The Social

This ticked-off cat isn't too thrilled about the snow, but plenty of online retailers are.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

A blizzard that pelted much of the Eastern Seaboard with over a foot of snow also led to a spike in last-minute online holiday shopping last weekend, traffic firm ComScore said Tuesday.

Online shopping continues to eat up a bigger chunk of holiday retail each year, but this season, with roads snowbound and temperatures well below freezing in some of the most populous areas of the country at the tail end of the holiday season, it was even more than usual. (Several cities in the mid-Atlantic, like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pulled in more snow in a single snowfall than they typically do in an entire season.) For the weekend of December 19-20, U.S. traffic to non-travel retail sites was up 13 percent from the equivalent weekend last year--and on Tuesday, December 15, right when the storms started hitting weather forecasts, it was up 21 percent.

That Tuesday marked the biggest online spending day in history, ComScore says.

"The major snowstorms hitting the eastern seaboard over the weekend appear to have given holiday e-commerce an additional boost, resulting in the heaviest online spending week on record at $4.8 billion," ComScore chair Gian Fulgoni said in a release. "Consumers have clearly continued to spend online later into the season this year, with several very strong spending days in the most recent week including the heaviest online spending day in history--Tuesday, December 15, with $913 million. Retailers have been very aggressive with late season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off."

A survey from Coremetrics said that sales for "Cyber Monday," the Monday after Thanksgiving and typically a day for big online deals, showed healthy gains this year.

Mark Zuckerberg should be proud: The top search term of 2009, according to Experian Hitwise, was not "porn," "poker," or "Britney Spears." It was, for the first time, "Facebook."

In 2008, Facebook had been the tenth most searched term on the Web, according to the traffic company's annual survey of search queries.

The rest of the list for 2009 is also made up of "navigational" searches, which Hitwise reps say actually always dominate top search queries despite the common wisdom that top searches tend to be for online gambling or racy pictures. In spot No. 2 is last year's leader, "myspace," followed by "craigslist," "youtube," "yahoo mail," "google," "yahoo," "ebay," "facebook login," and "myspace.com." If you add up all four Facebook-related terms in Hitwise's top 300 search terms, they make up slightly over a percent of all searches on the Web. The #1 term alone accounts for 0.67 percent.

Meanwhile, searches for "porn" came in at No. 16. Britney, unfortunately, didn't crack Hitwise's top 300, but the most searched for celebrity was Michael Jackson at No. 95, and "Twilight" hottie Robert Pattinson came in at #221. (Hitwise representatives say that they are currently reevaluating the data to see if recently beleaguered golfer Tiger Woods has moved up in the rankings, too.)

Update at 2:10 p.m. PST: So where's "Twitter" on Hitwise's list? It's hanging in there at #56, the company says.

Not only is this Super Mario costume homemade and hilarious, the guy sure can boogie.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

Really, America? Can we talk?

You see, I received this press release from Experian Hitwise in my in-box about the most-searched-for Halloween costumes in the U.S., based on searches in the month ending October 24 that ended in "costume." And the ranking was led by "Michael Jackson costume" and "Balloon Boy costume." OK, so those are timely, albeit a little bit more than unimaginative.

But it doesn't stop there. Following that were "Tinkerbell," "Catwoman," and "Poison Ivy," indicating that most costume searches are either on behalf of women or men who really want to make a fool of themselves. Among the top costume searches beginning with the word "sexy" were "sexy sailor costume," "sexy nurse costume," "sexy witch costume," and "sexy Queen of Hearts costume." (What would Lewis Carroll think?) And high-ranking costume searches beginning with "adult" include "adult cat costume," "adult Snow White costume," and "adult Care Bear costume."

I don't care what you dress up as for Halloween. Have fun with it. But just think about it. Adult Care Bear costume. Really. It's a costume that's probably itchy and uncomfortable, unflattering, and will embarrass the heck out of your kids if you have any. Not to mention that there's no obvious relevance to current events or pop culture that would negate the creepiness factor, considering the last time I checked the Care Bears have been around since 1981. Whatever happened to cowboys and pirates and disgraced politicians? Hitwise stats have officially weirded me out.

More depressing figures: Compared with the same time period last year, Hitwise found a 97 percent jump in searches for "pet costumes" this year. Those poor dogs.

In my in-box last week: "Citibank Survey Reveals Small Businesses Not Joining Social Media Conversation."

In my in-box on Thursday morning: "Survey: Nearly Half of Small Businesses Surveyed Have Profiles on Facebook and Twitter."

Um, do these add up?

