Stats on social networks are important, but I’m going to need your help in creating a community archive, can you submit stats as you find them?

I’m often asked, “What are the usage numbers for X social network” and I’ve received considerable traffic on my very old post (way back in Jan) of MySpace and Facebook stats, even months later. Decision makers, press, media, and users are hungry for numbers, so I’ll start to aggregate them as I see them

An industry analysts’ perspective on web measurement:
To be clear, my employer Forrester doesn’t provide specific numbers about social networks like Compete, Comscore, Nielsen or others, we conduct our own surveys on user/brand behavior, opinions, and technographics, so I’m often asked for these numbers by press. I’ll use this page as a library, and point clients, press, and media to it, so they’re armed.

Numbers don’t tell us much without insight and intrepreation, in fact, you’re going to see conflicting numbers of usage from many of the agencies and social networks themselves. The key is to look at trend movements, don’t focus on the specific numbers but the changes to them over time.

I put more weight on active unique users in the last 30 days vs overall registered, in fact, the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers.

No single metric is a good indicator, you have to evaluate the usage from multiple dimensions, so you also have to factor in what are users doing, time on site, interaction, and of course, did they end up buying, recommending products, or improving their lives.

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Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008

All Social Networks

Overall growth, Unique Audience of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, LInkedIn, MySpace and beyond, Oct 23, 2008, Nielsen Wire

Social Media Stats: This comprehensive wiki has additional data, Helen Lawrenece

Membership in social sites: Facebook, MySpace… and Classmates.com, Oct 2008, Rubicon Consulting

Bebo

40 million registered users, Nov 2008, from Bebo directly to me

Facebook

Facebook usage skyrockets from election activity: Includes specific usage numbers, fans and supporters, Nov 5th, Source: Zdnet

Facebook 18 Million Unique Visitors in UK, top 5th overall web property, Sep-Aug 08, Source: Comscore

More than 120 million active users (does not indicate measure of active), Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world, More than 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs from over 160 countries, Over 52,000 applications are currently available on Facebook Platform, Nov 2008, from Facebook Stats Page

If the numbers are right, Facebook’s online users have grown by 30 million in the last four months, up from 90 million users in early July 2008. That means that Facebook is growing much faster than the 250,000 new users per day that the company had previously estimated, Nov 3, 2008, Epoch Times

LinkedIn

Nearly 60% of LinkedIn users have high personal incomes and hold executive-level or consultant positions, Nov 10th, 2008, LinkedIn, Anderson Analytics.

LinkedIn demographics presentation from Aug, 2008, Erick of Techcrunch

MySpace

MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe, Jan 2008, emailed to me from press

Reunion

32 Million Registered Members, and Growing. Jan, 2008, Reunion to me direct

Update, Nov 20, 2008: 50 million total registered members, Adding 1.6 million+ members monthly (mostly adults), Nearly 1 million active paying subscribers. Numbers direct from Kate Zentall of Reunion to me.

Second LIfe

Second Life provides real time stats: Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Days: 985,92 (out of 16 million total registered). Nov 18, 2008, Linden Site

Twitter

Global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier. Nov 12, 2008, Comscore via BBC.

Locations (Cities) with the most tweets, Tokyo is the most popular city, Real TimeTwitter Local

Twitter stats by usage during week, as well as comparing heavy vs light users, May 15th, Compete (submitted by Nick)

Caveat: As I mentioned before, do not quote these numbers are from me, I’m simply collecting them in one spot, as you’ll see the accuracy will be debated depending on source to source.

I need your help, as you find references to usage, visitors, or registered members numbers in articles or reports, please leave a comment with the URL.

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If you weren’t following what was happening online this weekend (yes, yes, ok you’ve got a life) there was a Groundswell against Motrin’s latest viral advertisement that was rejected by mothers in Twitter, spread to blogs, and YouTube. I’m not a mom, so at first glance I didn’t understand the offense, but apparently, it was condescending to moms who perceived wearing babies in a sling as ‘fashionable’ accessory, and who didn’t wanted to be labeled as an ‘official mom’. The original video, which was trying to lean on the light side, took to many generalizations with mothers and resulted in a revolt capped by this backlash video.

To learn more about the story, read Laura Fitton’s summary, Dave Knox of P&G is taking note, has made it to the NY Times Parenting Blog, and the VP of Marketing representing Motrin has apparently responded (I can’t confirm this). Update: Motrin has now apologized on their site (see screenshot below) and there’s MSM pickup by Scientific American and Computerworld (of all places)

As much as I’m interested in what folks are saying, allow me to provide an aspect that most others aren’t: short term numerical numbers. (it’s the analyst in me)

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The Motrin Moms Backlash by the Numbers
I watch the twitter storm start on Saturday (thanks zsazsa), and watched it carry on through the weekend, I’ve taken snapshots of various analytics and social media tools now on Monday morning.

Above Screentshot: Twitter stats indicate bump in mentions of “motrin” and “motrinmoms”

Above Screentshot: Twitscoop’s Twitter Analytics shows peak for “motrin” notice there’s no mention before the ad.

Above Screentshot: Twitscoop’s Twitter Analytics shows peak for “motrinmoms”

Above Screentshot: 6,000 views on Youtube Video: Motrin Ad Makes Moms Mad

Above Screentshot: As a result, 3rd result for “Motrin” in Youtube is to the mother video

Above Screentshot: Although there are only a few tags for “motrin” on delicious, most point to brand backlash

Above Screentshot: The Motrin.com website is down, likely they are removing the ad and reverting to a previous website

Above Screentshot: Google search results for “Motrin Mother” (I found an adjacent term to measure the impacts) are mainly to brand backlash

Above Screentshot: Brand backlash has not impacted Google search results for “motrin”

Update: Nov 20th, It’s finally hit the search results pages of google for “Motrin”, the 9th link down is to the NYT times blog.

