Recently, Facebook announced that it had surpassed the 300 million user mark. According to Experian HitWise, Facebook accounted for 58.59 percent of all U.S. visits among a custom category of 155 social networking Web sites in September 2009. This is an interesting stat and I would love for Experian HitWise to send the full list over, so that I can also analyze the playing field for new, emerging, and declining players across the board.

The report noted that Facebook’s growth was the highest among all social networks, with U.S. visits increasing 194 percent between September 2008 and September 2009.

Market Share of U.S. Internet Visits to Top Five Social Networking Web Sites

But then, there’s our “social” darling…Twitter. Twitter had the largest percentage gain in market share of visits among the top five visited Web sites, increasing 1,170 percent compared to the previous year. In fact, 2009 is “The Year of Twitter” as documented by the traffic and reach of Twitter.com at Alexa and Compete.

According to the report, U.S. visits to all social networks was up by 62 percent from September 2008 to 2009. Except of course, at Myspace and myYearbook. From 2008 to 2009 each experienced a significant erosion in visits by -55 percent and -40 percent respectively. The good news for MySpace however, is that the network topped the charts for average time spent in the network. And, as engagement is a key metric for social media, this data is critical to the future of MySpace engineering, innovation, and the ecosystem it creates moving forward.  But, that engagement level is slipping, as it reflects a 12 percent loss of attention year-over-year.

As you’ll see in a report I will soon publish, Twitter is starting to appeal to the youth who have powered MySpace in the past and still do today. Fusion and integration are key at the once dominant social network.

Average U.S. Time Spent Among Top Five Social Networking Web Sites (in minutes and seconds)

Looking at the data, you’ll notice that Twitter also experienced a loss in engagement time among visitors. From September 2008 – 2009, Twitter actually lost a whopping 31 percent of visitor attention span. I believe that many will say that the shift in numbers stems from the migration of those who previously interacted on Twitter.com and now engage via third-party clients such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, CoTweet, HootSuite, et al. I will have these numbers available for you shortly…

Nielsen also released interesting numbers that corroborated with my recent findings that emanated from my research into the demographics behind the most popular social networks. As a result, CNN postulated as to whether or not your social class determined your online social network.

Breeanna Hare of CNN asked if a class divide exists online.

Research suggests yes.

Nielsen Claritas conducted an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the United States in August. The study found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely use Facebook, while the less affluent, 37 percent, are more likely to connect on MySpace.

Users with household income above $75,000
Facebook — 41.74 percent
MySpace — 32.38 percent
LinkedIn — 58.35 percent
Twitter — 43.34 percent

Users with household income under $50,000
Facebook — 28.42 percent
MySpace — 37.13 percent
LinkedIn — 17.34 percent
Twitter — 28.36 percent

Female users
Facebook — 56.33 percent
MySpace — 56.69 percent
LinkedIn — 48.11percent
Twitter — 53.59 percent

Users aged 18 to 24
Facebook — 10.27 percent
MySpace — 15.46 percent
LinkedIn — 3.99 percent
Twitter — 9.51percent

Users aged 35 to 49
Facebook — 31.54 percent
MySpace — 29.09 percent
LinkedIn — 43.64 percent
Twitter — 34.02 percent

According to Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, “MySpace, users tend to be in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods. They’re on their way up, or perhaps not college educated. Facebook goes off the charts in the upscale suburbs.”

Nielsen also found a strong overlap between those who use Facebook and those who use LinkedIn.

Honestly, categorizing human behavior and activities in social networks by financial status appears incomplete and almost insular. If we are learning anything in the study of and participation in social networks, it’s that individuals are forming networks that traverse across multiple social networks – and, they will continue to do so, forming one larger, expansive human network in the process. We’re bound by context and interests and it’s why psychographic data overcomes demographics when assessing how to best reach, engage, and galvanize the people who define our communities online.

This is why, in social media, digital anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and psychology prevail…

Please also read the psychology of Twitter with Dr. Drew and in Social Media, Women Rule

Connect with Brian Solis on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, Posterous, or Facebook
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Have you bought the book or the poster yet? (click below to purchase):

This isn’t an attempt at sensationalism, this is a clear message for all businesses, in every market – Engage or die! If you don’t, you’re competition will. Those who engage with customers and markets will cultivate loyalty in ways never before possible. Traditional marketers will lose, unless they embrace new media.

