Facebook Launches Pages Redesign

Facebook has begun rolling out a full redesign of Facebook Pages. The changes will make the Pages look and operate more like user profiles.

The new Pages redesign was first seen in December, when Facebook accidentally launched it and quickly took it down. The update not only removed tabs, but it gave page admins the ability to post and comment on other Facebook Pages through a “Login as Page” feature.

Those prototype features have made the cut for today’s launch. As Facebook’s Rohit Dhawan, the lead product manager for Facebook Pages, explained to me earlier today, the company has wanted to redesign Facebook Pages ever since it launched the profile redesign. “We strongly believe you should have consistent experiences when possible,” Dhawan said.

The big difference everyone will notice will be the new layout. The left-hand menu for editing pages has been removed in favor of a new navigation menu that replaces the old tabbing system. And like the Facebook Profiles redesign, the left-hand “Information” box is also gone. However, page admins can now add info about their brand at the top of the page under the main title.

The right-hand menu has also been tweaked. There is now a section that features the page’s admins (if you so choose) as well as a section that shows users how many of their friends have also “liked” that particular page. Finally, just like profiles, a page can now feature relevant photos at the top. This could lead to some very creative uses for Facebook Pages.

---

Log In As Your Facebook Page

---

There are some other notable differences between the new Facebook Pages and the old version, especially for page admins. The “Login as Page” feature gives admins the ability to interact with the rest of Facebook as a page, not an individual. For example, I could log in as Mashable and start commenting and “liking” things on Facebook Pages that have “liked” Mashable. Admins will also see a different News Feed if they are logged in as their page; It will display the most important news from the pages you’ve “liked.”

“A page can now use Facebook as if they were an individual with the ability to interact with other pages,” Dhawan said. “It provides interesting content when people are visiting the page. ”

Pages can’t do everything a user can, though. Most importantly, they cannot post on a user’s wall or comment on his or her status. The lone exception is for a user who has opted for the “everybody” privacy setting; Pages can comment on status updates for those individuals.

The other update Facebook is adding is an “Everyone” filter that brings the most interesting and engaging posts from a page’s community to the top of the page. This makes it easier for users and admins to easily find the most “liked” and commented conversations on a particular page. The new Facebook Pages are also smart enough to filter out posts that are not in a language you speak.

The new design launches today as a preview for Facebook Page admins. Before switching, they can check to see what their page will look like and tweak elements of the design before launch. The company is also releasing a Page Tour and a manual to explain the new design. Admins will have until March 10 to switch over though, before Facebook automatically updates every page to the new design.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/02/10/facebook-pages-redesign-2/

Is Reddit on the Rise?

Reddit has announced some small but significant staffing changes today, causing us to ponder the big picture for the little link-sharing app that could.
As longtime rival Digg takes a Titanic-like nosedive into the freezing waters of the Internet, hemorrhaging staff along the way, Reddit claims things are going swimmingly.
Today, the small team, which was acquired by publishing behemoth Condé Nast in 2006, has just announced a couple new hires and says it will be hiring more engineers shortly. The company will now include a new back-end engineer and a new sales rep, as well as a couple redditors who will be working as part-time support staff.
But you may recall things were not so rosy for Reddit in the quite recent past. Just six months ago, the site was forced to adopt a freemium model to keep itself in business. At the time, Reddit staffer Mike Schiraldi wrote,

“Whenever this topic comes up on the site, someone always posts a comment about how Reddit is owned by Condé Nast, a billion-dollar corporation… and how if they wanted to they could hire a thousand engineers and purchase a million dollars worth of heavy iron. But here’s the thing: corporations aren’t run like charities. They keep separate budgets for each business line, and usually allocate resources proportionate to revenue. And Reddit’s revenue isn’t great.”

Clearly, times have changed since those words were penned last year. For one thing, the freemium features, dubbed Reddit Gold, were considered a huge success by the company.
Also, since then, the site has grown to more than one billion pageviews per month. That figure represented a 300% year-over-year increase.
This kind of traffic growth has helped the site lure “big-ticket” advertisers, according to site admins; another rising source of revenue is the site’s sponsored link system, which is used to promote SMBs, startups, blog posts, YouTube videos and other kinds of content. And Reddit Gold continues to be a success, too.
It’s interesting to watch this company — which without doubt was smaller than Digg as far as staff was concerned and which never drove the same masses of lemming-like traffic to publisher sites the way Digg did — succeed even as Digg falters. Perhaps this is a real-life example of a slower, steadier web app winning the race.

