Tag: Social Media

Symantec Urges World Cup Fans to Use Caution on Facebook and Twitter

Security firm Symantec has announced that during the World Cup it expects social media activity to spike dramatically, and predicts a concurrent rise in fraudulent activity on the web in general, and social networks in particular.

"The 2010 Football World Cup may be the first to be held in Africa, but it is also considered by many to be the first time that millions of fans will be able to make significant use of social networks to boost their experience," a representative for Symantec tells WebProNews. "Social networks like Twitter and Facebook will play a major role in World Cup 2010 as football fans display videos and photographs, share anecdotes and, perhaps most importantly, showcase their football expertise in heated debate."

"Users are cautioned to resist the temptation to simply click on just anything, no matter how alluring it may appear," the company says. "Symantec research has shown that the majority of cybercrime attacks happen through legitimate websites that have been compromised by attackers the victims are unaware that while they are on a normal looking website, they are, in fact, exposed to malicious content."

"Users should also beware of accepting new friends claiming to be likeminded football fans and be especially wary of new sites set up around teams or specific players," urges Symantec. "Traveling fans should not reveal details of their current whereabouts on the social networks. Criminals are known to monitor the sites and use this information to plan robberies."

The firm actually has a site dedicated to information about World Cup-based security threats, which you may find helpful. The page comes with links to become a fan on Facebook and follow them on Twitter, which may also help keep you in the loop with any new related findings.

Social networks have already been making a point of encouraging fans to engage around the World Cup. For example, we looked at a couple offerings from Facebook and MySpace. Google showed us what the search activity has been like.

June 14, 2010
Facebook’s Guide to the World Cup

Facebook has posted the Facebook Guide to the World Cup, which shows soccer/football fans how to get the most out of the World Cup experience on the social network. "Facebook is helping football fans make the World Cup a more social experience, a Facebook representative tells WebProNews. "Fans around the world can take part in the World Cup action by joining the more than 2.5 million Facebook users who have liked and supported their favorite teams on the Goal! Leaderboard."

The Leaderboard displays a running competition to see which country has the most passionate fans, and allows them to support their favorite teams and encourage their friends to support them. You can sort it by passion rank, popularity, intensity, region, or group.

"With the help of Facebook’s global World Cup broadcast partners like Univision and ESPN, fans can share status updates and comments with their friends while watching the events live via Facebook’s Live Stream social plugin," the rep says.

"Fans can also build their own dream team with the EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars game on Facebook," she adds. "And for the giving fan, you can sign up to support 1GOAL, the World Cup charity that aims to ensure education for all, and stay connected with them on Facebook."

On a related note, we also received an email touting Watercooler’s Epic Goal as the "best soccer game on Facebook." I can’t personally vouch for this, but in the spirit of things, it seemed worth passing on. This review looks at some different ones.

June 14, 2010
MySpace Offers Interactive World Cup Content Site

MySpace has an interactive, media and feature rich World Cup profile it’s showing off, as the event kicked off today.

"We’ve built this community for our users to act as an aggregate of the flurry of World Cup activity not only across MySpace but across the entire web including videos, live status updates and tweets via Kosmix, World Cup content from Fox Sports and Univision and much more," MySpace Manager of Corporate Communications Jessica Bass tells WebProNews.

The MySpace World Cup Profile includes:

– Real time tweetbeat via Kosmix

– Teams specific badges for users to support their favorites and automatically appears in the user’s stream

– Live matches and world cup news via Univision

– Opportunity to sign the petition to bring the World Cup to the US

– World Cup videos, photos, fan forums and soccer related social games

MySpace is shifting its focus to content more these days, and this World Cup profile is certainly an example of that. Though on the site, MySpace still touts itself as "a place for friends" to new users, its announcements are generally geared more toward content lately, and News Corp. COO Chase Carey was recently quoted as saying flat out, "MySpace is a content site."

That’s not to say friends aren’t still a big part of the equation. When you choose your badge to "show your team spirit", it updates your status for your friends to see.

June 11, 2010
More Americans Going Online To Connect Locally

More Americans are using online tools as a way to connect to their neighbors and local communities, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Nearly a quarter (22%) of all adults (representing 28% of Internet users) have singed up to receive alerts about local issues such as traffic, weather alerts, school events and crime alerts via email or text messaging.