Above Screenshot: The Motrin.com site is back up on Monday 11am PST, after being down for a few hours, with the public apology –which I think is handled well

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Conclusion: It’s not as bad as it looks…yet
In summary, there were some major blips in social networking tools like Twitter, (it was the top trending topic over the weekend, meaning many saw it that weren’t directly involved) however it’s not likely to cause enough of impact search engine results for “motrin”, be a mainstream press story, or cause damage to stock price.

Overtime, these search results may fade away, depending on how Motrin reacts, and how mothers decide to press the situation.

Although brand backlash certainly wasn’t intention, I’m sure that some at advertising firm who created the campaign will chalk this up as a success (it got influencers talking about the brand –who previously weren’t), although the PR group certainly has been dealing with this firestorm all weekend.

Lessons Learned

Always test your campaign with a small segment first

Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend

Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond

The participants have the power, so participate

For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

I’d love to hear your comments on the fiasco, what short term and long term impacts does this have to the brand? Update: more stats from Freshtakes

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Obama has declared he’ll be using YouTube to provide weekly addresses to the nation and the world, I want to start taking snapshots of the analytics in order to understand the changes that are happening to our world. Each generation has it’s medium, and this one is the web –let’s see how our leadership grasps this.

The following is the most subscribed channels of all time. I use this as a primary measure as if someone subscribes it means they’re asking for updates whenever new content is published, preference. The following is a snapshot of numbers of the most Subscribed (All Time) YouTube Channels.

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YouTube’s Top 5 Most Subscribed Channels of all Time:

#1 Fred

This skit act from a very hyperactive spaz who had too many moutain dew and twizzlers publishes ‘burst’ style videos featuring non stop high-pitched clips stringed along designed to keep the attention of pre-teens, teens, and the occasional web strategist. Fred is now the star of the New TV conference. Notice the few amount of videos Fred has produced and high viewership.
Type: Comedian
Videos: 35
Joined: October 01, 2005
Videos Watched: 16,203
Subscribers: 647,697
Channel Views: 19,314,418

#2 Nigahiga

This Hawaiian comedy group does satires, interviews and slapstick style stunts.
Type: Comedian
Videos: 57
Joined: July 20, 2006
Videos Watched: 11,693
Subscribers: 632,891
Channel Views: 17,116,311

#3 Smosh

Two college age guys produce skit comedy.
Type: Comedian
Videos: 60
Joined: November 19, 2005
Videos Watched: 20,161
Subscribers: 597,161
Channel Views: 21,898,415

#4 Universal Music Group

The only ‘mainstream’ media channel to make it to the list, this shows TV clips and shows as a secondary medium to the TV screen. They’ve published a whopping 8k videos, a scattershot strategy, far beyond any of the other top 5.
Type: Director
Videos: 8,905
Joined: August 23, 2006
Subscribers: 499,766
Channel Views: 18,214,102

#5 Jonas Brothers Music

The only mainstream music group to make the top 5, the Jonas Brothers Music publish vids, behind the scenes videos and tour updates.
Type: Musician
Videos: 72
Joined: May 11, 2007
Videos Watched: 1,474
Subscribers: 385,888
Channel Views: 18,845,718

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The reason I’m posting these channel numbers is because I’m watching carefully the changes that will happen from Obama’s promise to be a YouTube president. He plans on publishing weekly videos from the white house to provide a human face as well as accepting feedback in a conversational way. Let’s stop and think about mediums used by past Presidents. Franklin D Roosevelt understood the power of the radio (during an economic crises), and was able to reach millions of Americans in ear shot, John F Kennedy harnessed TV, used makeup to keep his cool over his sweaty opponent and beat out and reached millions of American homes to beat out Nixon by 100,000 votes. Now, Obama is using the internet to reach millions around the globe, all at no additional cost of publishing than Fred. Here’s Obama’s stats on his official channel:

#34 Barack Obama’s YouTube Channel

Obama used social media tools for awareness, fundraising and word of mouth marketing. He has committed to doing weekly YouTube videos and publishing on Youtube and Change.gov to the nation and the world, here’s the first video.
Type: Political
Videos: 1,823
Joined: September 05, 2006
Subscribers: 137,570
Channel Views: 19,705,785

Change Dot Gov
Also, this channel has just been created this past week, and is just getting started…

Type: Political
Videos: 4
Joined: November 05, 2008
Subscribers: 4,550
Channel Views: 29,779

Fred vs Obama
Although Fred has almost the same number of Channel Views (both 19million) as the next president, Fred has 640k subscribers, 4.6 times more than Obama’s 137k subscribers. Of course, Fred’s preteen target audience is more likely to be regular YouTube users with registered accounts, they’ve all opted in for his videos.

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I’ll be tracking Obama’s YouTube stats as we move through the next four years, in the meantime, here’s the first of his weekly YouTube video.


Saturday, November 15, 2008 06:00am EST, at the time of this embed, there are only 3,858 views.

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Sixth graders, are just 10 years from the workforce, I wonder if we’ll be ready.