Source:  http://mashable.com/2011/02/08/reddit-hires/

Where to Spend Your Digital Marketing $$$ in 2011

The marketing landscape is changing at a pace never seen before.  Twitter and Facebook are exploding with unprecedented popularity, smart phones are selling like hotcakes, and new forms of advertising are constantly being developed to reach the 21^st Century consumer.
So what’s next for digital marketing?  Where is the market going?  These are extremely interesting questions for businesses trying to reach consumers, get their attention, and drive behavior.  (Tell us what you think)
If you’re paying attention there’s some interesting facts that will probably make you evaluate where you are, where you want to be, and if you’re moving in the right direction.

Facebook

• 1 in every 13 people on Earth are active Facebook users and half of them are logged in on any given day - over 250 million people.

• 71% of  U.S. web users are on Facebook

• The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user database.

• Facebook Display Ads have a Cost Per Conversion of less than half of Google.

Mobile Marketing

• 48% of 18 to 34 year olds check Facebook right when they wake up. 28% check it on their smart phones before getting out of bed.

• Between 2006 and 2008 the average number of monthly text messages increased by 549% (65 to 357 according to the Nielsen Company) .  Current averages are near 700 text messages per month.

• 2 Weeks before Christmas 2010 smart phone sales were already double the total for Christmas 2009.

This surely isn’t the whole story.  Weigh in and share your comments, insight, and knowledge below.
What’s valuable to your business in 2011?  CLICK HERE to tell us.

Yours in Service,

@BrettRelander

About the Author

Brett Relander works with small to medium sized businesses & corporate brands to develop measurable digital marketing strategies. It's about results, nothing else. http://TacticalMarketingLabs.com

Source:  http://socialmediatoday.com/brettrelander/266416/where-spend-your-digital-marketing-2011

Facebook to Let Advertisers Republish User Posts

Facebook users who check in to a store or click the "like" button for a brand may soon find those actions retransmitted on their friends' pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for by advertisers.

Currently there is no way for users to decline this feature.

Facebook says this lets advertisers promote word-of-mouth recommendations that people already made on the site. They play up things people do on the site that might get lost in the mass of links, photos, status updates and other content users share on the world's largest social network.

The new, promoted posts would keep the same privacy setting that the original posting had. So if you limit your check-ins to a specific group of friends, only these same friends would see the "Sponsored Story" version later.

The promoted content will appear on the right side of users' home pages, not in their main news feed. That's where regular ads, friend requests and other content are located.

Involving users in advertisements without their consent has been a thorny issue for Facebook. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in this case the company is making money off a person's name or likeness without their consent. He calls it "subtle and misleading" and says users should object.

Twitter already offers advertisers something similar, called "promoted tweets." These are Twitter posts paid for by advertisers to show up in search results and on top of popular topic lists on the site. But while Twitter's ads are written by the companies that pay for them, Facebook's sponsored stories are created by users.

Both represent an effort to make advertisements more akin to what people are already experiencing on the site instead of putting up virtual billboards that users might ignore or find tacky.

Online Video from Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v10100328087082670

Facebook, MySpace and YouTube Named Top Blacklisted Sites Of 2010

Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube continue to polarize corporations and people in charge of networks, judging by a new report from OpenDNS.  The sites showed up on both "top blacklisted" and "top whitelisted" lists covering the entire year of 2010.

If you'd like a definition of those terms, OpenDNS said in its report, "Blacklists are typically used when there is no desire to block an entire category in principle, but there is a focus on preventing traffic to specific websites based on a combination of their popularity and content.  This top ten list suggests a concern with the use of bandwidth by streaming sites and with privacy concerns from advertising networks."

Then the company added, "Whitelists are typically used when there is a desire to block entire categories, but access to selected websites is granted on an exception basis.  These sites represent the most trusted sites in their category."


All sorts of interpretations seem possible as a result.  An unpleasant one for Mark Zuckerberg: perhaps companies like Facebook less than Playboy.  Or, to head in the other direction, maybe the average office worker prefers Facebook to Playboy, thereby necessitating the "blacklist" response.

Either way, the sites appearing on these lists can at least argue that they've succeeded in attracting everyone's attention.  And home usage is likely to be high as a result, since blacklists and whitelists can't restrict everyone's browsing all the time.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2011/01/25/facebook-myspace-youtube-named-top-blacklisted-sites-of-2010

27% of People Use Facebook in the Washroom

Recently AIS Media asked a very interesting question to its readers in a survey: "Do you ever use Facebook on your mobile device while you’re in the bathroom." 27% of respondents said yes. This is not surprising to me whatsoever, considering that Facebook recently surged past Google in regards to time spent on website. The majority of the respondents were between the ages of 30-49, with Females representing a 54% share.

