DreamGrow Social Media

Facebook More Visited Than Google

Everything social is what people want to do most. Currently the top site is still Google but it will pass. People love to talk more than search. If we look at the top sites in US for 2009 then we see that four of them are used for communicating with others (Yahoo Mail, Facebook, MySpace and Live Mail). I believe that this social chatter is fundamental human need and won’t go away any time soon.

As we pointed out in our 22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010, people will use more social networks’ messaging instead of regular email and IM. This will boost the visits to the social sites and decrease the usage of web mail. This all leads to Facebook becoming the most visited site in the world some time in 2010.

Experian Hitwise US tweeted that:

Facebook was the most visited site in the US on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. 1st time the site has been the #1 visited US site ever. — Hitwise_US

Search Engine Land has a Hitwise graph for the data running up to the Christmas.

Experian Hitwise UK shared their data:

Facebook was the #1 US website this Xmas. Not quite there in the UK yet – maybe next year… — Hitwise_UK

I think there are two factors holding back total domination of Facebook. Lack of news and god-awful search. If Facebook would integrate Bing search to its platform then Google would have a lot to worry about.

Facebook Having A Redesign

GigaOm has released two new screenshots, depicting the forthcoming redesign that’s going to change the look of Facebook a bit. We don’t know when the changes are supposed to happen, but generally, changes tend to happen soon after pictures are released.

So, what has changed?

• The navigation bar has been reorganized, removing the doubled profile link we have seen so far.
• The search bar has been moved to the center, indicating Facebook’s desire to make search more relevant inside the site. If they would also work on it’s algorithm a bit, it may really grow to be a widely used search engine. At the moment, the Facebook search feature is really bad. Even if you know what you are looking for you may end up empty handed. SO, if this is only cosmetics then it won’t do much good as people will probably ignore it, if it gives consistently bad results.
• Facebook has combined some of the menus to an all-purpose “account” dropdown, making it look more logical than before, especially for the newcomers.
• The sidebar is scaled down, taking some design elements from Facebook Lite. Still the functionality of the sidebar is a bit rudimentary considering the amount of space that it takes on the screen. This could be remedied by
• the bookmarks that have been added to the sidebar – a (hopefully) nice way to have a quick access to your favorite applications or pages.

Research: Student Grades Not Affected By Social Networking

The study “Social Networking Usage and Grades Among College Students” (PDF) finds that students who heavily engage in social networking do just as well academically as students who are less interested in keeping in touch with the medium.

The study indicates that social media is being integrated with rather than interfering with students’ academic lives. College students have grown up with social networks, and the study shows they are now simply part of how students interact with each other with no apparent impact on grades. – UNH adjunct professor Chuck Martin

It seems that most of the time that is used for social networks comes from TV, idle surfing, and gaming. This way the time spent on social networking sites could be said to be a “higher quality” activity. The time for studying and other important thing stays the same.

The research shows that there is no correlation between the amount of time students spend using social media and their grades. Grades followed similar distributions for all colleges.

63% of heavy users received high grades, compared to 65% of light users. 37% of heavy users of social media received what were defined as lower grades and 35% of light users fell into same category.

The study showed that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular social media sites, with 96% of students saying they use Facebook and 84% saying they use YouTube. 20% said they use blogs, 14% use Twitter, 12% use MySpace and 10% use LinkedIn.

89% of students use social networks for social reasons and 79% use them for entertainment. 26% of students use social media for educational reasons and 16% for professional reasons.
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Image credit Mary Gober

World Map Of Social Networks

Italian writer, blogger and photographer Vincenzo Cosenza has put together a visualization showing the most popular social networks around the world on a map, based on recent traffic data (December 2009).

As we can see from the map, Facebook is still strong and on the rise. It is dominating most of the western world, together with Africa, Middle-East and the Pacific region. With a user base of 350 million and growing, the map will probably look even greener next year.

Friendster…is…well…Friendster. Nothing to talk about here.

Although Facebook is also growing in Russia, it is still dominated by Odnoklassniki and V Kontakte. I personally don’t see this situation changing any time soon either. They both support cyrillic and are strongly oriented on the Russian-speaking community. They are also widely used among Russian inhabitants in other Eastern European countries.

