Shazam, Twitter, tablets and polar bears had our attention during the Super Bowl 2012, a social TV breakthrough.

On Sunday, even having two screens didn’t seem enough, as people watched the game on their TVs, while having Shazam open on their smartphones, tweeting from tablets and watching Coke’s Polar Bowl on their laptops all at the same time.

Whether because it was the first time the NFL had partnered with the host city, the success of the game’s first ever social media command center, the increased number of social media users this year or all these factors together, this Super Bowl was the most social yet.

Twitter and GetGlue saw the largest increase in activity compared to previous year. The former saw the numbers double since last year and the latter saw a 700% increase in check-ins compared to 2011.

The game set a Twitter record and registered a total of 12.2 million social media comments from 5.4 million people, and that’s not even counting comments related to #brandbowl.

Among the most buzzed-about Super Bowl commercials are the Doritos Baby Slingshot, David Beckham H&M ad and Chryslers’ “Halftime in America.”

People were posting 10,000 tweets per second on average and the second-highest peak in Twitter activity was during the half-time show featuring Madonna.

It was also the first time the game was being live streamed online with 2.1 viewers. The only drawback was that most of the commercials only appeared online after they aired.

For some, this “four screen social TV event” was a bit too overwhelming – Super Bowl, Brand Bowl and Puppy Bowl were going on at the same time, while people were trying not only to watch, but also share the highlights of each one.

This extremely social event, a breakthrough in terms of interactive and social TV, could be a stepping stone to a new level of interactivity – beyond just a hashtag or “Shazamed” content. After seeing the potential of social TV, brands can learn how to be in several places, platforms and apps at once and give their fans a truly 3D integrated experience.

How many gadgets did you use during the Super Bowl 2012?

Traditional TV as we know it has ceased its existence. It is still possible to catch a traditional sitcom every once in a while, but most sports programs, reality shows and commercials are filled with social media icons, QR codes and are becoming more and more interactive every day.

Our habits of watching TV are changing as well. Now that we have hi-tech gadgets like smartphones, tablets and laptops surrounding us 24/7, we are more used to technological multitasking (in other words, using multiple gadgets at once). In fact, according to Nielsen’s Consumer Usage Report, 70% of women and 60% of men are distracted multi-taskers, checking their email or surfing the Web while they watch TV.

Shazam, an iPhone app that has been around for a while, is now tapping into a market beyond just mobile and going after interactive TV. Now, Shazam is not only able to name a tune, but also recognize audio for a TV ad and direct you to a website with more interactive content.

If you watched 2010’s Super Bowl (who didn’t?), then maybe you remember the Dockers ad that used Shazam. It was the first commercial to use the app in conjunction with the advertising content – not many companies were comfortable with betting their multimillion SuperBowl spot on an interactive test like that. Apparently the strategy proved to be worth it, and in the upcoming SuperBowl, 1/3 of all the ads will be using Shazam.

MySpace also didn’t waste time and is now jumping on the social advertising bandwagon. It’s launching MySpaceTV in the hope of finding new audiences of its dying platform. The consumers would be able to turn TV-watching into a social sharing experience through real-time online chatting about a sports game or inviting their online friends to watch a show with them. Right now, all these cool multitasking features will only be available with the purchase of a Panasonic Viera TV set.

These recent TV-related innovations may be the sign that many people are not satisfied with just watching TV anymore. As they are not satisfied with just doing one thing. New on the go technologies helped us get used to multitasking and sharing everything we do. We enjoy broadcasting our actions to the world, as if all of our friends, followers and fans want to know exactly what we are doing every single hour.

No matter what you think of this trend, this is the type of a bandwagon your business should get on. Start creating content that is accessible from any platform and make it easy for your visitors to share it with each other (make sure you always create something worth sharing). Acknowledge your audience’s need for multitasking and sharing – give them what they are looking for and they will keep coming back to you.

How is your online content interactive and share-friendly?

Facebook is currently testing out a new feature for brand pages. This feature will allow page admins to receive private messages from users. Any Facebook user will be able to send a private message to a fan page.

Facebook has just begun introducing this feature, making it only available in Asia for the time being.

If the feature proves its value, Facebook will hopefully make this new communication option available in other countries.

This feature will not be a way for brands to flood their fans with spammy communication. In fact, the social network has recently revoked admins’ ability to message their brand page fans. The new private messaging option will be an opportunity for fans to reach out directly to page administrators – only they will be able to initiate a private conversation with a brand.

Even if Facebook users have not “liked” a particular page, they will still have the ability to message the admins directly.