I’m now in Dallas, about to speak to 250 marketers (then do workshops) who all work for a company that’s about to ramp up their social marketing activities and put community first. Brands foster communities is a trend we’re seeing, just as Oracle boldly launched it’s Oracle Mix Ideas which allows anyone to submit comments right on the corporate website.

On the flight over here from SF, I sat next to a young lady (mid 20s) who is a teacher to sixth graders (12 year olds) in San Antonio. As I almost always do, I shifted the conversation over to the internet and she shared with me how this next generation of digital natives is coming at us fast and strong

The Sixth Graders:

All of her sixth graders were literate, although not all of them had computers at home, so she couldn’t issue mandatory web assignments.

Many of them used the internet for research, she allowed them to cite wikipedia as a supplement–but they had to cite other websites.

Many students turned in their ‘papers’ as digital blog posts on blogspot.com.

The art of writing in cursive is deteriorating, many of the students could not read her cursive writing, soon it may go the way of shorthand.

The sixth graders would often groan and roll their eyes when asked to do a writing assignment –yet when she listed off the internet as one of the methods they could produce the project, they quickly got excited –and lightbulbs went off.

Plagiarism is still an issue, but she and her colleagues have sophisticated ways of checking papers by copying and pasting them in Google, or using proprietary software.

I asked her if she sees an increase in web technologies as they get older, and she says “yes, soon the parents won’t restrict and monitor their usage, as they go to high school and college”.

I asked her if this helped them to be more or less social, she replied: “Both. They still are shy in class presentations as kids are from any generation, but they express more of their personal being online”

During tests, if the students didn’t know the answer to the questions, they would write “IDK”.

Now this certainly wasn’t a scientific study, but I’m sure you can find stories like this from sixth graders all around the United States, and perhaps around the world. Give them a six years, and it’ll be interesting to see how their online behavior impacts their college admissions: “10 percent of admissions officers from prestigious schools said they had peeked at sites like Facebook and MySpace to evaluate college-bound seniors. Of those using the profiles, 38 percent said it had a “negative impact” on the applicant, according to Kaplan Inc”.

If you have experience with the modern day sixth grader, I’d love to hear your observations in the comments below, if you don’t have any stories to tell, forward this to someone who can.

Warning, if you ask me any questions, and I’m unable to respond with a good answer, I may just respond, “IDK”

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This is entirely speculative post, as I don’t have access to US Government databases, yet the concept worth thinking about. I certainly don’t know the answer, and posed the question to my twitter community with a variety of responses, there wasn’t a clear agreeing side.

Government Data
The US Government has a wealth of demographic, workplace, educational, and financial information about it’s citizens, I’m sure there are other databases collecting information. Yet when I think about the information being created by ourselves on the social database (myspace, facebook, blogs) only a portion of the above data may be found, but an entirely different set of information can be found.

Social Database
Our research indicates that a majority of teens in North America are using social networks, in fact more than 2/3rds are active monthly users, and about 1/5th are daily users. We’re all aware of the stories of how teens are using these tools to communicate as their primary forms above phone, and even email.

Types of information commonly found in the Social Database of Gen Y:

Demographics
When I take a look at a few of my younger friends I see they’ve uploaded (willingly) information about their: age, sexual preference, political stance, work, school, email address, IM clients, phone numbers

Pschographics
They also share some of of their psyhographics: what they like, what motivates or saddens them, hobbies, music. With some time, you could eventually interept their profile to find some inner drivers and motivations. Status messages can really be telling, it’s obvious to me when someone is going through relationship pains.

Technographics
While not as complete as formal research, they also share their technographics (how they use technology) by looking at their activity, mini-news feed, see what type of applications they’ve downloaded and used. Beyond web use, you may see elements of consumption of cell phone, tv, and other technolgies present.

Relationship Network
Perhaps most importantly, they share their network information, you can see who has become their friends, what they think of each other (top friend apps) and eventually find nodes, influencers, and sneezers.

Privacy
Although much of this profile information is hidden, privacy continues to be a top concern, yet many of those afflicted with information sharing in a way they weren’t expecting have to always remember they were the ones who put that information out there in the first place. Even if someone decides to delete a profile, they comments, applications on third party sites, will leave a residual ghost that may be impossible to erase.

Considerations
Generation Y (and everyone else) should have a mental filter in their mind before publishing anything on the web. One should assume that this information (or pics) should be considered public, seen by those you don’t want to see, and here forever. While this may not always be the case, it’s a good filter to have.

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A few minutes ago, I completed my Forrester teleconference on Facebook, apparently it was very popular and hand more sign ups than most other topics. During the session we ran a poll to those that were attending (most are web marketers and web strategists). Here are the responses:

1. Do you use Facebook for your personal or professional life?
a. Yes 124/196 ( 63%)
b. No 50/196 ( 26%)
c. Not Sure 3/196 ( 2%)
No Answer 22/196 ( 11%)

2. Does your company use Facebook for Marketing purposes?
a.Yes 45/196 ( 23%)
b.No 103/196 ( 53%)
c.Not Sure 25/196 ( 13%)
No Answer 25/196 ( 13%)

3. Does your business plan on using Faecbook for business in 2008?
a. Yes 68/196 ( 35%)
b. No 27/196 ( 14%)
c. Not Sure 76/196 ( 39%)
No Answer 26/196 ( 13%)

Although a very limited sample, and just of those that are focused in on social networking, It’s interesting to see that a majority of the members on this call were using this tool. Forrester should be using Facebook to reach this audience, such as the Forrester Facebook page that I initially created, that’s now being maintained by Alexis. I’ll be unbiased, you should also take a look at the Gartner page while you’re at it, I was one of the first to become a fan.

