Best of YouTube 2012

My last post of 2012. Another year has gone so quickly! This below is the review of what happened on YouTube in 2012.

A few stats:

• 4 billion views per day (growing 1 billion views each year)
• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

Over the period of time YouTube certainly has become the most prodigious online video library. It’s not only famous among PC and laptop users, mobile and tablet users have also started embracing and admiring it.

• Traffic from mobile devices tripled in 2011
• More than 20% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices
• 3 hours of video is uploaded per minute to YouTube from mobile devices
• YouTube is available on 350 million devices

Check the video, it’s worth it as it looks to me they invested quite a lot of money in making this: the YouTube 2012 Rewind Style

And this is the behind the scenes J

Thank you everyone and I wish you all an amazing 2103!

The ultimate guide to restaurants on Facebook in Oman

Here is a list, a long one, of restaurants, cafes, fast food outlets and even people who enjoy cooking from home. Whatever type of food you fancy, whether pizza, curry, ice-cream or a cupcake, you’ll find it below. Some pages are really well managed and very engaging, while others not so much. I've taken into consideration those pages, in English, which have been updated in the past six months. As usual, if I missed, very likely, any let me know.

Not surprisingly most big international brands top the list but it is good to see how local companies and entrepreneurs managed to build a name, reputation and a brand online. The combined number of fans is 108,944; that’s 25% of the entire Facebook population in Oman. It shows how much we like food here J.

Lastly, if you want to know more details (reviews, prices, service, etc.) about some places mentioned below I strongly suggest paying a visit to the super blog Omani Cuisine.

UPDATE: 
I was told i missed a page, it is called Lubna's Cake (276 fans) and Caramel Oman French Bakery and Pastry Muscat (1470 fans); on both pages you'll find lots of yummy things!

Facebook’s Midnight Delivery

Want to wish your Facebook friends a happy new year without having to get on your phone or computer? Facebook just launched an automated service that will let you write your New Year's greetings now, and they'll be sent automatically when 2013 arrives in your friends' time zones.

Midnight Delivery suggests friends you might want to send New Year's greetings to; could be friends you often interact with or others you haven’t spoken in years, if at all. Simply go to the Facebook Stories page and select the people you want to send the message to. Only 10 people at one time can be chosen and you also have the option of sending photos along with your message.

I can see the advantages (you can set it up in advance or your friends will receive it at midnight no matter in what part of the world they live) but I find it as lazy and impersonal as sending a mass SMS.

Heineken’s global social media challenge

Nice initiative by Heineken, and Tribal DDB Amsterdam, around the streets of Amsterdam and through Facebook in order to connect with their local and global audiences.

The social media challenge 'Meet the World in One City', done by Barnaby and Mick, aimed at meeting people from 194 different nationalities on the Streets of Amsterdam in just 14 days. People were also able to contact the pair through a dedicated website to help them achieve their challenge.

Love the idea; a great example of how to present a company, Heineken in this case, as a global brand. See the video and find the answer on Heineken’s Facebook page.

Instagram updating policy after photo backlash

Instagram's new terms of service and privacy policy has triggered a backlash among social media users. The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, comes three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the popular photo-sharing site. Unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out.

Many Hollywood celebrities are outraged, one user tweeted: "Good bye #instagram. Your new terms of service are totally stupid and nonsense. Good luck playing with the big boys", while New York-based photographer Clayton Cubbit wrote on his account that the new policy was "Instagram's suicide note".

Instagram immediately responded to the confusion over new terms and policies apologising for the unclear message and promising updates and clarifications. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom pointed out that:

- Instagram doesn't plan to sell user photos. He said the company is working on updated language to make that perfectly clear.

- He said language that indicated your photos could be used in advertisements will be removed from the terms completely.

"Our main goal is to avoid things likes advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience, Systrom wrote. “Instead, we want to create meaningful ways to help you discover new and interesting accounts and content while building a self-sustaining business at the same time.”

It seems we’re safe for now J.

Top social media moments 2012

Social media platforms, this year more than ever, encouraged individuals to include their personal opinions and participation in the news. Here follow the top stories; many great moments and, sadly, some very horrific ones.

February 11, 2012 - Whitney Houston's accidental drowning death was Google's top search trend, generated more than 10 million tweets and was the third-biggest event on Facebook in 2012.

February 2012 - Pinterest became the third most popular social network on the web, behind Facebook and Twitter and was the fastest ever to reach 10 million users.

March 5, 2012 - Kony 2012 video went viral. The 30 minute video called for peace and ultimately became a phenomenon.  It was shared rapidly and viewed more than 100 million times in just 6 days, making it, at that time, the most viral video ever.

