If the social graph ie., Facebook and its 400 million worldwide users – who’s size already dwarfs the entire U.S. internet audience – were a search killer then why does the group as a whole (120 million US users) run just three searches individually on Facebook per month?
Facebook Users
According to comScore, Facebook.com originated 395 million searches from the U.S. during the month of January 2010 while Google users ran 14.1 billion searches in the U.S.
At their present 13% search growth rate per month, Facebook will catch Google’s 2% search audience growth rate at what point – sometime in the next century?
Not only does the math not add up but the reality is people are creatures of habit and as long Google continues to deliver noise free results while Facebook continues to be the place where it users go to get attention not answers the social graph will remain just that – a social graph not a search killer.
With much fanfare, Google has launched its version of real time search incorporating Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Blog updates into their search results.
The following video shows how Google answers the “What’s happening right now?” and the “What’s happening nearby?” questions (please forgive the Slumber Inc. soundtrack).
Entering keywords into Google and selecting Anytime produces an amalgamation of relevant news and web results while selecting Latest often produces a condensed version of the Tweet Stream.
Google Real Time Search Anytime
Such doesn’t appear to be the case for one particular brand – Google.
Google Real Time Search Latest
Selecting “Latest” in Google’s real time search for “Google” produces not a list of Tweets containing Google but instead a ho hum list of relatively tame looking mostly Google owned sites.
Google Real Time Search Latest
Purely a coincidence?
Must be a fluke here on my computer.
Surely its one or the other.
Why otherwise would real time searches for Yahoo produce Tweets containing Yahoo but not those searches containing Google?
Yahoo Real Time Search Google Results
Does the same thing happen to you when you search for Google in their real time results?
If so, the lack of Tweets about Google in Google’s real time search results must be the result of a bug.
The following is my response to a request from a client regarding my opinion on social media and online display advertising.
There seems to have been an uptick in the number of recommendations suggesting businesses begin or increase their budgets for social media and online display advertising campaigns.
Dear Client,
The efficacy rhetoric of both social network and display advertising is increasingly on the rise as Microsoft/Yahoo and Facebook/Twitter attempt to attract more display brand advertising dollars from traditional media who are losing the war for the consumer’s attention.
The social / display advertising camps wouldn’t have to be selling their merits – if their results did their speaking for them.
The reason the former don’t is because their product produces inferior results while the latter has yet to yield any results if any results at all.
These are some of the reasons why the Yahoo/Facebook/Twitter market cap / value is 1/8 Google’s $150 Billion.
However, as with everything else – there are exceptions.
I have had a small percentage of deals convert with display while others have not.
Testing is the only way to prove or disprove whether or not display advertising will work for a particular business.
Display ads can be geo-targeted but its not as precise because it relies on other publishers data and it can have placement, targeting and measurement issues.
The first thing to do is to test whether text ads convert in their display network first. If so, then try image / display ads.
Unless of course a testing supports and fulfills a brand’s impression objectives in target markets and isn’t held to the same level of results performance as search.
If a display advertising test meets its objectives, then launch trials with Yahoo / MSN publishing partners.
Nielsen’s June 2009 Social Media Stats reports continued online member community unique audience size growth for the seven of the top ten largest social media sites.
Twitter posted the largest year over year growth rate of 1,928%.
From Nielsen Wire:
Among the top 10 social media sites, Twitter.com was again the fastest growing, increasing 1,928 percent year-over-year, from 1 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21 million unique visitors in June 2009–making Twitter the fourth most visited member communities site in June. Facebook continued to lead as the No. 1 U.S. social networking site for the sixth month in a row, with 87.3 million unique visitors in June 2009.
Online Member Communities Unique Audience
Although Twitter’s audience reach grew the most, Facebook’s audience penetration remained the highest @ 4:39:33 spent on the site.
Both Facebook and Twitter saw increases in the average amount of time spent per person by their respective audiences.
Facebook was also the No. 1 social networking site among the top 10 when ranked by average time per person, with visitors spending an average of 4 hours and 33 minutes on the site in June. This is a 240 percent year-over-year increase. The average time per person on Twitter increased 522 percent year-over-year, from 5 minutes and 2 seconds in June 2008 to 31 minutes and 17 seconds in June 2009, making it the fastest growing by time per person among the top 10.
The reason social media hasn’t become a bona fide sales channel is because the majority (if not all) of a social media’s audience at any one point in time – whether its Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter- are not buyers.
This hasn’t slowed the onslaught of social media spammers nor has it slowed them in their efforts to peddle wares to anyone who might be listening.
In the not too distant future, comScore will release its traffic stats for a variety of different web categories and properties for March 2009.
One web property’s traffic many observers will be following closely is Twitter.com.
According to comScore during the month of February 2009, Twitter.com had 9.8 million unique visitors while Facebook had 275.6 million unique visitors and Myspace had 123.5 million unique visitors worldwide.
Based on my research, I am going to predict Twitter.com will have twice its February 2009 traffic in March 2009 – 19.6 million unique visitors.
I just added my Twitter account into my Linkedin account profile after noticing Owen Frager had added it to his “what he is working on” Linkedin updates.
Twitter TimCohn
Pretty cool Owen…
Linkedin TimCohn
I had been meaning for some time to write about the importance of “owning and controlling your brand” whether personal or corporate in the most promising emerging social platforms for both offensive and defensive purposes
Appropriately, I first became acquainted with Owen after having posted on Domain King Rick Schwartz’ blog
Name.com
about how I missed the first offensive opportunity to control “my personal brand” – albeit my not so unique name – on that newfangled social platform called the world wide web way back in 1996.
Tim Cohn
Granted, its hard to gauge in advance which social platforms will have the largest audience and reach after filtering out all their noise.
However, not registering your “brand” in their databases early on can lead to remorse later on.
If you haven’t done so already, register your own brandname.com / companyname.com and create accounts for the same names in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr – if you can…
The same holds true for individuals.
Sign up for a Linkedin account under your personal brand: your name.
Don’t be disappointed though if you can’t. If yours is a common name – it surely has long since been registered.
Registering your brands with these sites may not make you any money in the short term, but if and when social media platforms ever figure out how to make money for themselves let alone for their advertisers and users, wouldn’t it be better for you to control your brand name(s) on the most successful social media sites instead of someone else?
Search Marketing Communications 
You must be logged in to post a comment.