Some Statistics About Your Facebook Status

Inside Facebook Blog has put together some statistics on Facebook Status updates; some of which is more relevant to America, but there were some global insights which I found quite interesting.

Whilst competing for users, Facebook integrates well with Twitter. You can see the effect of the conversation about Twitter versus the integration with the following graph.  Conversation, (e.g. “Twitter’s down again”) seems to be on the decline, but integration is increasing (judging by the growth in statuses which include the RT – or Re Tweet tag).

The RT and @username tags aren’t likely to make much sense to non Tweeters on Facebook, so I expect that there will be a way to sync only original posts in future.  I wonder whether the decline in Twitter mentions is down to increased server capacity.

The strain of virus formerly known as “swine flu” produced “a huge media frenzy at least as big as avian flu a couple of years ago, and mad cow disease before that,” as the post appropriately notes. The friendlier-to-pigs term, “H1N1,” has managed to infect Facebook, occurring as frequently as “swine flu” this past fall.

The effects of media hype and seasonal illnesses can be seen from the following graph, which shows a winter trend in status updates for Flu type terms, along with a huge spike in status updates for the terms Flu and Swine flu, which followed from the heavy coverage in the news.

I quite like this graph. It shows the frequency of occurrences for two common swear words in Facebook status updates.

Interestingly, people seem to be becoming more well behaved, as the number of mentions has declined over the year.  Perhaps people are becoming more aware that content published on the Internet may come back to haunt you in later life… or maybe it’s because mum’s on Facebook now!

Edited: December 23rd, 2009

Manchester Digital Event

Manchester Digital are hosting another social gathering in Manchester for those in or interested in the industry.

I’m gutted I’ll miss this one as I’m away at the time, but I would encourage anyone in the area to go.  They’re always interesting events with nice people in a related line of work/study.

The party starts in Bar Ça on 8th October, and you can get tickets from the Manchester Digital Site.

Edited: September 24th, 2008

Referral Programs To Publicise Your Website

I’m pleased to have recently been accepted to Blogrush, which is a referral program for bloggers. I say “pleased”, because this is my second attempt!

Initially I was disheartened that I didn’t cut the mustard, but the filtering does mean that the chances of links to poor quality blogs shown on your site are reduced. And to be honest, I hadn’t published many quality posts at the time of my first application.

I’ve been a member of ‘my blog log‘ for some time. This is a similar service, which has been recently bought by Yahoo. I have to say it does generate traffic and subscribers from people with a similar interest. It’s quite nice to see the faces of your readers too!

So far, I like Blogrush – some of the links in the sidebar have sent me to some interesting blogs, in particular this one from Unlocked Profits – How To Get Free Web Site Traffic In 2008. My New Years resolution will be to write some guides for work’s website available for download…

If anyone has any opinion let me know…

• Is it easy to use?
• Does it generate traffic or subscribers for you?
• Do you think it looks spammy?
• Have you used other services to better effect?
• Is traffic not important for your blogging?

Edited: January 11th, 2008

Social Networks And Your Online Profile

I’m amazed at what my friends put on their online profile!

People have been fired because of their online activities, and it has become more common for employers to look up their prospective employees before they offer a job.

It’s getting easier and easier to update your profile whenever and wherever you are. Sites like Facebook, Pounce, Twitter and Jaiku allow you to update your status using your mobile phone; and photos can be sent directly to the web from your phone in one click.

This makes the warning “don’t drink and dial” seriously worth listening to.

And it’s shocking what some people write about their friends online, let alone what photos they add. Users sometimes have very little control about what is said or shown online.

Facebook has recently been opened up (further!), to allow search engines to index profile pages.

We saw Rachael’s parent’s house trashed earlier this year after she publicised it on MySpace, and we’ve been warned recently that sharing certain personal details on sites like Facebook can leave us open to identity theft.

I’m going to sound like my mum, but be careful what details you make public online… you don’t know who will read them, and you don’t know how you will feel about it in 10 years time!

*Image borrowed from dups, who’s running an interesting online commentary about St Patrick’s Day.

Edited: December 12th, 2007

Testing Out Twitter On The Blog

I’m still figuring out whether there is any point to Twitter…

I love the fact that it can be integrated into webpages; there are sleek plugins available; we used some for a pilot project on the PushOn Online Marketing Blog in combination with a mobile phone application Shozu which published images straight to our Flickr account. The images can also be automatically re-published to the PushOn blog, or PushOn MySpace page.

The freedom of instant one click publishing via mobile makes it great for commentary on events, however the fact that it’s so easy to do, means that it’s very quick and easy to publish crap. Big Brother have a Twitter feed, and there have been notable instances where people have said something silly and ended up in a lot of trouble.

Jaiku is a similar application to Twitter, and has had good feedback.

I think I like this ‘micro blogging’ malarkey, it’s good for sending a small amount of information quickly to multiple people with similar interest.

Jack Lail thinks it’s a bad, bad thing, but he likes it, he’s written an interesting post on the subject of Twitter.

Incidentally, I’m trying out a tool which publishes a note on your Twitter account when you post a blog entry… I’ll let you know if it works!

Edited: June 26th, 2007

Using MySpace friends to promote bands and business – Social Media Optimization

Friendr.net has just launched; Friendr.net has been worked on by Virtuaffinity website developer Jim Neath.

This is a new social media optimization tool, that helps people add MySpace friends to their profiles.

This tool is useful for people who use their MySpace profile to promote their business or band, without spamming the typical MySpace users who purely use it to contact their friends and associates. MySpace is a great tool for keeping in touch; but spamming can be a problem.

As Social Media Optimization is relatively new, and the scope of Web 2.0 projects is constantly increasing, best practices and Social Media Marketing etiquette will also evolve.

Here are a couple of suggestions from an article by Kent Lewis of Search Marketing Standard:

• Respect the community
• Building and maintain a consistent and robust profile (or brand)
• Engage in the community by commenting, contributing and sharing regularly
• Don’t include blatant self-promotion
• Don’t post biased information
• Don’t breaking community rules
• Don’t spam

Learn more about Social Media Optimization from Wikipedia, or a brief summary of it from PushON Online Marketing specialists.

Edited: April 23rd, 2007