This new option will definitely benefit customer-centric brands, such as telecom companies, that have to respond to a lot of customer service questions and requests. Private messaging will help make those pages less cluttered. And brands will be able to deal with negative feedback outside of public space.

On the other hand, the new feature might cause the growth of brand pages might decrease, because customer-brand communication will no longer appear on public timeline and the Ticker. The organic reach of the brand page will decrease, driving less traffic of new visitors.

Another drawback of private messaging might be its availability to everyone. A lot of people (fans and non-fans) could start using it as the primary way of communication with a brand. Pages with thousands of followers might get flooded with messages from frustrated or angry clients and will have to answer each one of them individually.

While private messaging does provide a better customer service for clients, it might get overwhelming for fan page administrators and might require some extra help.

The private messaging feature will be completely optional, and if page administrators will decide not to use it, the will be able to easily opt out of it.

Recently, many social networks became more brand-focused in the last month – Google+ introduced brand pages back in November and Twitter launched a new look for company pages in the beginning of December.

Now Facebook is up to speed with everyone else. The only question is – does it care more about improving brands’ customer service or proving to Google+ and Twitter that it’s unbeatable?

Twitter rolled out new platform redesign that lets you discover, connect and share more easily. Twitter is now “yours to discover” and is a “faster, simpler way to stay close to everything you care about,” according to the website.

The timing for the new redesign seems right, especially with the buzz about Google+ brand pages and the updated Facebook subscriptions feature. It looks like Twitter’s new interface and features will be stirring many discussions in the next few weeks.

Redesigned Twitter app for iPhone and Android was available since yesterday, and the new website is now live.

The iPhone app interface looks a lot cleaner and does not feel as crowded, and it is easier to navigate in many ways.

Content discovery on Twitter is a big part of the new redesign, and even the beloved user-created hashtag got a new name – the “discover” tool.

Twitter tried to make the experience with the Discover button as customized as possible – the tool will show you the information based on your interests, location, the users and hashtags you follow and what is currently happening (and trending) in the world.

Unfortunately, the saved searches are now gone from the mobile app, but Twitter’s new ability to guess what hashtags and stories will interest you eliminates the need for those. According to the website, “as you use Twitter more, Discover gets even better at serving up more content just for you.” I wonder if it will rise privacy concerns later on…

Just like a relatively new activity feature on the Twitter website, the Connect button on the mobile app allows you to see all the interactions you have on Twitter in one place – new mentions, followers and retweets. Another neat redesign feature is the ability to see the whole conversation of replies before and after the tweet where you were mentioned.

Along with the new features, Twitter also rolled out new brand pages, according to Advertising Age. Brands will now have an opportunity to post large header images and decide to keep a particular tweet on the top of their page. Right now, Twitter is launching brand pages with only 21 marketers, including Coca-Cola, and hopefully the feature will soon be available to everyone.

How will new Twitter brand page help your business?

This is that time of year when we begin to stress out about getting our holiday shopping done. Because our family, friends, coworkers, extended family, and bosses all have different preferences and tastes, and it always takes a while to find that perfect gift for each one.

Thankfully, the age of technology, when much of our private information is widely available for the world to see (thanks, Facebook), makes it easier for us to do holiday shopping.

Some companies made a huge push this year to make their customers’ shopping process easier and a lot less stressful.

Etsy decided to redesign their Gift Ideas for Your Friends service, connecting it with Facebook and allowing the visitors to see which gifts would better suit their family and friends based on their interests and likes on Facebook. And it does so without violating anyone’s privacy.

Once you log in, Etsy pulls up all of your Facebook friends and four gift suggestions for each, based on their interests and likes. Many are very accurate, and some I would actually consider buying. Etsy even wrote the behind the scenes post about how they made this service work. It would be interesting to see the results of this initiative and if it will increase the website’s traffic and revenue for this holiday season.

Another interesting gift shopping resource was launched by Walmart. They introduced a Facebook app called Shopycat (so, it’s like a shopping copycat? hm…), the main point of which is very similar to Etsy’s, but the gift recommendations come mainly from Walmart’s Books and Electronics departments.

Good luck with keeping your gift shopping activities in secret though, because (thanks again to Facebook privacy settings) a Shopycat-related notification to your friends will appear on the Ticker right away.

Are there any other apps that help you do your Christmas shopping?

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Did you camp out at the doors of your local Toys R Us this Black Friday? Or drank 10 5-hour energy drinks to surf the Internet non-stop for 24 hours this Cyber Monday? Well, your efforts paid off – at least for those in retail industry – many of the stores reported record profits from this Thanksgiving sales weekend.