Twenty percent of all adults (27% of Internet users) used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.

Overall, physical personal encounters are still the main way people stay informed about community issues.

In the year before the survey Pew found:

*46% of Americans talked face-to-face with neighbors about community issues

*21% discussed community issues over the phone

*9% exchanged emails with neighbors about community issues and 5 % say they belong to a community email listserv

*4% communicated with neighbors by text messaging

*4% joined a social networking site group connected to community issues

*2% followed neighbors using Twitter

June 10, 2010
Majority Of Facebook Users Are Fans Of At Least One Company

More than half (58%) of U.S. online consumers begin their day interacting with companies via email, compared to 20 percent who start their day on search engines and 11 percent on Facebook, according to a new study by Exact Target.

"Consumers who check email first tend to be more task-oriented, subscribe to more emails and interact with brands across email and social media to obtain deals, promotions or new product information," said Morgan Stewart, principal, ExactTarget’s research and education group.

"This stands in stark contrast to people who initially check Facebook, who tend to draw firmer, more segregated boundaries and become fans of brands for entertainment purposes or to show support for a company or product."

The majority (93%) of consumers subscribe to email marketing messages while 42 percent use Facebook at least once a day, and among those, 69 percent are a fan of one or more companies.

Other key findings of the study include:

*54 percent of consumers between the ages of 18 and 24 are fans of brands on Facebook.

*43 percent of online consumers are either fans or followers of at least on brand on Twitter or Facebook.

*68 percent of daily Twitter users follow at least one brand but only 7 percent participate on Twitter with that frequency.

"Consumers’ initial online activity provides a glimpse into their priorities and motivations, giving marketers an understanding of how and when to deliver the most compelling and relevant messages," said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget’s chief marketing officer.

"Marketers must move quickly to make the most of the opportunity, and the Subscribers, Fans, Followers research series provides the insight required to develop a targeted and effective interactive marketing program."

June 9, 2010
More Americans Watching And Sharing Online Video

More than two-thirds (69%) of adult Internet users have used the Internet to watch or download video, representing 52 percent of all adults in the U.S., according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Fifty percent of adult Internet users have viewed a comedy video online, up from 31 percent in 2007, and 38 percent have watched an educational video up from 22 percent.

Thirty-two percent of adult Internet users have watched movies or TV shows online up from 16 percent three years ago.

Political videos have also increased in popularity. Thirty percent have watched political videos online, up from 15 percent in 2007.

"We are seeing a surge in online video watching that is driven by a combination of broadband access, the increasing use of social networking sites, and the popularity of video-sharing sites," explains Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and author of the report.

"To tap into these trends, untold numbers of websites now showcase online video as part of their content."

Home video is the most popular content posted online, shared by 62 percent of video uploaders. Uploaders are just as likely to share video on social networking sites like Facebook (52% do this) as they are on more specialized video-sharing sites like YouTube (49% do this).

While video-sharing is growing in popularity, adult internet users have mixed feelings about how much they want to share. While 31% of uploaders say they "always" place restrictions on who can access their videos, 50% say they "never" restrict access. The remaining 19% fall somewhere in the middle.

"People are increasingly enthusiastic about the opportunity to share their own video content online, but there’s a lot of variation in terms of how people control access to the videos they post, who they think is watching, and concern about how their video might be used," said Purcell.

The survey found among video uploaders, there is almost universal appreciation for the ease with which video-sharing sites allow them to share video with family and friends. But a considerable number (35%) also feel they should be more careful about what they post. And while 39% of uploaders express the belief that only people they know will see the videos they post, an equal number (41%) say they are surprised by the number of people who watch their videos. Another 28% say that sharing videos online has helped them meet new people.

June 4, 2010
Facebook’s Open Graph About to Get Significantly Bigger, Courtesy of Demand Media

Facebook’s Open Graph is about to get significantly bigger. I spoke with Demand Media VP, Marketing Jason Jaynes about the company’s new integration with it, and it’s a biggie, but not necessarily in the way you might think.

When you think of Demand Media, you probably think about Demand Studios, the company’s content production arm, and the sites it powers – sites like Cracked, eHow, LiveStrong, etc. These sites have enormous reach in themselves, but Demand’s new announcement has much bigger implications.