April 2012 - Facebook Bought Instagram. The largest social network shelled out a whopping $1 billion to acquire the photo sharing application. We’re still waiting to find out the reasons behind such price and move.

May 18, Facebook Went Public. The highly anticipated Facebook IPO was all anyone could talk about. In the first few hours, the biggest IPO in Internet history encountered a series of problems, with tens of millions of dollars in trades being wrongly placed.

July 15, 2012 - Gangnam Style. Who doesn’t know Gangnam style? As of today the video has been viewed over 966 million times on YouTube, and is the site's most watched video after surpassing Justin Bieber's single "Baby".

August 2012 - London 2012 Summer Olympics. Twitter, Facebook and other social networks have been a central part of many breaking stories during these Games and this alone may define the 2012's claim to being the first truly social media Olympics.

September 24, 2012 - Kate Middleton’s nude photos sparked social media agitation with over a million searches on Google as well as Facebook shares, Tweet, re-tweets, etc.

October 2, 2012 - NASA’s Curiosity made the 1^st Foursquare Check-in on another planet. NASA has been very active online since the early days of social media. Mars Rover broke many records, one in particular, marking the first Foursquare check-in ever on another planet.

October 4, 2012 - Facebook Hit 1 Billion Users. Great achievement by Facebook. This means one in seven people on Earth are on Facebook. It means that more than the combined total populations of the US, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan, or more than the entire world population in the year 1800, is on Facebook.

October 2012 - Hurricane Sandy became a social media superstorm. American east coast residents living through the storm used social media for various reasons: to inform friends and families, to grieve their losses, to share photographs of the damage (the most instagrammed event to date), and to obtain information pertinent to their neighborhoods.

November 6, 2012 - The U.S. election reached far beyond the American borders to be the most talked-about event on social media this year. President Obama marked his win via Twitter. Within hours, this photo on Tweeter became the most retweeted of 2012 with 810,000+ Retweets and 300,000+ Favorites.

December 14, 2012 - Social media is boiling with talk about the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. The tragedy is drawing many new voices to social media debates where the common themes are gun control and school security. This should be a wakeup call for many.

Facebook Gifts: the answer to your holiday gift dilemma?

Article written by *Stanna Johnson - Facebook users and marketers are more than used to the site making random updates about every three months or so. Some of them are great updates, benefiting everyone, and some of them are just thorns in the side of people who have just finished adjusted to the previous rollouts. So, where does Facebook Gifts rank here?

Gifts, one of Facebook’s newest features, allows residents of the United States to browse through different items to purchase for other Facebook users. The Facebook ads reminding you to purchase someone a gift may seem like an annoyance to many users, but during the holiday season, you can benefit greatly by using this feature. For marketers, you can actually benefit by using Gifts year round.

How Facebook Gifts Can Help You During the Holidays

Having your products listed as a Facebook Gift is not a super-easy process at the moment, but since this is a new feature it will most likely become a lot smoother in the near future. However, it’s worth looking into and it should vastly increase exposure for a retailer once set up.

Quick Shopping for Friends and Family

For a regular user—or even a marketer looking to be a regular shopper—Facebook Gifts provides you with an opportunity to pick up a great gift for the people you care about without having to browse around the entire Internet for ideas. It’s like Amazon melded with Facebook to create Gifts, and you can easily take care of your shopping needs while on-site.

Extremely Easy to Use

Although Gifts is only available to a US audience at the moment, that still hasn’t stopped it from becoming very popular. The reasons for the popularity: Everything’s contained in a streamlined interface. You don’t have to put any real effort into shopping. Facebook handles practically everything. Granted, you may be paying a few dollars more when compared to other sites, but since Facebook steps in and ensures the gifts are sent to other users, it’s too convenient not to appreciate.

Friends Trust Friends

Marketing to people can be taxing on you as a businessperson. Even when you use great apps like Qwaya, the customizable features available on Facebook, and other methods and apps to make things easier, it’s still hard work to create customers.

What you always want to do is to create content, whatever type it may be, that strengthens your brand and is something people like, comment on and share. In doing so, real people will do some of the marketing for you and spread the message to their network of friends.

Facebook Gifts can be a part of this strategy. If someone purchases a gift through you, this shows that you’re a real business that offers real products people want to buy. And to be honest, that’s not always the message you get from Facebook advertising. This will definitely earn you some loyalty points.

Facebook Reminders

If you are planning on doing some holiday shopping, some birthday or anniversary shopping, or if you’re planning on rewarding your loyal customers, Facebook won’t let an opportunity go to waste. You’ll receive a reminder about an upcoming birthday or holiday. You’ll be prompted to buy a gift. So if you are looking to use this innovative feature, the feature actually comes to you. You won’t have to remember everyone’s birthdays.

