Today's Most popular News

September 16th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

The latest numbers are in, and Twitter is apparently growing at a torrid pace. According to stats just released from Nielsen Online, Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique visitors in August (US-only), an increase of 422% from the same period last year.

Moreover, visitors to Twitter spent 55% more time on the site on average – a total of more than 7 minutes per user. Those numbers point to rather robust growth for the site, especially considering many of its most rabid users access it through a third-party client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck.

Elsewhere in the social networking space, Facebook continued to narrow the gap on MySpace, a trend we also noticed last month. Unique visitors to the site grew to 38.2 million, representing a more than 10% month-over-month increase and a 100% jump year-over-year. MySpace saw 61.3 million unique visitors – up slightly from last month, but still essentially flat compared to the same period last year.

Some other trends worth noting:

- LinkedIn grew 146% year-over-year to 10.8 million unique visitors

- Imeem fell from 3.9 million unique visitors in July to 3.4 million in August. They could be one of the more impacted companies from this month’s expected launch of MySpace Music.

- Buzznet traffic fell 54% year-over-year to 1.8 million unique visitors. The company has recently made a number of acquisitions including Idolator and Qloud to bolster its audience.

The full chart is embedded below:

Source:Mashable!

App-vertisements are one of the stranger things to come out of the social media scene, as is the concept of social ads. These two unique advertising concepts are teaming up in the form of a partnership between SocialMedia and Buddy Media to create an even more social ad experience, whether we like it or not.

Ads are a necessary evil, it’s true, With the recent introduction of Buddy Media’s Buddybrain, app-vertisements got a bit more intrusive. Buddybrain allows brands to track their social media-based ad campaigns in great detail, giving brands greater insight into how the customers use and view their traditional ads and app-vertisements.

By joining forces, SocialMedia and Buddy Media effectively become the one go-to spot for social advertisement of all types. They have created an effective little monopoly on online ads for the social media and new media markets simply by being first in their respective fields and then first to join.

“Advertising in social media is about getting users to engage with a brand’s messaging in a way that scales and is measurable,” says Seth Goldstein, CEO of Socialmedia.com. “Our partnership with Buddy Media simplifies the buying and execution of campaigns that get users to interact with brands.”

What the partnership also does is allow SocialMedia to see the detailed information compiled in Buddy Media’s Buddybrain. With Buddybrain combining with SocialMedia’s Premier Partner Program and Buddy Media’s App-vertising Reseller Program, app-vertisements may soon become the preferred way to reach customers in the social media space. I’m not sure the social media user is ready for this onslaught of applications that are also ads, but like mobile ads, they are fast on the rise.

What is the point of the social ad market? To make your favorite brands into your friends. By engaging the customer or potential customer, brands hope to become more accessible and likable, which they hope will lead to trust and increased sales. As obnoxious as this new ad space is, it seems to work. And as long as these mildly deceptive application-based social ad campaigns work, they’ll stick around.