Facebook Pages Updates Now Push to Twitter

Though it seems like a relatively minor change - this is a significant change / win for marketers who actively use Twitter and Facebook Pages. Users have been able to send their Twitter posts into their Facebook streams (and a staggering percentage of my social graph's updates come from Twitter)... but it has always been a one-way street. As of today, Facebook Page owners are able to syndicate their updates from Facebook to Twitter... with a variety of controls (updates, images, notes, etc).

These controls currently only exist for Facebook Pages, but it is logical to assume that this is the first step before Facebook Status updates also both directions (collecting data, understanding usage and determining whether or not pushing all status updates into Twitter is wise and scalable). Marketers are an ideal audience to test the integration: they are motivated to share in both directions and the population is active, well-incented and much smaller.

Great landing page: big, clean logos and a simple message: "Now share anything with fans and followers, all from one place."

You will be asked to authenticate your Twitter account and give Facebook access to speak to Twitter (and visa versa)

Select what content you want to share. The default is all content, but you can share status updates, photos, links, notes and events

Social Reputation on Twitter (Foursquare Screenshot)

A great screenshot from Twitter (via Tweetdeck's iPhone app) that shows the virality of Foursquare. I've spoken a lot about the power of conversation in the real-time web - but this is notable because it taps into the power and influence of social 'gaming', reputation and location-based activity. Within a couple minutes, two prominent Twitter users separately announced the transfer of Foursquare mayorship at a New York coffee shop... one was proud and one was defeated.

By the way: if you do not already, I recommend following Jon Steinberg (@jonsteinberg) and Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) on Twitter.

Friendfeed is Facebook's Real Time Search?

Facebook today announced an acquisition of Friendfeed - getting an innovative, growing service (still small by Facebook standards: 1m users vs. Facebook's 250m) and, by all accounts, an exceptional team (comprised of ex-Googlers).

The twitter and blogosphere almost immediately and universally labeled the deal a talent acquisition. And while Facebook has indeed acquired a talented team (planning to disperse them through the organization), they also got two important product enhancements: real time search and filtering. I've said several times that I believe the next major progression for the real-time web is the ability for users to search, filter and determine authority / relevance. This is one of Friendfeed's strengths. And it is an area where they can instantly help Facebook - with thinking, product, data, etc. If the social web is (at least in part) predicated on conversation, the acquisition will help facilitate discussion by reducing noise and increasing relevancy. And if revenue opportunities exist within those conversations (just ask Starbucks and other active brands), search and filtering will play a role on the advertising and data side.

The Power of Social Recommendations

It's no surprise that social recommendations work - they are based on connections, shared interests, references, etc. I've written many times that I believe conversation - enabling it, aggregating it, filtering it and applying authority / relevancy - is where the real-time-web's great value is derived. An example from last night that: - proves the power of network-based sourcing (and demonstrates the size and robustness of Facebook) - validates the missions of certain companies (like Aardvark for instance) - likely frightens players in the recommendation space who are not innovating - and raises a series of other questions (more below)

Last night, in a bit of a scheduling bind, I was trying to secure a nice Napa hotel for a post-wedding weekend getaway (between our belated honeymoon later in the year). After spending a few moments unsuccessfully researching highly rated hotels online... I found nothing. After calling a couple friends directly, I still had no leads. So I posed the question on Facebook and received 10+ lengthy, trusted responses in a couple hours. The quality of the responses far exceeded anything I found online because it came from trusted sources, was articulate, qualified and timely.

The questions out of this experience: - in which verticals does it work and, depending on the space, how does the depth of experience change? - how can this content be archived and search? - if this list is truly better than Citysearch's Top 10 Guide - how can is it made available in relevant ways outside of my network? - can Facebook Connect enable the same experience and quality for sites off-Facebook? - what role does Twitter play a role here considering that it is a public network?

Bitly + Twitter Has Driven 350,000 views to Youtube's JK Wedding

In less than a week, Youtube's hit video "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" has been viewed over seven million times (and nearly 1.5m times in the last 24 hours). So what does that look like on the real-time web? And how much traffic have Bit.ly and Twitter sent?

One of the reasons I love Bit.ly is because of its transparency and ability to deliver meaningful analytics. For a given URL, you can see a page's real time traffic, referrals and geographic usage (all of which originated with a Bitly URL).

350,000 of the JK Wedding's 7m views arrived from Bitly alone. That is 5% of the video's views.

Even as the video's virality slows down, that is still 25-50 clicks per minute:

And Twitter.com represented over half of the traffic. Facebook was only 20,000 visits (but the video of course can be embedded directly into Facebook - Bitly's normal use case on Facebook is through the Twitter app integration):

Proof enough that this video was a viral hit: it collected 5,000+ Diggs and over 800 retweets on Tweetmeme... and that is from a Youtube embed off Youtube.com (outspokenmedia.com).