The key however, is finding ways to measure everything in ways that mean something at every level of corporate communications.

In any given day, I will sell, evangelize, educate, and defend social media to clients and business prospects. But then again, I seem to have to do the same for PR – as to this day, most executives have no concept of how PR works, nor the understanding of how it helps them.

But either way, when it comes down to it, businesses want metrics.

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with a new player in an already crowded consumer electronics marketplace. It was a fascinating experience, because while it’s considered by many experts to be a commodity play, this company happens to be one of the oldest, most trusted brands on the planet.

While we discussed PR opportunities, both traditional and 2.0, their greatest enthusiasm unveiled during potential ideas surrounding social media and the ability to engage their customers in conversations. More importantly, it was a glimmer of hope as it revealed that they too, might have held reservations about the potential for success.

Last week, Factiva invited a group of Social Media Practitioners, Bloggers, Corporate Program Managers, and PR consultants, to discuss metrics in Palo Alto and what was important to them as influencers, their executive team, and clients. Jeremiah Owyang hosted the roundtable and Daniella Barbosa from Factiva made it all happen.

This post isn’t intended to serve as a summary of the discussion. Jeremy Pepper, Jeremiah, Christopher Kenton, and Daniela Barbosa, among others, have already captured it brilliantly.

Jermiah Owyang

My platform for the event was many-fold, as I wasn’t there simply as a PR person. I’m also a blogger, and more importantly an advisor to many tech companies in a variety of industries including enterprise, consumer electronics, and Web 2.0. With each hat I wear, my answers vary.

Stowe Boyd, Greg Narain, Daniella Barbosa

My goal here is to emphasize key observations and critical points that must surface in order help social media permeate into day-to-day marcom campaigns – including skeptics and evangelists alike.

Jeremy Pepper

Here are some of the questions we discussed and attempted to answer?
- Do you believe Consumer Generated Media is important and should be measured?
- Who is creating Social Media? What are they creating? And is “the who” more important then “the what?”
- If you are producing Social Media, how will you measure ROI?
- Do you think that Social Media needs a structured, mutually agreed upon measurement techniques and metrics (e.g. MSM’s ad value equivalence and article impressions) to make monitoring a more serious practice?
- So what should be measured, and how do you want it delivered?

I think we all agreed that CGM (the term) is dead. Let’s just call it social media, and absolutely, it’s critical that we track it. We call can agree that customers, peers, competitors, basically, everyone can and is generating social media. But it’s not just about who, it’s about “what” they’re saying.

In this case the “I” in ROI becomes much smaller than previously factored. And, while we’re at it, ROI for social media, should be measured in terms of “ROP,” return on participation. Why? Because ROI is iffy at best when measuring the true value advertising, branding, event marketing and especially PR.

The mistake that most executives make is that they try to tie everything to sales. Advertisers link everything to circulation and page views. PR people tie column inches and online articles to ad value. How does any of this apply to social media?

Those of us in the space are actively finding ways to measure ROP – and many of the processes are painfully manual. Services such as Technorati, Buzz Metrics, Blog Pulse, Buzz Logic and Alexa help, but wouldn’t it be incredible if there was a Techmeme or Tailrank for tracking conversations based on key words? Now that’s a winner right there! It’s the only service that could measure “conversations” and we all (or we should all) know, that markets are conversations now more than ever.

ROP is specific to the measurement of “participation” which is, at the end of the day, what separates social media from traditional marketing. ROI is a metric when marketing at customers. ROP measures conversations with customers and customers conversations with others.

After all, social media isn’t only for companies that “get it.” In fact, my greatest challenge is trying to help those companies that need it, understand and embrace it to not only succeed, but also survive.

