Who will be the #1 social network in 2012?

With Forrester predicting Facebook and Amazon as 2012′s major mobile players, another ComScore study speculates on the rise and expansion of overall social networking. And we ponder the relationship between the two…

Social platforms are still in the early stages, growing and evolving almost faster than they can be tracked. Social in general continues to gain ground as a dominant source of online content, accounting for 16.6 percent of minutes spent on the web towards the end of 2011. ComScore’s recent report on social networks showed that, while leader Facebook continues to dominate the arena (three out of four US users are Facebookers), relative newcomers like Tumblr, Pinterest and Google+ are also climbing the popularity pole.

Twitter held the no. 2 spot in the category as of December, drawing 37.5 million unique visitors and surpassing its biggest competition from 2011, LinkedIn, whose audience clocked in at 33.5 million at the end of last year.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean there isn’t healthy competition brewing out there. According to ComScore’s findings, in the past six months Google+ has reached 20.7 million US visitors, while Tumblr hit 18.8 million. The network we find the most impressive/interesting is Pinterest, which has managed to draw 8 million unique visitors – mostly women! – without the clout of a gargantuan network of products such as Google’s.

And where does mobile fit into all of this?  Plastic Mobile of course sees it as a key resource to all platforms, and a crucial leveraging point for those looking to get a leg up on the competition. Melody Adhami, our President and resident mobile guru weighs in: “all of the social networks should be paying attention to mobile because it is a) where their audience is spending most of their time and b) an obvious way to reach that audience on an intimate and consistent level – meaning, those networks who can remain relevant in the mobile space will win more ‘facetime’ with their customers. Now, that doesn’t mean just offering a mobile friendly version of their site. It means taking advantage of the inherent features of the phone and the way people are using mobile to make sure users are accessing your social brand vs. your competitor’s on mobile.”

And according to an article in the New York Times, it seems other industry leaders are in agreement: “Mobile is the new face of engagement,” says Ted Schadler, principal analyst at Forrester. “Businesses should stop thinking about it as a small Web site on a tiny computer, and start thinking about mobile as being deeply embedded systems of engagement. That turns out to have huge implications.”

What do you think? Who will be the next big social network powerhouse in 2012? Will Facebook maintain it’s dominance, or will Twitter close the gap? Or will both of them lose out to Google+, or the underdog with girl power, Pinterest? And, more importantly (to us, at least), how will mobile tie into the social media battle for total world domination (or something)?

Tweet us with your favourite network, mobile 2 cents or just general musings about social networks and their future bearing on our LIVES!

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Its been a full 3 weeks since Dx3 Canada wrapped up and the buzz around the event still remains. Although we miss all the excitement from participating, we’ve been thrilled to see all the takeaways from Canada’s first ever digital trade show.

One such takeaway? Custom mobile solutions are serving as a channel of engagement and communication between brands and their customers.

Watch Sparksheet, an award-winning multiplatform magazine, as they question Melody Adhami president and COO of Plastic Mobile, at Dx3 on the direction and successes of mobile commerce.

Courtesy of our sensational team here at Plastic Mobile, a new and completely redesigned AIR MILES App is now available for iPhone and Android.

As the first coalition loyalty application of its kind in Canada, AIR MILES’ mobile app version 2.0 was announced today.

The coolest new feature? Definitely the Check-in Challenge (on now until April 30, 2012). The Check-in Challenge is the first ever AIR MILES mobile game that ranks the number of Check-ins Collectors do at AIR MILES Sponsor locations against other Collectors each month. At the end of the month, the top 50 Collectors with the highest number of Check-ins will get a Check-in Bonus – 2x the reward miles they earned that month at the Sponsors they Checked in at.

Collectors with Android and iPhone devices can now also get on-the-go access to AIR MILES Reward Program information such as account balances, improved browsing of the complete dream rewards catalogue and in-store bonus offers at sponsor locations based on GPS.

“We really wanted to enhance the user experience with the new AIR MILES app. By simplifying the process and adding the Check-in Challenge gaming feature, we believe collectors will not only find the app more useful in their day-to-day, but also enjoy the experience of earning more rewards,” said Melody Adhami, Plastic Mobile’s President and COO.

For complete app intel, visit our made-for-media page, complete with a video, photos and all the answers to your questions (we hope!).

Or, download the new AIR MILES App on Android or upgrade or download the app on the App Store to see just what we are talking about.

We’re all a Twitter about the new app, so tweet us and tell us what you think @plasticmobile.

Securing over 1000 unique daily visitors, the user-friendly, app-esque Royal LePage mobile website is proving enormously useful as users realize the benefits to having real estate information right at their finger tips.

The analytics show that the mobile website continues to grow its unique visitors each month, with traffic on the mobile website up 50%, compared to the desktop, which has stayed consistent.

The Royal LePage mobile website is the latest and greatest mobile tool for home buyers and sellers alike, and we’re so excited to see that users are loving it as much as we do.

We all new the day would come, though no one was ever able to predict when. But, it seems Mark Zuckerberg finally got tired of everyone speculating about the value of the Book, and decided to put a price tag on it himself: $5 billion! Not too shabby.

The new speculation, of course, is does that dollar figure over-value the social networking phenomenon, or will it follow the path of the Google’s before it and prove everyone that Zuckerberg and team were actually airing on the side of conservative? Only time will tell!