During the call there were a lot of questions about widgets, open social, and a few who requested success metrics for some of the campaigns, it felt like a pretty savvy crowd, I’m expecting to receive a few meeting requests from clients to further discuss Facebook and social networks.

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Apparently the industry is starved for hard core data and facts, as I received quite a bit of positive feedback about the numbers I published yesterday.

It’s really important to point out the strength and weaknesses of data. Data is certainly useful in decision making (and running decisions up the flag pole, or proving one’s programs are achieving success) but at the other hand, too much focus on data alone is a detriment.

Without insight, context, and analysis, data itself is a crutch, and remember the numbers only indicate what has happened, and sometimes point to what could happen.

So in the end, you’ll need to find a 360 view of the landscape before applying data, insight, experience, and analysis (what it means) to your web decision making process. In some cases the most brilliant avante garde strategists ignore the data and go off instinct for truly remarkable results.

Just a quick note on perspective my friends: remember to think holistic.

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Update Nov 2008: I’ve started a new list of data, with links to new sources on this page Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008.

Every so often as an Analyst I get numbers from some of the companies I cover (I’m mainly covering social networks now), here are some that I’ve received from Reunion, I feel it’s helpful to share this with my readers.

Sources
The ones from MySpace are handed to me from a member of the press, someone I have no reason not to trust, and the Facebook stats are from their own site.

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Facebook

Quick Analysis: The hot talked company Facebook has the highest growth rate, and at Forrester we predict it to achieve the same number of registered users as MySpace in Q4 of 2008, or early 2009 given the current growth rates. The widget platform, which launched summer 2007 has had strong growth as more than 13,000 applications have been launched. Please don’t call this the MySpace killer as each of these sites serves a different demographic, with a different purpose, and different tools. Facebook is more of a ‘lifestyle’ play that allows members to connect to each other.

General Growth
* More than 60 million active users
* An average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
* An average of 3% weekly growth since Jan. 2007
* Active users doubling every 6 months

User Demographics
* Over 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
* More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
* The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
* Maintain 85 percent market share of 4-year U.S. universities

User Engagement
* Sixth-most trafficked site in the United States (comScore)
* More than 65 billion page views per month
* More than half of active users return daily
* People spend an average of 20 minutes on the site daily (comScore)

Applications
* No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)
* Photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined (comScore)
* More than 14 million photos uploaded daily
* More than 6 million active user groups on the site

International Growth
* Canada has the most users outside of the United States, with more than 7 million active users
* The U.K. is the third largest country with more than 7 million active users
* Remaining top 10 countries in order of active users (outside of the U.S., Canada and UK): Australia, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, France, Hong Kong

Platform
* Over 7,000 applications have been built on Facebook Platform
* 100 new applications added per day
* More than 80% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform

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MySpace

Quick Analysis: MySpace the largest Social Network in North America maintains a dominant position as media site, primarily aimed at youth, giving them the opportunity to relate to brands and bands, as well as self-express. This site will continue to do with advertisers and marketers. Expect to see more TV and video networks to integrate and work with MySpace, who has the new generation that Generation X was to MTV.

Metrics
· MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users
around the globe
· We are the country’s trafficked site on the Internet
· 85% of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or older)
· 1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace, in the UK it’s as common to
have a MySpace as it is to own a dog

·On average 300,000 new people sign up to MySpace every day,
this month we broke a record and had 4.5 billion page views to the
site in one day.

We are localized and translated in more than 20 international
territories: U.S., UK, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,
Spain, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, MySpace en
Espanol, Latin America, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and
Finland.

·MySpace is one of the fastest growing websites of all time,
we have:
·100 Billion rows of data
·14 Billion comments on the site
·20 Billion mails on the site total
·50 Million mails per day (more than Yahoo, Hotmail,
or Google)
·10 Billion friend relationships
·1.5 Billion images
·8 Million images being uploaded per day
·60,000 new videos being upload to MySpaceTV each day
·More than 8 million artists and bands on MySpace Music
Acts including Lily Allen, Sean Kingston, Arctic
Monkeys, Dane Cook discovered on the site by users

Company Details
·Launched in January 2004
·Acquired by Fox Interactive Media in October 2005
·Los Angeles-based
·Founded by Chris DeWolfe, CEO and Tom Anderson, President

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Reunion

Quick Analysis: This quiet company is profitable already, and is making some strong growth with repeat users that are buying services from the company, as well as advertising. Reunion caters to an older crowd that is seeking to connect with each other from school, childhood, work, or locations. It’s surprising that this company has 32 million registered and is already profitable.

Highlights
·Over 32 Million Registered Members, and Growing
·70+ Million Site People Searches Actively Tracked
·7+ Million Avg. Unique Visitors Monthly
·700,000+ Paying Subscribers

Update Nov 20th from Kate at Reunion:
·50 million total registered members
·Adding 1.6 million+ members monthly (mostly adults)
·Nearly 1 million active paying subscribers

Competitive Detail
·Critical Mass of Post-Facebook Members, with 90% Over 25 Years Old
·Patented Technology to Keep Address Book Updated
·Proven, Balanced Revenue Model: Higher Value/Member With Subscription Model

Financial Summary
·Profitable Revenue Growth of over 100% every year without any external capital
·Ranked #664 in Inc. 5000 Top Companies
·4th Fastest-Growing Company in Los Angeles (LA Business Journal)
·Recently took 1st outside investment of $25M from Oak to accelerate growth

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I’m thinking about publishing these numbers once a quarter or once a month, if you’re a company that’s in the social networking space, you can send me some valid and confirmed numbers at my email, listed on my contact page. These are not really centralized anywhere in the industry, and I think it could be of a service to everyone.

