With the way our current social media is diluted with various websites that are geared towards making friends and meeting up with old ones, it is hard to say if Facebook will really end up being the champion in the end. Not since the Google explosion has the there been an Internet trend that is so widespread in its popularity. The comparison with the Google growth is in fact one that is made by many industry observers, and while there are a number of clear similarities, there are also some important differences that can easily be seen through this mess of internet growth.

It is expected that by early 2014, all the various social media sites will have more than 1 billion members. That number is predicted to grow until somthing new comes out with a leveling off on the number of new members expected by 2015. The combined revenue from these sites, which in 2011 reached almost $2.5 billion, is estimated to balloon to a whopping $10 billion by the end of 2012.

The overall membership numbers in social media sites varies greatly from area to area. The country of Asia accounts for the lion’s share of users, with 35% of the total users expected by the end of 2012. EMEA accounts for about 28% of all users, North America follows closely with 25% percent, and the Caribbean and Latin America trails behind with 12% of all users. With the inevitable crowding of the social media site industry, many observers feel that consolidation of the market is a sure thing. This has given rise to some predictions that the smaller individual social media sites will be swallowed up by the bigger players in the field. Some experts feel however that this is not necessarily the case. In particular, social media sites with a focus on special interests are expected to survive the trend towards consolidation.

All of this massive hype and wonder perhaps is what inspires the comparison to the Google boom, but in the midst of all the buzz, there is a certain degree of trepidation felt by many as well. While many investors are naturally excited about the potential of social media sites, the fact that these types of web sites have not been proven for the long term is causing some hesitation. The promise of riding on the wave of the next big Internet phenomenon is a tempting prospect, but it is tempered by the uncertainty of social media sites as a long term sustainable industry. The most cautious industry observers have even gone so far as to suggest that most social media sites would do well to hold off on an IPO for the time being and see what shares start off the bidding should Facebook or even Twitter go the IPO route.

Have no fear, future start-up dreamer: the future of social media is just as bright as ever and at this relatively early stage of the game, considering that many social media sites seem to be going up and offering interesting features, such as Pinterest. What companies and investors should do however is to adapt their approach to be prepared for the changes that will inevitably come in the future and even involve daily business within the mix of social media.

About The Author

Greg Henderson, a California-based businessman with over 11 years in SEO/SEM, provided this piece based on personal endeavors and education in search engine optimization with a concentration on content optimization for the social media future. His current projects include a Public Records site PublicRecordSources.com, and a background check site SnoopStation.com.

greg henderson

California-based businessman with over 11 years in SEO/SEM, provided this piece based on personal endeavors and education in search engine optimization with a concentration on content optimization for the social media future. Knowledge is power, and through my public records projects, I hope to give power of knowledge to you.

photo credit: ralphhogaboom

A study of online marketing habits by research company ForeSee Results revealed this week that only 3 per cent of the traffic that commercial websites receive comes from social media sources such as Twitter or Facebook.

The researchers warned that these findings showed that the vast majority of companies are failing to sufficiently exploit the social networking phenomenon.

After looking at the habits of over 10,000 British internet users, ForeSee found that the most common reason that people gave for visiting one website over another was the familiarity of the brand – some 46 per cent of respondents said that this was the main factor that would put them at ease when shopping online and reassure them that they were shopping safely.

Another 13 per cent of respondents said that they would choose a certain website because of the recommendation of a trusted search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. This indicates that the search engine giants still have a lot of influence over the online marketing process.

However, only 3 per cent of respondents said that an encounter on a social networking site had led them to a commercial website – strongly suggesting that there is still a vast untapped hinterland for internet marketing and online advertising campaigns to exploit.

Researchers were also quick to point out that none of the reasons for ultimately visiting a commercial site appeared to have any greater effect on whether the visitor made a purchase on that site. In one example, 74 per cent of customers bought a familiar-branded product and later recommended it to a friend. This was almost as high a proportion as those who were directed to a product via a friend on a social network.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

Multimedia search website Startup Qwiki finally opened to the public last week following an injection of some $8 million in funds.

Startup Qwiki was created by Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of social networking phenomenon Facebook, and the co-founder of YouTube Jawed Karim, but until now has only been available to private users.

photo credit: BrixFoto,

However last Monday the alpha version of the site formally opened its portals, potentially changing the way that online marketing operates.

The Qwiki blog revealed last Monday that since the private alpha was launched last November, it had received over 100,000 requests to join the program. Users had provided an avalanche of – mostly positive – feedback, helping the creators make it pitch perfect for the launch of the public alpha.

“We’ve added some new features and functionalities, and continue to ask for feedback from each of you in helping us perfect our technology,” it added.

Qwiki is a boon to online marketing practitioners because of the unique way it uses its collection of more than three million reference terms. When entering a search term, the site provides the user with an “information experience,” featuring a selection of pictures, photos, videos, maps and other kinds of info describing the term – as well as related search terms.

The Qwiki blog said that “custom animations are created based on data gathered by Qwiki, including timelines and populations.”

“Soon you’ll be able to watch Qwikis on your Facebook friends, local restaurants — and we hope, eventually any topic in the world. In fact, any publisher or person will soon be able to create Qwikis,” it promised.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

An online marketing expert said recently that search engine giant Google is very unlikely to allow advertising hosted by social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Bigmouthmedia head of strategy Andrew Girdwood argued that allowing social networks’ ads on Google’s pages would weaken the company’s own position.

Currently, Google is carrying adverts from the Twitter network to a limited extent – allowing promotional Tweets to be carried by its Realtime search engine, but not its main one.

Social networking is widely seen as the next frontier for online advertising as it is the perfect environment for viral and search-based marketing campaigns. The total spend on online marketing efforts in the sector is estimated next year to rise from £130 million to £275 million.

Another future platform for online marketing is the internet television, according to Screen Digest.

The magazine’s head of broadband Dan Cryan said that more people are likely to start using internet TVs for general surfing, while privacy issues will keep the majority of social networking on computers.

The shift is likely to cause a fresh look at the way online marketing takes place – for a start, internet TVs are going to be watched by multiple viewers at once.

The number of internet televisions in circulation is set to boom in the next few years, according to DisplaySearch. In a recent report, the analysts said that over 122 million internet-ready TVs will be in households by 2014.

The fast pace of change in both technology and online habits is a constant, if refreshing, challenge for marketing workers.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

Online marketing expert Craig MacDonald said this week that Facebook will be the place to be seen in 2011, with an expected surge in the number of companies advertising on the social network.

In an article for Search Engine Watch, Mr MacDonald estimated that online marketing departments are going to devote up to 20 per cent of their total advertising budgets to Facebook alone.

He admitted that promotions on Facebook suffered from “atrocious” clickthrough rates last year, but insisted that things are now very different, with the social media platform now competing with established search engines such as Google for conversion rates.

Stressing that Facebook is “huge, it’s global and it’s growing,” Mr MacDonald insisted that it now operates “dollar for dollar” as efficiently as Google, in online marketing terms.

Recent figures from Experian Htiwise would appear to support his thesis, showing that Facebook was the most visited domain in the US in 2009, with 8.93 per cent of all American online traffic.

Online marketing investment is set to grow throughout 2011, according to eMarketer analyst Geoff Ramsey.

“The bad economy has actually accelerated the shift to digital advertising,” he told the New York Times. “Online ads, especially search ads, are increasingly seen by many marketers as a more reliable bet than print ads, which are often difficult to tie to a measurable financial result.”

Mr Ramsey pointed to figures from November 2010, which showed that US computer users conducted over 17 billion searches in that month. Google remained the major platform for such searches, with 64.3 per cent of the total.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

photo credit: David Boyle

One online marketing expert has made his predictions for the major areas of interest in the sector set to dominate the New Year.

Hit Search founder Andrew Redfern said that copywriting skills will become “more important than ever” in 2011 as quality of content starts to be the decider in many online advertising campaigns.

He said that marketing teams will have to raise the bar when it comes to their knowledge skills, as they respond to the increasingly fragmented nature of the online marketing arena.

A third area in which online marketing is due to develop is in terms of planning, he went on. The new ability on search engines such as Google to carry out localised searches and focus on cross-platform resources, ­­­means that online advertising campaigns will need to be better integrated over the next 12 months if they are to be successful.

The final major area of development in the world of online marketing in 2011 will be cross-platform marketing, as previously alluded to. Mr Redfern stressed that “HTML5 will allow for a more strategic view to function over multiple platforms.”

When it comes to SEO marketing, he said that the localisation of Google would have a significant effect over the next 12 months, with more complex systems of management and delivery required. The year will see the “blurred lines” between SEO and social media such as Facebook and Twitter becoming even more so, especially as local additions are placed on Google and other search engines.

Google itself is likely to remain the number one search engine, although as the year progresses the likes of Bing and Yahoo will be clawing back a small amount of the market, Mr Redfern predicted.

However, Facebook is also set to launch its own search listings in 2011, again with the focus on localisation.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

An internet expert said today that online marketing professionals – and indeed all marketing professionals – need to raise their game and prepare for the vast potential of social media.

Dan Oliver, who is the editor-in-chief of .net magazine, admitted that at the moment it is early days for online advertising and marketing via social media such as Facebook and, increasingly, Twitter, but stressed that over the next few years, the size and importance of the social media market is set to grow exponentially.

The tentative nature of the sector is one of its biggest attractions, Mr Oliver argued.

“At the moment there’s little best practice in this area, which means most companies and social media specialists are still in a period of experimentation,” he said – adding that businesses reliant on their web presence would be “crazy” to ignore online marketing through as many media as possible.

“Even the most traditional forms of marketing, such as print brochures, can now be enhanced and personalised via digital campaigns,” he noted.

