Digital privacy involves three main stakeholders: consumers, the government and the advertising industry. Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy. Government entities in the US and elsewhere are looking to temper that anxiety through laws, regulations and pressure on the digital ad ecosystem. And that system, which includes advertisers, agencies, media companies, websites, retailers, search engines and related vendors, is looking to satisfy both government and consumer demands through self-regulation and tools like Do Not Track (DNT) headers.

via How Marketers Can Manage the Privacy Problem – eMarketer.

Pinterest, a two-year-old social bookmarking site that lets users collect and share things they like on the web, is driving increasingly significant amounts of traffic to retailers’ websites.The service enables users to create online bulletin boards, or “pinboards,” for popular categories such as home decor, food and wedding inspiration. Members can use Pinterest’s “Pin It” bookmarklet tool and iPhone app to save things they see online and offline, and explore and repin the images their friends collect via their personal newsfeeds. The website is especially popular among women, who account for 58% of Pinterest’s traffic, according to Experian Hitwise.

via Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers [INFOGRAPHIC].

The approach I’m going to use is to 1. Use my Acquisition, Behavior and Outcomes framework to ensure an end-to-end view of important activity and 2. Recommend metrics / KPIs you can use based on the size of your company.

via Best Web Metrics / KPIs for a Small, Medium or Large Sized Business.

Self serving presentation, but interesting stats

(1) The Social Content Quiet Giant.

Digital privacy involves three main stakeholders: consumers, the government and the advertising industry. Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy. Government entities in the US and elsewhere are looking to temper that anxiety through laws, regulations and pressure on the digital ad ecosystem. And that system, which includes advertisers, agencies, media companies, websites, retailers, search engines and related vendors, is looking to satisfy both government and consumer demands through self-regulation and tools like Do Not Track (DNT) headers.

via How Marketers Can Manage the Privacy Problem – eMarketer.

New social media service Path promises to bring your true friends (not just acquaintances) together in a much more personal way. However, neither Path, nor Facebook, nor Google+ have fully comprehended that personal circles vary by context, and that context changes rapidly and infinitely.

In the end, while services like Path get us closer to “personal,” they are still very much “broadcast” versions of social media. Ultimately, new services will arise that will allow the user to easily and naturally build relationships, physically meet and communicate with one’s rapidly morphing groups of true friends.

via Why Social Media Needs to Get More Personal.

We’ve long been concerned about just how many of the 250 million users of Sina Weibo are real, and not spam or zombie accounts. Now a report from the HP Labs ‘Social Computing Research Group’ claims to have found that an astonishing 49 percent of all retweets on the microblogging service come from fraudulent accounts. To make it worse, those automated fake users account for about 32 percent of the total tweets.

via Report: Half of All Retweets on Sina Weibo are Spam | Tech in Asia.

I have the feeling that Social Business will definitely be 2012′s top buzzword. The more time I spend online, the more I bump into this term. The problem is that, except social media practitioners, it can be misunderstand with Yunus’ vision of “a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today” (see Wikipedia’s definition). By social business, I mean a social business, as in social media. Social Business is not a technology, a practice or a strategy, it’s a unified vision of social media usage inside and outside of a company.

via The What And How Of Social Business – Forbes.

Shortly before Christmas, I ran into an old friend who oversees social media for one of the big-branded management consultancy firms. He confided in me that he was having an issue with Wikipedia.

Wikipedia wouldn’t grant him editing privileges, as a PR person, even though the information on the site about his employer was inaccurate. His question to me: should he pose as someone else to make the necessary changes?

via The Flack: Wikipedia & PR: Friend or Foe?.

Pinterest has been one of the hottest new social networks on the radar for a few months now. In fact, Pinterest has cracked the current list of top 10 social networks — and it’s technically still invite-only.

For many users, Pinterest serves as a comprehensive wish list of sorts. Users (a.k.a. Pinners) post Pins to Boards that they organize by topic or theme. For instance, a user who is planning to remodel a house may Pin interior decorating ideas to a Design Board. Or a bride-to-be can post wedding dress inspirations to a Wedding Board. With 32 different topic areas, users can browse everything from fitness to art to science.

via Pinterest: 13 Tips and Tricks for Cutting Edge Users.