Update Nov 2008: I’ve started a new list of data, with links to new sources on this page Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008.

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Twitter is one of the top referrers of traffic to my blog, over 2000 referrers from twitter to my blog in the last 30 days…there’s something happening there.

I’ve also noticed and increase of new users over the past 30 days, feel free to add me as a friend, I will add you back. (Update: I’m no longer adding anyone back, as it’s not time efficient for me to do this)

Twitter is becoming a major communication tool for me lately. There are more intimate conversations being held on this next-generation chat room, and it’s filled with early adopters and those who are trying to reach them.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, my colleague Peter Kim recently did research on it, as well as recorded a podcast. I’ve also got a post up on why Twitter matters to the web strategist –it’s a quick start guide.

Here’s a few of the conversations I’ve been having in the last week

Just this morning we were debating the (lack of) user enterprise software debate

This past weekend I met over a dozen people who like the same type of music I do, and they recommended new artists to me.

News and information breaks on Twitter before it hits blogs

Last week I was on the phone with Francis Tapon, author and world traveler, he told me his secrets to getting paid to traveling the world, so I tweeted it to my 1900 followers.

I also share interesting links to content I’m reading, mainly around web and technology, as well as events I attend, much of this does NOT end up on my blog.

I’m starting to use Twitter like my link feed, why I find interesting I put on twitter, rather than on my google shared reader or my blog.

You won’t hear me talking about what I ate for lunch, but you will learn things about me that I’m passionate about –strategy, music, art, etc.

Who it’s for and who it’s not
If you’re in the tech industry, and in marketing, you should be paying attention to what’s happening on twitter. There’s even search tools that can help you find discussions and memes. Also, if you’re trying to reach early adopters, these are tools for you. This really reminds me of the the whole blogging industry in 2005, it’s the same type of pros and cons –it’s just much smaller now. If you don’t meet these criterion, then it may not be for you, always remember to find the audience you’re trying to reach first.

Hope to see you there, my profile is jowyang, and I’ll follow you back.

If you’re seeking more followers and want to connect with folks (once you get a few dozen active friends, a real ‘conversation’ starts) leave a comment below with your twitter name.

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Update: I’ve tweeted to my network to add their name to this comment area if they want to connect with other folks (see my actual tweet) that are interested in social media+marketing+and are on twitter.

[The Fabric becomes stronger as the Threads connect]

In just a few minutes there are over 20 responses. This is testament to how rapidly things are evolving. Now the title of this post is needs to be modified: “Some conversations are moving to twitter..and back to blogs”

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Update 2: Three hours since I’ve posed the first tweet pointing people here (Have about 50 new followers, and over 160 comments on this post, dozens of replies within twitter, became the top node on techmeme, as well as direct messages), and I’m getting messages that Twitter is slowing down as people are starting to add other, the fabric is growing. This is a good test of what could happen in an emergency, as folks were using Twitter to get messages out during the South CA fires a few months ago.

The viral activity in and around Twitter was amazing, people of like minded interests were leaving their twitter profile below, then connecting to each other at a rapid rate, it then spread the the blogosphere slowing both twitter.com and my blog.

There are echoes on the blogosphere too:

Why is Twitter Exploding? Because it’s A Conversation Ecosystem.

Jeremiah Owyang Causes Twitter Explosion

Twitter Traffic

Help! I’m Addicted to Twitter!

Twitter is a Conversation Ecosystem

My assumptions were right, there really is something happening in twitter, it’s clear it’s the desire to connect and communicate.

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Update 3: The Day After
It’s very clear this was twitter storm resulted in meeting the objectives of getting folks to connect. I’m receiving messages and reading blog posts that many people now have added 20-100 followers or connections that they might have not been able to connect to previously, you can track the many incoming links from Technorati. Sadly, having a few hundred more contacts has flooded my mail inbox with notifications, but as promised, each person I’ve promised to follow and listen to in return. Lots of clicking to do this weekend.

Most importantly, the value of a network is determined by it’s size, yesterday (which some are calling ‘Twitter Tuesday’) resulted in a stronger fabric across the social network. All of the boats rose with the tide.

604 comments

Click To Play

Yusuf Goolamabbas shares with me from the Oublaze offices in Cyberport (see pics), in this short clip we cover a lot of ground. In the time I spent with him, I learned that he sees the web from a very strategic point of view, and shares his views on the state of the web industry in Hong Kong.

You’ll find out:

1) What’s his view on the web industry in HK?
2) How can 150% cell phone penetration be accurate?
3) Bloggers: creators vs readers
4) Social Networks in Hong Kong, why is Facebook hot, but yet a fad?

Yusaf, wishing you and the rest of the folks over there good wishes, hope all is going well.

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(Left: Classical Chinese Garden, Bao Mao Gardens)

Navigate to other reports
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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is the final report of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“In mainland China, the youth don’t know how to communicate to each other, offline or online. MySpace put a .cn as a domain extension…it was lame”

For the online marketer wanting to reach China’s users, simply re-skiinning a website is not sufficient, understand the changes in design, information layout, content requirements, and cultural technographics differences.