Tweetmeme, Bitly, Retweets and Blog Comments

Even if a small change, it is telling that TechCrunch has added a Tweetmeme "retweet" counter to their homepage... directly beneath the comments counter (and visually more powerful). It is also telling that the reteweet numbers are often 5-10x the comments.

I am not suggesting that either onsite comments are disappearing or less valuable that offsite comments (namely Twitter and Facebook) - but it is a powerful, fast-changing dynamic... and clearly publishers and brands need to understand, encourage and facilitate activity both on and off their domains. In this example, the TechCrunch post saw 10,000+ pageviews arrive from Bit.ly-only URLs:

Of course, as the conversation continues to become distributed, data and measurement become tougher to collect and mine. Danny Sullivan has two good, recent articles on how Twitter may be delivering 500%+ more traffic to your site than you currently believe.

- Is Twitter Sending You 500% To 1600% More Traffic Than You Might Think? - How Twitter Might Send Far More Traffic Than You Think

It is also important to remember that discussion and engagement themselves have great value... regardless of location and in ways measured beyond pageviews.

Starbucks: Four News Feed Interaction Lead to Three New Fans

Starbucks was named the "Most Engaged Global Brand" in Charlene Li's ENGAGEMENTdb study. I have written about Starbucks as a leading example of Facebook marketing ("A Lesson in Facebook Marketing and Engagement") - this document is helpful because it reveals Starbucks though process, team organization (six people with centralized focuses) and viral data:

“Recently, we found that for every four people that interacted with a particular news item, another three people are added virally as friends of those people.” Just to put it in perspective, the announcement of the mini-Starbucks card on Facebook drew 1,406 comments and 12,382 people “liking” the post so that it showed up in their news feed. Facebook is not only about messaging to the 3.5 million fans, but also allowing the fans to talk with each other about their love for the product and experience.

Contrast that to Twitter.com/starbucks where one person responds to inquiries, such as replacement blades for coffee grinders, or even questions from baristas about changes in the menu. With 250,000+ followers, Starbucks uses Twitter as an “in the moment” channel to deliver timely customer support and spread word about the latest breaking news and contests.

Other great brands to follow / study: - Zappos - Dunkin Donuts (my favorite Facebook brand) - Amazon - Jetblue (Southwest and Virgin are also good) - Redbull

ENGAGEMENTdb: Most Engaged Brands On Social Media -

Bit.ly, Real-Time Analytics & Twitter as a Traffic Referral

Over a year ago, I wrote about the need for analytics for the real-time web (and the potential business model surrounding it): "Twitter and Friendfeed: Understanding Referral Traffic; Arriving at a Business Model".

Since then, the real-time web has exploded (thank you Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc)... and the need for deep data, filtering and search has only become more glaring (a notion made very clear in Twitter's internal documents and memos).

I have also written about Bitly and the role it can play in this ecosystem. Recently, I have started using Bitly's sidebar and data more actively (Clicks, Referrers, Locations and retweets). I love it. It's a glimpse of: - what discussions and posts are active and engaging - where the traffic and discussion is beginning (email, IM and desktop clients like Twitterific are primary drivers) - where the discussion is occurring (for the most active topics, it is more off my site than on it... fascinating) - Twitter's ecosystem (in the below example, Twitter.com accounts for only 6.5% of the direct clicks)

The Real-Time Web, Authority Filtering & CrunchUp Themes

Yesterday TechCrunch put on the "Real-Time CrunchUp" event to discuss what has been billed as the real-time web. Alongside several product demos and company launches, the most prominent discussion topics were: - Business models and opportunities (Ron Conway provided his ten ideas)

- Businesses vs. Features: are these products able to sustain themselves as companies or are they features within larger companies

- Is the real-time web just beginning or is the lifecycle relatively advanced? And what does this mean for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other big company's abilities to compete?

- Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Friendfeed and what each mean for openness, competition, user experience and, ultimately, the consumer

- Noise. A theme I have written much about: the real-time web is overwhelming. How do we filter the noise to arrive at what is most important and relevant. And does filtering mean that the web is no-longer real time? The last theme (noise) is most important to me because, as the real-time web becomes more popular (and it will), it becomes increasingly difficult to digest and decipher. This is where Facebook will have a major advantage (using the social graph and 'like' / commenting systems). It is also where Friendfeed has already done a great job by using activity, relevancy, social connections, etc to deliver the news that it considers most important:

Other companies that are well-positioned here (and that I have covered; click for coverage): - Tweetmeme - Bitly - Aardvark

And proof that filtering is especially critical for Twitter - even if, as many of the CrunchUp panelists argued, it delays the immediacy of the real-time web: beside the live-stream of the CrunchUp final panel was a Twitter widget displaying 'relevant' tweets (defined by hashtags). Spammers quickly and repeated followed. I added the below screenshot and blocked out the very graphic user icon: