social Media ROI Arrives (Digiday.com)
• How AMEX Grows its Massive Social Media Presence (Mashable.com)

Twitter caused waves this week when it acquired Posterous. Our team got together to chat about how startups and aquasitions are changing our business and marketing culture. Should we continue to invest our time and money building content and businesses in the backyards of free tools that could go away at any time?

Articles of Note:

• Posterous is Joining the Flock at Twitter
• Should Agencies Really Be Investing In Startups?
• PepsiCo Selects 10 Startups to Pilot Digital Marketing Projects

In December, Time Magazine named The Protester its Person of the Year. This month, a new protest has surpassed Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in online conversations. You won’t find this battle being waged on Main Street or the streets of Manhattan. This protest is taking place on the information highway—and it’s proving that the virtual battleground may be just as powerful.

The Stop Online Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has created an uproar online, squeaking past OWS by 4% in social conversations during the past month. As we move closer to the Reddit blackout in opposition of SOPA, we took a look at what’s driving these conversations.

Netflix has been front-page tech news over the last few months with the announcement of pricing changes and now the spinoff of Qwikster, their new DVD/video game arm. We thought we’d take a qwick qwik quick look at the basic numbers from the latest announcement to see how it all panned out.

Over the years, countless new terms have become a part of the social media marketing language. When working with marketers and analysts, there’s a fair amount of jargon to keep up with. You don’t need to carry around a glossary, but familiarize yourself with the items below in order to better understand the vast world of social media and how it’s affecting not just your business, but online conversations as a whole.

• Hashtag: The hashtag was invented in 2007 to make it easier for group members attending particular events to find each other through search. For example, do a search for #barcamp or #sxsw, and you’ll find an instant community discussing the events. The hashtag has since been adopted by the wider Twitter community, and is often associated with jokes and pop culture references (e.g. #tgif and #nowplaying).
• Incoming Tweets: The number of incoming tweets a website or page receives is the number of times its URL has been linked within a tweet. This can be tracked through tools such as backtweets.com and convotrack.com. Blogs will often display the number of incoming tweets through tools such as the Topsy Retweet Button or Retweeters.
• Retweet: Twitter users can “retweet” or share a tweet originally published by another user. You’ll know it’s a retweet if you see the abbreviation “RT” in front of the post. Retweets are often used by social media analysts to measure trend growth and popularity.
• Like: Facebook users can now “like” content outside of Facebook and share it with their friends. Sites will often display the numbers of “likes” to particular content through plugins such as Facebook Like Button and Facebook Like .
• Feed: A feed is a data format that allows an audience to subscribe to frequently updated content (blogs, podcasts, etc.). Social media aggregators are able to retrieve online conversations and pull them into their own tools through these feeds.
• Hits: The number of hits a website receives is the measurement of the number of times a website is accessed. Hits can be broken down by time and other factors that help determine the strengths and weaknesses of a website. The number of hits is often the primary data used to gain site advertisers.
• Influencer: An influencer of online conversation for a particular brand or organization is related to the exposure of that brand or organization through popular websites, Twitter and Facebook accounts, forums or blogs. Influencers tend to be somewhat subjective, depending on the variables that a particular brand uses to measure by (unique readers, retweets, incoming links, comments, direct sales driven, etc.).
• Diggs/Up-votes: Similar to a Facebook “like,” a “digg” is a vote given to online content on the social news site, Digg.com. The more diggs, or votes, a post has, the higher it rises on the site, and the more attention it is given to the Digg audience. This community voting model has since been used on other popular sites like Reddit and Newsvine.
• Meme: A meme usually refers to online content that has suddenly gone viral (meaning its circulation has skyrocketed); memes tend to be short-lived, as they are quickly usurped by new memes .
• SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the presence of a website in search engine results (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing). SEO can be broken down into many categories, but they all involve adjusting the language, features or code of a site in order to optimize visibility.

I’m spending the week in Michigan with family, and I’m finding that my parents and friends have a difficult time understand what exactly I do for a living as an online conversation analyst (or what anyone in public relations or marketing does these days, really). Conversation monitoring and analysis is certainly a new concept to most, since this is a career path that didn’t exist just a few short years ago. Beyond that, the job can be fairly complicated to describe. It’s not as simple as saying, “I’m a doctor,” or even, “You know that show, Mad Men? Yes, it’s sort of like that.”

So here is my attempt to describe, in the simplest way possible, what it is that a conversation analyst aims to accomplish.

Conversation monitoring is like an insurance policy for brands.

The thing is, you never know when something is going to blow up online and cause an outrage among your customers or potential customers. The last thing a brand wants is to be the target of an outrage without knowing until it’s too late. As a brand manager, it’s nice to have the “insurance policy” of knowing that someone is keeping a regular eye on these trends to make sure you don’t become the next Motrin, Dominos, Pantene, Nestle or Maytag.

Conversation monitoring is the new customer service.

It’s fairly common these days for consumers to blast questions and complaints to their social connections online rather than picking up the phone or submitting the issues directly to the company. This could be anything from product quality issues or trouble locating products to complaints about discontinued or updated products.

Conversation analysis is like an open focus group.

When brands launch new products or campaigns, it doesn’t make sense for them to throw their messages out there without having a plan in place to gauge consumer responses. Online conversation analysis offers the ability to gain an immediate understanding of how consumers are reacting to the brand. This might influence anything from whether an advertisement continues to run to whether the ingredients or design of a particular product need to be reevaluated to make improvements.

Hope this makes things a bit more clear. Feel free to add your thoughts around the definition of conversation monitoring and analysis.