Source: http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2011/01/27-of-people-use-facebook-in-washroom.html

Claim your Facebook Email Address

To set up a free @facebook.com address, you need to follow the below steps

First sing in to your account
Log on to http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/
Now you will see request an invitation green color link at the bottom click on that, it takes some time (may be days)
Once your receive the invitation from the facebook go to your Messages view and click the "Claim your Facebook email" link.

Your email address will match your public username, for example:

Profile: facebook.com/username
Email: username@facebook.com

If you don’t have a username yet, you can choose one when you create your email address.

Once you set up your email address, people can email you using any traditional email system (e.g., Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail), and the emails will be delivered to your Facebook Messages. When you send messages to external email addresses, the emails will be formatted to look like Facebook messages, including your name, your profile picture and your message.

Cite: http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=19031

The New Messages - New Feature from Facebook

Well, it's finally here. After Facebook announced that they'd have an email solution that's not email, they've rolled it out to the public.

This morning, on my Facebook news feed, I saw the following message regarding Facebook's new Messages:

The new system combines your messages, texts and chats in one place so you don't have to try to remember how you communicated with your contacts in order to find what you're looking for. But it also does one other important thing - something that's a salvo at Google's Gmail: users are given the opportunity to get a Facebook email account.

Why would you want a Facebook email? According to Facebook:

There are many benefits to claiming your Facebook email address:

• It’s free and easy to set up.
  
• Having your email integrated with your messages, chats and texts makes it easier to check them all at once. And if you’re looking for a message later, you don’t have to worry about how it was sent since all your different types of messages are in one place.
  
• Your Facebook messages are compatible with traditional email systems (e.g., Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail). When people send you emails from these external systems, they’re delivered directly to your Facebook Messages. And when you send messages to external email addresses, they’re formatted to look like your messages on Facebook, including your name and profile picture along with your message.
  
• Owning your @facebook.com address makes it easier for friends and family who are not on Facebook yet to connect with you.
  
• Your other email addresses may change over time, but your Facebook email never does.

Personally, I"m a committed Gmail user, since my Google account integrates with many other platforms (such as Blogger, which this blog is written on), among others. I don't know if I'll give this a try or not.

But a little bit behind what's driving Facebook's decision to expand in this area. The New York Times discusses the decline of email in Gen Y, citing that the younger generation simply doesn't use email as much as they use IM and texting.

In November, Facebook announced the evolution of its messaging system and in a Fast Company article, Zuckerberg noted his inspiration for deciding on the software that would shape the communications style of whole generations:

"Whenever I get a chance to talk to high schoolers, I always want to ask them what kind of software they're using... So I asked them: What do you use for email? [And they answered,] 'Some of us use Gmail. Some of us use Yahoo. But we don’t really use email.' And I said, 'What do you mean you don’t use email? Everyone uses email.’ And they said, 'No. It’s too slow.'"

Using high schoolers as a focus group for the future of a multi-billion dollar company? While I understand that they're on the cutting edge of what's next and that they'll be the users of the future, my traditional self cringes a little about the notion of basing your success on the tastes and proclivities of such a young a generation. Particularly when they have yet to fully grasp the habit of good writing, functional grammar, and the ability to fully express their thoughts.

My concern arises from this kicker from the Fast Company article:

The teens told Zuckerberg it was too much trouble to think of a subject and to compose a formal message.

Too much trouble to think of even a subject line? I weep for the future.

Cite: http://www.scottmonty.com/2011/01/facebook-at-center-of-your-messaging.html

8 Excellent Twitter Analytics Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams

Twitter is now the third most popular social network, behind Facebook and MySpace (Compete, 2009). A year ago, it has over a million users and 200,000 active monthly users sending over 3 million updates per day (TechCrunch, 2008). Those figures have almost certainly increased since then. With the torrential streams of Twitter updates (or tweets), there's an emerging demand to sieve signals from noises and harvest useful information.

Enter Twitter Analytics, Twitter Analysis, or simply just Analytwits (in the tradition of Twitter slang). These analytics tools are growing in numbers; even Twitter is developing them.

