Numbers, visits, UAV's, who is leading what?

Its more topical than ever right now, is Facebook on the way down, has Google + cracked the code and migrating users not unlike what Facebook did to MySpace?

Rather reading every second article that has appeared in the last week on who has the upper hand I went looking for some user stats to offer some clarity to the changing landscape…

According to figures compiled by website socialmedianews.com.au from Google Ad Planner and checkfacebook.com more than ten million Australians visited Facebook, while the number of people visiting the Google-owned YouTube fell by 100,000.

Facebook remains the most popular social media website with 10.4m unique Australian Visitors (UAVs) last month.

YouTube attracted 9.8 million UAVs, down 100,000 on the previous month, Blogging platform Tumblr increased its number of unique Australian visitors in July to 1.5 million a rise of 600,000.

StumbleUpon has overtaken Digg as the most popular book-marking site. 

Does the Social Media PR machine do a better job of migrating users than the actual sites themselves? Or is that Social Media sites understand the power of pop culture and can harness it better than ever before?

Number of Unique Australian Visitors
1. Facebook – 10,436,860
2. YouTube – 9.8 million (down 100,000 on June 2011)
3. Blogspot – 4.6 million (down 1,000,000)
4. WordPress.com – 2.1 million (down 200,000)
5. LinkedIn – 2 million (steady)
6. Twitter – 1.9 million (steady)
7. Flickr – 1.5 million (steady)
8. Tumblr – 1.5 million (up 600,000)
9. MySpace – 930,000 (down 70,000)
10. StumbleUpon – 150,000 (steady)
11. Digg – 140,000 (down 20,000)
12. Reddit – 100,000 (steady)
13. Foursquare 63,000 (steady)*
14. Delicious – 59,000 (down 17,000)
15. Gowalla – no data, May 2011 was 9,500*

The evolving social media landscape

The first Facebook users, who drove the worldwide success it is today, are reportedly turning their backs on the social network  (TrendStream,  Global Web Index, B&T 16/08/11) .

The major global research study has found that US college graduates are showing signs of Facebook fatigue and using it less often in certain areas.  

While total usage of Facebook continues to grow due to its popularity in emerging markets, in developed economies such as the US, UK and Canada there have been significant declines in terms of active participation with the site such as status updates, sharing content, messaging and installing applications. 

The Global Web Index which looks at the way consumers use the internet based on 100,000 interviews in 27 key markets found that in the US in June of this year, the number of people that messaged friends and joined a group in the last month was down 15% and 10% respectively since the first wave of research in July 2009. This trend was even more pronounced with the under 30 US college graduates – the first group that ever used the social network.

Microblogging and social networking are the fastest growing social media activities, up 62% and 40% from July 2009 to June 2011 respectively, spurred on by increased use of mobile, according to the research.

I think the data over the next 12 months and the take up or adoption of Google+ will offer a more definitive understanding of this data. The current changes to FB are part of the product evolution, no different to the product improvement we see in other categories or products. 

The innovators and early adopters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle) will welcome the change (if they have not already jumped ship to Google+),  how long will it be until the old FB is forgotten and we accept the features as the norm? I look forward to seeing how long it takes the majority of the population to accept the new changes? Is there a predetermined model for adoption in the social media space? 

One thing is for certain, anyone outside of an innovator or early adopter find it hard to accept change... http://socialmediafun-daiz.blogspot.com/search/label/Facebook

When the conversation goes ....

I thought it would be pertinent to share this with the group, as you dont always get it right but that is a matter of opinion in this case. Social media drove several conversations, I have highlighted some more 'notable' ones below.

For the opening of the Caulfield Carnival last weekend the Club promoted on course food & beverage offerings - key strategic iniatives for the Club are race day attendance and driving the punter out of the TAB, off the couch, out of the pub and back to the course.The PR machine prodcued good results before the meeting and we created a lot of conversation on and off line about the direction the club had taken.There were a suite of initiatives that we took to market, but the ones listed here had the more amusing respsones...

One of the oncourse food offerings was 3 party pies for .99c. 

Some Tweets that brought a smile...for reference I'm MRCTrackNews. These tweets are from radio personalities and sports journalists.

Can you make it viral?

Picking up on our recent class conversation and similar events at work about companies/brands asking for viral campaigns and requesting ad agencies create a 'viral campaign' for them left me reminiscing about the great viral campaigns that I had seen or heard about.

Big Warnie - a well executed and integrated campaign when 'social media and viral' were still the latest buzz words. First of the five part series here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ-7MsY54j8
Stats on the campaign here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGTCtd0ZSLU
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2006/cricket-australias-big-warnie/

Who can forget Carlton Draught? 162,000 downloads in the first 24hrs which climbed to over 500,000 before the week had finished;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3GH7Pn_eA

Reading RoniJ latest blog; http://ronij-openroad.blogspot.com/2011/09/dark-knight-risesand-goes-viral.html had me dig deeper into what I think was one of the defining moments in 'viral marketing' - The Blair Witch Project.... I think anyone with an interest in marketing has read the story of how the horror movie, The Blair Witch Project was made for $22,000 and grossed $248 million at the box office, by generating massive pre-opening "buzz" online long before the public even knew they were reading about a movie.

The chat sites started picking up rumors of three college kids who were lost in the woods while on a film school project investigating stories about a witch. The kids were never heard from again but their camera was found. The film inside was restored, revealing horrifying sounds in the night woods....

It was a hoax, but for a time many on the chat sites were believers. But what is truly remarkable was how the hoax took on a life of its own, even before anyone heard that the supposed film found in the woods was coming to theaters. By the time the film was released, it had built up fever-level anticipation.

This brings me back to my original point of brands wanting viral campaigns - as these three guys who brought you The Blair Witch have formed a marketing company called Campfire http://campfirenyc.com/. They specialize in creating viral marketing campaigns which they refer to 'story telling', which I would call generating content...

That said, their work includes the Audi campaign called "The Art of The Heist," which lit up web sites, blogs, cell phones, message boards and even had  real-world stunts. The results were better than Audi could ever have hoped for, with 2 million hits on their web site, 4000 test drives and 75% more dealership leads.

Viral marketing is not a disease, but it is "buzz" (the 'old school' water cooler conversation) that spreads from one person to another by becoming a topic of conversation - its WOM for the digital age...