My friends at Apture have given me access to the new Apture 2.0 and I am actively testing it on RyanSpoon.com. You will notice that as you scroll down, the Apture toobar appears and allows you to: - share / view shares on Facebook - post / view posts from Twitter - share via email - search and access results directly onsite
Two screenshots are below - followed by a video of how Apture 2.0 works. Would love feedback
Close up:
Celebrating Tiger Wood's 'comeback' to the PGA Tour, TGW.com ran a clever promotional campaign: receive free shipping on all NIKE golf products for the 24 hours following Tiger's announcement.
Nike, who recently pulled Tiger Woods from the relaunched NikeGolf.com, did not run as aggressive a campaign... in fact, Tiger is still not included on the website:
January marked the month where Facebook passed Google in visits and Yahoo in Uniques. Today, Compete released their February 2010 numbers and the trends continued:
1. Google remains the largest by reach (with 141m uniques) and Facebook has gained some distance ahead of Yahoo. All three sites dipped consistently (4.3-4.9%) from January.
Google: 141.3m uniques
Facebook 127.9m uniques
Yahoo: 125.4m uniques
2. Facebook is the largest in terms of visits - really pulling away from Google (2.8b vs. 2.5b). Again,all three sites declined - but while Facebook's decline was 2.5%, Google and Yahoo dipped 9.2 and 12.7% respectively... which is turn created separation between Facebook and the others.
Facebook: 2.8b visits Google: 2.5b visits yahoo: 2.2b visits
3. Google and Yahoo each see 17.8 visits per unique. Facebook sees 21.9... a substantial difference.
4. It is also interesting that Google's top "referral" and "destination" site was Facebook (Yahoo was #2 and YouTube #3).
As you can tell from recent blog posts, I have been spending time looking at traffic sources for various sites (Facebook, Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, etc). New data from Hitwise reveals that one-third of Foursquare's traffic comes from Facebook:
Top traffic sources for Foursquare 1. 33% Facebook 2. 22% Google 3. 08% Twitter In total, nearly two-thirds of Foursquare's traffic arrives from three sources (one search and two social).
A few things pop out:
- Facebook's referral traffic has steadily grown on a relative basis... and considering that Foursquare's SEO 'juice' has most likely strengthened over time, that means the relative growth has overcome success on Google.
- Twitter as a traffic source is relatively volatile: large peaks around 30% and lows around 7%. It is likely an outcome of power Twitter users and large events (like SXSW - though not reflected here).
- I imagine the visits differ dramatically between Google and Facebook + Twitter. SEO likely sends more branded (foursquare.com) and deep visits (directly to locations - ie a specific venue's name); whereas Facebook and Twitter are more social and circular (driven by the individual rather than the location).
According to new Hitwise data, 7.07% of all internet visits go to Facebook. Google is the second largest at 7.03%. And Yahoo is a distant third at 3.67%. Equally impressive is how quickly Facebook has gained on Google - since January, they have jumped from ~6.5% to ~7.1%. Much of that acceleration happened in the last thirty days. Just a year ago, Facebook represented ~2.5% of visits.
This data comes a few weeks after Compete released their January report where Facebook surpassed Google in aggregate visits. Furthermore, if Facebook now represents greater internet share by visits, you would imagine that they are therefore significantly ahead by time on site. Google's in-and-out experience combined with Facebook's single-page structure likely result in Google winning the page-view war.
Several social media best practices - particularly on Facebook - come from big consumer brands: Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Rockstar, Vitamin Water, etc. McDonalds is arguably the biggest brand, but.... Go to McDonalds.com and notice prominent links to follow them on Facebook and Twitter. There is more real estate dedicated to each of these than, for instance, to their restaurant locator:
Click on Facebook and a shadowbox pops up that asks, "are you sure you want to leave?"
It's almost as though McDonald's wants to promote Facebook / Twitter... but doesn't like the consequence of having it occur on Facebook / Twitter. It is also bizarre because the call to action is clearly "Become a Fan on Facebook" - so if I have offered to do so, why ask me to confirm again?
The strangest part is the messaging below the Yes / No. The language is not particularly inviting.... nor does it suggest that McDonald's itself is involved with their various accounts:
"You are leaving the McDonald's Corporation web site for a site that is controlled by a third party, not affiliated with McDonald's."
... But we hope that eventually you do decide to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Gilt Group made its name around high fashion at low prices. In their words, "Gilt Groupe provides access, by invitation only, to Men’s, Women’s and Children’s coveted fashion and luxury brands at prices up to 70% off retail. Each sale lasts 36 hours and features hand selected styles from a single designer." It is interesting how different the 'inventory' between Gilt's vertical offering is (Gilt for women and Gilt Man for men). For instance, true to their early success, Gilt.com currently has seven offers... all of which are fashion related. There are four promotional units that all also promote fashion:
Compare that to Gilt Man, which is predominantly travel and vacation related. Four of the six current offers are travel related; the remaining two are men's fashion. There are also two promotional units - which are product related (mobile app and referral program):
Not sure whether it is a comment more on purchase habits or Gilt's ability to drive demand and/or inventory... but the difference is certainly striking.
Whichever side of the spectrum the answer falls, fashion still sells on Gilt Man. Below is one of the two Gilt Man fashion boutiques; within 10 minutes, several of the items were full sold out:
I encourage you to read Eric Eldon's piece on InsideFacebook about how Facebook's most popular game, Farmville, now defaults to Facebook Credits and Payments. As location and geo dominate the blog headlines (Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla), Facebook Credits has managed to stay relatively under the radar... but Facebook's payments platform is important as it is going to be very big. And, despite being young, Facebook Credits is now exposed to Farmville's 84,000,000 monthly actives... that's quite the launchpad.
A big, exciting day for Brizzly (whom I have written about more than a few times!). Today they announce two major product launches: 1. Brizzly for the iPhone It is a free iPhone App (download here) and has the same functionality and feel that Brizzly.com has. If you are an avid Brizzly or Twitter user - it's a must:
Brizzly has always included Twitter trends with crowdsourced definitions and color. In fact, they also have made it widely available with the Lets Be Trends API. Trending topics each get their own guide pages - which are archived - and feature relevant content from the community, Twitter, relevant sources, etc. You can also access historical information about topics. For instance, Chuck Norris is the #2 trend today (it is his 70th birthday) but you can also see that first appeared as a trend on Jan 16, 2010. In fact, Chuck has quite the robust Brizzly timeline:
You can now read more on TechCrunch: "Brizzly’s Been Busy — Buying Apps, Creating Guides, And Going On Picnics."