Let's take a look. The first survey, conducted by Citibank and research firm GFK Roper, surveyed 500 small-business executives in the U.S. and found that 76 percent say they don't think social networks are helpful for "generating business leads or for expanding their business," and 86 percent "say they have not used social-networking sites to get business advice or information."

Yet the second survey, commissioned by research group Internet2Go and small-business networking site MerchantCircle, polled 2,000 small businesses in the U.S. and found that 45 percent already operate Facebook pages and 46 percent have either a business or personal presence on Twitter.

"We've known anecdotally that small businesses are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter but these numbers are surprising," Internet2Go senior analyst Greg Sterling said in a release. "The conventional wisdom is that (small businesses) are unsophisticated but they're adopting social media tools en masse it appears, because there are fewer barriers to entry than other forms of online marketing."

Meanwhile, the Citibank survey: "Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses," executive vice president of Citi's small business group Maria Veltre said in a release. "While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."

The two, both of which classify "small business" as a company with fewer than 100 employees, really seem to serve up fairly conflicting results. But let's look a little deeper. The Internet2Go study, affiliated with a company (MerchantCircle) with an obvious interest in small businesses and social media, only polled existing MerchantCircle members. That means that those small businesses have already made at least one big leap toward trying to become more social-media-savvy.

Internet2Go senior analyst Greg Sterling told CNET News that the decision to only poll existing MerchantCircle members was made because it's difficult and expensive to pin down small businesses to survey them. The social network has "a large population of SMB users," he said in an e-mail.

That said, he admits the survey's results aren't totally random as a result: "These results should not be automatically generalized to the entire (small business) population," a blog post by Sterling explains. "They're qualified by the following: the survey targeted the most frequent content-publishers among MerchantCircle's small-business members. However, we believe these respondents may be a leading indicator of where the market is heading."

So it's more than likely that the Citibank survey shows the scenario closer to the current reality. Fine print, you know, can say a lot.

This post was updated at 10:52 p.m. PT with comment from Internet2Go's Greg Sterling.

A majority of U.S. workplaces block access to social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, new survey results commissioned by consulting firm Robert Half Technology indicate. Fifty-four percent block social networks "completely," while another 19 percent only permit it "for business purposes."

Only 10 percent of companies surveyed permit social-network use on the job for any kind of personal use; 16 percent allow "limited" personal use, according to the results released Tuesday.

The study, conducted by an independent research firm, surveyed about 1,400 chief information officers at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees, which means that the results obviously don't encompass small businesses.

Regulating social-network use at work is a complicated matter. There are some nuances that numbers like these don't bring up: "limited" personal use of social networks sounds like it could mean anything from blocking the majority (but not entirety) of social sites to simply instituting a "don't trash your boss on Facebook" rule. Some companies, additionally, may have different standards set for different degrees of employees--the guy running the company Twitter account and the human resources department may have extra privileges, for example.

There also isn't a differentiation in the results regarding which percentage of "blocked completely" workplaces use filtering software to keep employees off banned sites and which ones have a rule by which employees are supposed to abide (but might not).

Internet controls and filters in the workplace are nothing new. But social networks pose an interesting case: their potential for professional as well as personal networking, not to mention the well-publicized use of Twitter for marketing and customer service. There's also the fact that they've become so ingrained in culture and communication that some companies choosing to block them can appear draconian rather than prudent.

But they're still great for procrastination and counterproductivity, so it's not surprising that most businesses put the clamp on them.

"Using social networking sites may divert employees' attention away from more pressing priorities, so it's understandable that some companies limit access," Robert Half Technology executive director Dave Willmer said in a release. "For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes."

Along with the survey results, the company also offered a number of tips for social networking on the job: be aware of your employer's policies, don't complain about your co-workers or boss online, and keep tabs on your usage so that it's not too much of a time suck.

Pretty much everyone in the audience at Sheryl Sandberg's talk on Tuesday morning as part of New York Advertising Week understood the meaning of the slide she displayed that read "Nielsen and Facebook are in a relationship." A nod to announcements on Facebook's homepage "news feed," the "in a relationship" phrase is now a recognizable slice of Internet culture--much as social network Facebook itself has become ubiquitous.

And Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, hopes it will be just as ubiquitous in the advertising world. Her goal on Tuesday was to formally announce the social network's "strategic alliance" with data and audience measurement firm Nielsen, starting with the launch of a product called BrandLift, a market research tool that can measure audience response to advertisements on Facebook "in a matter of days."

Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank joined Sandberg on stage to detail the basics of BrandLift. "We recognize just how increasingly important Facebook is within the whole ecosystem of media," he said, adding that it would be "crucial in building (marketers') confidence in using the Internet as a tool."