Besides Twitter Search, the following 8 Analytwits are some of the more useful web applications to analyze Twitter streams. Each of these tools serve specific purpose. They crawl and sift through Twitter streams; also, aggregate, rank and slice-and-dice data to deliver some insights on Twitter activities and trends. There's no single best analytic tool available but use in combination, they can extract interesting insights from Twitter streams.

8 Great Tools for Social (Twit)telligence

TWITALYZER:
It provides activities analysis of any Twitter user, based on social media success yardsticks. Its metrics include (a) Influence score, which is basically your popularity score on Twitter (b) signal-to-noise ratio (c) one's propensity to ‘retweet' or pass along others' tweets (d) velocity - the rate one's updates on Twitter and (e) clout - based on how many times one is cited in tweets. Its Time-based Analysis of Twitter Usage produces graphical representation of progression on various measures. Using Twitalyzer is a easy; just enter your Twitter ID and that's it! It doesn't require any password to use its service. Speed of analysis is depending on the size of your Followed and Followers lists.

MICROPLAZA:
It offers an interesting way to make sense of your Twitter streams. Called itself “your personal micro-news agency,” it aggregates and organizes links shared by those you follow on Twitter and display them as newstream. Status updates that contain similar web links are aggregated into 'tiles.' Within a tile, you can see updates from those you follow and also those you don't. Another interesting feature is ‘Being Someone', which you can peek into someone's world and see their 'tiles'; designed to facilitate information discovery. You can also organize those you follow into groups or ‘tribes'. You can create, for example, a knitting ‘tribe' to easily what URLs your knitting friends are tweeting. In addition, you can bookmark 'tiles' for future reference. Its yet-to-be-released feature, Mosaic, allows users to group together the bookmarked 'tiles' and turn them into social objects - for sharing and discussion. At the time of this posting, MicroPlaza is still in private beta.

TWIST:
It offers trends of keywords or product name, based what Twitter users are tweeting about. You can see frequency of a keyword or product name being mentioned over a period a week or a month and display them on a graph. Select an area on the graph to zoom into trend for specific time range. Click on any point on the graph to see all tweets posted during a specific time. One can also see the latest tweets on the topic. Twist also allows you do a trend comparison of two (or more) keywords. Its graphs are embeddable on any website. A simple but effective tool for trending, similar to what Google Trends is doing for search queries.

TWITTURLY:
It tracks popular URLs tracker on Twitter. With Digg-style interface, it displays 100 most popular URLs shared on Twitter over the last 24 hours. On Digg, people vote for a particular web content, whereas on Twitterurly, each time a user share a link, it is counted as 1 vote. This is a good tool to see what people are ‘talking' about in Twitterville and see total tweets that carry the links. Its URL stats provides information on number of tweets in last 24 hrs, last 1 week and last 1 month. It also calculates total estimated reach of the tweets. Another interesting site is Tweetmeme, which can filter popular URLs into blogs, images, videos and audios.

TWEETSTATS:
TweetStats is useful to reveal tweeting behavior of any Twitter users. It consolidates and collates Twitter activity data and present them in colorful graphs. Its Tweet Timeline is probably the most interesting, as it shows month-by-month total tweets since your joined Twitter (TweetStats showed Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, started tweeting since March 2006; 80 tweets during that month). Twitterholic can also show when a person joined Twitter but not in graphical format. Other metrics include (a) Aggregate Daily Tweets - total tweets, by day (c) Aggregate Hourly Tweets - total tweets, by hour (d) Tweet Density: hourly Twitter activities over 7 days period (e) Replies to: top 10 persons you've replied and (f) Interfaces Used: top 10 clients used to access Twitter. In addition, its Tweet Cloud allows you to see the popular words you used in your tweets.

TWITTERFRIENDS:
TwitterFriends focuses on conversation and information aspects of Twitter users' behaviors. Two key metrics are Conversational Quotient (CQ) and Links Quotient (LQ). CQ measures how many tweets were replied whereas LQ measures how many tweets contained links. Its TwitGraph displays six metrics - Twitter rank, CQ, LQ, Retweet Quotient, Follow cost, Fans and @replies. Its interactive graph (using Google Visualization API) can displays relationships between two variables. In addition, you can search for conversations between two Twitter users. This app seems to slice-and-dice data in more ways compared to other applications listed here.

