Internet Giants Take France to Court Over Personal Data Policy. More than 20 Internet companies, including Google, Facebook and eBay, will file a complaint with France's State Council against a decree that obliges them to keep their users' personal data for a year. The French Association of Internet Community Services (ASIC), the body representing these companies, will formally file the appeal. In the past couple of years, French authorities have had a somewhat ambiguous view on user privacy. France was quick to fine Google $142,000 for privacy violations, after it was revealed that Google collected private data from public Wi-Fi networks.
On the other hand, the aforementioned decree, published in March, obliges ecommerce, video and email sites to keep their customers' private data for a year, including their full names, phone numbers, postal addresses and passwords. The French police, the fraud office, customs, tax or social security authorities can demand to view the data. ASIC sees several problems with the decree. Photo courtesy of swanksalot. Twitter Considering Facebook-Style Pages for Brands [REPORT] HOW TO: Improve Engagement on Your Brand's Facebook Page [STATS] If you're looking to boost engagement on your brand's Facebook Page, a new report from Buddy Media has some key findings for you. The social media marketing company collected data from 200 of its clients' Pages* over a 14-day period and found that time is an important factor in determining the success of a Facebook post. The study reveals that more often than not, a Facebook post is ill-timed — in fact, office hours could be the worst time to blast content.
"While marketers may work Monday through Friday, Facebook is humming with activity 24-hours a day, seven days a week,” says Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow. And so, brands must adapt to their consumers' schedules in order to optimize their engagement. Here are the findings, along with tips about when and how to make the most of a Facebook post. Be Timely The study found that daily Facebook engagement has three peaks: early morning (7 a.m. Good timing on Facebook depends on the day of the week, too.
Be Concise Ask For Engagement. Why Users Are More Engaged With Social Media on Fridays. Rebecca Black's not the only one who thinks there's something special about Friday. Two separate pieces of research out this week show that the end of the work week is the best time to get traction on status updates and tweets. Analyzing more than 200 of its clients' Facebook pages over a 14-day period, Buddy Media found that engagement on Thursdays and Fridays was 18% higher than the rest of the week, and that engagement was actually even better on Thursday than on Friday. Meanwhile, Twitter Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain — speaking at the Ad Age Digital conference earlier this week — said that Twitter users are more engaged with tweets on Fridays.
The reason is fairly obvious, says Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at the Altimeter Group: "People are heading into the weekend so they're thinking about things besides work. However, Liebling adds that there might be another factor at work: There may be fewer posts overall on Fridays, which means a greater number of average click-throughs. HOW TO: Optimize Your Content for Social Discovery. David Sasson is the chief operating officer of Outbrain, a content recommendation platform that is based in New York.
You can follow him on Twitter at @davidsasson. Since the rise of search over the past decade, few obsessions have run deeper in the world of online publishing than search engine optimization (SEO). In an attempt to grow their audience and gain exposure for their content, publishers have increasingly focused on keeping Google’s crawlers well fed with tasty morsels of meta data, keyword repetitions, internal linking and more. But designing websites for crawlers often has a downside; namely, it can lead to a poor experience for flesh-and-blood users. How often have you actually used a keyword tag like the one below to navigate a site and discover new content?
Probably never. It’s wasted space cluttering the page, used only to help Google instead of actual readers. Luckily, this mentality is beginning to change as the sources of traffic into publisher content diversify. 1. 2. Facebook "Likes" More Profitable Than Tweets [STUDY] If event registration site Eventbrite's experience is any indication, social media marketers looking for monetary returns on their efforts might get more value from Facebook than Twitter.
The company announced Wednesday that an average tweet about an event drove 80 cents in ticket sales during the past six months, whereas an average Facebook Like drove $1.34. The study, which used in-house social analytics tools to track ticket sales on the site, was a continuation of a similar analysis the company released in October after analyzing data from a 12-week period.
That study also indicated Facebook drove more sales for Eventbrite than Twitter, although the difference between the two networks' sales per post was greater at that point than throughout the entire six-month period (the "value" of tweets increased). It's important to note that only a very small percentage of site visitors shared event pages on either network. Obviously people are more likely to share events if they are attending. Twitter to Devs: Don't Make Twitter Clients ... Or Else. Pure play Twitter clients — apps like Echofon, Twidroyd and UberTwitter — got a sharp slap on the wrist today from Twitter platform chief Ryan Sarver. In an API announcement post, Sarver finally made clear what third-party developers have known for months: The company does not want developers to make Twitter clients any longer. Sure, you can make a Twitter analytics tool like Klout or a Twitter-integrated CRM platform like HootSuite.
And the company loves it when startups like Instagram and Foursquare let their users plug in their Twitter accounts. But if you're thinking about making an app that displays and sends tweets, Sarver and company suggest you think again. So why is Twitter cracking down — at least verbally, for now — on apps that look like and function like but aren't Twitter? Twitter's Official Position on Third-Party Apps Sarver on stage at Twitter's developer conference, Chirp. "The answer is no. " How important is it to consumers that tweets look like Twitter?