‘Facebook has unveiled a new messaging platform which takes aim at one of the internet’s first applications, email.

Although blogs had been speculating that Facebook would announce an email service to rival Google’s Gmail and others, Facebook said email was just one component of its plans.

Declaring email past its prime in the age of texts and instant messages, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company doesn’t believe email is going to be a modern messaging system. The first internet email system arrived in the early 1970s.

“If we do a good job, some people will say this is the way that the future will work,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg dismissed notions that Project Titan, as its service is called, is the “Gmail killer” it’s been dubbed as in the media.

But he also said that just as high school students are forgoing email in favor of shorter, more immediate chats, more people down the line will send IMs and chats because it’s simpler, “more fun” and more valuable to use.

Though email is still a primary form of communication for older adults, recent studies suggest this is not the case for young people.

Text messaging has surpassed face-to-face contact, email, phone calls and instant messaging as the primary form of communication for US teens, according to a 2009 survey from the Pew Research Center’s American Life Project.

Email use was the lowest – only 11 per cent of teens said they use it every day to interact with friends, compared with 54 per cent who said they text daily and 30 per cent who said they use land-line phones.

The popular social network unveiled its plans in San Francisco, a day before Zuckerberg speaks at the web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Underscoring the enormity of the project, Facebook’s director of engineering, Andrew Boz Bosworth, said 15 Facebook engineers worked on the project for 15 months.’

Source: The Courier Mail

Are Emails Finished? is a post from: OE Design Blog

If you choose not to be a part of the Social Media revolution, you are potentially sabotaging the future of your business. The impact you can make can be quite substantial; you just need to choose to join in the Social Media revolution.

Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the number of people collaborating, researching, and interacting online through the different aspects of Social Media.

Google

1. Over 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 (one trillion) unique website’s are listed in Google.
2. Over 121 million searches are made every hour.
3. Daily page views exceed 7.2 billion.
4. Google has 19,835 employees.

YouTube

5. Over 2 billion views a day.
6. 24 hours of video are uploaded every second.
7. Average person spends 15 minutes on YouTube every day.

Facebook

8. More than 500 million active users.
9. Over 695 status updates are posted every second.
10. More than 250 million users log onto Facebook each day.
11. Average user has 130 friends.
12. Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on facebook.
13. More than 100 million people use facebook on their phones.
14. More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.

Twitter

15. 300,000 new users sign up every day.
16. 180 million people use twitter every month.
17. Over 50 million tweets sent per day, at about 600 tweets per second.
18. 600 million searches are made on twitter every day.

Other Social Media Sites

19. Linkedin has 50 million users worldwide.
20. Wikipedia has 14 million articles.
21. LinkedIn has 60+ million professionals worldwide.
22. Yahoo has over 12 million searches every hour.
23. Bing has over 3 million searches every hour.

If you need any help or have any questions regarding social media, feel free to contact us.

Sources:
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
http://mashable.com/2010/03/19/global-social-media-usage/
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/014511.html
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html
http://webtrends.about.com/b/2010/03/15/the-top-10-most-popular-social-networks.htm
http://compete.com
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx

Warning: 23 Social Media Stats You Can’t Ignore is a post from: OE Design Blog

‘….Selling ads is Google’s big money-maker, but the online-ad business is broadening away from Google’s sweet spot, selling ads tied to the search-engine terms people use. Instead, advertisers want to target people based on more specific personal information such as hobbies, income, illnesses or circle of friends.

The changes at Google reflect a power realignment online. For years, the strongest companies on the internet were the ones with the most visitor traffic. Today, the power resides with those that have the richest data and are the savviest about using it.

That has propelled internet ad companies into an arms race so swift that even Google fears being left behind. One slide from an internal presentation in mid-2008, which was reviewed by the Journal, is headlined bluntly: ‘Get in the Game’.

That particular slide describes the importance of breaking into the lucrative business of selling ‘display’ ads, which are larger ads with pictures, as opposed to smaller text ads. Today, Google still trails market leader Yahoo in US display-ad revenue, according to analysts. Google still leads the internet pack overall, of course.

