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.
MySpace started off as a hub for indie bands to connect with their fans. Now, with a new partnership with the IAC/InterActiveCorp-owned Citysearch, it's hoping to do the same for the likes of bars, clubs, and restaurants.
Called "MySpace Local," the new section on the News Corp.-owned MySpace will be rooted in existing listings from Citysearch (restricted to major U.S. cities) that are souped up with social features like the ones that you might see on a band or celebrity's MySpace page (photos, videos, comments, and the like). It's launching with just "restaurants," "bars," and "nightlife" categories, but will eventually expand--and it'll only be available to a select number of users this week before rolling out to the rest of MySpace's U.S. users.
"We're using the tools of new media to make the discovery as social and therefore as relevant as possible," said Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace, in a conference call on Tuesday. "The first thing you will see are ratings and reviews from your actual friends. When a reviewer is anonymous or unknown, it's hard to say whether you should care what they think."
Eventually, MySpace Local will highlight reviews from celebrities, "influencers," and power users with "street cred." There will also be new features like menus and possibly an online reservation tool.
This move will put MySpace in competition with fast-growing reviews site Yelp, which has been dealing with image and credibility issues recently but which has nevertheless been catching up to Citysearch in reach.
It'll also present more opportunities for local advertising. The social network has been courting small advertisers with a program called MyAds. But there will be big brand advertisers on MySpace Local, too, with Outback Steakhouse and Coors signing on for the launch.
Citysearch, which recently overhauled its site, also syndicates some of its content to AOL.
Berman said that research showed about 50 percent of active Citysearch users have MySpace profiles that they check at least once a month. "There is healthy overlap, but there is also a healthy new audience to be reached," he said.
This post was expanded at 10:54 a.m. PDT.
SynthaSite, a San Francisco-based company that lets users build Web sites with minimal technical expertise required, has changed its name: it has ditched the corporate-sounding moniker for the more Web 2.0-ish Yola.
"The name SynthaSite has brought us to where we are today, but it won't take us where we want to go," CEO Vinny Lingham said in a release. "We're reaching a global market and need a name that is easy to say, resonates in any language, and captures the creativity and excitement that our users bring to their Web sites."
Yola, which targets individuals and small businesses, comes from the Hindi word for "hatch." It launched early last year and now says it has more than 1.5 million registered users. The name change won't affect any of them, the company said, and if their sites are hosted on SynthaSite subdomains, the URLs will not change.
While still SynthaSite, Yola launched a new user interface last summer and more recently raised a $20 million series B venture round from Reinet Fund.
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