History of Social Media

Social media is now an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries. Skloog has put together an amazing infographic which outlines the history of social media.

Click on the image to get the full view.

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Every Google acquisition plotted on an infographic

by Jason Clarke

It seems like you can't go anywhere online without running into the latest trend: infographics. The idea is to take a bunch of information, and distill it down into something easily digestible. It can be a very effective tool, but it can also be abused.
Scores.org has an interesting infographic that shows Google's acquisitions through the past 10 years, starting with their purchase of Deja, which became Google Groups, right up until their most recent purchase of Like.
One of the things that stands out the most when looking at this vertical graph is how much Google's appetite for acquisitions has increased. They bought three companies in July, and already another three in August of this year.
To be honest though, it takes longer to figure out how this graphic is trying to present information than it would to simply view these statistics laid out on a spreadsheet. And that's my general beef with most infographics.
On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have taken the time to look at a plain-jane spreadsheet of this information, so I guess pretty pictures aren't going away any time soon.

Source: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/08/26/google-acquisitions-infographic/

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Google Winning Sign-In War, But Facebook Close Behind

By Mathew Ingram Aug. 17, 2010, 8:01am PDT

Most website users still prefer logging in with a Google account, but Facebook is a close second, according to new data from Janrain, a Portland startup whose software plugin makes it easy for websites to offer multiple login methods. The company’s latest survey looked at statistics from more than 250,000 websites and services that use its software, and found that close to 40 percent of users prefer to sign in with a Google ID, while 24 percent chose to login with their Facebook profile. Yahoo came in third with 14 percent of sign-ins, while Twitter and Microsoft’s Windows Live were tied at 5 percent.



It’s not all that surprising to see Facebook and Google ahead of Twitter, since much larger numbers of people use the social network and various Google services than are likely on Twitter, but it’s interesting that Microsoft’s Windows Live — which has been around for years, and was designed to be a single sign-on solution for the web long before Facebook came along — has such a tiny proportion of login activity, at least according to Janrain’s data (meanwhile, MySpace, AOL and LinkedIn are lumped together in the “other” category). The company said that the stats have not shown much change from April, when it last looked at its overall login data.

It’s worth noting that the numbers reported by Janrain are substantially different from those recently provided by Gigya, another service that offers multiple logins for websites. Gigya found that Facebook was the number one login method at all of the sites it covers, with 46 percent of logins, while Google came a distant second with 18 percent. It’s not clear how many websites or services Gigya’s data was based on, or what explains the discrepancies between the two surveys.

Janrain also broke down logins based on the type of website or service users were logging into as well, and that data shows Yahoo in the lead with 34 percent of logins to news and media-related sites, and Facebook in second place with 28 percent. Google comes in third with 25 percent, and AOL has 10 percent — which may seem like a large number, but isn’t that surprising given the fact that it is closely tied to the media properties of former parent company Time Warner (Gigya, meanwhile, found that Twitter was the number one login method at news sites, with 45 percent of sign-ins, while Facebook came second with 25 percent).





Janrain said that its data showed Facebook well in the lead when it comes to logins for music-related sites, with 55 percent of sign-ins, while Twitter was second with 18 percent. Facebook was also the number one login method for websites involving retail brands, Janrain’s study showed, with 45 percent of logins. Yahoo was in second place with 23 percent and Google came third with 21 percent. Facebook was also the number one choice for logging in to European websites, the company said — it had 39 percent of sign-ins, with Google coming in second at 26 percent and Twitter at 12 percent.
The company’s numbers also showed that Facebook is the leading service when it comes to sharing links to websites, thanks to its ubiquitous “like” buttons, with 53 percent of users choosing to share their activity on the social network — but Twitter is a strong second place with 37 percent.

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The Value of Google Result Positioning

Source: Chitika 

How much is the top spot on Google actually worth?  According to data from the Chitika network, it’s worth a ton – double the traffic of the #2 spot, to be precise.

In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.  The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 5 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together.

“Obviously, everyone knows that the #1 spot on Google is where you want to be,” says Chitika research director Daniel Ruby.  “It’s just kind of shocking to look at the numbers and see just how important it is, and how much of a jump there is from 2 to 1.”

The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1.  Going from the 11^th spot to 10^th sees a 143% jump in traffic.  However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%.  As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position.

