As a social media intern at FEARnet/Lionsgate Entertainment last summer, I was responsible for keeping up with latest digital trends. I found a lot of great websites that were especially helpful in the field of social media. Trendrr.tv is a unique service that tracks the online activity of all major TV networks and shows in real time. They look at a variety of inputs from social media activity, to blog buzz and video downloads. Trendrr takes all of this social data and organizes it into an informative list that includes sentiment value of the activity. I think this is a unique feature because it lets you know how people are feeling about the network or show. Some shows may have a lot of activity across Twitter, Facebook, Getglue, & Miso but most of the buzz is negative. This allows networks to keep track of what their consumers like to see and what they don’t. I am definitely a fan of integrating social media in digital entertainment because it adds an extra level or interactivity and personalization. You can communicate with people all over the world who are watching the same thing on TV and I think this trend will continue to grow.

According to comScore’s Video Metrix service, the top 5 U.S. online video content properties in January 2012, in terms of unique video viewers, were:

1. Google websites (152 million)
2. VEVO (51.5 million)
3. Yahoo! Websites (49.2 million)
4. Viacom Digital (48.1)
5. Facebook (45.1)

Overall for the month of January 2012, 181 million U.S. internet users watched nearly 40 billion videos, with the average viewer watching 22.6 hours of online video content. Video Metrix’s data for the top U.S. online video ad properties as ranked by video ads are as follows:

1. Hulu (1.4 billion ad impressions)
2. Adap.tv (652 million ad impressions)
3. BrightRoll Video Network (598 million ad impressions)
4. Tremor Video (580 million ad impressions)
5. Specific Media (397 million ad impressions)

Overall for the month, Americans viewed 5.6 billion video ads. In addition, comScore finds that video ads reached 47% of the total U.S. population an average of 38 times during the month. Among the other notable findings:

• 84.4% of the U.S. internet audience watched online video.
• The length of an average online video was 6.1 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 12.2% of all videos viewed and 0.9% of all minutes spent watching videos on the web.

I’m currently working on a campfire animation in Maya. I’ve posted the animatic here so you can get an idea of what animation im going for. There will be trees and grass that is affected by a wind source. The campfire in the middle will be flickering while also emitting light that matches the flicker. The image above is just a still and my first pass. I’m having some issues rendering the draft animation, but will update with my progress.

In Facebook’s recent IPO filing they disclosed a potential pitfall for the company: mobile. Facebook says they do not display ads on their mobile products. Over half of Facebook’s 845 million users access the site on a mobile device, which means Facebook isn’t making revenue from these mobile users. As more people steer away from personal computers and towards mobile, this can negatively impact Facebook’s financial results. Facebook mentioned in order to compete effectively in the business, they must successfully monetize mobile usage. Facebook will hold it’s first marketing conference in New York City on February 29th, where it claims to share the “newest solutions, actionable insights, and proven strategies that demonstrate how you can use social technology to drive business growth.”

According to MobileMarketer, Google’s AdMob and Apple’s iAd mobile ad networks have lowered their prices to attract advertisers. This seems to be a result of Facebook’s IPO earlier this month, which expressed their interest in entering the mobile advertising. By making their prices more attractive to customers, they hope gain new large clients before Facebook does. On Wednesday, Google removed the 10 cent minimum bid and targeting fees for “cost per click” ads on its AdMob platform. Apple previously required a minimum of $1 million to be spent per iAd campaign, but they have lowered the minimum to $100,000.

Since Facebook’s recent IPO filing on February 1st, some financial data has been released, which contradicts many who previously valued Facebook at over $100 billion. A company’s value is determined by how much money the company makes and how much it might make in the future. Facebook made $1 billion last year, which was a 66% increase from 2010. It is growing faster than the top companies Google and Apple. Facebook has other sources of revenues that will continue to grow, such as transaction fees on Zynga’s games. Zynga will have about $1 billion in revenues this year, and Facebook takes a 30% transaction fee. Also when Facebook enters the world of mobile advertising, large revenues are expected.

According to BusinessInsider, In order to believe that Facebook is worth over $100 billion, than you must also believe Facebook will launch a new fast-growing business, or radically accelerate in the advertisement or payment business.

Read BusinessInsider’s process behind the $75 billion valuation for Facebook here.

Last week, comScore released its annual report which highlights the popular trends in the digital world. This includes everything from social media to mobile.  The social media report found 16.6% of a user’s time online was devoted to social networking. Not surprisingly, Facebook topped the list for the most minutes users spent on a social network. comScore also noted the popularity of the “interest graph”, which is the notion that people consolidate around similar interests rather than people they know. An example, is Pinterest.com, which has hit 11.7 million unique U.S. visitors this month alone. Google of course is still the leader of search engines; however, Bing surpasses Yahoo for the second most popular. Regarding online video, more than 100 million Americans watched online video a day–a 43% increase from 2010. Also, online video ads are 38% more memorable than TV ads in an offline environment. By the end of 2011, more than 8% of digital traffic was amassed by smartphones and tablets. An interesting overview of the 2011 trends, which provides insightful information moving forward. Check out comScore’s videos for an overview here or download the full report here.