February marks a milestone in the social networking calendar as Facebook celebrates its birthday.

The site turned six last week and is showing impressive figures of late, with double the amount of users (now standing at 400 million worldwide), compared to this time last year.  Econsultancy statistics also say that 50 per cent of active users log into the site each day – effectively 200m people every 24 hours!

With such huge traffic statistics and progression over 12 months, it’s no wonder Facebook continues to be a big deal for brands.  Many still regard Facebook as a great way to reach their audience.  Others who have been slower on the uptake are now starting to catch on.

BMW UK and Volvo have recently launched Facebook campaigns – BMW with an official fanpage, Volvo with an application to promote their new clean diesel C30 DRive car.  Volvo’s app increased their number of fans from 60,000 to 400,000.

Whilst speculation remains over how Facebook can monetise the site and cash in on 400 million users, you can’t dispute how far the site has come in six years.  Figures released last week from the GSMA also show that Facebook is dominating the lives of mobile internet users in the UK, with around 2.2bn minutes spent browsing the social network during December alone.

Facebook has certainly changed the game for consumer-facing companies, and those wanting to reach and influence everyday people need to understand it.

Happy birthday Facebook!

Just for fun I thought I’d use Google Trends to compare the leading social networks in terms of how much traffic they’re getting from UK web users. This first chart shows that Bebo and MySpace both declined at a fairly similar rate over the past 12 months, while Twitter has been steadily climbing.

What’s interesting is that all of these sites seem to have levelled out over the past couple of months at approximately the same volume of visitors – between 110k and 150k unique visitors per day. Obviously there are some clear long term trends here, so it will be worth revisiting this graph in a few months time to see how things have changed.

Now let’s see what happens when we open the door and let the big hairy Facebook gorilla into the room…

That puts things into perspective a little, doesn’t it? But when we look at the trend, it seems Facebook has been stuck on a plateau of around 2 million unique daily visitors for the past 12 months. If anything, the trend seems to be drifting ever so slightly downwards.

There are a couple of caveats to this. First, this data is based on Google’s own estimate of website traffic, rather than the sites’ own analytics – although I’d argue that if you were going to trust any third-party estimate of traffic volume, Google’s would be the most accurate.

Secondly, these are visitor numbers, not user numbers. Facebook’s UK user numbers have increased over the same period (although they seem to have levelled out recently too) which could indicate that users are visiting the site less.

Another issue with these stats is that they are likely to miss a large chunk of regular Twitter users who do not use the site through their browser, but through third party tools like TweetDeck. Some analysis puts the number of users who access the service via such tools at 68%, so that’s a potentially huge volume of Twitter users who aren’t accounted for in this graph.

This would put Twitter far higher up the chart than Bebo and MySpace, but still nowhere close to Facebook.  Despite a clear upward trend, Twitter still has a long way to go before it can compete with Facebook in terms of audience size.

Whilst reading the econsultancy.com online PR benchmarking report, it struck me that PRs and brand marketers were still talking a different language.

Clients wanting increased brand mentions online are met with agencies delivering blogger relations. Those asking for brand reach are offered optimised press releases.  A client wants outcomes: and the agency offers tactics. Well, nothing new there then!

The trouble is that this issue is completely exacerbated by the proliferation of social media jargon. Love or hate these new terms, agencies and clients alike are letting them fly from their collective lips: especially around the pitching table.

At the recent Utalk Marketing conference, presentations from different marketing agencies revealed the scale of the confusion within the industry. There is no common understanding between the different marketing professions. Just look at the PR and SEO industries where there is no agreement on the definition for online PR. No wonder clients get confused.

We might be using the words like ’social media’, ‘influentials’ or ‘conversations’, but we don’t always mean the same thing: several social media terms could now be classified as homonyms there are so many different meanings!

And the cloud of confusion is getting thicker. Every time a new tool, technology or platform rises in popularity it is accompanied by a raft of new buzzwords.

It occurred to me that no one had yet determined how much the social media jargon was impacting client marketers. What is the effect of having to learn a new lexicon of marketing and technology terms? How is social media literacy affecting the understanding of what a client wants? And most importantly, how is the confusion influencing budgets.

So we are doing some research with brands in the UK, to be published as a report (and shared socially of course).

I would like to include some comments and anecdotes from readers and fellow bloggers in the report (accredited of course). So if you have an opinion, or story to tell on the issues of social media jargon, please do share in comments or trackback posts (now I am using jargon!).

Do certain terms need clearer definitions, or should we be going back to basics and using the language of communications? Are there words that you think are commonly misunderstood or often misused?

Our intention is to put the best into the report with a link to your blog or website – and give you the first view of the report before we officially publish.