THUMMIT QUICKRATE:
Thummit offers sentiments analysis, based on conversations on Twitter. This web application identifies latest buzzwords, actors, movies, brands, products, etc. (called ‘topics') and combines them with conversations from Twitter. It does sentiment analysis to determine whether each Twitter update is Thumms up (positive), neutral or Thumms down (negative). Click on any topic to display opinions on the topic found on Twitter. In addition, it allows people to vote on topics via its website or mobile phones. The idea behind this app is good but still has some kinks to work out.

TWEETEFFECT:
TweetEffect matches your tweets timeline with your gain/lose followers timeline to determine which tweet makes you lost or gain followers. It analyze the latest 200 tweets and highlights tweets that coincides with you losing or gaining two (or more) followers in less than 5 minutes. This application simplistically assumed that your tweet is the sole factor affecting your gain/lose followers pattern. But, in reality, there are many other factors involved. Nevertheless, TweetEffect is still a fun tool to use; just don't take the results too seriously.

Cite: http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/80437

The Future of Content Survey: How Effective do Businesses find Social Media Strategies?

We all know social media can do great things for a business. A well developed social media strategy can play a big part in a business’s ability to be successful. However, according to the recently released Future of Content survey, developed by Loudhouse with Meltwater Group, 48 percent of organizations do not consider social media an integral aspect of their marketing effort. It is easy to assume that the reason behind such a decision lies with budgetary constrictions but surprisingly only 18 percent cite this as a barrier. Given the strong potential of social media, what therefore could be fuelling organizations’ hesitancy toward embracing this practice?

Only 37 percent of US companies surveyed consider social media as the most effective marketing method of consumer engagement. Companies are still reverting back to the tried and tested methods of in-person events (61 percent) and print magazines (56 percent) to encourage interaction with their customers. Given that social media is a relatively new practice many organizations have difficulty in creating meaningful or interesting content (23 percent) that emotionally engages their audience. This suggests an overall lack of understanding of the social media landscape.

30 percent of companies cite measurement capabilities as a significant challenge to adopting social media. Companies are used to being able to measure the success of a campaign but social media presents a new challenge in measurement. Tracking social media’s return on their investment (ROI), whether it’s money or time, is unfamiliar territory for many organizations. An average of six people are shown as having some social media responsibility resulting in confusion about whom within an organization should “own” and facilitate social media practices. Ownership is typically given to those with enthusiasm for new technology (52 percent) rather than specific social media skills (32 percent). Without clearly defined roles it is difficult to measure the success of a strategy or its respective goals.

Similarly, a lack of resources and time to devote to social media (38 percent) can affect organizations’ ability to measure the true ROI of social media activities, with only one in six companies fully satisfied with their associated ROI measurement tactics. This suggests that businesses are hesitant to fully embrace social media without first mitigating any risks regarding their associated budget.

While 84% of companies think it is important to monitor what is said online about their brand, only 1 in 5 have invested in tools to do this. This indicates that companies are excited yet challenged by the changing nature of content and are learning as they go in adopting the necessary skills and knowledge. With a further 29 percent of companies planning to adopt monitoring methods in the coming year, businesses now need to re-evaluate how and why they are using social media to ensure this investment is justified.

What these findings tell us is that although overall enthusiasm about social media is high with 35 percent, of those companies having increased their social media budget in the past 12 months, the industry itself is in a transitional period and still very much in its infancy. With transition comes risk, and more emphasis will therefore be placed on measuring its overall contribution in order to help justify the investment. Knowing who is saying what about your brand and where they are saying it is a key part of measuring changes in sentiment and therefore the impact of online activities. It’s important to evaluate your options to determine the best solution for your business.

Cite: http://socialmediatoday.com/n-de-besche/259336/future-content-survey-how-effective-do-businesses-find-social-media-strategies

6 Key Metrics for a Social Media Measurement Dashboard

A host of social media monitoring tools are available to monitor conversations that are relevant to your brand or company. Many of these tools also now offer built-in engagement components that allow you to easily engage in relevant conversations. In addition to ease of use, another key benefit of these tools is that you can also track and measure the conversations you participate in through one easy solution.
 More Popular Social Media Marketing Columns from 2010

    * Twitter Exploit Warning: How Anyone Can Easily Snatch Your Direct Messages
    * Measuring Social Media with Web Analytics, Part 1
    * How to Gain Traffic Using Twitter, YouTube

This makes social media engagement much easier to manage, but a key aspect is still missing. To fully understand the impact of your social media efforts, you need a true social media measurement dashboard.

Because there aren't any truly robust tools that go beyond monitoring social media to measuring your social media efforts, you'll likely need to create your own dashboard for now. The following are six key metrics that should be part of your social media measurement dashboard.