The announcement is of Facebook Open Graph integration with Demand Media’s Pluck service. Pluck is a social media platform service that is used by a slew of major brands around the world in varying capacities – things like powering reader comments and interaction with content. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re familiar with Pluck itself, because there’s no way you’re not familiar with some of the brands that utilize it. Take a look:

That’s a pretty good chunk of the web, no? Add to that, the fact that consumers are increasingly engaging with brands online. Granted, just because the brands listed use Pluck, doesn’t mean they will have to use certain functions related to the Facebook integration, but one can only assume that most of them will use them in some capacity, given the traffic and engagement benefits.

Pluck already claims to generate 3+ billion social interactions a month. How do you think enhanced Facebook integration will affect that?

Of course Demand Media’s own content properties utilize Pluck, and Jaynes tells me that the company views Facebook’s Open Graph as just "as important" as search to the discoverability of Demand Media content.

Pluck is extending its Pluck 4 Comments and Pluck 4 Persona applications. "Our comment application recognizes the user is logged into facebook, and that the user’s not logged into USAToday," Jaynes explains giving a hypothetical example (USAToday may or may not use the feature). We don’t know who you are, but we can give you the ability to comment on the article." Users will go through a quick connection with Pluck’s Facebook app, and the comment will be posted on the site as well as on their Facebook Wall.

Pluck is also giving users the ability to automatically create a Pluck persona powered by their Facebook data. The goal, Jaynes says is to "lower the barrier of entry" for the user to participate socially on the local site. He gives more details about Pluck’s plan to integrate with Facebook here.

May 27, 2010
Do Facebook’s New Privacy Settings Really Protect Your Privacy?

Facebook has introduced its latest changes to privacy settings, to appease disgruntled users who have been somewhere within the range of mildly irritated to outraged over the previous incarnation. The company is getting numerous pats on the back, or at least "that’s more like it" responses from people for the most part (there are some who still aren’t satisfied).

Do you like the latest approach Facebook is taking to privacy? Tell us what you think.

While the settings do address the main concerns that have been so widely discussed and publicized since the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph/instant personalization initiative, no privacy settings are truly going to protect people’s privacy on Facebook – and that’s not Facebook’s fault. I would blame a combination of human nature and technology.

If you’re worried about privacy and how it is related to Facebook, it really doesn’t matter how many times Facebook adjusts its privacy settings. The fact of the matter is that there is no more privacy, unless you don’t interact with people whatsoever. This applies whether you have a Facebook account or not. That really makes no difference if someone whips out their phone and takes a picture of you. With most modern phones, all they have to do is tap a button to send it right to Facebook for all of their friends to see. Did you say or do something embarrassing at a party? Witnesses can easily become instant broadcasters, and there’s a good chance that some of their Facebook friends know you.

Did you casually mention something to a friend? Anything? They may mention it in a status update and instantly let all of their friends know about it. Whether or not they did this with any malicious intent is irrelevant. It happens. Human contact in general should be considered non-private. If you say or do anything that you truly want kept private, you better keep it to yourself or let people know you don’t want others to know about it (and hope that they care).

Facebook is really just an extension of the web itself, when it comes to privacy. The same rules apply to YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, or any other platforms where users can communicate to the public (or even to a closed network).

The privacy issues that exist now have existed the entire time the web has been around. It’s only the pace of sharing, which has accelerated. Years ago, someone could have easily created a website about you if they knew how to create a website at all. Status updates and blog posts are just easier. Smartphones make them almost like a reflex for some people – and the smartphone market continues to grow rapidly.

Mark Zuckerberg has taken a lot of flack over the privacy concerns that have arisen around Facebook of late, as well as his own stance on privacy in general, but no matter how much Facebook or any other social networking entity on the web tweaks its privacy, your privacy will never truly be ensured – unless you hide from society completely.

There are pros and cons to the manner in which technology evolves (and continues to do so). Regardless of your stance on privacy, it’s pretty clear that things aren’t going to be slowing down anytime soon, and a decreased sense of privacy is simply a side effect.

Who’s getting excited about Facebook readying location features?

Facebook Privacy and Business

Apart from the grand scheme of things, Facebook’s new settings should make some users more comfortable, and the more comfortable Facebook users are the better off Facebook and anyone who considers it a significant part of their business strategy will be.