Sadly I missed being on Ian’s NMK panel for ‘Clients in the Wild’ as I just had over 200 staples taken out after an op. But it seems the discussion and subsequent blog by Will McInnes has created a stir – causing several blogging PRs some deeper introspection. Antony Mayfield summarises the issues up rather eloquently.

Like Antony , I too am an optimist. I also lived through the similar, if not so public, growing pains of the digital ad agency industry. Back in the 90s these start-ups and specialists departments were dismissed by the powerful TV ad world. And we all know how that has changed now. We now have a very different marketing landscape with digital taking the lead and the more handsome budgets.

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Just gave this presentation at the Online Marketing Show. Not sure it makes a lot of sense without the banter over the top, but I thought I would share.

The slides really fall into four categories:

1. How brands are performing in social media
2. The changing landscape online
3. How you can trigger conversations by tapping into passions and interests and creating social currency
4. How Sony BRAVIA used this model to inspire postive discussion, raise search engine visibility and drive website visits

Our latest research looking at brand conversation in social media shows that techie companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo! and Microsoft, take the lead in terms of brand mentions in blogs, social networks and photo and video sharing sites.The study, launched at the Online Marketing Show examines the Interbrand Top 100 global brands and their voice in social media.

Here are the results for the top 25 most discussed brands.

 Technology leads the way, with Disney and Ford just squeezing in  the top 10. But split across the top 100 reveals that the industry sectors are quite evenly spread, with all of Intebrand’s top 100 brands getting a mention in social media.

Of course, this is just a snapshot and, before my friends at Onalytica and Market Sentinel rightly jump in, this research doesn’t take into account influence. Which we agree is essential. But the study does show that brands are being talked about and that is what we set out to confirm.

The full study will be available on the immediate future website on tomorrow or you can pop along to the OMS show at the Business Design Centre in London to get a free copy.

Technorati Tags: Google, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Interbrand Top 100 global brands, social media, Disney, Ford, Onalytica, Market Sentinel

Positive and negative comments in groups on social network sites, such as Facebook, Flickr and MySpace reveal Disney, Nintendo and Google are the most popular brands. This comes from our latest research, Brands in Social Media.

Social networking groups are proving very popular in the UK. They are a very public demonstration of the connections between people and brands. Popular groups can quickly swell in numbers and influence large numbers of consumers online.

Understanding the sentiment of brand conversations is crucial. Frequency and popularity in the conversation is meaningless without a clear picture of whether the discussion is positive or negative.

We assessed groups set-up on three of the most popular social network sites: Flickr, Facebook and MySpace. We compared groups against the Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands. Groups that mention the top 100 brands were examined and brand sentiment (positive, negative or neutral in tone) recorded.

Automotive brands had the most loyal fan-based groups, Microsoft the most negative groups and Google hardly any negative comments at all! In fact, most Google groups were either advocating the search engine or explaining ways of using the technology.

The full report will be on our website on Thursday – for those that want the detail.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Disney, Nintendo, Google, Brands in Social Media, Social networking, Microsoft

We are launching research exclusively at the Online Marketing show this week. The study looks at the Interbrand top 100 global brands, to reveal which brands have the largest share of voice and the most positive conversations.

The report measures brand mentions across blogs, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, social bookmarking and news sites, to provide a snapshot of brand share of voice. It also details sentiment (positive and negative conversation) in social network groups. A section of social media that is increasingly being adopted by consumers in order to discuss brands.

Come and visit us on stand V6 at the business design centre (26^th and 27^th June) and you can get your free report, along with a whole range of guides and tips (a social media toolbox).

I am speaking at the workshop too, at 1pm on the 27^th – worth a visit if you prefer an explanation along with case studies on how to engage with social media.

Drop me an email if you want to meet up during the show.

Now off to frantically look for a four-gang adapter so I can power up my laptop at the show.

Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins at the Corporate Engagement blog have just published their free (second edition) Social Media white paper. Updates on Second Life, Twitter and wikis and some new case study examples of Australian brands experimenting with social media.Great snapshot of the current social media space – a definite read.

We’re exhibiting at the Online Marketing Show this week.

The event will be good. We went last year and found ourselves constantly in the throng of online marketers – discussing Online PR till we were hoarse. Last year, visitors wanted to know what online PR was and how it integrated with online marketing and traditional PR activity.

This year, it is already clear that they want to know how they can get involved with social media. I am quite ebullient at the prospect of talking to companies that are ready to take the plunge into the online conversation

We are managing the press office for the show, and also have our own stand (V6). We will be running an online PR clinic for anyone with social media questions they need answering so do come and say hello.

We are giving away a social media toolbox full of case studies, tips and our social media research (launching at the event). Do visit and pick up one up.

Technorati Tags: Online Marketing Show, social media, online PR