Sheryl Sandberg (file photo)

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Burbank confirmed what he told CNET News last night, that BrandLift measurement would eventually reach beyond the hugely popular social network. "(Brands) have asked us to extend this tool beyond Facebook," he said. "Working with Facebook, we expect to do that, too."

But for now, it's all about the social network. Sandberg pitched Facebook to the ad industry audience, as she has done in the past, as a hub for meaningful connections and communication. "Facebook is where people go when they want to share, when they want to connect, when they want to reach out to the people they know," Sandberg said, and she brought up instances as varied as grassroots activism in Iran and the two girls in Australia who updated their Facebook status messages rather than calling emergency services when they were trapped in a storm drain.

"I thank them, and we're glad, we're especially glad they got rescued," Sandberg said, noting that the girls' choice of crisis communication highlighted just how important Facebook is to personal connections in members' lives. "(But) next time you use emergency services, 911. Better option for sure."

What she also talked about: How fast Facebook has been growing. Last year at Advertising Week, she said, she announced that the social network recently had hit 100 million active users. This month, Facebook hit 300 million. And a full 50 percent of them still return to the site every day, Sandberg said, something that surprised her because she'd assumed that late adopters would be far less active than early adopters.

More numbers: Facebook's mobile applications are used by 65 million people. The average user spends 5.75 hours on the site per month. And the average user now has 130 friends, up from 120 a year ago.

Competition and skepticism
Sandberg had good reason to persistently highlight both Facebook's staggering growth and its newfound cultural significance: The advertising industry simply hasn't had a whole lot of faith in social media. "We've had some stumbles, some of our own making, and I think it's fair to say we have more of our fair share of critics," Sandberg said, mentioning that she'd once gotten a phone call from her parents asking whether she was looking for a new job because they'd read a report that Facebook was running out of money.

Facebook has also had to compete for marketer attention with the (at least for now) more buzzworthy Twitter, which rose to fast fame amid celebrity endorsements, a high-profile role during last year's U.S. elections, and the seemingly ubiquitious placement of "tweets" on cable news programs. A Twitter profile and a Facebook fan page can be directly competing products.

But the real skepticism surrounding Facebook's potential as a moneymaking power--at least as long as it remains supported primarily by advertising--comes about because, at least until this point, there has been a lot of marketing buzz-speak but not a whole lot of concrete numbers to measure its actual success.

"You want measurement, measurement you can rely on, measurement that you believe is valid," Sandberg said. That's why Facebook approached Nielsen as a respected third party, she explained.

Brands have found significant success with Facebook fan pages, which are free to create, she said. But adding paid advertisements through Facebook's "Engagement Ads" product can enhance those brand pages significantly, Sandberg explained. (It also means Facebook gets paid.)

"A year ago we introduced Engagement Ads. Rather than having to go to different sites or go to landing pages, consumers were able to engage with marketers directly with the ads themselves," Sandberg explained. "(They can) RSVP to the event, 'fan' a page, watch a video and comment, send a branded gift, or respond to questions from a marketer." As part of Tuesday's announcement, Sandberg announced that Engagement Ads have been expanded to include an easy way for Facebook members to request free product samples.

There were some skeptical questions from the audience, notably one that inquired about the poor searchability and indexing features on Facebook profiles and fan pages. The audience member asked whether this was potentially being upgraded.

"The short answer, is do we want to take content and make you more easily able to find it, find it now, find it later?" Sandberg responded. "Of course. And it's something we're definitely working on."

Update Tuesday 4:14 a.m. PDT: Facebook and Nielsen have officially announced their multiyear deal.

As part of the Advertising Week festivities in New York, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is slated to make a marketing-related announcement on Tuesday morning.

The announcement of a partnership with Nielsen on a product called "BrandLift," which polls Facebook users on ads they see on the social network, was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

There weren't a whole lot of details disclosed, even when the two companies confirmed the news of "a multi-year, strategic alliance" later on Monday. Nielsen BrandLift, a release explained, is the first product created from the deal. It will use opt-in polls on Facebook's home page to gauge user sentiment around advertisements, measuring "aided awareness, ad recall, message association, brand favorability, and purchase consideration." It'll roll out in the U.S. to a number of test partners this week and to all advertisers over the next few months. There will be "hundreds" of BrandLift tests in that time, the release explained.

An end date to the multi-year deal has not been disclosed, Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank told CNET News on Monday evening.

For now, Nielsen BrandLift is part of its partnership with Facebook. But the product "will expand to other websites" eventually, Burbank said. He wouldn't comment on repeated rumors that Facebook would be launching an ad network for sites participating in its Facebook Connect program.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook has a history of big New York marketing pushes to further establish itself as a major player on Madison Avenue. Earlier this year, Sandberg keynoted the AdAge Digital conference to pitch Facebook's "active network" of friend connections as a powerful advertising tool, and two years ago Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the social network's first major advertising initiative shortly after Microsoft had taken a $240 million stake in the company.

(Part of that 2007 announcement included Beacon, the ill-fated advertising program that Facebook finally put the kibosh on this week.)

Getting statistics on advertising effectiveness is important for Facebook, especially with a longtime industry player like Nielsen on board. While Facebook has been growing in prominence as a digital ad destination, it's still had to do some convincing to combat the industry attitude that social-media advertising doesn't work.

Also sure to be mentioned at Tuesday's announcement? The fact that Facebook has recently hit 300 million active users around the world and continues to grow fast. That's a lot of eyeballs.

Nielsen's own measurements of Facebook traffic place the social network as the fourth largest unique audience in the U.S. (and remember, most of its traffic is now overseas), and that out of all Web-based brands it enjoys the most individual time spent per user.

This post was expanded at 7:33 p.m. PT.

Traffic firm Hitwise says Facebook eventually overcame MySpace in terms of U.S. traffic as a result of the launch of its Facebook Connect universal log-in product, according to a post from analyst Heather Dougherty.

"The number of Web sites participating in Facebook Connect has grown quickly to over 15,000 Web sites (globally) including CNN.com, NBC.com, ABCNews.com, Hulu, WashingtonPost.com, The Huffington Post, and others," Dougherty's post read. "And what is really interesting is to look at the year-over-year growth in the market share of visits to Facebook, because there is a clear uptick in the growth rate following the launch of Facebook Connect."

And that growth spurt was what made it the biggest site of its kind in the U.S., according to the numbers. The social network officially surpassed MySpace in U.S. traffic during the week of May 30, Hitwise estimated.

Facebook's rapid growth made it pretty much inevitable that it would surpass the News Corp.-owned MySpace, once the clear leader in social networking. But even when Facebook passed MySpace in worldwide traffic, MySpace still had a pretty big edge in the U.S. Ultimately, Facebook passed MySpace in U.S. usage earlier than some thought it would.

If Hitwise's numbers are accurate, it's a big testament to the success of Facebook Connect, which launched in full last December.

MySpace has launched its own universal log-in product, MySpaceID, backed by partnerships with Google and Yahoo. But it's Facebook Connect that has caught on among both the Web-going public and the marketing world.

"A clear benefit of Facebook Connect is the ability of the user to use a single portable identity--and most importantly, one password, rather than logging into multiple accounts across the network of Web sites," Dougherty wrote. "Participation from Web sites in Facebook Connect also has strong implications to appear more often in the search results executed on Facebook resulting from member postings as search becomes a more prevalent activity within this large audience.

Facebook now has more than 250 million active users worldwide.

AAAAAAHHHH! Here come the grown-ups!

You've probably heard it already: New numbers from iStrategyLabs indicate that in the apparent reversal of the plot of any '90s-era kiddie caper flick, grown-ups are taking over Facebook.

According to iStrategyLabs, from January to July of 2009, even though the population of Facebook members over the age of 55 grew 513.7 percent, the site now sees 16.5 percent fewer high-school users, and 21.7 percent fewer college users. Which, naturally, is cause for panic because when the cool kids leave it's all totally over. Or so the common wisdom says.

A BusinessWeek blog post has the right idea: Take a look at the methodology. iStrategyLabs did not actually survey Facebook members, it just looked at their affiliations. The downturn means that Facebook users are dropping their university and high-school affiliations, not that they're leaving the site per se. And that could mean one of a few things: as the BusinessWeek post points out, it coincides well with spring graduations from high schools and colleges, and some members undoubtedly drop those affiliations when they graduate.

Another theory that's been tossed around is that university and high-school affiliations can make it easy for administrators and teachers--not to mention parents--to keep tabs on kids and their shenanigans. Not joining networks can make a profile more incognito.

It's also important to note that these statistics come solely from Facebook's U.S. users, who now make up less than a third of its total membership.

And there's no related shrinkage shown in Facebook's age demographics that typically encompass high-school and college students--members under 17 are up 24.2 percent, and those aged 18-24 are up 4.8 percent. Just a smidge, but not a plummet by any means.

So this is a set of numbers to take with enough grains of salt to put around the rim of a margarita--but just think twice before you put the photo of you drinking that margarita on Facebook. Those sneaky adults could be watching.