Some of the ideas that were introduced for measurement include (through my creative mashing-up of many of the ideas tossed out there):
- Relevance
- Influence and reach
- Community, engagement, participation, comments, etc.
- Demographic
- Sentiment/tonality of the post
- Ranking, via Alexa, Feedburner, downloads, etc.
- Blogroll
- Meme, tracking conversations
- Readers and loyalty

Based on the voting, the following were the results:

Photo Credit: Jeremiah Owyang (see more from the set)

The Results, Photo Credit: Jeremy Pepper

#1 Participation – Engagement
#2 Influential ideal, memes, path
#3 Relevance
#4 Sentiment / Tone

According to Jeremiah, “Measurement depends on what the business goals are. Some folks tied measurement back to hard ROI: (Does Social Media shorten the sales cycle/reduce cost, and does it increase revenues).”

However, most of the discussion focused only on measuring bloggers. To me, bloggers only represent one, albeit highly influential, piece of the social media landscape. However if we’re talking about social media as it relates to CGM, then services such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, flickr, Yahoo Groups, LinkedIn, among thousands of others are also relevant for metrics.

One important observation regarding bloggers is that it’s not just about the most influential bloggers out there, it’s about the “magic middle.” These are the people who recognize valuable content and in turn share it amongst each other. With the right tools, conversations can then be tracked throughout the traditional marketing bell curve, while inside the tornado, riding the cluetrain, crossing the chasms along the way.

Perhaps the most critical element of any of this is to combine existing metrics with new measurement standards in order to make this whole process tangible and easier to embrace. ROI + ROP.

Engage or die!

Andy Lark

Here’s a partial list of attendees courtesy of Factiva’s Glenn Fannick
- Stowe Boyd, BlueWhale Labs /
- Andrew Lark, Founder, group lark
- Ed Terpening, VP Social Media, Wells Fargo, Wells Fargo Blog Index
- Christopher Kenton, MotiveLab,
- Jeanette Gibson, New Media Communications, Cisco
- Brian Solis, FutureWorks PR / PR2.0,
- Ian Kennedy, Product Manager, Yahoo, flashpoint
- Jeremy Pepper, Social Media, Weber Shandwick / POP! PR Jots
- Jory Des Jardins, Co-Founder, BlogHer, LLC;
- Mike Manuel, Strategist, Voce Communications, Media Guerrilla
- Andrew Vignolo, Director, Market Trends & Analytics, Levi Strauss & Co.
- Jeff Beckman, Director, Worldwide and U.S. Communications, Levi Strauss & Co.
- Tony Obregon, Director of Social Media, Cohn & Wolfe

For more pictures from the event, please visit the stream on flickr. You can also visit Jeremiah’s set on flickr.

Please keep this story relevant, vote at NewPR!

Roi rop social media social+media factiva pr bloggers metrics jermiah+owyang daniella+barbosa jeremy+pepper cgm web2.0 web+2.0 technorati buzzlogic techmeme tailrank alexa feedburner stowe+boyd greg+narain brian+solis pr2.0 pr+2.0 blogher Andrew+lark grouplark group+lark lark marketing advertising marcom communications public+relations

On the heels of the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup in Palo Alto on Tuesday, I spent the day in San Francisco at the Social Media Club HQ specifically to attend my first SF event – well that and a million other things on the SF to do list.

Organized by Joel Sacks, CNET and Marketing Strategist at BuzzShout, and Myles Weissleder, VP of Communications for Meetup, SF NewTech Meetup is similar in format to the Silicon Valley event, but targeted towards the burgeoning tech-savvy and tech-curious crowds in San Francisco, the East Bay, and North Bay. And what better place to hold a tech meetup than CNET headquarters?

This is their sixth event, and according to Myles, its attendees have doubled each month. That says more than you can imagine. If all holds true, the next event will be standing room only.

In a curious and interesting change-up, Myles asked the audience about their professional vocation.

The first question, “How many folks here are developers?”
½ of the audience raised their hands.

Next question, “How many of you are venture capitalists?”
A few were brave enough to identify themselves.

Last question, “How many journalists and bloggers are in attendance?”
Surprisingly, and maybe it was because of our location (CNET), several were in attendance.

Miles works for Meetup and attends these events to, “drink the bath water,” and to get a hands-on view of the tech meetup community. Plus he admitted being genuinely enthusiastic about the space.