The decision to go public may have been prompted by the expectation that Facebook will probably hit its 1 billionth users this year, and that they turned a tidy profit of $1 billion last year. Another very interesting fact to come of the filing for an IPO, is that about 80% of the Facebook fan fare is based outside of North America. Weird? We at Plastic Mobile were positively baffled by this stat, since no one we know isn’t sharing, posting and chatting on Facebook – except for one guy. But, he still uses Explorer as his web browser.

One final tid bit of interest we read in PCWorld stated Zuckerberg is not only chairman and CEO, but he has also included a clause to allow him to name his successor if he is still the company’s controller upon his death: “In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death,” Facebook’s S-1 filing says. “Control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor.” Reports from The New York Post and Bloomberg Businessweek suggested that analysts found this mighty strange, but one thing is for certain; Mark Zuckerberg is, and will remain, Facebook’s reigning king.

We’re standing by to learn more about the over-under value debate and to see where this major moves takes the world of Zuckerberg, err, Facebook.

Two days, 3,469 Canadian Marketers and one remarkable event. That was this year’s Dx3. On January 25 and 26, the Toronto Metro Convention Centre was filled with tonnes of engaging conversations around Canada’s digital advertising, marketing and retail landscape.

Plastic Mobile was very proud to be a participant in the inaugural forum for Canadian digital innovation.

For me, some of the highlights included, Visa’s touchless payment transaction ice cream exhibit, which not only kept my team full of delicious ice cream, but also demonstrated to attendees the future of NFCs. Visa’s Derek Colfer gave a session on the future of NFC in the Canadian mobile industry, saying that it’s still going to take awhile for things to get going. He cautioned his audience to consider that it took nearly a decade to get the credit card chip and PIN rolled out in Canada, so we shouldn’t expect to see mobile payments rolling out in 2012. Nevertheless, the Visa booth allowed visitors to practice using NFC technology to get some ice cream. Pretty awesome.

Also, Doug Stephens, President of Retail Prophet Consulting, and Candice Faktor of ShopCatch began the second day of Dx3 with an interesting keynote on the retail space. Stephens was a man of the future, looking ahead into retail 20 years from now, whereas Faktor focused on present-day retail. Both speakers concurred that mobile has shaken up the retail industry unlike anything ever before seen.

Another exciting event was the startup “pitch-off” at the Intertainment Media Incubation Zone. Five contestants were given five minutes each to pitch their plan. The winner was the Toronto-based startup, Stylsize, who showcased their very cool online retail mobile solution with its advanced apparel-fitting technology.

Two interesting mobile-related myths that were actively debunked at the show were about group buying and broadcasting apps. There was a charge to make attendees better understand that the emphasis for group buying is not about “will I make a profit?”, rather customer acquisition. And that broadcasters are missing the mark by creating apps that just copy their TV experiences without adding value and making them “Mobile friendly.”

And of course Plastic Mobile was there, bringing the mobile-retail relationship to life with our interactive candy shop, which was the talk of the Dx3 highlight list.

After such a great forum this year, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2013.

This week RIM announced that CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis will step down from their positions, though they will maintain majority of their shares and stay on as board members.

Thorsten Heins will take on the daunting role as RIM’s new CEO. In spite of seriously declining share prices, Heins has signalled that he will largely stay the course set by Balsillie and Lazaridis.

In a Star interview, Heins notes that RIM is still a solid financial performer and that it is the number one smartphone in many countries outside of the US. He goes on to say the their problem isn’t technology, it is in their communications and that is where they need to focus their efforts. “The perception just doesn’t match the reality,” Heins told the Star. “We’ve got $1.5 billion in the bank, and virtually no debt. We’ve also got a 75 million subscriber base.”

Regardless of this assurance, shares dropped even further after the announcement of the RIM pioneers’ resignation. Ugh. Sorry RIM, we can’t help but think the future looks grim.

What do you think? Will Heins be able to pull RIM out of its US despair? Tweet us with your thoughts @plasticmobile.

…as well as about 750 other execs, media personnel and tech enthusiasts, but, whatever.

At 7:30 this morning, this odd pastiche of professionals piled into the SONY Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, ON, to hear Duncan Stewart, Director of Technology, Media and Telecommunications, entertain and educate about Deloitt’e annual #TMTPredictions.

The tech arm of the professional services giant put together some very interesting facts and advice on what’s in store for our evolving industry in 2012. Among the most interesting prophecies were:

• continued growth of the ever-surprising TV
• the advent of data caps in many leading countries (i.e. the death of unlimited ISP deals. Le sigh.)
• the metamorphosis of our smartphones and tablets to “little PVRs”; and
• the immediate future of NFCs (hint: it’s not what you think).

One mobile prediction that really stood out was the hypothesis that the purchase of tablets would continue to increase, but that it would be less by new buyers and more concentrated by a secondary tablet in the home – apparently we’re not very good at sharing with our families.

Likewise, while the creation of apps continues to surge, Duncan Stewart pointed out that a great number of them are not unique - meaning that, while a number of new apps are being developed, so are existing apps being expanded to cover other operating systems. So, an app that was made last year for iOS, may this year be added to the Android and Microsoft markets.

According to Duncan Stewart, developing a mandate (like we have here at Plastic, not to brag, but we’re just saying) to develop cross-platform apps as often as possible, or as often as makes sense for our partners, will be crucial to increasing efficiencies in the future, and staying competitive in the mobile game.