"What these privacy advocates don’t get is that Facebook, like Google, isn’t free," says SeeWhy Founder Charles Nicholls, who has written about the subject. "It’s a massive service that needs to be paid for, and that service is going to be funded by a multi-billion dollar advertising business, just as Google is. This is the price you pay for using a ‘free’ service. Facebook ‘Like’ is central to this strategy and equally important for ecommerce."

Many (myself included) have speculated that Facebook’s Open Graph could lead to the company launching an AdSense-like product down the line, with the ability to target users all over the web based on their personal interests. It could be very powerful. Mark Zuckerberg’s response to the notion that any of the company’s recent moves are geared toward advertising (via VentureBeat):

There is also this idea going around that if people share information openly that we can use it better for ad targeting. But advertisers don’t get any information from the system. We don’t give your information to them. We target all the ads ourselves. And it doesn’t matter who you’re sharing with, whether it’s your friends or the public. It doesn’t affect the ads at all.

Does that change anything? Couldn’t an AdSense-like product still work without the advertisers getting personal information from users and letting Facebook do the targetintg?

Regardless of whether or not such an ad network is ever actually released, e-commerce businesses have a lot to gain from Facebook’s Open Graph.

"From an ecommerce point of view, what’s not to like here?" asks Nicholls. "It’s now really easy for your visitors to share what they like on your website with their friends, without so much as a login. The ease of use and simplicity of the ‘Like’ button makes it a sure-fire hit, as long as users can get comfortable with privacy."

Comfort or no comfort from users, the Open Graph is definitely a hit with businesses, and judging from all the "liking", "recommending", etc. going on around the web, privacy may really not be as big of a concern among general users as it has been made out to be in the media.

If you have anything to contribute to this conversation, please do so in the comments.

May 27, 2010
More Spam Including Legitimate Social Media Links

Security firm Symantec tells WebProNews that nine out of ten spam emails now contain a URL link in the message, and this month, around 5% of all domains found in spam URLs belonged to genuine websites. The top four of those belong to well-known social networking, blogging, file sharing and user-generated content sites.

"Domains belonging to well-known web sites tend to be recycled and used continuously compared with ‘disposable’ domains which are used for a short period of time and never seen again," said Paul Wood, Senior Analyst with Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence. "Perhaps this is because there is some work involved in acquiring them: the legitimate domains require CAPTCHAs to be solved to create the large numbers of accounts that are then used by spammers.”

So far in May, between 10% and 30% of spam containing a URL link has included at least one legitimate domain, the firm says. Additional findings include:

– Botnets Move in to Capitalize on Africa – in the last year, the proportion of global spam that comes from Africa has increased from 2% to 3% of global spam. This is an increase of 1.2 billion spam emails being sent from Africa every day, compared with 12 months ago… a significant hike in spam output for Africa, since the volume circulating globally hasn’t significantly changed.

– Soccer World Cup Themed Malware – spam emails have used the World Cup as a hook since late 2009, but in May in May, a malware attack featuring the theme of the competition was discovered. The email attempts to spoof a well-known US soft drink brand, but it had actually been sent from an IP address in Macau, a special administrative region of China.

This month, the most spammed industry sector is Engineering, with a spam rate of 95.1%. Spam levels in the Education sector were 91% The Public sector is still the most targeted industry for malware, with 1 in 74.2 emails being blocked as malicious.

Symantec’s full report can be found here.

May 26, 2010
Google Buzz Gets Even More Integrated with Email

Over the last month or so, most of the discussion around social media has been mostly related to Twitter and Facebook, as both recently had their developer conferences and introduced some new things to get people talking. We haven’t heard a whole lot of discussion around Google Buzz. When we have, it’s still mostly been about privacy.

Google hasn’t had its developer conference for the year yet though. That’s coming up in a couple weeks (WebProNews will be there covering it by the way). While there has been much anticipation about Android and even Google Wave news from the show, I would not be surprised to see some new Buzz-related things introduced.

Today Google introduced a new feature for Buzz that lets you comment via email. "One of the things people like best about Google Buzz is the ability to have conversations in the comments," says Google Software Engineer Henry Wong. "But until now, if you were reading a post in an email client (like the native mail app on your phone or Outlook), you couldn’t easily join in on the conversation — you could only email the original poster. Today, we rolled out a new Google Buzz feature for you to try out: comment via email. Now, you can comment on the post simply by replying to the email message."