Having digital and mobile platforms so widely available to both, retailers and consumers, changed the game this year.

Coveted information about best stores, products and Black Friday deals traveled from shopper to shopper via online word-of-mouth with the speed of light in anticipation of the upcoming mega shopping weekend.

Major retailers tried to employ online media as much as possible this Black Friday and Cyber Monday, using social media to get the word out and online deals (and an opportunity to not have to deal with angry people and long lines) – to lure shoppers to their digital realms.

The strategy worked. According to Mashable, “the volume of Black Friday dialogue [on social networks] was 110% more than last year, and there was ‘a spike in positive sentiment’ around and anticipation for Cyber Monday.”

Online retailers like Gilt Groupe were finally able to compete with in-store Black Friday shopping by offering exclusive mobile deals. And a lot of Black Friday shopping this year shifted online, especially now that more people embrace the opportunity to shop on their tablets and smartphones.

But really, in the year of such advanced technology and social media, this shouldn’t be surprising.

It also shouldn’t be surprising that Amazon’s sales of Kindle quadrupled and Apple’s sales broke all previous records this Cyber Monday.

What these numbers show is that online and social media has real power (and not just in retail industry):

1. Power to disseminate loads of information at extremely high speeds
2. Influence purchasing decisions (”All my friends are buying this product/listening to this band/etc.!”)
3. Build brand loyalty (stronger brand-consumer relationships can influence customer loyalty)
4. Encourage offline purchases (for example, promoting offline deals via social media)

All you have to do now is incorporate it into your business strategy and not be too surprised when you start seeing positive results.

Can we help you develop your social media strategy?

Social tagging is becoming more visual with features like stacks in Delicious and Silicon Valley’s new invention Pinterest .

But Pinterest is not just another social tagging site or a blog. Its invite-only beta version already managed to get more than 1.3 million active users on Facebook and it continues to grow every day.

Lately, it’s been getting more buzz outside of the Silicon Valley tech community, including sources like New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

So far, the majority of its active users are designers and other creative types (mostly females), which becomes obvious after taking a look at the site’s home page flooded with pictures of shoes, cute animals and delicious looking culinary inventions.

The idea of Pinterest is very simple – creating an “online pinboard” of your favorite things, places, quotes, etc. You can group your “pins” into categories and create a board for each one, like “Places I’d Like to Visit” or “Books Worth Reading” (the site gives you several suggestions of the most popular board categories for social tagging).

The “pinning” process is super easy – the site asks you to download its “Pin It” button to the bookmarks bar that you use every time you stumble upon (no pun intended, but the process is indeed very similar to StumbleUpon ) something awesome.

There’s a lot more potential for Pinterest as a social tagging site than just attracting one niche demographic. It can be a great way for small businesses to tell their story, get their products out there and connect with existing and potential customers. Especially now that the developers cleaned up the site’s interface, making it more user-friendly, elegant and easy to navigate.

Pinterest is a great social bookmarking platform for self-expression. As a small business, you can use it to show your followers the “personal side” of your business by pinning not just your own products, but also things that inspire you and are relevant to your business and your audience.

The site also has a social aspect to it: users can “like” and “repin” the images they saw on someone else’s board (similar to Tumblr ), which could be a good way for your business to connect with other Pinteresters and potential customers.

With the site’s popularity rapidly growing every day, it could also act as a helpful SEO tool for your business, so don’t forget to “pin” your most relevant blog posts, press releases and articles.

Finally, you can use Pinterest to really get to know your audience. Follow your demographic, find out what they like, what inspires them, their unique style – soon you will start seeing trends and patterns that will help you better target your marketing efforts.

Have you started using Pinterest for your business? Tell us about your experience in the comments below!

Last Thursday Mark Zuckerberg introduced a fully revamped Facebook – with new profile, new features, and less privacy than before.

The new Facebook profile, called Timeline, was described by Zuckerberg as a new way to “tell your [life] story.” In a few weeks, the new “scrapbook” profile will be available to everyone and will feature all your activity, including status updates, pictures and new likes, from the very first time you stepped on Facebook grounds.

The Ticker, visible to every Facebook user at the top right corner of the home screen, is now home for real-time “lightweight information” about your friends, such as who liked whose status and who planted what in Farmville.

Ticker frees space in your News Feed for more important information, such as friends’ status updates, new pictures and relationship changes.

Open Graph takes “social” to a whole another level, allowing users to go beyond simply “liking” content. Now Facebook partners and app developers can turn any verb into a button, letting users to share their activities, including reading articles, watching movies and listening to music with friends.

While the majority of Facebook users were busy complaining about the current and upcoming changes, we decided to take a look of how these updates might affect Facebook marketing.

