Social Networks

This week Facebook will reportedly be rolling out the ability to send status updates to Twitter directly from the publisher box. There are apps that cater to the cross-posting of updates between the two social networks, but this would mark the first time Facebook itself actually encouraged it.

The move is an interesting one, considering that Facebook has spent much of its time making itself more Twitter-like. Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook has a good piece chronicling the company's "Twitterfication" over the past year, which includes events like opening the Status API, letting users subscribe to their friends and Pages and receive status updates via text message, releasing @replies-style tagging, and encouraging users to make status updates public. O'Neill says the only step left is to open a search API. Of course Facebook has also just released its own URL shortener.

Facebook employees are already testing the Facebook-to-Twitter functionality:

The feature will utilize the new Facebook URL Shortener, which could actually lead to more widespread awareness of it. Once Twitter is flooded with Facebook links, people may start gravitating to that to shorten their own URLs, although the service at FB.me is not live for everyone to use yet.

Either way, things are really starting to heat up in the URL-shortener space. Not only does Facebook now have its own, but so does Google. On top of that, Twitter-favorite Bit.ly has just launched Bit.ly Pro.

Related Articles:

> Facebook URL Shortener Makes Appearance

> Facebook Shows a Glimpse of Twitterness

> Facebook Altering Pages and Feeds

If You don't think Twitter is useful for business now, new features may change your mind. Twitter announced that it has begun limited beta testing of a new feature aimed at businesses, called "Contributors." The feature allows businesses to have more control over who is posting for their company Twitter account, and to make that information visible to users.

Would you find such a feature useful? Comment here.

"The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations," explains Twitter's Anamitra Banerji.



Businesses have already been finding different ways to personalize accounts. For example, the WebProNews Twitter account (feel free to follow it) utilizes "@cotags" to sign Tweets. However, this practice requires adding characters to tweets, and sometimes every character counts. If you're trying to optimize your tweets for maximum retweeting (which can in turn drive traffic to your site), you want to leave as much space as possible for followers to add their own information.

Twitter's new "contributors" feature should solve this problem. Businesses who regularly utilize Twitter will be anticipating the roll out of this feature. There's no telling how long this limited beta testing will go on though.



The important thing for businesses to keep in mind is that Twitter is finally getting serious about becoming more useful to them. There are a great many ways that businesses can use Twitter and the company knows this of course. Now, however, they seem to be set to start really catering to businesses. The new "Contributors" feature is apparently only the first of an unspecified number of business features Twitter is currently working on.

"The simple features that Twitter has offered to all users has worked for business users as well," says Banerji. "As Twitter becomes more integral to businesses, they will need more business specific features from Twitter – both on the web and API. We have been working on some of these features and are ready to start a limited beta test of one that's further along in development."

The key words there are "working on some of these features." Twitter is looking to start monetizing its own business, and catering to other businesses is bound to be a step in that direction. Ads and commercial accounts are said to be coming to Twitter soon. The commercial accounts would come with premium features, such as analytics. In fact, Twitter COO Dick Costolo recently said that multiple authors would be a part them as well, and that is exactly what they're testing right now.

We don't know what other features Twitter may have up its sleeve, but it will be very interesting to see what they come up with and how businesses respond. Either way, businesses are going to want to keep a close eye on what Twitter does, because it could have huge implications for key areas of how their businesses communicate online down the road.

What features would you like to see Twitter offer businesses? What would make Twitter more useful to you? Tell us here.

Related Articles:

> Driving Traffic with Twitter

> Need More Examples of Twitter's Usefulness to Business?

> 10 Great Ways To Use Twitter To Your Business's Advantage

Facebook has launched the Create Application API, which is aimed at making it easier for users to integrate Facebook on their websites and widgets.

"Many websites are looking for ways to integrate Facebook Connect, such as commenting using Facebook identity or showing visitors their Facebook friends' recent activity," says Facebook software engineer Vishu Gupta. "Companies like DISQUS offer widgets to such websites, providing off-the-shelf Facebook integration with just a few clicks."

"Every website that wants to integrate with Facebook needs an API key. The Create Application API allows widget providers to programmatically generate this API key and other necessary settings," says Gupta. "For example, a fourth party comment system like DISQUS can now more easily enable bloggers to integrate commenting with Facebook into their blogs."