Google is also now letting Buzz users view entire photo albums in Buzz, as opposed to just the limited amount of pics from Flickr/Picasa that were previously able to be viewed.

Google says it is "chipping away at the feature requests" its receiving, so that leads me to believe that more features are on the way. We’ll see if any of them can spark the public interest.

May 7, 2010
Should Social Media Be Held Accountable for User Actions?

Update: A court document from the judge in this case has been released indicating that the for profit factor of YouTube is what makes this a crime. A Google representative is quoted as saying:

“We are reading the full 111-page document from the judge. But as we said when the verdict was announced, this conviction attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. If these principles are swept aside, then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear. These are important points of principle, which is why we and our employees will vigorously appeal this decision.”

Original Article: A judge in Milan, Italy has convicted three Google executives over a video uploaded to YouTube in a case, which could have serious implications for social media and ultimately, the web in general, at least in Italy. The video, uploaded back in 2006, featured a group of school kids bullying an autistic child. Google says it worked with Italian authorities to help ID the person responsible for uploading it, and the uploader and other participants from the video were sentenced to community service.

Now, in 2010, Google executives David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes(3 out of 4 defendants) have been convicted for “failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.” They were all found not guilty of criminal defamation.

Should these Google execs be held accountable? Comment here.

“In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload,” writes Matt Sucherman, VP and Deputy General Counsel – Europe, Middle East and Africa on the Google Blog. “We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question.”

This is a case of a business being held accountable for user-generated content. Isn’t the entire web generated by users? What if Google’s search engine (algorithmically) indexed something illegal. Should company execs be penalized, even if they comply with authorities’ requests for removal of such content? Ask yourself these questions:

– What if YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. had to shut down because it couldn’t control the things users post?

– What if every blogging platform had to do the same?

– What if you went to jail for comments posted on your blog?

You’re not likely going to go to jail for comments posted on your blog, but the point is, that by allowing people to post comments on your blog, you are allowing user-generated content, that you can’t necessarily control until after it’s been posted, unless you don’t let them go live until approving them. Google is being held accountable for content that users uploaded, which was not in their control until after the fact. YouTube users upload 20 hours of video every minute, according to Google.

You can see why this case is much bigger than just the specific instance it involves. The case is subject to appeal, but if it is not overturned, what will this mean for the web? Tell us what you think.

“The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police,” says Sucherman.

“To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video,” he says. “They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video’s existence until after it was removed.”

He goes on to talk about how the case “attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built,” also mentioning that European Union law dictates that hosting providers have a safe harbor from liability as long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. “If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear,” Sucherman says.

If rulings such as the one against these Google execs were to become commonplace, how much do you think that would affect the social media industry? Companies like Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc. couldn’t let users upload content, which essentially means social media couldn’t exist. User-generated content couldn’t exist. How could you blog? How could you leave a status update on Facebook, or upload a family photo to Picasa? There is always the possibility that some user could make a death threat or upload child porn, so if the companies behind the services that were used to commit these crimes were held accountable, how could their businesses continue?

That’s why Google is not only upset about the ruling against its executives, but calls it a “serious threat to the web.”

Should Google (or any other site) be held responsible for content that users upload (even when said content is removed)? Share your thoughts.

May 6, 2010
Is Your Content Getting As Much Out of YouTube as it Could Be?

YouTube still claims to be the second largest search engine in the world. Just think about that for a minute. If you produce online video and it’s not on YouTube, you’re probably missing out on a great deal of potential viewers. If you’re not producing video at all, you’re missing out a lot of searches.

Do you consider YouTube important to search marketing? Let us know.

However, just uploading content to YouTube is not going to be enough. Like with any other form of search engine, content needs to be optimized to be found. At SXSW in Austin back in March, WebProNews spoke with Margaret Gould Stewart, who leads YouTube’s user experience team. She talked about some reasons a lot of content producers are missing out on some tremendous opportunities when they use the world’s most popular online video site.

"When you’re building a sustained audience, you have to continually create great content that connects with your audience," says Stewart. "I think the secondary part is understanding your audience – understanding who you want to reach, and proactively cultivating a relationship with the people in your audience. And on YouTube that means not just creating great content and uploading it to the site, but actively building your subscriber base, so that you can be in direct and regular interaction and conversation with those people."