“Xiaonei.com is a Facebook Clone”.

“Clone” is the right word, the design looks copy pasted. There is more reports from VentureBeat on this company and a recent acquisition.

“Linkhurst.com is a linkedin clone”

This business like social networking site offers tools similar to popular LinkedIn. There’s some other interesting resources for internet marketers in China.

“Two types of internet users in China: 1) Lower end surfer, likely less education, and will gravitate towards Tencet. May be rural. 2) The Urban and Educated will have a career focus.

I learned this from a CEO in Hong Kong with roots in mainland China, he suggested there are two widening gaps in Chinese culture, society, and thus the web. Understand which segment you’re aiming for, and build accordingly.

“Chinese may not make virtual friends, as web friends doesn’t make sense, real events offer more value.”

Value, is the consistent theme I heard from this CEO, with the differences in online behavior to connect with others, creators of online events need to take extra special care of purpose. Perhaps start with an in person event first.

“Social Networks will not work in the mainland, as the web is used for entertainment [consumption], if there’s no value, usage will be low therefore, networked games and virtual games work as there’s entertainment value”

If the web is used as an entertainment medium, building sites with large interaction may not work, says this CEO.

“The ability to quickly access copyrighted content, young users don’t feel a need to ‘earn’ money for media and content”

Copyright issues have continued to plague western software, media, and music industries, eCommerce strategies around eMedia should be aware and cautious in developing their strategy.

“The change from Web 1.0 which is Information, to Web 2.0, which is People, is challenging for mainland China, trust is important”

This is not a China phenomenon, it’s happening all over the world, the real value of information is what is being delivered, filtered, and exchanged by networks of common interest, and eventually trust.

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I really enjoyed Paul’s additional commentary, although he questions why I would visit HK to cover mainland. Most of the people I talked to were from mainland, served mainland, or had their users in mainland, it was all tied. Best find? Paul linked to this Ogilvy blog reporting on Asia, I subscribed.

Love to hear your commentary, this concludes my report series. For additional related interviews, see what Shel has been doing with Andrew Mao on the impacts of Social Media, Culture and the Chinese Culture (part 1, and then read part 2). Also related, Alibaba’s IPO may hit 1.3 billion.

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(Left: Teacher and her School Children, Mainland China)

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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is part 3 of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“China blocked Feedburner when they were acquired by Google”

thus making stats for subscriptions using Feedburner highly innacuriate. Why? China already has more internet users than all of North America combined…any many are learning English.

“Koreans are separated by 2-3 degrees at the most, but don’t feel comfortable chatting”

The old saying that everyone in the world is connected by 7 degrees may still be true, but in South Korea, folks are highly connected and can easily find others.

“Asians don’t have a recovery system for failure, therefore the dating websites are scary”

In American culture singles (and sometimes the married) clamor for online dating services. In Asia, rejection hurts, is fierce, and there is no recovery from it, so Asian dating sites have a very tough time getting started. Web Strategists should be aware of reward mechanisms and failure systems that allow passing and failure, the culture is different. Who told me this? An already multi-successful web entrepreneur.

“Tencent QQ is a chat feature that’s used as a Social Network for young teens”

Active discussions occur on this IM tool, which is the world’s third largest. There are virtual coins that can be used to upgrade one’s avatar or blog.

“BBS (bulletin boards) are popular and China, so why would Social Networking be important?”

asked a CEO of a stealth startup in Hong Kong’s Innocenter to me. Technographics studies may indicate that individuals may like to join networks, participate, but may not want to demonstrate relationships in the world wide web.

“Chinese Culture [mainland] doesn’t do a lot of real world social activities, so applying that to the web is challenging”

He questions if there’s real value in Social Networks, what can an individual learn or gain in such a network. For many, the process should be: Meet, then exchange contact information, then information, then add real value needs to be shown. For many Chinese, the value is not yet realized.

“Chinese bankers don’t have time to use social networks, they’re going to use the newspaper and their blackberries”

Tells one investor analyst. His focus in his career was to provide research to busy bankers, they’re not likely to share online, unless direct contributions will result in return.

Love to hear your commentary, even if you don’t agree. Stay tuned for part 4 next week.

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(Left: Hong Kong Harbor at night)

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Summary
I ventured to Hong Kong and met with many of the web industry leaders, below is part 1 of 4 of my Web Strategy Field Report to understand the web sphere in Hong Kong and China. If you’re a web strategist with global responsibilities you’ll need to understand what’s happening in one of the world’s largest internet user base.

Opportunity
To date, there are more Chinese internet users than all of North America combined, and only a portion of China is full online, the potential has not yet been tapped. Simply re-skinning your website in Chinese and adding a ‘.cn’ domain may not be a sufficient strategy.

Purpose
I want to understand the global web better, and am doing what I can to learn more. It’s easy to become very insular in the Silicon Valley bubble, so if you’ve any suggestions, please leave a comment

Methodology
30-60 minute formal or casual interviews. I’ve met several successful Entrepreneurs, Investors, Analysts, Professors, CEOs, Strategists, Bloggers, Podcasters, and Marketers during this period.

Limitations
Please note this field report is incomplete. I’ve neither the time nor resources to do thorough analysis, and do a 360 degrees research. The information and anecdotes collected are from interviews with those that I met. As always, a web strategy and plan should have thorough research completed before starting. If you disagree or have other data points to add (even if it’s just your own opinion, I welcome them in the comments, please don’t be shy).