The magazine editor also said that although there is no established best practice right now for businesses seeking to exploit social media, this will change as the medium itself matures.

Mr Oliver made his remarks following the 2011 Travel Report by Bigmouthmedia, which revealed that the holiday sector is defying challenging economic conditions to ramp up its investment in online advertising and marketing.

Recent statistics from the USA illustrate how popular social media is becoming on the internet – with social networking now accounting for 22 per cent of all time spent online.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

Online marketing professionals may need to get used to yet another game changing development on the internet soon, if reports of Facebook’s latest cunning plan turn out to be true.

Sources have revealed that the social networking phenomenon is busy on a new feature, grandly codenamed Project Titan. This is nothing less than a comprehensive email service aimed at eclipsing such established contenders as Googlemail, Yahoo and Microsoft’s venerable Hotmail.

According to the reports, Facebook will be an entirely web-based email service, operating within the social networking program itself and users will be offered a “facebook.com” email address. But what sets this plan apart is the ambitious message filing system.

Sources say that the application will analyse events, photos and friends on Facebook proper and use the information to sort emails by what it believes are the highest priority.

Facebook has tentatively announced that it will be staging a “major press event” on Monday in San Francisco, with the invitations strongly hinting that it will concern messaging and emails.

The new email service should prove a boon to online marketing campaigns, with another set of targets for online advertising and commercial mailouts. Companies such as Google are likely to feel threatened by the development – Google has already had a public spat with Facebook over the sharing of data – and online marketing experts are predicting a response from the search engine giant – expect to hear of new applications and features on Google soon.

Until Monday’s grand unveiling by Facebook, that classic dictum applies – watch this space.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

New figures published yesterday revealed that Facebook is the single largest platform for online advertising in the UK.

The data, by analysts comScore, showed that the market share of display advertising controlled by the social networking phenomenon had soared since 2009 to nearly a third of Britain’s online advertising sector.

Researchers estimated that UK internet users were exposed to almost 221.1 billion display ads in the third quarter of this year, representing a 34 per cent year-on-year increase.

They then subdivided these into a top ten – some 68.7 billion were on Facebook, well ahead of the 13.7 billion placed on various sites under the Microsoft umbrella, the 8.8 billion on eBay and the 8.2 billion via Google. There were 7.7 billion display adverts on Yahoo, an increase which was more than twice those seen on lesser platforms such as Glam Media, Trader Media Group, AOL, Bebo and Amazon.

The largest number of these ads were provided by large companies who have been swift to embrace the possibilities of online marketing, such as the Virgin Group, which was responsible for 4.4 billion adverts concerning its broadband, mobile and TV services – topping the comScore list of brands.

It was followed by the O2 group’s owner Telefónica, with 2.9 billion ads, and broadcasting company BSkyB, with 2.6 billion.

In fourth place was telecoms giant BT, with 2.3 billion ads, followed by eBay, Microsoft and Google itself, with 1.2 billion, 1 billion and 814 million ads respectively.

ComScore Europe managing director Mike Read noted that many companies were responding to the global economic downturn by placing more of an emphasis on online marketing.

“Following the ad recession that occurred from late 2008 through most of 2009, we are now seeing a strong resurgence in the online display ad market,” he said.
Mr Read predicted that the market would expand even further in the final quarter of the year.

“In the run up to Christmas with consumers searching for gifts, the growth in online advertising is likely to continue its ascent,” he added.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.

Social media are going to play a large part in online marketing campaigns this Christmas, according to new research.

Research by internet marketing affiliate network LinkShare found that at least 43 per cent of companies involved in some form of online advertising campaign over the holiday period this year will be taking advantage of the unprecedented opportunities offered by Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites.

Another 37 per cent of online marketing respondents said that they would be hoping to tempt customers over Christmas with online vouchers and special offers, while 17 per cent would be creating videos to promote their online advertising.

Just 18 per cent of companies surveyed believed that next year’s rise in VAT would have a deleterious effect on their online marketing budgets – with 30 per cent sure that the increase would spur companies on to make more effectively targeted campaigns than ever before.

The network’s managing director Liane Dietrich commented: “A call for more targeted and measured campaigns is certainly in line with what we are seeing from our own customers who are looking to increase their efficiency, and after the Christmas sales boom this will remain important.”

With the growing popularity of iPads and smartphones, many companies that use internet advertising believe that video campaigns are set to become more important than ever next year.

Nearly 30 per cent of respondents surveyed agreed that online videos, which can be searched for using Google or other engines, would be the largest digital advertising format, although another 28 per cent were sure that the likes of Twitter and Facebook would continue to reign supreme in 2011, dominating the online marketing world.

Dan Coysh

Daniel has been a freelance journalist and providing SEO Copywriting services for over three years now at Online Media Direct, after eight years as reporter and news editor for a national newspaper. He has provided SEO news content for a number of sites and on several occasions has completely rewritten a website’s text – both in the public and private sectors.