Not every marketer using Facebook has the money to spend on gifts for people. It is quite an investment. But whether you’re purchasing gifts for the people you care about or just looking to reward loyalty, Gifts is an investment that might be worth making.

Article was written by Stanna Johnson from Qwaya. Stan is an online writer and a social media enthusiast who loves to write about the latest social media trends. Feel free to leave your questions and comments below and she'll surely answer it.

Star Wars uses the force in one of the greatest flash mobs ever!

When you want to do something do it properly, with a big bang! That’s what the German Symphony Orchestra recently did in Cologne. This is a great flash mob, one of my favorites.

The surprise gig began with a conductor and a trumpet player setting up in the middle of a busy square...I’ll let you watch the rest as it needs no explanation.

And these are two other really cool flash mobs: ‘insanely awesome marketing drama’ and ‘ninja’.

A new blog in Oman – Freezing Omanis

There’s a brand new blog by two crazy brave Omani guys who in February will be going to the Antarctica as part of the 2041 Antarctic Youth Ambassador Programme.

Bader Al Lawati and Ameer AbdulHussain will be going for this once-in-a-lifetime trip with the objective to learn first and then educate others about how climate change will negatively affect Oman.

Bader and Ameer, from the 28^th of February through the 13^th of March 2013, will face the toughest challenge in the highest, driest, coldest and windiest continent on earth, Antarctica. Good luck to them and keep us all posted :)

Check out FreezingOmanis.

Where are the banks?

Guest post by *Ahmad Abbasi - So where are Oman's banks? No, not where as in city, town, street. But where as in social media presence, on Facebook or Twitter. Answer? Bar one bank, nowhere, which means almost all are missing a trick or two as far as interacting with potential customers is concerned.

The one Omani bank which seems to understand and appreciate the social media potential is Bank Muscat. According to Social Watchlist, a website which monitors official Facebook pages from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Bank Muscat is sixth in the league table of top Facebook pages from Oman. HSBC Oman is nowhere to be seen.  National Bank of Oman is nowhere to be seen. And the rest, the same, nowhere to be seen. Why? Supposing for a moment a snippet like “business current accounts available from HSBC” appeared somewhere on HSBC Oman's Facebook page. Would it get a reaction?

Maybe it would. Or maybe not. Depends on a number of factors. What is certain is if there is no page in the first place then reaction is going to be zero. Common sense. If there is a page and it's simply used as an advertising extension, you know, click here to find out more about international banking or business banking or financial management, the reaction is going to be zero, too. A Facebook page has to be clever, engaging, entertaining, and subtle. It has to give the target audience a reason to go online regularly to check out the page.

In other words, engagement is the name of the game. Social Watchlist says Bank Muscat is “ranked #615 amongst Facebook pages in the Middle East & North Africa, with 34,364 likes. This is a -0.15% growth from the previous week and -0.53% from four weeks prior. The page engaged 0.72% of its audience, with 249 people talking about the page. This summary is based on data from December 01, 2012.”

Ranked 615 across the MENA region as a whole but sixth in Oman, the stats appear good but are not stunning. Could do better is a fair summation. Now compare this with Oman Air, the top page in Oman. Social Watchlist says, “Oman Air is ranked #307 amongst Facebook pages in the Middle East & North Africa, with 116,106 likes. This is a 19.84% growth from the previous week, and 62.08% from four weeks prior. The page engaged 39.65% of its audience, with 46,038 people talking about the page. This summary is based on data from December 01, 2012.”

Huge difference in likes and engagement. Supposing HSBC had a page which had 46,000 Facebook users talking about it. What would that do for business if only a fraction turned talking into concrete action?

Oman's population is just over 2.8 million. And over 1.7 million people in Oman use the Internet, according to the latest available figures. More than half a million use Facebook. Social media represents huge opportunities not only for banks and airlines, but for all kinds of companies. But there has to be the understanding and the will to make it all happen.

Click here to check out Social Watchlist.

*Ahmad Abbasi is a Doha-based freelance financial expert who has written for a number of popular Qatari and Omani websites.

Facebok at its best...by Turkish Airlines

I saw this on earlier on and I want to share it as it is a great example of how to promptly react to a complaint and win a customer's heart.

A Turkish Airlines passenger complained through Twitter while on-board because apparently it was too hot.

The reaction from the social media team on the ground, the hostess and the pilot (that's the most impressive thing!) was fast and positive, and won a customer that most likely would't have used Turkish Airlines any longer.

Social media at its best by a very customer oriented company.