“The screen is getting bigger for a reason, some kids are playing 4 MMORPGS at once”

declared Yet Siu, the CEO of Outblaze over lunch at a fine seafood restaurant on Lamma island. He’s noticed that some youths in China and HK are playing up to 4 MMORPGs or web games at the same time…each in it’s own window.

“Mini –Homepy (pronounced mini-home-pie) aggregates one’s network”

Is a new feature coming out of South Korea that aggregates one’s network and is like a filter for an individual. If you want to communicate with an individual, you will go to his mini-homepy and leave a message. It’s a combination of a blog, homepage, aggregator, and message board an individual. I did some searches for this product but didn’t find much.

“America has never seen an Alibaba”

On more than one occasion has a few strategists told me about the success of Alibaba. What is this website? It’s an online marketplace for small to medium sized businesses, a site that has no North American relation or comparison. It sports a storefront (free) for any company, and those that wish to upgrade can add video and other features for a fee. Some companies pay up to $5,000 a year. In fact, the company is due to go public soon, and investors are expecting the stock to split within the first 24 hours of IPO. (so I’m told). Ther are 24 million registered users (compared to how many US users) with

“The internet industry is grouped in the Software industry”

Unlike the United States the internet is listed and categorized as a subset of the Software Industry. In the US, internet is often clearly separated from desktop or enterprise software, and we strive to maintain that separation. Over time, this may change in China as well. For many web professionals, they clearly see the web as an evolution to re-purpose desktop applications in the browser, and then the mobile web.

“There are 1.4 million new broadband users in China every month”

During a presentation from China Mobile various stats were given. Although this growth seems massive only 10% of China is on broadband, I believe the stat in United States is around 70-80% (from memory)

Stick around next week, I’ll be releasing part 2. If this was helpful or even if you have some contradictory information, please leave a comment.

Update: I had a great conversation with Carleen Hawn of GigaOm’s Found|READ, she’s summarized much of what I’m reporting back to you all.

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Arrived in Hong Kong, although my fifth time here, the sheer size and energy of the city that’s always under construction always amazes me. The flight over, on Singapore’s luxurious planes was fantastic, I feel rested when fully reclining in a chair after 14 hours of flight (flickr photos). On the way over, I was able to read a ton of Forrester material, analyze a few strategies, and just relax.

Tonight is the Hong Kong Blogger dinner that I encouraged everyone to come to, there’s over 60 folks, and OutBlaze, a white label communications company has offered to be a gracious host. I’ll be hanging with them and other technologists over the next few days to understand Hong Kong’s web scene better.

I’m here as I’m speaking at the CLSA investors conference. CLSA is a brokerage, consulting, event and analyst firm. There are about 2500 investors from all over Asia here at the Grand Hyatt (flickr photos), with speakers from the largest corporations and China, and even entertainment by the band INXS, which I grew up on. I have distinct memories of them in Sixth Grade, although my kid sisters had a blank look on their face when I brought up their name “in excess what?”

When I meet people from the Finance industry, I often tell them I’m in “new Media” first, if they probe farther I’ll explain it as social media or social computing, so far, most understand.

I’m also reading, listening, and absorbing data points about Asia’s web scene. Today, one of the executives of China Mobile presented, she gave quite a few facts, trends and data points. Wireless infrastructure for one of the world’s largest cell phone market (China), will access the web via the phones.

Asia’s Growing Web and Mobile Industry

China Mobile has 21% growth last year

China Mobile has 68% market share in China

They are deploying ‘nodes’ into Rural areas, which can quickly scale

In other reports, from CLSA’s Elinor Leung, I learned that China is 2nd to Japan in Web Advertising

The Beijing Olympics will be a major web advertising opportunity and spike

Beijing is pushing the digital/broadband experience for the Olympics

Broadband in China is 14%

Advertising Spend: Online Growth is 68%, while the second highest, radio is a mere 20% growth.

It’s truly an international conferences, at the back of some rooms, there’s small glass enclosed boxes where translators sit and transmit to wireless devices so everyone in the audience can absorb the knowledge.

Hey Web Strategist! Are you paying attention to what’s happening in Asia? There’s going to be a lot of eyeballs here, what are you doing about it? Here’s some stats from the World Internet Usage.

Have a story to tell?
My schedule the rest of the week? It’s Tuesday right now, but on Wednesday, I’ll be visiting some of the offices of folks that hosted the dinner, and will meet a few other entrepreneurs. I speak on Thursday, and am free on Friday if you wanted to meet for tea or coffee here at the Grand Hyatt to discuss Asia’s web industry, I’m very curious in learning more.

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I’m a data junkie, and am cruising ComScore’s top web properties reports, here’s a few global and national reports:

Top Global Properties
Many of us have already seen this report, not too surprising: “772 million people online worldwide in May… representing a 16 percent penetration of the worldwide population of individuals age 15 or older. Google continues to lead as the most popular property, reaching almost 70 percent of Internet users…The fastest growing property in the top 10 most-visited sites was Apple Inc.”. Only 16% of the globe is online? This means growth will just continue as this medium moves forward.

Report Rankings of Top French Properties for July
Google still maintained dominance of the 26 million French users, “French social networking site, Skyrock Network, which ranks among the most popular social networking sites in all of Europe, was the eighth most visited site, with 9.1 million unique visitors.”