Joel also took the spotlight to remind the attendees about the Future of Web Apps Summit.

So with that, the first presenter was brought-up to the front.

Yousendit.com, Co-founder and CTO
Presenter: Khalid Shaikh

If you’re an avid reader here, you may remember the recent post about this company. I have used it recently to quickly and safely transfer large, critical files with outside vendors and partners.

It’s an interesting service that allows anyone to send large files, securely, to contacts through email, bypassing any filters or limits set in place by admins on other side of the firewall.

It was founded in 2004 and has grown to 27 employees and has over 300 million file transfers under its belt.

Basically, Yousendit allows you to send up to 1GB files at a time. The site also promises that your data will stay secure: “Your data goes to who you want it to and nobody else. No risk of having data end up in the wrong hands.”

What I didn’t know…is that Yousendit.com is already in the top 300 rankings at Alexa and that they’re transferring upwards of 30 terabytes per day.

Their goal however, is lofty as it is ingenious. They’re seeking to integrated the service into popular applications, similar to Adobe Acrobat…think, “the PDF of web transfer.” When you’re ready to send a file, right-click and send to “yousendit.” Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Let’s see if they can do it.

Even though they’ve been around for a couple of years, the company is planning an official launch on 9/12. They’re targeting SMBs and will focus on 3-4 top verticals to deliver real business value.

Quote of the night, “Give us a few months, and watch us execute. If we can run fast enough, we will maintain mind and market share to stay #1 as the leading file transmission service that users trust with their data to solve their needs.”

Next up…

SiteKreator, Your site, online, your way
Presenter: Ivaylo Lenkov, CEO

SiteKreator highlighted its online web site design and hosting solution. It currently offers a free edition as well as a BETA version specifically designed for businesses. While there were plenty of engineers and programmers in the audience, like Yousendit.com, this is a service that hits home for me.

Lenkov started the presentation by highlighting successful examples SiteKreator customers. He then dove in to show us how quick, easy, and painless it is to build full-blown pro-quality Websites.

SiteKreator Business Edition features an integrated site builder and global hosting services to deliver one total solution for businesses to succeed online.

It even offers advanced interactive features such as online forms, blogs, forums, members-only areas, newsletters, under the same branding umbrella, ensuring a consistent, and impressive, presence all within a few clicks.

The service is designed for SMBs who don’t have Webdesign expertise, the budget to hire a professional designer, nor the desire to build a generic site with the hundreds of site builders out there.

Business owners can get the SiteKreator design tool and global hosting starting at only $95 per year.

Quote of the night was in response to how Lenkov would reach his target audience, “SiteKreator everything you need, and more, to get a business web site online. It is reaching the SMB market through resellers aka site designers. Believe it or not, they are the first place most small businesses go to inquire about getting their business online.”

And the other quote of the night for SiteKreator was actually voiced by a member of the audience, “I just wanted to let everyone know that I am an extremely happy user of the SiteKreator Business Edition…and I wasn’t paid to say that!”

Third…

CivicEvolution, Civic Engagement 2.0
Presenter: Brian Sullivan, Founder

Bryan Sullivan of CivicEvolution opened up his presentation with a powerful statement, “How do we restore common sense to Government? We restore the influence of common citizens.”

I’m glad he answered that question right away, otherwise, my guess would have been, “elect a new President.”

But seriously, CivicEvolution facilitates online tools for stakeholders to get together and create their own solutions. Think of it as civic engagement 2.0.

CivicEvolution is a non-partisan public service designed to facilitate community deliberation and problem solving. It has been designed to provide a flexible set of tools and processes that enable groups to engage in productive deliberation. Groups and individuals can use CivicEvolution to empower their communities, develop deeper knowledge, discover new ideas, and understand differing views and philosophies.

The highly configurable software walks participants through the entire process. First, meeting each other, then proposing a project, getting feedback, voting on it, forming teams, and taking action.

It is impressive and hopefully it gets traction.

