Who isn’t on Facebook these days? We’re all connected and joined together with pictures, status updates and a whole lot more – and most of us do it without an inkling of the perils that we face on the social media network, day in and day out. Facebook gets a lot of flak for being unsafe for kids, adding to an employer’s woes, and even messing up a relationship or two – and not without reason.
The social media giant has boomed in the last half decade or so, with more than a billion users to its name. The magnitude of the impact it can have on people has not gone unnoticed. The harmful stats are sure to throw anyone for a loop. From Facebook depression to stalkers, from a loss of productivity to slander – the problems that are part and parcel of the social media network are aplenty. read more
If you are an online marketer and you are not using email, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful tools for reaching customers and increasing engagement. Email is a means to reach the people most interested in your products or services in a deeply personal way. It’s a way to stay in constant contact with your most loyal customers, fans and supporters. However, email marketing can be very tricky. If it’s done well, it can attract new people to your business and make current customers even better. If done poorly, it can turn away people who were, previously, excited about you and your brand.
So who can you turn to for help in mastering email marketing? Social networks are among the largest email senders in terms of volume and have spent an incredible amount of time and resources honing their email marketing. However, this is effort and energy you can tap as you can learn a great deal from these networks without having to duplicate their investment. You just have to be willing to step back and study what they are doing and why. read more
Nike is one of the biggest and most successful companies in the world. It is considered a trailblazer in many aspects of business and people look up to Nike as a company that is at the forefront of innovation.
Nike is one of the companies that have fully embraced the power of social media as a way of enhancing its business and its relationship with its stakeholders. Nike knows that social media is an effective bridge that helps strengthen its relationship with consumers and it has developed an effective social media strategy that other companies are also emulating.
So what makes Nike’s social media strategy so effective? read more
Even though email and IM are still the two important communication channels, social media channels are rapidly increasing for our communication and we are dedicating more and more of our time online to social media.
Infographiclabs have collected and visualised the most recent data on Social Media usage in infographic below, enjoy!
One of the much hyped features of Google+ are the privacy settings, which are not new compared to Facebook, but easier to configure and actually use. While it is unlikely that we’ll soon get any insight in the user numbers. The number known so far is that more than 10 million users signed up to the service within its first three weeks. If, we can expect more official numbers it will probably be at Google’s next earnings call.
While it is too early to call Google+ a success, more and more we see very interesting numbers emerge, combined with the fact that the immediate reception and hype around the service did push Google’s stock (GOOG) with 13%.
Hitwise estimated Google+ at around 300,00 daily US based visits after two weeks, comScore said on Wednesday that the site had reached 20 million page views already in only three weeks, Paul Allen estimates there’s 18 million users already and Alexa ranks the G+ subdomain at almost 2% of the entire traffic to Google properties.
In an interview with The Mercury News, Vic Gundotra – Google+ Project Lead, disclosed another interesting statistic: around 2/3 or more of the updates posted to Google+ are ‘Limited’ and shared only with a select number of people. Women are also likely to share more content privately than men and early statistics of a low number of female users (less than 15%) are wrong. read more
Since Google+ launched, we have been left wondering how many users signed up, and were able to join in the first days. Wild estimates and predictions have been made, including complicated prognoses based on surnames. The latest and most widespread one by Paul Allen said that Google+ could surpass 20 million users by this weekend, as we reported here at The Blog Herald.
Until the Google(+) overlords decide they will publish user stats, we can only guess and guesses will continue to be made. But the service could be much more popular than expected already and with help of the Palo Alto search giant’s own tools, I discovered the rather amazing number of 40,100,000 profiles already. read more
The first wave of Google + (www.plus.google.com) invites will be going out soon and in the next few hours, we’ll probably see more posts with loaded with praises or criticisms. The first few weeks of reviews won’t probably do much to prove or disprove the idea that the search giant’s social initiative will actually eat up Facebook as it inches towards its rumored 2012 IPO.
From 2009 through 2010 Facebook has increased their size by leaps and bounds, not only in the United States and Canada, but in countries throughout the world.
Based on statistics taken from Alexa, Google Trends and other reputable data service centers, Vincenzo Cosenza posted the December 2010 map for Facebook dominance by country. As the legend on the map shows, Facebook, color coded in blue, has for the most part taken up a stronghold in more countries, although Orkut has managed to continue some of their dominance in some of the South America territory Facebook has begun to slowly control.
Also interesting, Facebook has knocked Orkut out of the top spot in India, while gaining slightly more control in Europe.
China’s QZone has also managed to work out a nice niche in the Chinese region, while Orkut does still control the Brazil market. read more
Twitter and Facebook users may want to act especially wary of any “free iPad” offers that come their way, according to PC World a new scam has circulated that states:
“u have to check out this website its glitchin right now and sending out ipads to everyone for free!”.
The messages look legit, having been sent according to IntoMobile from “hacked Twitter or Facebook accounts” that may include people from your very own friends list.
Once the link is clicked users are taken to “better-gifts.net” which asks users to enter in their information to receive items from various companies. Once a user enters in their personal contact and other information, they have immediately given up their info for malicious uses.
Both of the social network sites involved are aware of the issue and have reset the passwords for accounts that may have been hacked. While both companies say the issue affects only a small number of accounts, it’s still worth paying close attention to if you receive this type of offer. read more
Are you frustrated by the mundane conversations taking place on your Facebook wall? Tired of spam friend requests on MySpace? Sick of the Fail Whale? The folks at Current TV feel you, and have put together a game that will let you do what we have all dreamed of… kill the social networks! read more