Google’s Orkut is shrinking steadily, still dominating only in Brazil and Estonia. With Facebook’s user base having grown by 50% in both of these countries in one year, Orkut probably won’t be on the map at the end of 2010. Orkut also used to be big in India, but with Facebook growing by 150% in two consecutive years there, it has lost it’s dominant position.

Mixi is mainly dominant in Japan, with it’s main “advantage” being the possibility to stay totally anonymous – The people in Japan like to generally stay anonymous when surfing. Facebook’s privacy settings haven’t really been embraced there…

China’s QQ, when only usernames are concerned, is the biggest social network in the world. QQ today has over one billion usernames, but only one tenth of them are recurring visitors, topping at 91 million in Dec. 21. Without a doubt, QQ is the biggest player in China and will probably stay that way for a long time.

There are also a bunch of smaller players, being dominant in only one or two countries. But Facebook is changing that situation quite fast:

When compared to june 2009, Facebook has become dominant in 19 countries:

India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Czech Republic, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Oman, Yemen, Quadeloupe and Martinique

So, China aside, Facebook is still growing fast. By the same time next year, we will probably see a map where Facebook is dominating most of the western hemisphere, together with the Middle-East and the Pacific. The only real players who are stopping Facebook from having a total “world dominance”, will probably be China’s QQ and V Kontakte in Russia.

22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010

I have collected some of the ideas that seem to be growing fast and make real business sense. Here we go in no particular order:

Some people have problems with opening the original Open Office presentation format when downloading from Slideshare. Here is the PowerPoint version of the presentation.

Great! Got featured on Slideshare:

Your presentation 22 Social Media Trends is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday. – the SlideShare team

Slideshare went down shortly after. Coincidence? Hmmm… )

And here’s the list:

1. The fact that audience has the control starts to sink in. (Control is an illusion)
2. Social media will get real budgets. (Most of these budgets will be inhouse)
3. Social media will be integrated to overall marketing activities.
4. Social media ROI will become important. Measure how much do we get out of social media.
5. Brands start to use listening platforms to monitor the conversations.
6. Social media will reach behind corporate firewalls. (Read more)
7. Customer service and interaction with businesses becomes social. (Personaly touch pays)
8. Measuring online activities and their effect on offline sales will become increasingly important.
9. Media will fragment even more and smaller communities can be hyper-targeted.
10. Social networks chatter will be incorporated into CRM systems.
11. More sales will originate from social media contacts (B2B and B2C).
12. Marketing will hit mobiles big time.
13. All search will be real-time. Web, blogs, social networks.
14. Real-time will be the right time. Delays will cost customers.
15. People will use more social networks’ messaging instead of regular email and IM. (Webmail providers should be worried.)
16. First large scale successful augmented reality applications.
17. Campaigns will get more dynamic, spanning from offline to actionable social channels.
18. Social networks will become more commercial.
19. Ads will be more interactive and connected to social networks.
20. The home page for internet users will be social network’s profile page.
21. Facebook will grow to 700 million? (Let’s look at some numbers).
22. Shopping will be integrated into social networking sites.

A Simple Social Media Platform

Yesterday when I was running on treadmill I let my mind wander how all this data that is generated in the equipment could be used to improve my exercise, services offered and the overall wellbeing of everyone involved.

The data from the equipment and scales should be sent to a server where I can access it. I would be able to track my progress set goals and share my achievements with friends. Posting to Twitter and Facebook will make my experience more social and I would be less likely to quit exercising. A special Facebook application can handle the competition with other member of the club. This will tie the users to the brand’s fan page and application on Facebook.

On the other hand the owners of the fitness club could get incredibly valuable data about how people behave, what are the motivating circumstances and what patterns indicate that somebody is going to quit. This will enable them to customize their offers to meet the individual needs of each client.

In the end people would exercise more, socialize more, be more healthy and happy. I would really, really love this in my gym. The overall happiness index would go up a few notches.

Of course, this platform could be used for other things than just fitness club, but it’s a good example. Here is a picture to get a better understanding how this should work.