"We find that video producers who are really active in the conversation, whether it’s comments or uploading ‘how this video was made’- you know, kind of the behind-the-scenes – people are really fascinated by that stuff, and we see some our most successful partners really having that, again, kind of ongoing conversation – not an arm’s length relationship to the audience, but very engaged," she adds.

More WebProNews Videos

"We sometimes see content producers not investing enough time in attaching great meta data to their content, because like I said, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and we all know that for Google, it’s important to think seriously about search engine optimization, because you can have the great content, and ideally the cream will float to the top, but there’s definitely things you can do to help yourself along, right?"

"Good clear, direct titling of your content, putting the right kinds of tags…because the fact is initially when content goes viral, people may discover it through search engines, or embed it in blogs, but then it reaches that really exciting word-of-mouth status, where I just may mention it to you person-to-person, and then what most people do is just go to YouTube.com and they search for it," she continues. "So if you’re not indexed well in the search engine because you haven’t attached great meta data to your content, you’re going to miss out on that audience."

"The other thing that is really important is enabling embedding," notes Stewart. "It’s probably the number one most important thing, because what we see in videos that become very popular, very quickly and take on that kind of life of its own, a lot of that initial traffic in the first 48 hours happens actually off-site."

Note: This actually plays to a point I made about Twitter embeds as well.

If you want more success from your online video endeavors, read 35 Ways to Improve Your Online Video Performance, and Tips For Ranking Higher On and With YouTube, which features an interview with YouTube Product Manager Matt Liu. If real-time, live video is your thing, check out 8 Tips for Real-Time Video Blogging.

By the way, YouTube is renting movies now, and while it’s not exactly taking over Netflix at this point, I would expect this to grow significantly and get more people spending more time at YouTube, where there is a YouTube search box very close by, and relevant related video suggestions served to viewers constantly.

Is YouTube a significant part of your marketing strategy? Comment here.

May 4, 2010
Twitter Introduces Android App

Twitter has released its first official application for Android 2.1 and Google will be open sourcing the code in the app soon.

Twitter for Android app features a share button in your favorite applications for sharing links and images via Twitter.

The Twitter Blog provides more details. "Reading tweets is easy in a bunch of places on your phone. Quickly access your timeline with the home screen widget, view a tweet location on a map, and see your friend’s latest tweet in your phonebook, GoogleTalk list or any application that uses Android’s QuickContact bar."

"We had a great time working with the Android team and are thrilled that Google will be open sourcing the code used in this app in the near future. We look forward to the amazing experiences developers will create using Twitter APIs in their upcoming Android apps."

May 3, 2010
Online Research Still Key Tool For Consumers

Online research continues to play a key role in consumer shopping behavior, according to a new study from the e-tailing group and PowerReviews.

The 2010 Social Shopping Study surveyed over 1,000 consumers who shop at least 4 times per year and spend $250 or more annually online, to understand their motivations and preferences about online product research and customer reviews.

A contrast in research style was found with consumers being either light or heavy researchers (29% conduct just a few hours of research prior to making a purchase decision while 60 % research for a week or more). Very few consumers (11%) fall in between, research for just a day.

According to respondents, online research is preferred for three reasons: its ability to save time (79 % report saving somewhat to much more time doing their own online research), increase confidence (83 % are somewhat to much more confident about making a purchase decision when doing their own research) and provide credible information (82 % are somewhat or very satisfied with product information available online).

When surveyed about where consumers are doing research online, the study found:

*More than half (57%) of shoppers begin their research with a search engine

*The top three places for finding information online when researching products were retailer sites (65%), brand sites (58%) and Amazon.com (33%).

*Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter ranked as the place where consumers were least likely (6%) to research.

Lauren Freedman
President of E-Tailing Group

"Whereas once online product research was left to the technology savvy looking to make a major purchase, it is now part of the mainstream shopping experience for all product categories as consumers have taken control powering their own product research," explains Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group.

"These heightened consumer demands must be met with comprehensive product and category content to ensure elevated conversion rates and return visits."

Other highlights from the study include:

*Shoppers today are spending more time reading reviews before making purchasing decisions. 64 percent take ten minutes or more (as compared to 50 % in 2007) and 33 percent take one half hour or more (as compared to 18 % in 2007).

*Consumers today are also reading more customer reviews in order to be confident in judging a product. 39 percent read eight or more reviews (as compared with 22 % in 2007) and 12 percent read 16 or more reviews (as compared with 5 % in 2007).

*Following poor product content (72 %), lack of customer reviews (49%) was ranked as the number one reason a consumer would leave a site when conducting product research.

"The findings of the 2010 Social Shopping Survey validate what we are hearing from retailers and brands – that customer reviews have become a critical piece of the marketing puzzle, based not only on consumer demand but also on the sales they deliver," said Pehr Luedtke, CEO of PowerReviews.

"The next step for retailers is to now find new ways to maximize the impact and reach of these reviews – such as optimizing them for search engines through products like our In-Line SEO solution."

May 3, 2010
Watchdog Group Calls For Stronger Online Child Privacy Law

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing today about issues surrounding the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and if it should be updated to address online data collection practices, social networks, and the mobile web.

"It is clear that the single biggest change impacting the privacy of children since the adoption of COPPA has been the emergence of social network services, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter," said Marc Rotenberg, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Executive Director.

"These web-based platforms provide new opportunities for kids to interact online and also for companies to gather up information."

EPIC also criticized the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) failure to enforce children’s privacy rights despite clear violations of federal law. Rotenberg cited EPIC’s FTC complaint against Echometrix, a company selling "parental control" software that secretly monitored children’s online activity for marketing purposes. The FTC ignored EPIC’s complaint, but the Department of Defense shut down sales of the product.

EPIC recommended updates that would expand COPPA protections to teens and clarify the law’s application to mobile and social network services.

"The emergence of social networks and the powerful commercial forces that are seeking to extract personal data on all users of these services, but particularly children, raise new challenges that the original COPPA simply did not contemplate," said Rotenberg. "Today, I recommend that Congress raise the age requirement in COPPA to 18."

The FTC’s COPPA Rule took effect in 2000. The Rule requires operators of Web sites and online services that target children under age13 to obtain verifiable parental consent before they collect, use, or disclose personal information from children. They also must give parents the opportunity to review and delete personal information their children have provided.

April 29, 2010
Amazon Kindle To Add Support For Facebook And Twitter

Amazon has introduced a 2.5 software update for its Kindle, which features support for Facebook and Twitter.

The new Facebook and Twitter support will allow Kindle users to share book passages with their friends on the social networks.

Amazon said it is rolling out the new software update to a limited group of Kindle users and plans a full release in late May.

Other new improvements with the update include the ability to organize books and documents into one or more collections, zoom into PDFs and pan around to view small print and detailed tables or graphics.

Other enhancements include:

Password Protection- password protect the Kindle while it’s not in use

More Fonts & better clarity- two new larger font sizes and sharper fonts for a better reading experience

Popular Highlights- See what the Kindle community thinks are the most interesting passages in the books you are reading

April 29, 2010
New Social Networking Site Aims To Streamline Communications

A new social networking site has launched called RecreateMyNight.com and WebProNews spoke to Tejpaul Bhatia, President of the site about its offerings.

Bhatia said the idea for the site started last year when his team noticed that discovering and sharing media from special events was difficult due to the high fragmentation of photo sharing, video sharing and social networking sites.

"We set out to create a simple and seamless tool to aggregate photos, videos, status updates and more from multiple platforms into one location where all friends can share, contribute and enjoy," said Bhatia.

"We used weddings, birthday parties, graduations and regular nights out as our use cases to test the idea."

RecreateMyNight works by using a proprietary time-stamping system to integrate with multiple social networking and media sharing sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

Bhatia says the two main advantages of the site are "that you can utilize your social networking activity as chronological personal journaling tool and that you can pull information from multiple platforms without having to change your or your friends individual social networking and experience sharing behavior."

Bhatia says the site is for everyone but so far they have found heavy users of social networks tend to use RecreateMyNight the most. "This is why we chose Facebook Connect as our login mechanism for the site," said Bhatia.

On the initial response to the site Bhatia said," We are learning a lot about what people like to do and what they don’t like to do on our site. Early data shows that a large percentage of people that connect via Facebook are likely to recreate at least one night per visit and that a very large percentage of people that recreate nights share those nights with friends."

April 27, 2010
More Americans Going Online For Government Information

More Americans are turning to government agencies websites for information, according to new research from Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Some 40 percent of Internet users have gone online for raw data about government spending and activities.

Online activities related to the government include:

*23% of Internet users have gone online to see how federal stimulus money is being spent

*22% have read or downloaded the text of legislation

*16% have visited a site such as data.gov that provides access to government data

*14% have gone online to see who is contributing to the campaigns of elected officials

"Government interactions in the information age are often fueled by data," said Aaron Smith, a research specialist at Pew and author of the report.

"Online citizens can-and often do-‘go to the source’ in their efforts to monitor government activities, evaluate the impacts of new legislation, and track the flow of their tax dollars."

The report also found 31 percent of online adults have used social media such as blogs, social networking sites, and online video as well as email and text alerts to keep up to date about government activities.

Minorities are just as likely as whites to use social media to keep up with the government, and are more likely to agree that government outreach using these channels make government more accessible and helps people be more informed about what government agencies are doing.

"Just as social media and just-in-time applications have changed the way Americans get information about current events or health information, they are now changing how citizens interact with elected officials and government agencies," said Smith.

"People are not only getting involved with government in new and interesting ways, they are also using these tools to share their views with others and contribute to the broader debate around government policies."

April 27, 2010
Big Money in Facebook Marketing

Wildfire Interactive has received $4.04MM in Series A funding lead by Summit Partners. Additional investors include Jeff Clavier, Aydin Senkut and Gary Vaynerchuk. CEO Victoria Ransom tells WebProNews, "To our knowledge, we are the first fbFund company to raise a multi-million dollar round." fbFund is a $10M seed fund and joint venture partially run by Facebook.

Wildfire is a company that offers social media marketing technology to businesses, to help them create branded campaigns like sweepstakes, contests, coupons, giveaways, quizzes, and virtual gift campaigns, and publish them simultaneously to Facebook pages, company websites (integrated with Facebook), and on Twitter. The company recently sparked some buzz with its "Facebook-safe" sweepstakes service for those who "run a business and know the value of promotional campaigns on Facebook but have been stopped by the logistics, legal aspects and costs," as All Facebook’s Raj Dash puts it.

"The timing couldn’t be better – we founded Wildfire around the time of the last f8 and now here we are just a few days after the 2010 f8 reaching another big milestone for our company!" Ransom says of the funding.

Wildfire Founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard

"Since the last f8, we launched an easy-to-use social media marketing platform for brands, agencies and small businesses, reached profitability within 1 month of launching our product and won the fbFund twice," she adds. "We serve thousands of companies and have powered tens of thousands of social media marketing campaigns. With today’s investment from Summit we’re confident that we’ll be able to reach new heights."

Now that Facebook is taking over the web, one would have to imagine that services such as those provided by Wildfire will be increasingly in demand.

April 26, 2010
New Civil War Exhibit Promoted On Twitter And Facebook

The National Archives has launched a social media scavenger hunt to promote its new exhibit "Discovering the Civil War."

The social media campaign is launching on the National Archives main Facebook page at 12:00 p.m. EDT today.

The scavenger hunt will take place across the National Archives’ social media sites, including over a dozen Facebook pages, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

Participants who complete the scavenger hunt and submit their answers will be put into a raffle to win four "Discovering the Civil War" T-shirts from the National Archives gift shop.

The free exhibit will open in Washington, D.C., on April 30 and run through September 6.

April 26, 2010
Facebook And StumbleUpon Drive The Most Social Traffic To Websites

Twitter generates nearly 10 percent of social media global hits to websites, according to new research from StatCounter.

The report found that Facebook is still the main source of traffic to global websites with almost half (48%) of social media hits followed by StumbleUpon with 25 percent.

The data for March is based on 13 billion page views across the StatCounter network of member sites. The analytics firm just recently added social media to the categories its tracks.

"From a business perspective the findings suggest that there is merit in having a corporate Facebook page or Twitter account," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

"The surprise packet is StumbleUpon, which over the past year has been consistently in the top two Social Media sites in terms of generating global website traffic. Indeed, in the US in March StumbleUpon was number one ahead of Facebook in terms of website traffic generation."

The top social media sites to generate global website traffic after Facebook, StumbleUpon and Twitter are YouTube (6%), reddit (4%), Digg (2%) and MySpace (2%).

"Social Media market share fluctuates a lot more than browser or search statistics," said Cullen.

"For example, Facebook peaked over Christmas and the New Year with almost three quarters of the total, perhaps reflecting its important role in communications between families and friends."

April 22, 2010