Its revenue, $US23.7 billion last year, is more than three times Yahoo’s, its closest competitor. Its online advertising business is growing faster than those of its publicly held US rivals.

But Google’s revenue growth has slowed dramatically. And social-networking powerhouse Facebook is a widening threat with its ability to sell highly targeted ads to its more than 500 million users.

Fears about Facebook run deep at Google, which is designing its own social-networking service.

In a sign of how quickly things change, Google’s 2008 vision statement scarcely mentioned social networks. Google also plans to go head to head with Facebook’s ‘Like’ button – a tiny tool on many websites that lets people tell friends they ‘like’ something.

Each click gives Facebook valuable personal data about internet user’s interests.

Few online companies have the potential to know as much about its users as Google….’

For those of us in business, as we use these tools – the more targeted our advertising can become with the assistance of these battling giants is going to mean one thing – more business for all of us who choose to engage this technology as part of our marketing campaign.

Source:  Jessica E. Vascellaro The Wall Street Journal

The Raging Battle For Targeted Online Advertising is a post from: OE Design Blog

As a worker we are continually bombarded with what is happening in the world, in the lives of our friends and through all forms of online advertising and alerts. And as employers we are presented with the challenge – should we create an environment that is totally devoid of this interference, or should we encourage our staff to engage?

New research shows almost three quarters of Australian workers say ‘watching YouTube’ is the most common online activity at work. The survey from Dynamic Business Magazine also shows more than a third of Australians spend at least an hour on Facebook while at work.

‘Many of us are in front of a computer for the majority of our work day, often in our own cubicles or offices and now we know what’s really going on,’ said DBM’s Jen Bishop. ‘This kind of online activity is often generated by emails we receive promoting sales or new products, emails about new messages or posts on Facebook or friends emailing about new YouTube videos we just have to watch.’

But a Melbourne University study recently suggested productivity improves among staff who have more freedom to surf the net. The study of 300 workers found productivity rose 9% among those free to surf compared with those who were not.

Source Material: The Courier Mail

Is Social Media Creating Online Distraction Or More Productivity? is a post from: OE Design Blog

‘Facebook has overtaken Google to become the most popular website in the United States for the first time, according to new data from Hitwise, which measures Internet traffic. For the week ending March 13, the social networking juggernaut registered 7.07% market share, beating the search giant’s 7.03% market share.

“The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame,” Heather Dougherty, Director of Research at Hitwise wrote in a blog post. (Facebook briefly topped Google last Christmas and New Year’s, but this is the first time the website’s weekly numbers have beaten Google.)

The new data is sure to unnerve Google, which has been trying to crack into the social networking market — with controversial results. For Facebook, the data will add further fuel to its push to go public sometime in the next year or two, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested. Analysts predict that when Facebook does go public, it could see an immediate valuation of $35 billion — a figure which could rise to $100 billion by 2015.

Since December 26, Hitwise’s data shows Facebook steadily closing the gap on Google in terms of weekly U.S. visits.

Of course, it’s important to put these traffic numbers and charts into context. Google is a giant, $130 billion public company with a fantastically profitable business model that churns out $23 billion in annual sales. Facebook, though huge, is still a start-up in search of a sustainable business model that can justify its current valuation, which is estimated to be anywhere between $8 billion and $15 billion.

Even though Facebook has passed Google in terms of online market share in the U.S., according to Hitwise, it faces many more challenges. Simply put, people go to Google because they are looking for something — the inquisitive act of seeking naturally lends itself to advertising. Whereas people go to Facebook to socialize and share with friends and relatives in an environment in which advertising is viewed by many as an intrusion and a distraction.

So while Facebook may have passed Google in terms of traffic, there is little chance it will overtake the search giant in terms of revenue or profit anytime soon.’

