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The Rise and Rise of the Social Network Q&A

November 11, 2009

Sandra Hanchard and I presented a webinar titled ‘The Rise and Rise of the Social network’ earlier this week, and due to time constraints we could not answer all the questions posed to us, so the following are our responses. We are interested in your comments on any or all of the questions to add a variety of perspective and thought.

Q: Has the total amount of visits to Search Engines dropped as a result of visits to Social Networks growing?

A: The Search Engines industry is continuing to see growth in share of visits by Australian users, but is increasing at a slower rate than Social Networking and Forums.

In a year-on-year comparison the Search Engines industry has grown its share of visits by 4.6% compared to Social Networking and Forums 27.8% (the week ending 17 October 2009 compared to the week ending 18 October 2008).

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Q: Leading Social Networks in Australia?

A: The top 10 Social Networks visited by Australians are highlighted in the table below (click for larger image).

Q: Where does real estate sit in this graph?

A: below is the upstream traffic from the top 5 referrers of visits to the Business and Finance – property industry. The Top 100 Social Networks has grown 24.8% in the past 12 months to sit third behind Search Engines and Email Services.

Q: How can a company control content if it were to have a Facebook page?

A: You can have control where no-one but your company posts to the Facebook page, there is a great Mashable article you can reference to find out more With this method of control though you do miss out on having conversations and having customers providing testimonials.

Q: How much can the drop in Twitter usage be attributed to Tweetdeck and Seesmic etc? Would people using Twitter via these 3rd party applications be counted?

A: The data presented referenced the Twitter website only, and that the decrease could be due to users favouring 3rd party applications and mobile to access Twitter.

There are two reports that provide an indication to the amount of usage web based and otherwise. Sysomos in Canada suggests 60% of Twitter usage is web based and Rapleaf in the US found 65% of all ‘tweet’ are posted through the web interface.

Q: Tell us more about Google's social search product and also if the social networking websites are going to become more 'searchified' like Google? what do you think the future is?

A: Google’s social search will bring results from your social network that relate to the search term you have used. It is currently in Google Experimental Labs and if you have a Google profile you can join the experiment.

In essence is take your immediate network from various social networks that you participate in, plus their network as well and returns relevant results, so you are adding relevant public content from your broader social circle.
The results from your social circle appear at the base of normal organic results, clearly identified.
To find out more head over to Google’s Blog to watch a video explanation.

This is a further step towards improving the search experience in refining the relevance and timeliness of results, aiding discovery of new information from a trusted resource, i.e. your social circle. Bill Tancer, Head of Global Research, Experian Hitwise has been talking about the next move being towards curated content, and to a degree this is a form of that, leveraging your connections combined intellect and knowledge on a specified subject. The future is a hard question and we’ll leave that for the pundits.

In news just released starting tonight (US time), LinkedIn let users sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa in real-time (http://bit.ly/LRLSY)

Q: What type of time commitment is required to manage a social network presence?

A: It really depends on objectives and your establish success metrics. There are clients who dedicated staff such as a Community Manager and other who have absorbed it into the marketing or customer service functions. The ideal level of commitment will differ from business to business based on their needs and success metrics.

The Social Media space is very supportive and it would be an opportunity to ask this question through Twitter or a Social Media group on LinkedIn.

Q: Can Hitwise measure upstream and downstream data from a company official Facebook fan page?

A: It can be done via a custom report to the database but depends upon the size of sample being substantial enough to access useable data. If you are interested in this, please contact your account manager or email csm.ap@hitwise.com.

Q: Can you explain the Internal search of Social Networks - does this mean people accessing search engines from Social Networks?

A: We have the ability to provide search results that users enter within websites, including social networks. This differs from our search data that is based on search engine usage; primarily on terms that send users to third-party websites.

Q: Is there any international standard for Social Network measurement?

A: There are a number of metrics that provide guidance on the effectiveness of Social Networks; including visits, average session time, page views and audience segmentation.

Q: Are there any other new technologies emerging that may potentially pose a threat to Facebook?

A: It is always risky to answer either in a positive or negative manner. There is a huge amount innovation underway around the world looking for the next big thing. The strength of Facebook is in its utility and ubiquity, with applications and the ability to interact with third-party websites through Facebook Connect maintains their strong position, but it is a game of continued innovation and improvement to maintain leadership. We have seen before some of the largest sites suffer declines for a variety of reason, so while Facebook is a dominant Social Network at the moment that does not provide a guarantee for the future.

Q: Do you happen to know the impact of Ning on the social networking industry?

A: From an overall sense Ning (www.ning.com) has not has a great deal of success with Australian users, currently ranked at 567 in the Social Networking and Forums industry.