1. Gross Views

Gross views is the aggregate of views across your various social media channels. It represents the number of times users were exposed to your brand through your social media channels. The calculation will vary depending on the channels that you use, but some of the metrics that go into this calculation include:

        * Facebook page views
        * Blog page views
        * YouTube channel views
        * YouTube video views
        * Flickr photo views

2. Connections

This is a calculation of anyone who has explicitly expressed an interest in your brand or company. By expressing their interest, the user has taken the next step beyond just being exposed to your brand or company to now having a relationship where a conversation can take place.

Some of the metrics that will fall under the connection calculation include:

        * Blog subscribers
        * Facebook fans/likes
        * Twitter followers
        * YouTube friends and subscribers
        * LinkedIn group members

3. Audience Engagements

Audience engagement is a measure of how actively your audience is engaging with or talking about your brand or company. A few of the key metrics that go into the calculation include:

        * Blog comments
        * Twitter retweets and @ tweets
        * Facebook interactions
        * YouTube interactions
        * Social media brand mentions

4. Social Media Referrals

Likely one of your ultimate goals of a social media campaign is to drive visitors to a site where a conversion can take place. Measuring social media referrals to your site is thus a critical component of a social media measurement dashboard.

In order to properly measure social media referrals, there will need to be some set up and configuration with your web analytics tool. Once this has been completed, you'll be able to measure social media referrals that can be tied directly to your efforts as well as social media referrals that aren't directly attributed to your efforts.

To learn more about setting up and configuring your web analytics tool, check out part one and part two of "Measuring Social Media With Web Analytics."

5. Social Media Conversions

You'll likely be judged based on the business value that you deliver through your social media efforts, so just showing metrics (e.g., connections and audience engagement) won't impress your superiors. You need to show how these types of metrics translate into conversions that provide value to your company.

If you've properly set up and configured your web analytics tool to measure social media referrals and you've defined your site goals, then you're ready to measure conversions. You should measure conversions from each social media channel and then roll it up into total conversions that can be attributed to social media.

6. My Engagements

This is a measure of your activity within the social media space and is increasingly a type of metric that social media monitoring tools are including. Looking at how this metric correlates with the other metrics included in your dashboard can begin to show the impact that your social media efforts are having.

Some of the metrics that should be included in the engagement calculation are:

        * Internal blog posts
        * External blog and forum comments
        * Facebook posts
        * Twitter retweets, @ tweets, and general tweets
        * YouTube video posts

While these six metrics in a dashboard aren't going to show a complete picture of your social media efforts, they will put you on the right path to justifying the resources that are being directed towards social media.

Your social media dashboard should include additional metrics that are custom to your business needs and how you're engaging in social media. By creating your own social media dashboard that has the ability to show the impact of your social media efforts, you'll be in great position to bide time until a truly robust social media measurement tool is available.

Cite:  http://searchenginewatch.com/3641089

StumbleUpon Passes Facebook For Social Media Traffic

That was the whole tweet and nothing but the tweet that came from StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp.
The findings came via an analytics service called Statcounter which tracks an average of 15 billion page views per month on over 3 million websites. In terms of Social Media, they reviewed numbers from the top seven social media websites, including Stumbleupon and Facebook, as well as Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Myspace and Digg.

And as of January 1, StumbleUpon became the number one website for generating social media traffic in the U.S, accounting for 43.34% of the market.

You can see a larger version of the graph here.

So, what does all this mean?

Well clearly you should abandon your Facebook page immediately in favor of StumbleUpon.

Do it right now!!

On second thought...

We have to keep in mind that of the billions and billions of page views on the billions of websites around the world, is using only 15 billion enough to warrant a sufficient sample size?

Not sure....

Obviously Facebook is not going anywhere fast so as far as generating social media traffic I would say with a half a billion users they're a pretty safe bet to generate globs (technical term) of traffic.

The other thing to keep in mind is the validity of the findings themselves. Now I am by no means saying Statcounter's figures are inaccurate but tell me, have you ever seen something, anything, that generates more stats, graphs, charts, algorithms, than social media?

You can't go a day, hell an hour online without coming across an endless supply of "the latest trends in social media" or something to that effect.

So, while this is great news for StumbleUpon, just remember to get out the old salt shaker and take it with a few grains.

Cite: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/steve-olenski/258445/stumbleupon-passes-facebook-social-media-traffic

Microsoft Surface Trailer - Future Technology

CITE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g43GhjRCD5U