Facebook Drives 350x More Traffic to News/Media Sites than Google Reader
According to a ReadWriteWeb analysis of Hitwise numbers, Facebook drives 350 times as much traffic to other websites in the “news and media” category (3.5%) as Google Reader does (.01%).
However, Facebook, Google News (1.4%). and Google Reader togetheraccount for less than 5% of news sites’ total traffic. The #1, 2 and 3 drivers of traffic to news sites? Google, Yahoo and MSN.
70% of Marketers Plan to Increase Budgets for Social Media Marketing
According to a Jan 2010 Econsultancy survey of more than 1,000 US and UK marketers, conducted in association with ExactTarget, 46% of companies plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2010, and 66% will increase their investments in digital marketing channels. Additionally, investments in digital marketing will increase by 17% in 2010, and will account for 24% of overall marketing budgets. Marketers who focus on “brand reputation” as a measure of marketing effectiveness are most likely to shift their budgets from traditional to digital channels.
- 70% of the companies surveyed plan to increase their budgets for social media marketing (e.g. Facebook, Twitter).
- 56% plan to increase mobile marketing budgets.
- Only 17% of companies surveyed are increasing their print media budgets, compared to 41% who are decreasing spending.
How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation
IBM doesn’t have a corporate Twitter ID because “we want the IBMers in aggregate to be the corporate blog and the corporate Twitter ID,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation. “We represent our brand online the way it always has been, which is employees first. Our brand is largely shaped by the interactions that they have with customers.”
Thousands of IBMers are the voice of the company. As it turns out, its decentralized social media approach is another milestone in the company’s history—driving unprecedented collaboration and innovation. IBM lets employees talk—to each other and the public—without intervention. With a culture as diverse and distributed as IBM’s, getting employees to collaborate and share makes good business sense. …more…
Who's on Twitter?
Pablo Palatnik has published an analysis of Twitter traffic and demographics based on Quantcast data on is blog, PalatnikFactor.com. It shows US traffic to twitter.com peaking at 29.2 m on July 18, and averaging 23.6 m over the 6 months ending December 31.
American Greetings Launches Valentine's Day Twitter Contest
American Greetings kicked off a 12-day Twitter contest to build buzz heading into Valentine’s Day. The contest, dubbed “Follow the Love,” will include daily questions to be answered in tweets (140 characters or less) by the brand’s followers. A winning tweet will be selected daily and awarded one $100 retailer gift card and a $250 cash gift card.
To enter, participants need to follow “AMgreetings” on Twitter and then tag their response to the daily question as “#LoveAG.” The question posed February 1: “What does it feel like to fall in love?” During the first day of the contest (Feb 1), American Greetings modestly increased its number of followers by around 100 – from 1,200 in the morning to more than 1,300 in late afternoon. As of February 4th, the feed was up to 1800 followers.
A Billion Tweets a Month! Twitter Has Peaked! Twitter Sets New Records! Huh?
If you use your statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost, for support, rather than illumination (with thanks to Winston Churchill for another great quote), then today’s dueling Twitter reports will leave you reeling.
Is Twitter growth accelerating? Or has it peaked? We describe two apparently widely disparate studies below — take your pick of and tell us your opinion! Or you could just wait until the next set of studies comes out… …more…
50% of Companies Were Spammed from Social Networking Site in 2009
A survey of 500 companies found a 70% increase in spam and malware attacks via social networking sites in 2009, according to security firm Sophos.
Facebook topped the list as the perceived riskiest of the major social-networking sites, followed by MySpace, Twitter, and finally LinkedIn.
The Sophos report (PDF) said that more than 50% of the companies surveyed were spammed through a social-networking site last year and that 36% were hit by malware from such a site. …more…
Did Bloomberg Win Reelection Thanks to Social Media Campaign?
Jonah Seiger, founder and managing partner of Connections Media, worked on the election campaigns for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in both 2005 and 2009, including oversight of the campaign’s entire digital media program for the most recent election. Seiger spoke at a Social Media Week 2010 panel titled Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 Web & Social Media Summary, and his comments, summarized by David Cohen for MediaBistro’s WebNewser offer a case study of how much impact social media can have in a political campaign.
Bloomberg won the social media campaign by a wide margin, totaling more than 40,000 Facebook friends and Twitter followers compared with 6,300 for the challenger.
According to Seiger, 42% of traffic to the official campaign site was generated from social media and search-engine optimization. …more…
Facebook Soon to Pass Yahoo as #3 Largest Web Site WorldWide
Facebook is well on its way to taking Yahoo’s spot as the third largest Web property in the world. (Google and Microsoft are No. 1 and No. 2, respectively). Last summer Facebook took the No. 4 spot globally, displacing AOL, but according to comScore there was still an estimated 241 million unique visitors a month separating it from the No. 3 site, Yahoo. In December, 2009, that gap narrowed to 125 million unique visitors globally.
Why People Use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and MyYearbook
MyYearbook conducted a survey of users of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and myYearbook, asking why they used the various services. The company provided 12 options and asked the user to pick the three that mattered most to them. The top reasons for using Twitter–update status, follow celebs, stay current and friends I know–are clearly differentiated from Facebook’s top 4–friends I know, meet people, update status and share photos, while MySpace users cite reasons that are very similar to Facebook’s. The top reason for using MyYearbook is to meet people, followed by flirt.