It looks like a lot of fan page updates might get pushed into the Ticker, especially for those users who don’t interact with a page on a regular basis.

This means that your brand should focus on creating engaging content that will not get lost in the slew of information in the Ticker and that your fans will like (read, listen to, watch, etc.) and share.

Open Graph presents great marketing opportunities for brands on Facebook. Now users can interact with your brand’s content beyond just “liking” it. The users’ ability to [verb] any [noun] on Facebook encourages brands to create content that’s interesting enough to be consumed and shared by a large number of people.

The new GraphRank protocol will push into the News Feed those actions that are shared by multiple users at the same time. For example, if several of your friends are listening to the same song or reading the same article in real time, you will see that update in your News Feed vs. the Ticker. This gives brands the opportunity to reach Facebook users beyond the existing fan base.

The new Facebook is focused on relationships and social experience more than ever before. Challenge your brand to go beyond simple status updates – take advantage of all the new changes by creating content that your fans would want to discover together, share with their friends and discuss in groups. Being social will pay off.

The digital era’s key to success is to constantly deliver breaking news to your audience.

Everyone (especially the techy “early adopters”) likes to be first when it comes to finding out what’s going on in the world. The “I’ve already seen it” bragging rights give your most passionate fans a reason to find and share content in alternative ways, disrupting their normal viewing habits and creating buzz for your brand online.

The more exclusive content you deliver to your online audience, the faster your brand earns the highly coveted titles of a trendsetter and innovator in the eyes of your loyal (and recently acquired) audiences.

This year, London Fashion Week has successfully transferred its real-world experience into the online realm. Many brands participating in the event used it for their advantage.

Burberry Tweetwalk from London Fashion Week

Burberry partnered with Twitter to “break” the new Spring/Summer 2012 collection to its follower base, releasing pictures of every outfit minutes before the rest of the world saw them on the LFW runway.

Exclusive content is imperative when attracting the audience to your social media channels, especially in retail and fashion industries.

By offering its Twitter network the exclusive preview of its SS 2012 collection, Burberry got a few thousand more followers in one day, became a trending topic and once again confirmed its title as an online innovator in the fashion industry.

Another example of releasing breaking content is the recent partnership of a popular TV series Entourage with HBO Go for the show’s last season.

Entourage fans who have access to HBO Go have a unique opportunity to watch the final season’s episodes on HBO Go before they air.

The brand’s strategic onlie move allowed both sides to reap the benefits. Avid fans are getting a chance to see the season finale before anyone else and HBO Go is increasing the online social buzz and getting more subscribers.

Every business has the opportunity to use its online space – be it a website, social networks, or a video channel – to deliver exclusive content and breaking news to its audience, attract attention and create buzz – fans will definitely appreciate the VIP treatment!

What’s your brand’s key to success?

It’s hard to think of a more transformative time in a person’s life than college. Away from your parents, sequestered around a campus loaded with young adults just like you, all of you feeling out real freedom for the first time, like tadpoles that have just sprung legs and an appetite for Jell-O shots.

College is of different value to different people. And if I were counseling a soon-to-be high school grad on where she should spend the next four years of her life, I’d tell her to pick an institution that understands the importance of new media and social media in navigating life beyond college, both personally and professionally.

Ask your recruiter whether the college encourages students to tweet, to network on Facebook and LinkedIn as well as a school-specific social network; whether they encourage them to blog and produce videos; whether they, in short, facilitate student storytelling?

I recently came across a couple of student-made videos that speak well of new media adoption in American universities.

First, from the LJ World, comes Braves TV, a reality-TV-style student vid showing what life is like at Ottawa University in Kansas. Talk about transparency. The school basically set eight students loose with Flip Cams to make videos for the school’s official Facebook page. Check out the cool way they brought Facebook profiles into the video below.

Next, from Plog, on a less pedagogical but highly entertaining note comes these selections from a viral video Heisman campaign for University of Tennessee safety Eric Berry (who, incidentally, was the Kansas City Chiefs’ first round draft pick.) In fact, if you search Eric Berry on YouTube, you’ll find a wealth of content, both on the field and, like these vidoes, off.

The first is a professional-quality hip-hop video featuring Swiperboy, a rapper who has a side career as a Volunteers basketball player and student.

The next, from the same campaign, is a hilarious powerpop video with overtones of Blink 182 and Weezer tomfoolery.

Pretty mindblowing, huh? Especially for those of us who went to college back when mobile phones were new and Yahoo e-mail was about as sexy as it got.

What other colleges do you know of that are embracing new media?