There are two ways developers can call the Create Application API:

- FB.Connect.createApplication -- the JavaScript Client Library method.

- Facebook.createApplication -- the FBJS method.

Documentation for these methods can be found here.

Facebook says it wants to see a "strong ecosystem" of developers giving others the ability to make great Facebook integrations. This API is designed to do just that. Facebook has done a pretty good job of getting itself integrated into more and more aspects of the web. With the release of this API, that is a trend that is likely to continue.

Nielsen set out to prove that social media use put a significant dent into email use, assuming that the more time people spent on social networks, the less time they were likely to spend using email. It didn't quite work out that way in the firm's experiment however.

Nielsen explains its methodology:

We decided to churn some quick data to test our hypothesis that “Consumption of social media decreases email use.” First, we broke the online population into four groups. The first three are terciles of social media consumption in minutes. The fourth is a group that doesn’t use social media at all. We then looked at each segment’s time of web based email consumption over the course of a year. Finally, we subtracted the email consumption of those that do not use social media from those that do, basically to show a lift over possible external forces. Clearly, there are more robust approaches that could be taken (controlling for factors other than consumption for example) but for the sake of this simple experiment, we tried to keep it straightforward.

As you can see from the above graph, Nielen's results pretty much show the opposite of what the firm expected. It would appear that the more people use social media, the more they are also using email. The "low social media consumers" spent the least amount of minutes consuming email, compared with the "high social media consumers" consuming the most email.

Think about it though. We often get our social media updates through our email anyway, via notifications. I know I do (some networks allow you to adjust this in the settings). I know I have a direct message on Twitter or a comment on a Facebook post when I get my email notification. Every time someone that runs a YouTube channel that I subscribe to uploads a new video, I get an email notification letting me know. The list goes on.

There is also the possibility that when people are using social media more, they are actually on their computer more, and more apt to go through and send email. They may get on to check Facebook, and decide to go through their inbox while they're there. They may do just the opposite and check their email, and decide to post a status update. It makes perfect sense that the increase in one channel correlates with the other.

That is all the more reason to integrate social media and email marketing campaigns. Read more about such integrations in this article based on an interesting session from last week's Shop.org Summit.

Crowd Science revealed some interesting findings from a survey on Twitter use today. It would appear that Twitter is the most used social network by drivers. I'm not sure if that's the kind of endorsement Twitter wants (the most dangerous network), but its short-form texting-like format caters to the mobile user.

"Twitter is more of a mobile media phenomenon than other social networks, so these results, while a little disturbing, are perhaps not so surprising," noted John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. "And even though checking updates outpaces tweeting by almost two to one, the bottom line is that either type of activity takes a driver's attention away from the road."

According to Crowd Science, about 11% of Twitter users admitted to accessing social media while driving in the preceding 30 days, compared to only 5% of other social media users. 29% of Twitter users said they had accessed social media from cars at some point in the past, compared with 13% of non-users.



Additional Findings from the survey:

- twice as many Twitter users as non-Twitter social media users (8% to 4%) had accessed any social media from a theater during a movie or live performance (during the preceding 30 days).

- During the same period, 17% of Twitter users vs. 12% of non-Twitter social media users had accessed social media from a washroom or toilet.

- nearly three times as many Twitter users as other social media users have accessed social media from restaurants (31% vs. 12%).

- 40% of Twitter users access the service via mobile at least sometimes (compared with 32% for Facebook users, for example), and 8% use mobile all the time (vs. 3% for Facebook).

- 41% of Twitter users prefer to contact friends via social media rather than telephone, compared with 25% of non-Twitter social media users, and 11% (vs. only 6% of those not using Twitter) actually prefer social media over face-to-face contacts.

- 14% of Twitter users said they have revealed things about themselves in social media that they wouldn't under any other circumstances. Then again, 8% admitted to "frequently stretching" the truth about themselves online.

- More than twice as many males than females (32% to 15%) access Twitter primarily through a third-party application.

- 43% of Twitter users employ a third-party application at least some of the time, and 26% as their main mode of access.

- Twitter users tend to be older than non-Twitter social media users (54% over 30 years old, vs. 42%), twice as likely to be self-employed or entrepreneurs (18% vs. 9%) and to be planning to start a business during the next six months, and more tech-savvy (24% vs. 15% "buy gadgets/devices when they first come out," 48% vs.

