Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites

NYTimes.com: "FOR some time, Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser, has been dipping its big toes into the vast pool of Facebook, now the world’s largest social network. I recently knocked on the doors of both companies to hear how the experiment was going. Neither was inclined to say much.

Independent experts on Web advertising have been watching, however, and what they see is a myriad of difficulties in making brand advertising work on social networking sites. Members of social networks want to spend time with friends, not brands."

Understanding HP Lab’s Twitter Research

Jeremiah Owyang: Key findings from Twitter research conducted by HP's Labs group:

Most users have a smaller inner circle they communicate with: Within a social network, it was found that most only frequently communicate with a small segment of users –even if one has a large community. Makes sense, everyone has an ‘inner circle’. Finding the true network that an individual has (even if they have thousands of “friends”) is what’s really important. Although Scoble solicits imput from thousands of contacts, he leans on a smaller subset of folks to trust above all others.

HP Labs Sample Size is @ 6% of the Twittersphere: HP Labs took a random sample set of Twitter users, for a base of number of 309,740 users. According to my social network stats tracking page, Twitter’s total universe is somewhere between 4-5 million (still very small). I’ll value the network on the 5 mil side, so that’s sample size of about 6%, which is pretty healthy.

On average, most had 85 followers: They found that the average user has 85 followers in their network, this number seems reasonable when averaged out across the network.

On average, most had 80 friends: Most users followed back 80 others, which is close to the actual follower number. Perhaps some weren’t following spam bots, or people that follow everyone. James Governor has been discussing asymmetrical networks, but it appears that on the average, most are symmetrical.

About One Tweet a Day is Average Frequency: On average, these users had posted 255 tweets, and since the average users has been around for nearly 7 months, thats about 36 tweets per month, or about one a day.

68%: are active users Social networking stats are almost always flawed, as the vendors don’t disclose how many are truly active. I define active user base as logged in and completed an activity in the last 30 days. Among the 309,740 users only 211,024 posted. It’s unknown if this filtered out spam tweets, although nearly 2/3rds of users have returned (site stickyness. That’s a pretty good return to site rate.

Most members have been on twitter nearly 7 months: The research showed that the average person (from first to last post) was active for 206 days. This means that June 2008 (report written in Dec) has become somewhat of a trigger point, perhaps where a growth curve started to point upwards. I noticed an influx of users on April 2008, two months before HPs findings, see comment #579

A quarter of tweets (@) are directed at other users: The report showed that Around 25.4% of all posts are directed, by using the “@user” which is responding to others. This could suggest that the other 75% of tweets are updating their network of what users think is interesting or discussing ‘what they are doing’

The more followers, the more they tweet –up until a point: Figure 1 indicates frequently in posting the more followers they have, right up until about 500 followers where the frequency starts to level out (if the graph were smoothed). The data around number of friends suggests a similar graph, although there’s no saturation point (see figure 2). I’ll suggest the more connections a user has, the more value they have, and therefore are more active.

Despite having large networks, a smaller circle is maintained: For users with a high number of followers, they actually only still communicate with a smaller subset of users. This rule remains constant see figure 4.

Where’s the value? within the hidden network: To find out the real value of a twitter user and their network, finding out their true network of folks they communicate with on a regular basis will show their trusted network. Finding out who the Scobles’ communicate with the most will determine will help find out how he is influenced.

Google: Could They Have Two Down Rev Years Ahead?

Barron’s: "“Our research indicates that the challenging macro-economic conditions continue to worsen Google’s advertising driven consumer Internet business,” he writes. Chowdhry asserts that “contacts” say the number of keywords sold is down 2%-5%, and that bids on many keywords are down 20%. While Google is benefiting from the shift of ads from offline to online, he says that “the shift is not sufficient to overcome the downward macro-economic pressures.”"

Retooled Wall Street Journal site packing them in

Newspapers & Technology: "Not only does the site, which debuted Sept. 16, deliver more content, it's offering its distinctive mix of news and information to both subscribers and non-subscribers alike. That's a radical departure from the old WSJ.com, which restricted the majority of its content behind a paid wall."

Twitter turns serious with messages of life and death

FT.com: "Twitter , a text-based micro-blogging service better known for people alerting each other about what they are having for lunch in 140 characters or fewer, has become the central channel for eyewitness accounts and news updates on the events in India.

The service has been flooded with thousands of posts or 'tweets', some from people trapped in the hotels where the attacks were taking place. There are also calls for blood donors to go to specific hospitals, unconfirmed death counts and search pleas for the missing."