Source: Daily Finance

Facebook More Popular Than Google is a post from: OE Design Blog

I would like to think that she is smarter than the rest, because she has her dad’s brains, but read on and find out what a whole lot of her generation are doing when it comes to buying cars.

“Computers are turning into the hot rods of the 21st century.” states Neil McDonald of The Courier Mail.

“Unlike their parents, Gen Y is bypassing car ownership and driving the cyber highway to stay in touch with friends. Few see cars as necessary and increasingly they are staying at home, using social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace to hook up with friends.

A study into young buyer attitudes by global automotive analyst company JD Power has global implications for car brands increasingly trying to snare a younger audience.

The company’s Australian managing director, Brian Fine, believes the findings could change the way brands deal with younger buyers. ‘For car companies, younger buyers are their starting point,’ he said. ‘If they don’t get them at the early stages then they are probably going to have a tougher sell later on.’

The survey found that the global economic crisis has made young people more aware of the costs involved with owning and fueling a vehicle.

JD Power analyzed more than 300,000 online conversations among teenagers aged 12-18 and more than 475,000 online conversations among uni graduates and young workers aged 22-29 over an eight-month period.”

Source: The Courier Mail

Generation Y Taking To The Cyber Highway is a post from: OE Design Blog

So before I share with you 10 Social Media tips – allow me to introduce you briefly to each of these three media.

1. Blogs

A Blog is a website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary and descriptions. You can either have a Blog created by a web designer as a separate entity, or as part of an existing website, or you can set up your own at www.blogger.com . With 40,000 blogs in Australia and 130 million in the world, they are providing a powerful place to share information in text format, photos and even video. One of the effective ways to drive traffic to your Blog is to find other blogs or forums that relate to the industry within which you wish to launch your career, and start commenting. Find your niche and communicate. If you would like to design a blog that complements your brand talk to the team at www.oe-design.com.

2. Facebook

Facebook helps you to connect and share with the people in your life. With over 5 million users in Australia alone and growing, it can open up a large audience. The average user has 120 friends on their site. An interesting statistic is that more than half of Facebook users are outside college and the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older. These could represent your future bosses.

3.Twitter

Twitter can advance your career by allowing you to access the leaders in your industry. Through using search.twitter.com you can identify your specific niche and begin to engage influencers. Don’t forget to use www.tinyurl.com as part of your brief posting strategy and drive traffic back to your Blog.

So when you create your Blog, your Facebook account and your Twitter account – what next?

Position yourself in a positive light by using the following 10 Social Media tips.

1. Ensure you project a professional image while using social media at all times. Your future employer could be watching you.
2. Discrete is the word. Use wisdom sharing in such an open medium. Share positive comments.
3. Choose photos that are discrete.
4. Build relationships. Build trust. This is a powerful form of communication. A future employer can quickly get an idea of who you are by how you present yourself in your profile.
5. Create a professional Blog to show your understanding or keen interests in line with your chosen career. Post regularly. Now when it comes to blogging – either write it, copy and paste it and give accreditation to the writer by including their website address, or hire a ghost writer.
6. Meet and interact with the leaders in your industry via Twitter and point them back to your Blog.
7. Read well and then ask strong questions. Twitter is a great place for questions.
8. Sell yourself subtly. Social Media is a ‘not in your face’ medium. It’s all about subtle.
9. Upgrade yourself and share it in your social media circles. Your next opportunity is more likely to come from a social networking referral than from a job posting or advertised job opening.
10. A little wisdom and a lot of smart work(using social media) will help you forward your career, even in a tight economy. Employers hire when they don’t advertise, and often when they don’t think they have an opening, or even have a hiring freeze – that is before they meet you.

So your three social media career advancement friends are Blog, Facebook and Twitter. Use them wisely and consistently, and they will serve you well.

And while you’re at it follow Peter Sinclair – the CEO of OE Design – The Web Designers at www.twitter.com/OEDesign

How To Effectively Use Social Media To Advance Your Career is a post from: OE Design Blog