Report Rankings of Top German Internet Properties for July
Germany’s 32 million internet users use Google, and Microsoft properties. “Dooyoo Group, an online retail property which offers price comparison and consumer opinion postings, was the fastest growing property in July, increasing total traffic by 145 percent to reach 2.2 million unique visitors.”

Report Rankings For Top Japanese Web Properties
The Japanese are very much an online culture: “There were a total of 53.7 million unique visitors online in Japan in June, or 49 percent of the country’s population, age 15 or older”

Reports Rankings of Top U.K. Internet Properties for July
31 million users online. Travel websites indicate seasonal usage: “This was followed by the fastest growing of three holiday and travel properties, lastminute.com, which experienced a 30 percent increase to reach 5.2 million unique visitors. Cheapflights Sites, a flight and travel price comparison property, grew by 22 percent to 2.8 million unique visitors, while First Choice Holidays PLC grew 19 percent to 3.6 million.”

I’m also waiting for Widget reports from comScore, they’ve released a tracker, focused just on widgets. Also, Shel Israel is seeking folks from Latin America to help with his survey, please spread the work.

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The age old mantra that “numbers don’t lie” isn’t quite accurate. I scour the web and other repositories to find numbers, and I find that most reports conflict with each other. It doesn’t matter really, as I’m looking for trends for what’s happened in the past, where we are, and where we are going.

This report elevates us a bit higher as we see that the often overlooked growth segment is online gaming –not social networking. Here’s what I found interesting from StreetInsider:

“The year-over-year growth rate for frequent online gamers was 79%, significantly higher than the growth rate for users of social networking (46%). However, the growth rate for frequent users of video streaming sites was 123%, which could pose a significant challenge to the gaming industry in capturing the online leisure time of Internet users.”

The report doesn’t suggest what type of online gaming is being used, is it a downloaded application like World of Warcraft or is it a flash based game out of Kongregate?

“Thirty-four percent of U.S. adult Internet users play online games on a weekly basis, compared with 29% who watch short online videos and 19% who visit social networking sites with the same frequency.”

In a somewhat similar vein, this report from Reuters shows that users and consuming more content on the web than participating, so maybe gaming and social networking are just for a smaller segment of activities. I’m also curious to find out the mobile angles that this research covers. At some point, if this continues, there may be some direct tools for the Web Strategist to use games to reach their audience.

If you want stats and info about Social Networks, check out my first monthly digest for August.

4 comments

Every week I publish the following list of recommended reading:

Recent college grad Christopher Salazar has some interesting perspectives on Social Media

A French study (translated to English) shows the value of corporate websites, as well as compared to social media

David Veneski worked with Federated Media on an interesting project, read interview (link via Ken Kaplan, Intel).

Google might as well just buy newspapers

Creative 404 pages. great designs.

JiveSoftware gets funded $15 mil

Top five problems with IT

OpenID has a bewildering customer experience –I’ve said it myself, and it’s hurting adoption

Blogging Cliches

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ComScore has released it’s usual monthly roundup of industry data based upon their 2 million user survey. Some of the highlights of the survey are:

Top five web properties
Yahoo, Google, Time Warner, Microsoft Sites, and Fox interactive media. No interesting change there, those are the typical big five.

Top advertisers
The leading Advertising networks are: Advertising.com, ValueClick, Google Ads, Tribal Fusion, and Blue Lithium

Web Campaigns and Seasonal Trends

“The Simpsons Movie drove traffic to the Burger King site, resulting to increase of 4.2 million customers or increase of 774%.

The release of several anticipated films including Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, traffic to movie ticket sites also propelled the tickets category up 12 percent to 44.9 million visitors for the month.

The month also saw traffic increase to car rental and ground/cruise sites as travel season continued its strong presence in the monthly rankings, while job search sites experienced gains as Americans sought summer jobs and new careers.” (Analysis by 901)

It’s interesting to see how the successful Simpons/Burger King campaign is doing. Rohit has a comprehensive list of how the Simpsons have been marketing themselves online.

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Good friend and former mentor Shel Israel emailed Facebook’s corporate communications group to get some accurate numbers. About time, as I’ve seen contradictions in stats (and you know I’m obsessive about numbers). Here’s what he uncovered:

* Over 150,000 registrants daily. That’s 1 million a week since January.
* 35 million users today. Of course that number will be off a million one week from today.
* Half user are outside college. That number was zero in Sept. 2006.
* 0ver 40 billion page views in May 2007
* Average visitor stays 20 minutes
* Most growth is among people over age 25.
* 47,000 Facebook groups.
* #1 photo sharing app on the web. 2.7 billion photos on site.
* More than 2000 applications. The Top 10 are: Top Friends, Video, Graffiti, MyQuestions, iLike, FreeGifts, X Me, Superpoke!, Fortune Cookie & Horoscopes. The smallest of these has over 4.5 million users.

Thanks Shel, that’s helpful, now if I could just keep you from “biting” me.

23 comments

THe Internet Outsider demonstrates the formula most of us have already figured out, the web is causing a shift in advertising dollars (although not the most important attribute, but a key indicator to what’s changing)

“US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies–Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and MSN (MSFT)–grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%.”

42% online vs -3% traditional
Read the bottom line on this spreadsheet analysis. Google is growing hand over fist at 96% while NYT has a decrease by 6%.

Quite interesting that mainstream media would suggest that other factors were to blame such as the “real estate market” or “cyclical weakness.” Take a step back, look at how your kids are communicating, and see the forest.

When is the tipping point of advertising dollars being heavier online than on mainstream media? Collective research indicates 2011.

2 comments