Hashtags Make Your Facebook Posts Less Likely To Go Viral. Facebook's recent new features have been taking some clear cues from Twitter, no doubt making many marketers happy: Sponsored posts! Hashtags! Trending topics! All provide more ways to get your content in front of more people. But are they actually effective at attracting more eyeballs? With hashtags in particular, the assumption is people will click through to discover more related content. Not really, says a new study from Facebook analytics firm EdgeRank Checker, which found Facebook posts with hashtags are actually less likely to go viral than those without hashtags. Forget Friends and Followers. Focus on This Secret Weapon.
Report: Google+ Users Spent an Average of About 7 Minutes There in March. Google+ is catching up on a lot of fronts to Facebook, but it's still lagging in one key metric: Time spent. The average visitor to the social network spent 6 minutes 47 seconds on Google+'s site in March vs. 6 hours, 44 minutes on Facebook.com according to figures Nielsen supplied to Mashable. However, that number is down for Facebook. In March 2012, the average was 7 hours, 9 minutes per person. For Google, the figures are a substantial jump over the 3.3 minutes visitors spent on average on the site in February 2012, according to comScore. The figures do not include traffic via apps. A Google rep says Nielsen's figures are "far off" from what the company's internal data show.
Elsewhere, Nielsen reports that 20 million unique visitors in the U.S. used Google+'s Android and iPhone apps, a 238% rise over March 2012. Facebook Stops Path From Finding Friends After Spam Mishap: Report. Why 'Iron Man' Robert Downey Jr. Is on Sina Weibo But Not Twitter. Iron Man 3 opens today in North America, but it’s been playing in Chinese theaters since the May Day holiday and has already made a killing, bringing in a record-breaking $21.2 million on its first day alone. And it’s not just records: Marvel and its Chinese partner, DMG, are setting new standards for foreign movies looking to earn government clearance in China. To curry favor, the company added four minutes of footage just for the mainland, including throwaway parts for Chinese A-list actors Fan Bingbing and Wang Xueqi, and a ham-handed milk drink product placement.
Also new is the aggressive outreach to Chinese audiences by Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. Not only did he visit China for the first time in his life to talk up the film, but Downey also set up a personal account on Sina Weibo: Mind you, Downey doesn’t even have a Twitter account (or if he does, he doesn’t use it). Obviously, neither Somerhalder nor Wade need to sell movie tickets in China. 5 Tips For Designing Mobile Experiences For Couples. It was an ordinary tweet, until it wasn’t.
It’s happened to everyone: You “reply all” to an email meant for only one person, accidentally send a private tweet to all your followers, or quickly respond to a group text with something only meant for your other half. I’ve done it in the most spectacularly public way, tweeting about my doctor appointment follow-up, instead of sending an SMS. Unintentional public broadcasts are a new hazard we’ve created by increasing the speed and variety of the ways in which we communicate. Mobile technology, always-on social networks, and real-time communication have fundamentally changed how we create and interact with social circles (I bet your Instagram audience is different from your Facebook friends), and we’re all doing our best to keep up.
Think about it. That’s why we built Avocado. 1. Big plans, great sentiment … now what? We initially approached the problem with a utilitarian slant for admittedly selfish reasons. 2. 3. 4. 5. Facebook Opens The Door To Dislikes, With Emoticons. Facebook is unparalleled for sharing photos of our vacation or a child’s first steps. All of the best moments of our lives look amazing on the Timeline. So what about the worst ones? What about when we have a stomach ache, get fired from a job, lose someone we love? Should expressing those ideas look different? Could something cue your friends so they don’t hit that “like” button inappropriately? Apparently so. It’s Not Just Sad Stuff, But That’s What’s Compelling. Of course, the 200 presets aren’t just for the darker moments. “If you look at the data, most of the sharing on Facebook is positive. In other words, Facebook has found that people really are more likely to share all of their unhappy thoughts when given the formal option, even though, technically, status updates have offered free speech all along.
“That’s how people use emoticons in the first place. Love (and Sadness) For Sale That layer of context is valuable to more than just Facebook’s users, of course. Study: Will You Abandon Facebook in Favor of Google+? Brian Solis. InShare476 The question seems premature or perhaps over dramatized, but I ask it with all sincerity. Whether the answer is yes or no or if the answer is not yet within grasp, think about the question at any level you wish and try to answer it. It is the process of thinking through the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook and Google Plus where you discover what each network means to you and why and how you will divide your time and focus in each. Or, you may uncover reasons to jump from one network to the other or pull the plug all together.
It’s a healthy exercise to help you find balance and reconnect with your core values that drive productivity and fulfillment. The adoption of Google+ is nothing short of astounding. comScore estimates that 25 million people have circled their friends and are sharing, +1′ing their way, and chatting their way toward social bliss. comScore visualizes the blinding velocity of Google’s growth, reaching 25 million within its first month of debut. Facebook. Live-tweeting an event? Set your hashtag UP FRONT! I do a lot of live event coverage via Twitter, and I also follow a lot of events (especially conferences) via Twitter. One thing I’ve learned: It helps your Twitter audience immensely if, before the event (or at the start) the people tweeting it develop a consensus on the hashtag for the event.
That’s what Horn Group VP Susan Etlinger did earlier, for the PR/Blogger panel her company is hosting tonight. She’s one of several Twitter users who helped launch this hashtag simply by adopting and promoting it: Susan Etlinger helps launch a hashtag by using it. And here’s the fruit that this kind of coordination can bear: Check out the #PRblog hashtag …So: what’s a hashtag, and why is this so important? A hashtag is just a short character string preceded by a hash sign (#). RESOURCE: The Wild Apricot nonprofit technology blog offers a great tutorial: Introduction to Twitter hashtags. It’s essential to coordinate, promote, and use hashtags at least a few hours before an event starts.