Quote of the night, “We’re hoping to set up a meeting with George Soros who will be in Berkeley, and, he understands the value of open society. Every group faces the same problems, the wisdom always is in the room. Our job is to help the group find wisdom and solve their problems.”

Lastly…

Joyent, Simply joyent
Presenter: Jason Hoffman, CTO

After spending a few extra minutes trying to configure the screen, Jason jumped right in for a very cool demo.

The elevator pitch…Joyent offers simple, powerful, Web-based software that provides small teams with email, calendars, contacts, and shared applications.

It’s a fully hosted app, with nothing to install, configure, and there’s no need for computer staff or consultants (which I like!). The surprising part here is that hosted plans start at just $15/month.

The Joyent platform includes:
Joyent Connector – An suite of applications allowing teams to stay organized, informed and up-to-date, all within a web browser.

Toolbox – A collection of developer and deployment tools. Includes mobile device support, e-commerce, traffic analytics, and management of on-demand resources.

Strongspace – An easy to use and secure data storage service to safeguard all digital assets, from backing up copies of important documents to restoring an entire laptop on the road.

Joyent Accelerator – The Accelerator allows users to manage data securely behind the firewall, while continuing to benefit from network-delivered services such as proactive monitoring, software updates, spam protection, virus protection, gateway services, and real-time backup.

The service features tagging, search, RSS and calendar subscriptions, comments, security, and a ultra friendly UI. The features go on and on, but it seems incredibly simple to deploy and use. I might have to evaluate this for my team since I’m running back and forth between SF and SJ every week.

Impressive.

Joyent is part of TextDrive, a hosting company run by and for people who love publishing on the web out of Marin County. TextDrive has worked on projects for Tom Peters, cnet, Ruby on Rails.

Quote of the night, “We’re a group of 19, with 12 of them virtual, and we developed this service because we needed it.”

So that did it for the presentations. Questions seemed to run a bit longer, which gave the presenters an improved opportunity for authenticity – meaning they were stripped out of presentation mode and placed in a relaxed p2p discussion environment. This is where the real gems and value propositions were brought to light.

Prior to the networking portion of the evening, Myles called for an open mic night and allowed courageous individuals to make announcements, offer help, ask for jobs, etc. This part, I think we could do without, simply because we had been sitting for a while, and it was time to meet everyone else.

The room then opened to allow guests to network.

The group was diverse in age and backgrounds, and it was genuinely cool to meet some of the faces behind the Web 2.0 movement. Some of those I had the opportunity to meet include:

Rafe Needleman, Editor at Large, CNET
Angie Chang, co-founder of themintpages.com
Ranvir Gujral, CEO of InsightPath
Kristie Wells, Diva of Details at BrainJams.org
Lawrence Coburn, Founder of RateItAll
Jon Marcus, Corporate Presentation Coach – jonmarcus.com
Christian Perry, Founder and CEO of Zaptix (Welcome to CA.!)
Vincent Lauria, Meetro and Silicon Valley Newtech Meetup
Sunny Madra, Founder of Posticky

Quote of the night from anonymous, “Hey weren’t you at the Silicon Valley event last night? Me too…God, we just go to all of the same events don’t we?”

It’s true. Pretty soon, we’ll see a Web 2.0 sponsored tour bus that will transport us between events!

But seriously, I can’t emphasize enough the impact that events such as SV and SF Newtech as well as STIRR have had on the spirit, motivation and enthusiasm in the Bay Area.

In the meantime, enjoy September, and I’ll see you next month…

For more pictures from the event, follow the jump.

UPDATE: Joel Sacks also has a great post about the event.

Digg this!

Tags: alexa, buzzshout joel sacks, myles weissleder, joyent, posticky, brainjams, textdrive,
sunny madra, vincent lauria, angie chang, themintpages, women2.0, silicon valley, vinnie lauria, meetro, futureofwebappssummit, Socialmediaclub, Lawrence coburn, rateitall, sitekreator, yousendit, Khalid shaikh, kevin burton, kevin burton, Rafe Needleman, CNET, siliconvalley, meetup, web 2.0, web2.0, Zaptix, newtech, brian solis, briansolis, Christian Perry, Daniela Barbosa, factiva