Google Result	Impressions	Percentage
1	2,834,806	34.35%
2	1,399,502	16.96%
3	942,706	11.42%
4	638,106	7.73%
5	510,721	6.19%
6	416,887	5.05%
7	331,500	4.02%
8	286,118	3.47%
9	235,197	2.85%
10	223,320	2.71%
11	91,978	1.11%
12	69,778	0.85%
13	57,952	0.70%
14	46,822	0.57%
15	39,635	0.48%
16	32,168	0.39%
17	26,933	0.33%
18	23,131	0.28%
19	22,027	0.27%
20	23,953	0.29%

Numbers are based on a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across the Chitika advertising network in May, 2010.

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Google has Twitter timeline search

by Jay Hathaway (RSS feed) Apr 14th 2010 at 3:02PM

Google's venture into real-time search just got a lot more serious, with a new Twitter timeline feature. Like Twitter's own search, Google's Twitter timeline can tell you what people are saying about your search term right now. Google's done one better, though, by indexing tweets back to the beginning of time (well, the beginning of Twitter, anyway), and displaying an activity graph that shows you when tweets about your topic spiked.

The implications of indexing every tweet and making them all searchable are pretty huge. I'm excited to be able to go back and find some of the funny tweets I wrote a couple of years ago, but you might not be excited that people can find all the mean things you said about your boss before he discovered Twitter. Don't worry, though, deleting a tweet will wipe it out of Google's results, too.

It's interesting that Google made this move the day after Twitter announced Promoted Tweets on its search page. Can you use Google to skip Twitter's search and thereby skip its ads? On the other hand, it makes sense to launch a new Twitter feature on the opening day of Twitter's Chirp Conference for developers. It'll give them something to talk about in San Francisco.

[via CNET]

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Twitter Users React to Google Buzz [STATS]

GMAIL USERS: We hope you’ll join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account.

Some think Google Buzz could be the next huge social platform. Others think it’s one big privacy nightmare. With its launch week drawing to an end, we pinged our friends at Crimson Hexagon for analysis of Twitter user’s opinions.

The results, not surprisingly, are incredibly mixed. 16 percent of the tweets analyzed were characterized as positive, while 14 percent simply express curiosity. The much talked about privacy issues that Google has already moved to address garnered 15 percent of the tweet activity, though a full 50 percent either don’t like Buzz or are already claiming to be done with it. Somewhat surprisingly, 6 percent expressed loyalty to Twitter in their comments – a sign that some view Buzz as a competitive threat.

The overall buzz, one way or another, has been plentiful. According to another analytics firm – Trendrr – Buzz garnered more tweet volume than Google’s Nexus One launch, with a peak of nearly a quarter of a million tweets on Tuesday.

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400% Rise in Social Media Traffic due to Search Engines

Posted by Marshall Sponder on December 26, 2009


It’s Google that’s driving Social Media searches way, way, up – see my last post on 400% Rise in Social Media Searches in 2009 Y2Y – what does it mean?

Note: Just want to point out this “hunch” of mine about Google driving Social Media searches and traffic needs a more “deep dive” analysis to confirm.   My “hunch” is, I’m right – and if you look at the entire history of what’s happened this year with Social Media, Google, Bing and Yahoo! have their hands all over it …. especially the latter part of this year  – that confirms my “hunch”.

Still, as a Web Analyst – I feel a responsibility to confirm my hunch with real data beyond what I’ve shown.  Had I access to Comscore – I might have an easier time of it – the real data I need is not that easy to get a hold of …. I suspect, if I had it …. it would more or less, confirm what I believe, which is  … it’s the deals that Twitter and Facebook have done with Google that are driving up Social Media and will continue to accelerate in 2010.

I think it’s about Google and Real Time Search – the inclusion of updates from Twitter and Facebook are the main drivers – but the overall direction is for a full integration between Search Engines and Social Media next year.





Very interesting recap of developments in Social Media this year from WebProNews which tie into the 400% increase in searches and activity on Social Media in the second half of 2009.
Google’s  inclusion of real time data from Twitter and now Facebook – is beginning to deliver the “promised land” and  made Social Media the “mecca” the “goldmine” that it is … it’s Google, as I predicted long ago – would bring Social Media, via Search, into it’s own – it’s Google and the Search Engines that will make 2010 the year of Social Media ROI and the beginning of the Convergence.
While the buildup has been gradual, according th the Google Insights for Search chart – the real action started happening in July 09 and has been building up momentum ever since.

Google Insights for Search
	Gadgets powered by Google

Here’s what happened according to WebProNews – What’s Happened in Social Media Over the Year and I’ll bold the parts I think are the most significant.

July

In July, Google launched its Facebook page, MySpace launched its email service, and LinkedIn introduced custom profiles for companies. YouTube launched its 3D experiment, doubled the size limit of uploads, and gave users the ability to share YouTube Insights stats.