The Mobile Internet is Bigger Than You Think

This is a really eye opening presentation. I have to say that I have bee a bit skeptic about mobile. But maybe it’s time to reconsiders. One interesting fact from Wikipedia:

The world’s largest individual mobile operator is China Mobile with over 500 million mobile phone subcribers.

The number of mobile phones worldwide 2009 is 4.1 billion (Wikipedia), exceeding any other device including cars, credit cards and TV sets. As social media is a perfect fit for mobile devices then my thoughts about this platform are changing.

Social media weekend: Seth Godin, relationships, marketing is dead

Another collection of articles for people who want to stay up to date in all things social. Seth GOdin has released agreat free ebook. Marketing will die. What is a relationship and 50 tactics for social media. Share and enjoy.

What Matters Now: get the free ebook from Seth Godin. Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up. Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. Seth’s new ebook will get you started on that path. A page from 60 great thinkers. (Download PDF now).

Be of service. Always. Excellence! Never an exception! If not Excellence, what? — Tom Peters in the ebook

50 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits

2010: The Year Marketing Dies… (Subtitled) Or at Least Marketing as We Know It! If marketing burns to the ground in 2010, a new and more powerful marketing will rise from the ashes. The role of the new marketer:

• Won’t be merely to imagine creative messages but to fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience,
• Won’t be to plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar but to respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers,
• Won’t be merely to talk at consumers but to listen and engage one to one,
• Won’t be to build campaigns but relationships…

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. The same change is taking place in advertising and marketing. Control is an illusion.

Social media-powered show to hit Web. From creator of ‘American Idol’ comes ‘If I Can Dream,’ a social media approach to entertainment. If I Can Dream. Ehh… I had similar idea with my friend. Interaction, between characters across all social media in real-time. In addition to that regular TV appearances that are backed by YouTube and Hulu. This project seems to bypass regular TV. Ideas cost nothing, innovation is in doing…

Relationships Aren’t Universal. You, as a business, may have all the best intentions to forge a relationship with me, meaning that you want to talk with me, interact with me, get to know me better, understand my motivations and my personality and demonstrate that you value me as a customer, and hopefully give me lots of reasons to adore you and express that adoration publicly. I, however, may just want to get a discount, buy your thing because it suits my needs, and move on.

Kipp Bodnar: 11 B2B Social Media Predictions for 2010

Kipp Bodnar is writing about B2B social media future. Here’s a summary of the points with little commentary from me. Social media will spread from marketing department to sales. This will make social networks prominent lead generation tools. Seth Godin has predicted that in a few years 90% of the B2B leads will come from social networks. These trends will increase the budgets for the inbound marketing. To gain credibility B2B companies will target influencers. On the other hand CNET study suggest:

Shape your marketing messages for the larger network of moderately connected users, not just the few highly connected individuals at the top. This involves considering this group’s emotional and informational needs, not just modifying the messages you used for the top tier. – Guy Kawasaki, The Myth of A Listers and Influencers

Understanding the importance of social data and the use of real-time search will make it clear that B2B companies have to get social to stay in the picture and engage prospects. Social media will mean business and this will bring down the firewalls that now block employees from accessing social networks.

The content of B2B social media communication will get more exciting. Video, audio, streaming media, interactive tools and other stuff you can play around with will be used more and more. The best tools will make completing your goals fun. This fun will hopefully spill over to corporate web sites that start to develop social elements. The ones who don’t adapt will soon become obsolete

The corporate website of the future will be a credible source of opinion and fact, authored by both the corporation and community. The result? A true first-stop community resource where information flows for better products and services. – Jeremiah Owyang, How To Evolve Your Irrelevant Corporate Website

As for location based services, I believe that they will have a lot of impact on consumer side but B2B decisions is less influenced by real-time and location based services. The same goes for the importance of mobile base content. The B2C will lead the way and B2B lag behind.
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Image credit: Carl Dwyer

Top Twitter topics in 2009

On tuesday, Twitter released their top keywords, hashtags and phrases for 2009 in their blog. Since 2009 is coming to an end, it’s quite interesting to see the main topics discussed there at the end of this decade. The list is segmented by numerous categories, ranging from news events to TV shows.

A great list to see what was happening in the starchild of social media, at the end of the decade that gave birth to social media on the internet itself.