Mostly from the Internet, sometimes by Conrad Lisco.
According to a new report from Forrester, 62% of retailers with an online presence stated that the returns on social marketing were unclear. And 68% stated that if Facebook went away tomorrow, it would not adversely affect web sales. Not sure what those companies are doing [wrong], but it shows they realizing Facebook's full potential.
According to JP Morgan, companies like Amazon are seeing commpelling traffic and sales numbers - nearly 8% of Amazon's October 2010 traffic was referred from Facebook, up more than 328% YoY, and meant $25M in sales...
SocialCode, reporting on a new Facebook advertising research study, examining over four million data points from a wide variety of industries, says that for ads with a 'Like' button, older Facebook users have a higher CTR while younger Facebook users will tend to click 'Like' directly within the Facebook ad.
While propensity to click-through on Facebook is positively correlated with age, writes Marketing Charts, propensity to like is not. Age has a strong positive effect on whether a user will click, but has a less pronounced opposite effect on the likelihood of them becoming a fan of a page.
Fifty-plus-year-old users, the oldest segment in the study, are 28.2% more likely to click through and 9% less likely to like than 18-29-year-old users, the youngest group observed. Compared to the rest of the younger population, 50-plus users see a 22.6% higher CTR and 8.4% lower like rate.
Laura O'Shaughnessy, CEO, SocialCode, observes that "... younger Facebook users are more comfortable using the 'Like' button than older users at this point... (though) older users have a high level of interaction and curiosity about the ads... (but) are also the newest subset to join the social network... "
When broken down by gender, age has a much more pronounced effect on CTR for women than it does for men, whereas for men there is a stronger effect on 'Like' rate than women:
• Overall, women are 11% more likely to click on an ad
• 'Like' rates are almost even for men and women; men are actually 2.2% more likely to 'Like' an ad than women
• For women, CTR is 31.2% higher for the 50+ age group versus 18-29 year olds; men only see a 16.2% difference between the age groups
• Versus all age groups, 50+ women's CTR is 22% higher versus a 16.4% difference for males
• The oldest male segment has an 11.7% lower 'Like' rate than the youngest segment, and 9.5% lower 'Like' rate versus all age groups; Women only see a 7.2% and 7.9% difference respectively
LinkedIn continues to grow capturing the #2 spot among social networking sites in the U.S., after a year of 63 percent growth. Facebook saw a healthy 14 percent increase YoY. Twitter is up 31 percent YoY. Tumblr showed the strongest percentage of growth YoY, tripling its visitor base to more than 11 million monthly uniques.
Compete recently conducted a study that examined how online consumers use retailers' Facebook pages.
According to the data, a quarter of consumers visit a Facebook page for a retailer or consumer product at least once a month. Of these respondents, 56% say they use retailers' Facebook pages to keep up with sales and promotions (not surprising).
What is more interesting is their influence. More than 20% of consumers said that Facebook pages have been "influential" or "extremely influential" in making purchase decisions.
You might recall 4square & 7 years ago from Foursquare hack day 2011. Essentially it reminds you what you were doing a year ago today via email each morning.
Well, the same folks are responsible for Past Posts, a similar application that shows your Facebook activity from a year ago.
Both are super simple and present your peronal data back to you in a fun way. I suspect we'll start to see more sites and services like this which showcase your social data exhaust.
Nice insights from Buddy Media.
I highly recommend you read Business Week's commentary on the social media/tech bubble. It's pointed and not overly dramatic or post-apocalyptic.
There are some great quotes within. Here's a few:
1. This latest craze reflects a natural evolution. A focus on what economists call general-purpose technology—steam power, the Internet router—has given way to interest in consumer products such as iPhones and streaming movies. "Any generation of smart people will be drawn to where the money is, and right now it's the ad generation," says Steve Perlman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
2. Venture capitalists have become consumed with finding overnight sensations. They've pulled away from funding risky projects that create more of those general-purpose technologies—inventions that lay the foundation for more invention. "Facebook is not the kind of technology that will stop us from having dropped cell phone calls, and neither is Groupon or any of these advertising things," he says. "We need them. O.K., great. But they are building on top of old technology, and at some point you exhaust the fuel of the underpinnings."
3. Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."
4. After quitting Facebook in 2008, Hammerbacher surveyed the science and business landscape and saw that all types of organizations were running into similar problems faced by consumer Web companies. They were producing unprecedented amounts of information—DNA sequences, seismic data for energy companies, sales information—and struggling to find ways to pull insights out of the data.