- 30% have created a website, and nearly four of ten (37%) currently maintain a blog, twice as many as non-Twitter social media users).

The study was conducted among over 600,000 visitors to multiple websites within Crowd Science's open research network. The survey targeted social media users age 12 and up, and was conducted August 5-13, 2009. They have another study on MySpace on the way.

MySpace is touting the fact that a bunch of celebrities have already synced their MySpace and Twitter accounts. The feature was just announced today, and MySpace has already issued an announcement listing a number of celebrities taking advantage of it.

When the feature is activated,  a user's status update will appear in  their Twitter feed, and any Twitter feed update will appear in their MySpace Status & Mood.

Celebrities that are already using the feature include:

Lenny Kravitz
John Legend
Rachel Zoe
Margaret Cho
George Lopez
Jamie Kennedy
David Spade
Slash
Cat Deeley
Chamillionaire
Jim Gaffigan
David Alan Grier
Larry The Cable Guy
John Witherspoon

"This is only the beginning, as we plan to enable our users to sync their updates across even more networks," MySpace reminds us.

To set up syncing, users should go to "My Account" then setup the desired services they would like to sync. The company says you can sync to Twitter now, and that more networks will be available soon. After choosing a service, just click confirm.

Facebook has quietly made a few changes to its design. It's not exactly a huge overhaul that will provoke the backlash that last year's big redesign did, but just a few simple things that people shouldn't have too much of a problem with.

In fact, consider yourself "on the ball" if you've even noticed them without being told about them. One difference is just a straight border look, as opposed to the rounded corners that were on the social network. This is something the Facebook team has been debating, with reasons why both are good ideas, but ultimately, they decided the straight approach was more in tune with what Facebook is about.

"As part of the effort to simplify our visual style, the design team recently decided to go back to our square corner roots," says Facebook's Alexandre Roche. "In doing so, we hope to champion cleanliness and the razor cut look that Facebook is known for."

Before



After

Another change you might notice is tha the blue header bar now extends the entire width of your screen. The other change has to do with Facebook ads.

One nice thing about Facebook ads from the user perspective is that you always have the power to show Facebook your approval or disapproval. This is important since these ads are highly targeted based on your personal information (from your profile).

Before, Facebook allowed you to give an ad a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down." That was simple enough, but it wasn't exactly consistent with the approach used on regular Facebook content like status updates, which of course include the "like" feature.

Facebook evidently decided they might as well make the whole thing uniform, because now instead of the thumbs up/thumbs down, the options are now "like" and "x". They work the same way, but they just fit better with the rest of the site now.

Retweeting is a phenomenon that has taken the Twitter world by storm. The concept began when somebody added the letters "RT" to somebody else's tweet and posted it as their own. The idea caught on on a massive scale, and now there are services that utilize retweeting as the backdrop of their entire purposes. "Some of Twitter's best features are emergent—people inventing simple but creative ways to share, discover, and communicate. One such convention is retweeting," says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone.

Disclaimer: If you are not a Twitterer, you may be unfamiliar with the concept of retweeting. Basically, when someone updates their status on Twitter, that is called a tweet. When someone likes that status and wants to share it with others, they will at "RT" (for ReTweet) and the user's name typically and post the same update. This is usually done with Tweets containing links, so naturally it provides a good, viral means of link exposure.

Tweetmeme has been around for a while, offering a service to content providers, where they can add a button onto an article page that lets a reader easily tweet a link to that article on Twitter. It then counts these tweets, which become retweets, just like similar buttons you've probably seen for Digg. The more retweets that are registered on that button, the more interesting the content looks at first glance. The reason for this is that theoretically, if a user sees the article has 2,000 tweets, as opposed to 2, they can assume that a lot of people found the article interesting or informative, and will be more likely to continue reading. It's kind of like the concept behind comments. Articles that display a large amount of comments are likely to catch readers' eyes for the same reason. The Huffington Post discussed this concept in a recent interview with WebProNews:

More WebProNews Videos

This week, a company called Mesiab Labs launched a service that is practically identical to Tweetmeme, at Retweet.com. Obviously, this company is hoping to cash in on the popular concept, while injecting a powerful brand to go along with it. The timing of this is interesting because Twitter recently announced its own retweeting plans in an initiative called " Project Retweet," which will presumably see a retweet button at Twitter.com (many consider this long overdue), and retweet functionality right in the Twitter API, opening up a lot more retweeting possibilities in third-party Twitter apps.

