All posts in “Follow”

Facebook Rules, Rolls Changes: Social Media Round Up for September 16, 2011

This past week in the world of social media was all about Facebook

Facebook rules. Stats released this week show it continues to be the dominate social network. According to the latest Nielson Social Media Report (Q3, 20011) released this week, U.S netizens have spent over FIVE MILLION minutes (equivalent to approximately 102 years) on Facebook up until May, 2011. Time spent on Facebook is far more (100 times) than the time spent on Twitter, or any other websites.

This week, Facebook introduced several significant updates on their social network services in order to keep its crown as the top social social network in the world. From the Facebook blog:

#1 Improved  Friend Lists

Smart Lists are a new improvement to the existing friends list feature on Facebook. It helps to easily group friends into different lists, and receive updates from or share to different lists of friends. The best part is, Facebook even does the grouping for you!

  • You will see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you – like your school, work, family and city.

Facebook will also allow you to create your own Close Friends and Acquaintances lists, which allows you to see more updates from your best friends, and see less from the not-so-close ones.

The platform now makes Better Friend Suggestions for you to add friends into your  friend lists.

#2 Subscribe button

If the new friend lists are Facebook’s answer to the Circles from Google+, then the brand new Subscribe Button would be their move against Twitter. The Subscribe Button allows users to do three things:

  • To choose what type of content you want to see from your friends news feeds
  • To see certain types of updates from people whom you are not friends with
  • To share content with people whom you not friends with

Generally speaking, the Subscribe Button is very close to the functionality of  the “Follow” Button on Twitter.

#3 “View Share” button

The View Share option hasn’t been officially announced by Facebook yet, however, we heard that Facebook is currently conducting closed testing of this feature. The View Share option will appear on the comment box which allows user to see how people shared your content.

It is not hard to recognize that Facebook forward looking and gearing itself  up for the long haul . What do you think, should we now call it Facebook+?

Social Media Statistics: TV, Multi-tasking, Online News and Your Brand's Friends, Fans & Followers

Probably no one can make numbers look as cool as Sesame Street, but I’m about to give it a go in the name of Social Media. Here’s hoping these social media statistics make your next PowerPoint sing.

Couch Surfing, Channel Surfing and the Interweb

According to a recent survey by Nielsen, more people are surfing the web while they watch TV. Between 2009 and 2010 people who watched the Super Bowl while browsing the internet rose from 12.8% to 14.5% while Oscar viewers in the same time made a massive leap from 8.7% to 13.3% who watch and browse. What might surprise you are the sites that are keeping them hooked; Facebook (okay, not surprising) and Yahoo (Yahoo?). (via Fast Company)

Media Post reports people are also watching more TV online. A recent survey by Unicast found that of  planning to tune in to NCAA March Madness; 54% plan to watch the games online. An additional 10% plan to watch via mobile devices and 18% through social networks. The full study is available as a PDF. (via Mashable)

News is Not Dead

While the increase in Internet sourced news has created much dialogue around the death of the newspaper, news itself is not dead though traditional channels might be suffering. A Pew Internet study has found that 53% of all American adults get news online today- that is about 71% of all internet users. The interesting part is that only 35% are loyal to a particular source. The rest, seem to news graze using multiple sites and don’t rely on any one site in particular. Of the faithful, about 65% of them check in with their favourite news site at least once per day, yet only 19% of them said they would be willing to pay for online news. 82% said they would find another place to get their news instead. In other news, Yahoo News, Google News, AOL and Topix are the most commonly used online news sources. Not CNN, CBS or even <gasp> the New York Times. (via Web Search Guide)

Why Do They Become a Fan and What Does it Mean?

Ta-da! It turns out that Friends, Fans and Followers of your brand are more likely to support you at the cash register. According to a study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate more than 50% of Facebook Fans and 67% of Twitter followers feel more inclined to buy from brands they are social with online. But why do they socialize with you to begin with? The same study shows that 25% are hoping for discounts and deals while 18% want to show off how much they love you. <Aww>. (via eMarketer)