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STUDY: Two-Thirds of Marketers Now Use Social Media

Social Editors — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:46:00 +0000

Mashable — Earlier this year, we reported that 63 percent of companies planned to increase their spending on social media in 2009. Thus, it’s not too surprising that a recent study from the Association of National Advertisers reveal that 66 percent of marketers have now used social media in some capacity in 2009.

Also not surprising, the top platforms being utilized:

Facebook (facebook) (74%)
YouTube (YouTube) (65%)
Twitter (Twitter) (63%)
LinkedIn (LinkedIn) (60%)

Combined, this usage represents significant growth from 2007, when the same survey indicated that just 20 percent of marketers were using social media.

Although social media marketing is clearly on the rise, it remains a relatively small part of most marketing budgets. ANA reports that the bulk of spending will still go to maintaining a company website, search marketing, and online display ads.

That said, social media (including blogs) remains the quickest growing marketing segment, and as we recently reported, it’s expected to grow to a $3.1 billion industry by 2014. In all, it looks like social media marketing still has a healthy amount of growth in front of it.

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Facebook Grew Twice As Fast As Twitter In July

Social Editors — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:19:50 +0000

The Washington Post – If it wasn’t bad enough that Facebook bought FriendFeed on Monday and turned on real-time search to better compete against Twitter in the Stream Wars, and is playing around with a lite version that resembles Twitter even more, now Twitter really has something to worry about. Facebook is growing faster than Twitter in the U.S., even though it is more than four times larger.

In the month of July, according to the latest estimates from comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the U.S., which was 14 percent higher than in June, 2009. Twitter, in contrast, only saw 21.2 million unique U.S. visitors to its Website, a 6 percent rise compared to the month before. In absolute terms, Facebook added about ten million new visitors in the month of July versus roughly one million new visitors for Twitter.

At 87.7 million uniques, Facebook moves from the sixth largest Web media property in the U.S. to the fifth, passing the combined sites of Fox Interactive Media (80.9 million uniques) and coming within striking range of AOL (104.8 million). That is just in the U.S. Facebook is already the fourth largest site in the world (and Twitter is doing better worldwide as well, with a total of 44.5 million unique visitors in June).

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Facebook Tests ‘Lite’ Version of Service

Social Editors — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:14:55 +0000

PCWorld — Facebook is reportedly testing a simplified interface of its social network service with faster load times called Facebook Lite. According to reports from TechCrunch regarding Facebook Lite, the slimmed-down service will be similar to Facebook’s mobile version — Lite would offer only basic functionality such as making comments, accepting friend requests, writing on Walls, and viewing photos.

The bare-bones design has a one-column display of Wall posts, with three buttons at the top that let you write messages or post photos and video. There are also four links on the left under your profile picture: “Wall,” “Info,” “Friends,” and “Photos and Video.”

The idea behind Facebook Lite is to create a service that can be accessed relatively quickly for parts of the world where broadband Internet speeds are either unavailable or not widespread, according to TechCrunch. That makes a lot of sense, since the standard Facebook interface has become a feature-rich experience that can tax even a decent broadband connection. Facebook reportedly wanted to create a simplified experience to entice new users, in addition to creating a site with faster load times.

News of Facebook Lite leaked late last night when Facebook mistakenly sent invites to a wide range of users to try out the new service. However, when users followed the link provided to test the simpler version they were unable to access it.

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Developing a Social Media Strategy 101, Part 1

Social Editors — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:01:34 +0000

Search Engine Watch — With the growing popularity of social media, many businesses feel they need to integrate it into their marketing mix, but most aren’t sure where to start or how to develop a plan. Social media is useful for many types of organizations, whether it’s a big brand or small business.

Using social media correctly helps companies engage audiences in new ways, be more personable, develop new connections, and maintain the ones they have. This two-part article will cover the elements of a social media strategy and the steps to build one.

Social media has taken the institutional control of marketing and put it in the hands of consumers or the general public. This is important because, with technology being ubiquitous and available to all, we’ve been given the tools to carry on conversations and discuss our views and vote for our favorite content online. We now form many of our opinions and impressions from others we come in contact with online.

Understanding this principle is an important factor in building a social media strategy. Essentially, traditional ways of thinking won’t necessarily work. Instead of studying demographics about your audience, you need to get out there and talk with them. Get involved with the conversations that are already happening online.

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Social Media Marketing SUCKS! And Why…

Social Editors — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:37:28 +0000

Michelle MacPhearson — This week, Twitter was hammered by a DOS (denial of service) attack. I have no idea what that means, other than it’s some kind of server attack that’ll make your site go down.

So as part of this attack, Twitter was down for some time. If you could get on Twitter, tweets that seemed to go through didn’t actually appear in your follower’s timelines for hours.

No biggie, right? A minor inconvenience, not being able to use the service.

But what if your whole communications platform, your entire social media strategy, was based on Twitter? You’d have been SOL, to say the least, while Twitter was under attack.

You must never, ever rely on one service to get your message out.

Use Twitter? Great – it’s a fun platform for engaging readers, and if you’re interesting it’ll bring your site click-through visitors. But you shouldn’t be using JUST Twitter (or any other service) to communicate with your customers, readers or clients.

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“Do You Know… What Your Children Are Doing Online?”

Social Editors — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:44:13 +0000

CaymanNetNews — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace … What? — Since the Internet is such a big part of children’s lives today, families need to discuss how to properly use social networking sites to ensure their safety.

Tips on talking to your children about social networking

It’s no secret. Young people growing up today are more technologically advanced than older generations like the Baby Boomers. In those days, communicating with friends was done primarily by talking on the telephone, writing a note or speaking face-to-face. There was no e-mailing, text messaging, IM’ing (instant messaging) or posting comments on each other’s personal web pages.

In schools today, instead of just passing notes, students can send text messages on their cell phones and communicate online with their bff (best friends forever) or with people they don’t know, and this makes it difficult for parents to monitor their child’s online activities. In addition to e-mailing and text messaging, communicating via social networking sites is becoming more common for both older and younger generations. In fact, in January 2009, Facebook alone reported that they had 150 million active users. In addition, according to Common Sense Media, 55 percent of teens have an online profile on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.

“Social networking sites can be great resources for staying in contact with people, reconnecting with old friends, meeting people with common interests, and getting questions answered, but unfortunately not everyone who uses the Internet and social networking sites has honest intentions,” said Jay Opperman, Senior Director of Security and Privacy at Comcast.

What does this all mean? It means that parents should: 1) become familiar with online social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace; and 2) talk to children about the importance of being safe and smart while communicating online.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when talking to your teens about the Internet and social networks:

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Cyber Attacks on Social Networking Sites Aimed At a Single User!

Social Editors — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:31:07 +0000

AfterDawn — According to Internet security company F-Secure, the cyberattacks that disrupted service at Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal on Thursday were targeted at just a single blogger. The attacks appear to be politically motivated, as the targeted user, “Cyxymu”, is a pro-Georgian blogger, and they also came a year after the short Russia-Georgia conflict over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were aimed specifically at the users’ personal pages on the sites. Some commentary suggests the attacks came from Russian nationalists who have control over vast botnets, whereas Cyxymu claims it came from the Russian government itself as a means to silence its critics.

“Launching DDoS attacks against services like Facebook is the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don’t like one of the newscasters,” F-Secure researcher Mikko Hyponnen said. “The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter, LiveJournal, and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of this attack.”

Facebook said on Friday that its service has returned to normal for its 250 million users. “Yesterday’s attack appears to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves,” the company said in a release. “Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users.”

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Twitter outage spotlights ‘addiction to social media crack’

Social Editors — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:22:26 +0000

Computerworld — Attack that hit Twitter, Facebook and Google left users adrift . The attack that knocked Twitter offline and slowed access to Facebook Thursday morning offered a quick lesson in how dependent millions of people have become on social networking sites.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took the microblogging site Twitter offline for about two hours yesterday morning. The same attack also hit Facebook and a few Google sites, but they didn’t collapse as Twitter did. Facebook reported a slowdown and a spokesman for Google said that while Google search, Gmail and docs were unaffected, some users experienced problems with custom URL redirects in both the Google Blogger and the Google Sites wiki.

While security experts today are working to figure out who was behind the widespread attack, other analysts are calculating the effect the downtime had on social networking users.

While the level of damage varied from site to site, the online uproar over the attacks was palpable. When users couldn’t get on Twitter, a lot of them immediately went to their Facebook pages to vent their frustrations about not being able to Twitter.

And the slow connections they suffered there just increased their frustrations.

“It was kind of shocking. It was a lights-out kind of moment,” said Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and a blog of the same name. “Yesterday showed that people are addicted…

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Week in review: Antisocial networking

Social Editors — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:07:42 +0000

cNet News — Social media site Twitter wasn’t always friendly to users this week., The microblogging tool was inaccessible for several hours on Thursday morning, followed by a period of slowness and sporadic time-outs (and more outright downtime). Twitter blamed an “ongoing” denial-of-service attack, but initially had little more to say. Social-networking site Facebook has also confirmed that it was targeted by a DoS attack that rendered some of its features slow or nonfunctional.

The denial-of-service attack was apparently the result of a coordinated attack on a Russian activist blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Google’s Blogger, and YouTube. The pro-Georgian blogger, who uses the account name “Cyxymu,” had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News.

“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard,” Kelly said. “We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”

But Twitter’s problems go beyond Internet attacks…

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Fortune 100 Companies Use Social Media For Marketing

Social Editors — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:07:40 +0000

Twitter and other social media strategies have recently captured the attention of the Fortune 100 companies, who are increasingly using the technology for marketing.

Social networking, no longer confined to friends and colleagues, has become an important marketing tool for businesses of all sizes, according to a new >survey by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Digital Media.

The survey found that the largest 100 companies in terms of revenue on the Fortune 500 list were active on social media networks – specifically on Twitter and Facebook, and in blogs.

Twitter was found to be the social network of choice, with 54 percent of Fortune 100 companies using the technology. Blogs came in second at 32 percent, followed by Facebook fan pages at 29 percent…

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