Sketch for Project Retweet

 But back to why retweeting is useful to businesses. The attention grabbing effect of the retweet button on a piece of content is just one aspect. Another is of course, the promotion the content provider sees from a substantial amount of retweets. They're viral by nature, and in the best-case scenario, they can drive a ton of traffic to the content.

Famed blogger Robert Scoble started an interesting discussion on FriendFeed about what is better between the retweet and the "like" feature on either Facebook or FriendFeed itself. While I'm not going to get into all of the reasons why one is better than the other, Scoble and other participants in the conversation made a number of good points bout the pros and cons of retweets. Let's look at some of those.

Pros

- Retweets are viral

- Retweets show up as top-level items in FriendFeed

- As opposed to a Facebook "like," a retweet is shared with everyone

- Retweets typically give credit to sources

- While giving credit to sources, retweets can lead to relationships

- Susbstantial amounts of retweets can say a lot about the quality of content

- Retweets can inspire further conversation

- Retweets can be good for branding

- Retweets can easily be shared across multiple networks, like Twitter, Friend, Facebook, etc.

- Retweets can provide followers with additional value in quality content

Cons

- It's hard to provide a list of the things you've retweeted, as Scoble mentions. He mentions how people can see your "likes" on FriendFeed

- Retweeting creates what many people consider to be "noise" on Twitter

- Twitter's 140 character limit

- Some people consider retweeting to be like copying other people's work for your own gain, though this concept is heavily disputed

Conclusion

A recent study from Pear Analytics found that about 8.70% of the tweets it researched were retweets. In some of the more web-oriented circles, this probably even seems quite low. Without a doubt though, Twitterers are retweeting tweets like there's no tomorrow. Obviously businesses can see value in this, especially if they provide some kind of content that they would like to see shared.

As always, it comes down to providing quality content - the old "content is king" cliché. Even as the web has evolved, that simple fact remains true. If you provide something interesting, people will share it.

Scoble's whole "Retweet vs. Like" concept is an interesting one in itself. We have certainly seen Facebook make numerous changes to its interface that seem to move the network closer to the realm of Twitter. You have to wonder if Facebook will eventually incorporate some kind of retweet-like functionality itself.

What are your thoughts on retweeting? Do you see value in it or is it just noise? Tell us what you think.

Americans watched another record number of online videos in July with a total of 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month, according to the latest report from comScore.

In July, Google sites continued to rank as the most popular U.S. property with a record 8.9 billion videos viewed, making up 42 percent of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8%) followed by Microsoft sites with 631 million videos viewed (3.0%).

Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace Video, landed in the fourth spot with 558 million videos viewed (2.6%) and Hulu rounded out the top five with 457 million (2.1%).

More than 158 million Internet users watched an average of 135 videos during the month of July. Google sites surpassed its all time high with 121 million unique viewers during the month (74.1 videos per viewer), followed by Microsoft sites with 65 million viewers (9.8 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 52 million viewers (10.8 videos per viewer).

Yahoo sites attracted 47.3 million viewers (7.9 videos per viewer) and Viacom Digital with 42.4 million viewers (19.2 videos per viewer).

ScanScout Network was the top video ad network with a potential reach of 80.1 million viewers, or 50.6 percent of the total viewing audience. Tremor Media landed in the second spot with a potential reach of 71.1 million viewers (44.9 percent penetration) followed by YuMe Video Network with 68.1 million viewers (43%).

Other highlights include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual delivered reach were: Tremor Video Network (20.1 percent viewer penetration), Brightroll Video Network (17.4 percent), and BroadbandEnterprises.com (14.4 percent).
• 81.0 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 500 minutes of video, or 8.3 hours.
• 120.3 million viewers watched 8.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (74.1 videos per viewer).
• 48.2 million viewers watched 518.6 million videos on MySpace.com (10.8 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 12.0 videos, totaling 1 hour and 13 minutes of videos per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes.