Social Media Round Up For December 2009

social-media-round-up With 2009 now behind us and 2010 upon is there is little doubt that the biggest buzzword in reviewing the last year was the impact of social media. You might have witnessed lots of promises, expectations, resolutions and predictions pertaining to different online marketing segments in the year. But none of them were talked about as much as social media. Nothing gives us better evidence of this statement then the recent launch of all three major search engines of real time search to their search engine results pages. On that note, let us have a look at the top talked about stories in social media for last month.

With social media marketing evolving at such a rapid pace, it’s imperative to stay connected on the latest social media trends and stats. Here are some interesting findings on social media studies from Nielsen Company. The study report titled ‘Social Media: The Next Great Gateway for Content Discovery?’ sheds light on the relationship between social media and the searches that users are performing. This comparison study report compared searches done on social sites to search engines and portals. 18% of the surveyed users said that they’re using social media sites as core to finding new information. Quite a jump considering how new social media sites are.

Facebook Buzz

Facebook, the social media heavyweight has outweighed all other services not only in popularity but also with unique user enhancment features. Facebook tied another feather in their cap on Christmas and New Year’s day by beating Google in total web visits. Google, the usual winner every day in web visits was over thrown by Facebook during the festive seasons’ flurry. This also raises a serious question, “does that mean personal email is dying?” Guess with Twitter, and Facebook growing short text messages are becoming popular.

Facebook’s privacy updates raised some heated discussion in the online world as it can open a security hole allowing hackers to more easily steal personal information and break into critical accounts. Here is one such read: http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2704&blogid=24. According to reports Facebook started testing its own URL shortening service, which will initially focus on its mobile application.

Social Media Scan

Google gave us a surprising New Year countdown clock that shows you how many seconds there are left before switching to the new decade.
According Wall Street Journal, Google and Verizon Wireless deepened their ties.
Vevo, the online music video website is launched in selected countries. Vevo is owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, EMI and Abu Dhabi Media Company.
Following the trail of Google and Bing, Yahoo! adds Twitter to its main search result pages.
Microsoft’s MSN local edition pages, which was redesigned to a local content focus domain as part of its recent home page design tweaks, is now adding local video clips to its pages as the result of deals it has reached with NBC Local Media and Hearst Television.