Technorati just published an article that features Arktan among upcoming, innovative technology companies providing cutting-edge Social Web content aggregation, curation, and sentiment analysis products for brands.

The article described how leading brands are using these products to set them apart from their competition. Among these brands is Universal Music Group (UMG) that uses Social Web content aggregation, data filtering and curation products to provide engaging, interactive Social Music experiences for its customers. Reuters in the meantime has launched a new social media hub called the Social Pulse, and is successfully utilizing sentiment analysis and data filtering products to build engagement with their audience. The Daily Beast is also using sentiment analysis products for its “Election Oracle” during the presidential election year.

Who can benefit from these new products? Brands across all industries that want to benefit from cutting-edge technologies to grow their business, and get ahead of the competition.

Here’s a link to the full article, and a link to the article author’s personal blog.

Social sharing is emerging as a powerful social media tool. The term is often used loosely to mean any content sharing on social media, when in fact it has a very specific meaning. So what exactly does the term mean?

Social sharing refers to sharing of content and activity from a site or app back to a social network, such as Twitter or Facebook. These two social networking sites currently have the lion’s share of all social sharing, Facebook with 54%, and Twitter with 34%, according to Q3 2011 data by Janrain. Although the other major social networking sites have much smaller shares, they all have their own niche markets, most notably among them LinkedIn that is popular among B2B sites.

USA Network’s Psych Character Chatter site, powered by Arktan SocialStreams, illustrates social sharing in action. Fans on the site engage and interact with each other by posting comments on the site. When they opt to share their comments on Facebook and Twitter, it becomes social sharing. Comments shared on Facebook and Twitter drive traffic back to the Psych Character Chatter site. This cycle of virality repeats itself every time, when new fans enter the site, engage with the content and fans on the site, and then share their comments back on Facebook and Twitter.

Sites that provide engaging, interactive content, and make sharing seamless and effortless for the users are the ones benefiting the most from social sharing. When users sign in to sites using their social login, they share their social profile information with the sites. In addition, when they engage in social sharing on the sites, they provide information about the type of content that is of interest to them. Companies can then use this information to tailor marketing based on each individual user’s tastes and preferences.

Social sharing is starting to gain momentum, and becoming more widespread, but considering its potential reach and benefits, it’s still only in its infancy. It will be interesting to see, how it continues to be adopted in different industries, and what will be its impact going forward.

Huffington Post published an article this week, highlighting Arktan’s role in bringing innovative, technologically advanced solutions for leading global brands, including Universal Music Group’s (UMG), celebrity music artists.

Brands are facing the challenge of trying to find ways to connect, engage and interact with their fans in today’s fragmented social web landscape, where rules of engagement and social interaction are evolving. In this new landscape, high degree of user interaction and engagement are no longer the exception, but the new norm. 

Huffington Post article explains how our customer, Universal Music Group (UMG), representing many global celebrity music artists, has successfully met these challenges with the implementation of Arktan SocialStreams product to transform the artists’ websites into true centers of social engagement for their global fans. 

Arktan is proud to be in the forefront of this new “social revolution”. Our innovative products are already turning many brands’ websites and mobile apps into socially engaging destination sites for fans across all industries, and allowing brands to get deeper insights from user engagement on the sites and social media. 

Here’s a link to the full article, and a link to the article author’s personal blog.

Social media writers have been predicting 2012 as a banner year for television, and especially for Social TV. Mashable and ReadWriteWeb talked about this trend already back in 2011 as one of the top trends. Lost Remote also followed this trend very closely in 2011, and has now gone a step further, proclaiming social TV as “nothing short of a revolution in the TV industry.” (“12 Predictions for Social TV in 2012”)

Arktan has been a pioneer in building Social TV experiences for pioneering Social TV networks and shows since 2010. We also witnessed a big increase in demand and interest for Social TV during last year, and can already tell that 2012 will be a banner year in this space. But what we find even more exciting is the fact that brands across all industries are starting to understand the importance of becoming Social. The emergence of Social Brands means that our customers are not limited to Social TV, but represent pioneering brands in Social Entertainment, Social Music, Social Sports, etc. They all share a common goal, which is to build highly engaging, rewarding user experiences for their own customers, and in the process, to become a true Social Brand.

We at Arktan are proud partners of this growing number of Social Brands, and are expanding our product portfolio to accommodate the increasing demand for Social Brand features among our customers. We expect 2012 to be a great year for our customers, for us, and for all Social Brands out there. We’ll keep you posted on the major developments in this exciting, evolving space, as they unfold.

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In our recent blog post titled “Why Is Social Login Important?” we discussed the increasing importance of social login as a tool for companies to attract users to their websites. Social login provides a fast and easy way for users to log in to websites using their preferred social media login. The resulting benefits to companies are many, including increased customer registration, acquisition, and conversion rates. The social login feature is supported by all Arktan products as well.

According to recently published data by Marketing Charts for Q3 in 2011, Facebook has become the preferred social login site with 42% share of all users using social login to access websites (“Facebook Top Social Login Preference”). Google was previously the preferred social login site. Yet, the comparison of users’ social login preferences across industries revealed differences: For example, while Facebook still reigns with 58% of the total music industry social logins, the company has only 43% of the social logins in the media and entertainment industries.

The chart below provided by Janrain shows the current social login landscape.