DISTIMO REPORT: iPhone first in mobile apps in 2010

DISTIMO is a startup from University of Twente graduates I mentioned in my posts earlier. In the just released report they reveal the 2010 trends in the mobile app market. As expected iPhone was the market leader followed by Android. Good work guys!!!

Social Media Marketing on the rise

After almost two months of silence - due to an extremely busy schedule - I am back to blogging. A lot of interesting things have happened in the meantime. I survived teaching three classes Marketing Management in 1/2 semester and tomorrow the students should demonstrate what they have learned in the mid-semester exams. With our new International Bachelor BA course things were very excited since the group assignment of this year was a bit different than usual: The students must analyze the current online presence of the New Acropolis Museum and design a new one. The museum direction was very helpful and even made a special video for the occasion. The faculty offered a trip to Athens to the winning group and our University newspaper published a nice article about this.
Furthermore my NIKOS colleagues and I have survived another relocation of the department, inside the UT campus this time. I try to cope with the (accidental) formatting of the hard disc of my notebook and the avalanche of interest about Social Media marketing. Last week I enjoyed very much speaking to the ACCENTURE Social CRM Master Class in Amsterdam. Last month I participated in a Social Media Seminar organized by BothSolutions in the Venture Lab Twente and in November I will give two seminars on Social Media Marketing to the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. Other exciting news is that one of my BA students finished his BA thesis with subject the potential of Social Media as instruments of higher education marketing (see NEW PUBLICATIONS). Very interesting findings on the online social behavior of future university students in The Netherlands. A lot of interest already for this study since it was presented in the 2010 Student Research Conference in The Hague a few days ago; It is a good basis for a couple of scientific papers (the conference paper is available at request). This is part of research we do in online behavior of Social Media users.


So far so good but that’s not all; many exciting things have happened recently (and keep happening) in the Social Media domain. In the next weeks I will try to present some interesting cases of Social Media marketing in reference (whenever possible) to my Social Media Marketing Model - based on my 2008 JDDDM paper - that despite its age is becoming more and more actual. Those interested stay tuned.

The High Technology Small Firms Conference 2010 (HTSF 2010)

For the 8th time my department (NIKOS) in cooperation with the Manchester Business School organizes the annual High Technology Small Firms Conference (HTSF 2010) on the 27th and 28th of May in the campus of the University of Twente in Enschede (NL). There is also a Doctoral Workshop ogranized on the 25th and 26th of May. Info in the conference site and the Call for Papers. Hope to see you in Enschede next May

Busy times

The readers of this blog have most probably noticed that no post appeared in the blog the last 20 days. The reason: no time! The last weeks have been really hectic both professionally and personally. In the mean time many interesting things happen in the Web 2.0 /social media world, soon I will be back with new stories and comments. A taste of things happening in the Web 2.0 domain this video about Healthcare 2.0 ( this is by the way also subject of the Social Media Research Center of our University. Hopefully soon some fresh results form our research will be available in this blog

Health 2.0 2009 Opening Video from Health 2.0 on Vimeo.

Social Media Research Center: First studies completed

Last year my colleague Sjoerd de Vries from the faculty of Behavioural Sciences of our University invited me to participate as member of the scientific committee in a new research initiative, the Social Media Research Center (SOMERE)*. SOMERE is a junior research center designed in order to serve the interests of researchers and businesses interested in Social Media: about 20 MSc students from my faculty and the faculty of Behavioural Sciences work on research assignments offered by businesses and staff exploring the effects and importance of Social Media in the areas of marketing, education, healthcare, governance and entertainment.
One of the first assignments that was completed was the study by the MSc student Eze Ezekiel Onyebuchi called "MAKING SENSE OF WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY: DO EUROPEAN STUDENTS USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL GOALS?" Ezekiel made a comparison between Dutch and UK students in the way they use the SM for education and networking purposes. There are several similarities and some interesting differences here;
For example the most popular SM applications of UK students for educational purposes are Webcasts (99%), Social Networking (52%), Instant Messaging (42%) and YouTube(41%). Dutch students prefer to contribute and read Wikis (38%),  YouTube(35%), Instant Messaging (25%) and Social Networking (24%).

Regarding the use of social networking sites students in both countries use them mainly in order to stay in touch with friends (UK 70,8% and NL 79,4%). In both countries students are also using these sites for finding out information about people (in both countries around 44% of the students). An interesting difference in the number of students using them in order to make new friends (UK 42,5%, Nl 15,4%) and for finding a date (UK 38,9%, NL 5,1%). These last findings are interesting indeed, it looks that in the UK the social networking websites are used much more than in Holland for making personal contacts or relationships.
The study is available in the SOMERE web site under DOCUMENTATIE; it is also available at request to me.  More interesting results will follow in the future about our research activities in SOMERE (* the site is only in Dutch at the moment).

Entrepreneurial ex-students

After Stefan Fountain, an ex-student of mine and co-author in my paper
Web 2.0: Conceptual foundations and Marketing Issues who made it to TechCrunch with his company Soocial.com, the technology start up Distimo.com where another of my ex-students Remco van den Elzen is one of the co-founders (together with three other University of Twente graduates) also enjoys some very positive publicity in the same blog. The University of Twente has a long tradition of high-tech start-ups and these ex-students are a excellent ambassadors of the entrepreneurial spirit of our University. All the best to Remco and his partners with their venture.