A Twitter documentary was announced, and Twitter itself gave businesses a new resource and started making hashtags link. Facebook addressed privacy and photo use for ads, gave businesses a way to increase their Facebook fans, and added the ability to create events from the publisher.

August

In August, Facebook was readying a new ads manager, made subtle changes to its design, announced plans for privacy improvement, started integrating directly with Twitter, launched its own real-time search, implemented restrictions on sponsored status updates, updated open stream APIs, acquired FriendFeed, and began letting developers sell physical merchandise for virtual currency.

Twitter quietly took a step toward security, and announced plans to launch a feature that makes the service location-aware. Izea launched “Sponsored Tweets,” andTweetmeme brought analytics to retweeting.

Google reader got more social features, YouTube placed more emphasis on search and launched its own AdSense-like promoted videos. Delicious showed off new features forsharing, search, and its homepage. StumbleUpon made some big changes to its toolbar.

September

In September, Google turned the whole web into an exclusive social network with SideWiki. Yahoo launched a new contacts API, Yahoo profiles became social media profiles, and the company launched the Twitter-like Yahoo Meme in English. Microsoft added MySpace activity updates to Windows Live, and Bing announced it was readying sharing features for search results.

A sick poll was discovered on and removed from Facebook, and Facebook announced its translation plans, and that it had roughly the same amount of people as the entire U.S. population. Facebook also added tagging from status updates, and launched Facebook Lite in the U.S. and India.

MySpace Music launched in Australia, and Myspace users started being able to sync updates with Twitter. LinkedIn made profile organization easier, a record label was launched for YouTube stars, and YouTube began readying a friend-finder feature.

Pizza Hut and other brands used Twitter to help feed the hungry, Digg made changes to its nofollow policy, the Washington Post’s leaked social media policy faced criticism, and real-time search engines Collecta and OneRiot launched APIs.

October

In October, Bing scored deals with Twitter and Facebook, while Google scored one with Twitter. Mozilla shared its plans for integrating social media and email into one inbox, and Twitter partnered with its first charity. LinkedIn announced that it surpassed 50 million users.

MySpace introduced new music features, StumbleUpon launched a new design with more of a search focus, YouTube got real-time search for comments, and the only known video footage of Anne Frank appeared on YouTube.

Facebook confirmed testing of a new design, made share buttons more useful, gave groups walls, tried harder to get page owners to verify, and presented new obstacles for application developers. They also launched the Create Application API.

November

In November, Google eased the retrieval of SideWiki entries for entire sites, Google Wave got a feature for following, and Google launched some new features for Google Friend Connect.

Facebook tested new design changes, and continued work on privacychanges. Facebook and Twitter both made their way into dictionariesand onto video game consoles.  Twitter made geotagging tweets possible, and talked about plans which would make its suggested usres list more like Twellow’s. Twitter also changed launched Twitter Lists, gave apps access to people search, rolled out the controversial retweet feature, and changed “What are you doing?” to“What’s Happening?”.

LinkedIn opened up its platform to developers, Yahoo began showing tweets for news results, MySpace launched new music charts, Salesforce announced its “Facebook for the enterprise,” YouTube connected news outlets with citizen reporters, PayPal launched new APIs to take over mobile and social apps, Microsoft launched a big redesign of MSN, Opera launched Opera Unite, Digg launched Digg Trends.

December

In December, Google, Facebook, and YouTube all got new URL shorteners. Twitter continued expansion into new languages, and announced plans for business features. Google launched real-time search in the search results.

LinkedIn began testing a new design, and launched faceted search, Facebook began giving translators awards, adjusted privacy controls, and formed a board for online safety, MySpace launched new APIs, upgraded users’ mobile experience, and acquired iMeem, Bing launchednew maps with apps, and Yahoo deepened its integration with Facebook. Digg released a new version of its API. Also, the new FTC guidelines went into effect.

It’s mostly Google – Google has been merging the Social Web with Organic Search and now….



Compete.com Destination Traffic from Google.com, November 09

…. Social Media goes mainstream in 2010 – it’s said to be the year of Social Media ROI, so many say ….. I think if we’re not there by years end 2010, we’ll be much closer to it  – you can see the acceleration.
I’m developing a deck around this – but felt I didn’t want to wait to share the news – and perhaps, get insight from my readers that I can use  (I don’t get the whole picture – but I don’t know anyone who does – but, maybe, together – we can make sense of all of this).


Read more: http://www.webmetricsguru.com/archives/2009/12/400-rise-in-social-media-traffic-due-to-search-engines-google/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WebMetricsGuru+%28WebMetricsGuru%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ixzz0ax7XFekV
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

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