Social media charts

Today, I read a post with some interesting charts about the popularity of some social media sites. Click HERE to read the full article.

A powerful move: Yahoo and Twitter together

The interaction between different players within the social media world is starting to look like a war. Google gets Buzz and now Yahoo partners with Twitter. The latter represents a powerful alliance that could benefit both parts in significant ways.

To read more about the implications of this alliance, take a look at THIS ARTICLE from Channel Web.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn numbers

I took the following information from the post "The Big Three Social Networks Have Emerged as Professional Networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter" written by Don Bulmer:

- LinkedIn: LinkedIn has approximately 50 million users worldwide in 200 countries. The membership on LinkedIn is growing at roughly one new member per second. When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days, almost a year and four months to reach the first million members. The last million took only 12 days. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

- Facebook: Facebook has over 300 million members with 150 million that log in at least once per day. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook are 35 years and older and according to Facebook more than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared across the network, each week.

- Twitter: Twitter has more than 32 million members with the segment of 45-54 year olds being the top demographic and 25-34 year olds following closely behind at second. It has been found in other studies that baby boomers and senior citizens are more likely to join Twitter than their grandchildren.

I thought this was something interesting to share to get a picture of how social networks are doing today. If you want to read the full article, click HERE.

Twitter Analytics

What is the best tool to measure your success with Twitter?

I came across a very interestting article (read full post HERE) that talks about a new tool (Tweet Level) developed by Edelman which allows you to measure your Twitter performance.

There was a comment made to that post that mentioned another tool called twendz which seems to be a good one too.

Now, I am wondering what could be the best tool I can use to measure my Twitter presence...

Twitter for businesses

The popular Twitter has become a very useful tool for companies to promote their ideas and products. Check out the Twitter 101 section of the site to have a look at best practices and case studies of the way Twitter is being used by companies.

Click HERE to visit Twitter 101.

A short social media business example

Today, I read a short but useful post written by Massimo Paolini from the Examiner.com. He provides a short scenario which exemplifies the way a small business can promote its activities using social media tools. Check it out:

"Let's say you have a hair salon in Willow Glen. First, you'll want to create your own fan page on Facebook. Post pictures of your store and staff there. On your Twitter account, you can send out "tweets" about specials and new stylists or products. Advertise on Craigslist, and make sure your website is bookmarked on del.icio.us. Add more pictures on Flickr especially if your stylists are creating unique styles--and ask customers to post reviews on Yelp."

Click HERE to read the full post.

Meassuring Twitter in Iran

I just read an interesting opinion about the whole Twitter phenomenon in the Iranian elections. Gaurav Mishra’s (co-founder of social media research and analytics company 20:20 Web Tech) said in a post the following:

"Calling what’s happening in Iran a ‘Twitter Revolution’ is not only distracting but also dangerous because it reduces a legitimate broad-based grassroots movement to what’s quickly becoming a cliche (see Moldova)". Click HERE to see full post.

Also, I read an article from The Guardian that talks about the importance of meassuring Twitter in the right way:

"Supporters of reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi are more likely to use Twitter and Facebook. Poorer, less-educated voters have flocked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone acknowledged the limited group of users in Iran, who don't necessarily represent the mainstream. "Because Twitter is still a nascent service the sentiment is likely narrow," Stone said in an e-mail Monday to The Associated Press". Click HERE to read full article.

A pretty cool Twitter application

I just discovered this new application that allows you to follow Twitter conversations and hot topics in a very easy way. The application is called twendz and this is how the folks at twendz describe it: "twendz is a Twitter mining Web application that utilizes the power of Twitter Search, highlighting conversation themes and sentiment of the tweets that talk about topics you are interested in. As the conversation changes, so does twendz by evaluating up to 70 tweets at a time. When new tweets are posted, they are dynamically updated, minute by minute." It's pretty cool, check it out by clicking on the image below.