Facebook: Who you know; Twitter: What you know

Are you utlizing videos on your website or blog? Then here's an interesting stat for you from the folks at Social Media Today.

Videos promoted with links from Twitter are viewed much longer than from Facebook and Digg. Social Media Today says, "Users clicking onto videos links sent via Twitter spend significantly longer watching those videos than those arriving from Digg or Facebook, according to a new study by video stats site TubeMogul.

"The methodology (below) seems fairly robust, so it may offer a real insight into current Twitter usage: On Twitter you can follow interesting people, not just your friends."

Check out the full article and the study details here: Facebook: Who you know; Twitter: What you know

Facebook's billion dollar revenue forecast; it's THE media, social or not

As we see advertising revenues dwindle in traditional media, particularly magazines and newspapers, we'll be soon seeing an opposite shift in the form of a tipping point happening in new media, particularly the social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. In this story from Reuters on July 6th, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Facebook board member, Mark Andreessen, tells Reuters that while Facebook's revenue is at $500+ million this year, it is forecast for several billion in the next five years. "Privately held Facebook...has never disclosed its revenue except to say it expects 70 percent growth this year," the article quotes.

And did you know the high profile Web start-up, Twitter, while not making any money at the moment and instead establishing the user experience first (unlike mySpace), was asked by the U.S. State Department to reschedule planned maintenance during the Iran election crisis, because it "considered Twitter a vital communications channel for protesters?"

We're all beginning to understand more fully that Facebook and Twitter are destined to not just be social media channels used by some, but to become mainstream media channels used by most. The New Media isn't so new these days and media properties like Facebook and Twitter are becoming viable ways in which we receive our news in our beloved sound bytes and at a rate of speed that our minds crave. They are this generation's version of USA Today, bringing news to us where we connect with family, chat with friends and engage with those our businesses serve. Even the word "news" is being redefined because on the social networks, we get to choose and even create our own channels.

Engagement is such a key premise to understand more fully as people use the social networks because it's not about shouting messages from the rooftops, or treating the social media like more traditional media in one-way communication. To be successful in engaging others, one must first engage IN others. The old saying of WIIFM has never been more important than now -- your message must be about your audience, about each one in particular. One-to-one communications lives on, here and now in every moment. Remember those books we all read from Rogers & Peppers?

And the only question is how many moments can you catch with authentic relevancy? There are several definitions of engagement and my favorites for social media application are to interlock, mesh, involve, engross, pledge oneself and to deal with someone especially at length. The social media are long-term engagement tools not advertising tools, and the sooner we change our thinking, the better. Brands, whether your personal or company, will be built on engagement, authentic relevancy and thoughtfulness of others.

If you have questions about how to best to utlize the social media or how to consume or create content, please contact Sally Witzky for consultation.

A quick view of the stats: Facebook, Twitter and mySpace

This graphic came from Joel Comm's twitpic account. It shows the growth relationship of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. It may be difficult to read in this graphic (although you can click through to his twitpic and view much larger). But the green line is Facebook and you can see the incredible volume there. Twitter is the orange line at the bottom -- while the numbers aren't as big, the % growth is huge. And MySpace, as you know, is declining but still has moderate volume.

A quick recap:

Facebook: 122+ M unique visitors, 8.5% growth last mo, and 250% annual growth.
Twitter: 23 M unique visitors, 16.5% growth last mo, and 1,164% annual growth!
MySpace: 61 M unique visitors, 7% growth last mo but 5.6% annual decline.

When building a personal or business brand utilizing the social networks, you have to be where the people are, where the eyeballs are congregating. Kind of difficult to pass up 122+ million unique visitors on Facebook. So it's extremely important to have both a personal brand and business brand strategy for Facebook and Twitter, and I would add LinkedIn because of the demographics. And if you're in the music field, particularly an artist, MySpace is still a must.

If you have any questions about growth of social media or you feel you're not using them to the best of your advantage, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to answer you.