Google+ and the loss of online anonymity — Tech News and Analysis

As Google rolls out its Google+ social network, it is struggling with the same questions about identity that have caused problems for Facebook in the past: namely, how much should it force people to use their “real” names? The web giant has been disabling user accounts on Google+ for a variety of reasons over the past few weeks, but it has caused an outcry from many who feel it is being too strict in some cases and not enough in others. The big issue at the root of this battle, as we have pointed out before, is that in many cases anonymity (and pseudonymity) has real value. Are we losing that as a result of Google and Facebook’s real-name obsession?

via Google+ and the loss of online anonymity — Tech News and Analysis.

Why You Should Target ‘Friends of Fans’

A survey by ComScore in conjunction with Facebook looks closely at what the potential reach of not only the “fans” but “friends of fans” . This what you call the ‘secondary effect’. These friends of fans represent a much larger set of consumers (34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages)

While Bing with a fan base of approximately 1.7 million fans on Facebook, the number of “Friends of Fans” is 232 million – more than 130 times the size of its Fan base

via http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/07/28/is-this-the-holy-grail-of-facebook-marketing/

New Study Provides Insight Into Best Practices For Journalists On Facebook

A new study conducted by Facebook examines how users interact with Journalist Pages in an attempt to decipher the best methods of engaging an audience on the social platform. The findings help provide a better understanding of engagement with journalist pages and “will provide journalists with some best practices and insights on optimizing their engagement and distribution on Facebook to better reach their audiences.”

Some of the study’s key findings include:

Questions: Similar to brand pages on Facebook, posts that included engagement questions were effective in garnering 64% more feedback than posts with no questions.

Photos: Photo posts received 50% more likes than posts without photos.

Popular topics: According to the study, “Posts about education, politics and behind-the-scenes insights & analysis from journalists” received the highest amount of interaction.

Timing: Updates posted on Thursday-Sunday received the highest amount of feedback.

Content: Longer, “meatier” posts received more feedback than sparse posts.

Check out the full study for more.

via New Study Provides Insight Into Best Practices For Journalists On Facebook – 10,000 Words.

50 Social Media Stats to Kickstart Your Slide Deck

etc, etc …

“Social media accounts for one out of every six minutes spent online in US.” (Journalism.co.uk)

2. “Seventy-seven percent report that they use social media to share their love of a show; 65% use it as a platform to help save their favorite shows; and 35% use it to try to introduce new shows to their friends.” (TVGuide.com study via TVNewsCheck.com)

3. “Facebook users are overall more trusting than non-internet others. Pew reported, 43% of survey participants were more likely than other internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.” (Pew Internet via Social Media Club)

4. “22% of all grandparents in the UK are using social networks, according to Mashable. The study, which collected results from 1,341 grandparents from the UK, showed that 71% of grandparents who use a social network use Facebook, 34% are on Twitter and 9% use the business social network LinkedIn.” (Mashable via Social Media Today)

via 50 Social Media Stats to Kickstart Your Slide Deck | Ad Age Stat – Advertising Age.

Twitter drives four times as much traffic as you think it does

Twitter drives four times as much traffic as you think it does, say awe.sm co-founder Jonathan Strauss and his investor Mark Suster in a minor media assault today.

That’s because traditional analytics tools don’t always give an accurate understanding of social media traffic. For instance, when users click on links from desktop and mobile clients rather than browsers, many analytics tools label this as “direct traffic,” which is supposed to mean people who went to your URL independently of clicking on a link to it somewhere else. Strauss describes this measurement technique as “arcane.”

And more broadly, unlike other referrers such as the Web sites for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon, Twitter doesn’t rewrite or tag its outgoing links or frame linked Web pages to maintain attribution and/or a consistent experience and/or prevent phishing. (Though Twitter has started doing some of this with its t.co URL shortener.)

via Awe.sm Guys Say: Don’t Believe Your Referrer Logs – Liz Gannes – Social – AllThingsD.