“Nielsen estimates that the whole population spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on the social network. That’s also about the equivalent of 100,000 years, or 36.8 million days.”

The figures provided by Nielsen are based on the user activity of one hundred and fifty million people logging on to Facebook in the U.S. which equates to each person spending 350 minutes a month, or roughly ten minutes per day, on the social networking site.

Facebook teamed with measurement company Nielsen BrandLift in 2009 in a move to, according to Sheryl Sandberg who made the announcement: “provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data” allowing brands to more effectively monitor their advertisements.  The partnership was the precursor to the aggressive push towards social media marketing as the next big step for advertisers; and it seems to have worked.

Last month it was reported that Facebook reached a phenomenal one trillion hits per month; and according to web traffic reports for August, the social networking site attracted eight hundred and seventy million unique visits, providing Facebook with an impressive 46.9% reach among users surfing the web.  These are very appealing statistics for businesses using social media marketing as a platform to raise awareness of their company, product or brand online, and according to TIME’s report:

“Those 870 million visitors are around 120 million greater than Facebook’s reported total number of registered users. The discrepancy may be down to non-Facebook members visiting the site from other social media links or through search engine traffic.”

Comforting for social media marketers to know that Facebook’s reach extends beyond it’s registered followers, with over 10% of non Facebook users accounting for the website’s traffic.

Nielsen’s study also revealed that next in line after Facebook came Yahoo with over seventeen billion minutes spent on their site in May, and Google in third position with twelve and a half billion minutes.

Google can console themselves with the knowledge that after Facebook, You Tube came in with only a tenth of the social networking sites page views, but almost the same number of unique visitors, giving Google’s video sharing site a 42.6% reach amongst users online.

Facebook’s triumph comes just a week after Twitter announced via it’s blog that they had topped one hundred million users worldwide:

“Five years ago, Twitter came to life when @jack sent the first Tweet to his seven followers. Now, 100 million active users around the globe turn to Twitter to share their thoughts and find out what’s happening in the world right now [...] more than half of them log in to Twitter each day.”

The statistics recorded by Facebook and Twitter are testament to the impact that social media marketing is having on advertising strategies; and with the eagerly anticipated launch of Google+ the social revolution is set to continue.

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Snaptu, founded in June 2007, provides the ability to use applications designed for smart phones on simpler feature mobile phones.  The purchase of Snaptu is the third acquisition for Facebook this year, preceded by Rel8tion a company specialising in mobile advertising, and group messaging provider Beluga.

Earlier this week Snaptu announced that they had agreed to be acquired by Facebook, via their blog, identifying their objective in becoming part of one of the worlds largest social networking sites, with over 600m active users and counting:

“We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development. And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world”.

The move by Facebook is no doubt motivated by the fact that feature phones make up the vast majority of the mobile market; accounting for roughly 80% of mobile phones operating around the world; about 4.2bn out of the 5.3bn handsets that are used globally; essentially 77% of the worlds population.

According to statistics there was in excess of 200m mobile users accessing Facebook in the month of January, and this group was twice as active, on average, compared with non-mobile users.  In the same month that this information was collated, Facebook launched their app for feature phones, providing access to their social networking site from 2,500 different mobile devices; broadening Facebook’s global market into countries such as Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Poland, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Honk Kong, Tunisia, Dominican Republic and Romania.  It is believed that there are also plans for carriers to extend this service, to be made available in Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil and Bulgaria.

As explained by Charles Wu via Facebook’s blog, they are working towards a “better mobile experience” by developing their applications to make them suitable for use with feature phones:

“Over the past six months, we built the Facebook for Feature Phones app with Snaptu to bring improved Facebook functionality to over 2,500 different devices. We also launched 0.facebook.com as a faster and free way for people to access Facebook around the world, including locations where connectivity is especially costly and slow”.

Because simplistic feature phones do not tend to have access to the internet, this market is one that has remained unattainable to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, feature phone apps must be developed specifically for use with their operating software; a vastly different platform to traditional smart phone applications; the main difference being lower data requirements, and communications that are traditionally delivered via text message.

According to Snaptu, the acquisition is likely to be expediently managed, and is expected to be complete by the end of April.

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Executives from Warner Brothers are anticipating that the new partnership will generate a fresh revenue stream for the company, by making their films more accessible for people globally. The deal will also open up the Hollywood market to new customers, by providing films in an accessible platform. Initially, the service will be launched across America, but if the pilot scheme proves to be successful with users it is intended to be rolled out globally.

The new service will operate through the use of Facebook credits, which will be charging under two pounds for access to each film. Customers who download films will then be able to watch them within two days, at which point their access will be moved. Initially the first film to be used for the pilot will be Batman: Dark Knight, which was released in 2008. Further movies will follow after Batman has been piloted, although the titles which will be next made available have not yet been released.

Industry critics seem to be positive about the new partnership, suggesting that if it is successful then film studios from across the globe will consider launching the service. The initiative is a natural first step for filmmakers looking to make their products more accessible, as more more people have access to fast broadband and are becoming comfortable with viewing content over the Internet.

However, there are concerns that the new development may have a similar impact upon the film industry to that which was suffered through the music business, as record labels have experienced significant falls in profit as a result of online piracy. According to critics from companies are already at risk of losing revenue as result of similar issues and it is thought that making films available online will serve to compound the issue, unless there are strict regulations around security of downloads.

The move by Warner Brothers will offer Internet users are convenient and quick way of getting hold of their favourite films, reaching 500 million people globally. Teaming up with Facebook is a savvy move as it reaches a huge global audience, which other film subscription services have not yet managed to supply services to.

A spokesperson from Warner Brothers has commented: “Facebook has become a destination for hundreds of millions of people. Making our films available through Facebook is a extension of our digital distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world’s largest social network”.

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Users will now be able to obtain help for their Facebook friends who are expressing suicidal thoughts or intentions through the site. The new system has been piloted over the past few months with the support of The Samaritans. While it was operating on a trial basis, several people made genuine requests for help on behalf of others, and the system received no hoax calls or abuse.

The system will enable anyone who has a concern about a friend to fill out an emergency form, which goes straight through to moderators of the site. The reporting page requests details about the person concerned, including their site URL where the messages are being published, in order to enable moderators to identify them. From there, the site moderators will work with The Samaritans to get help for the person. Any alerts which are posted through will be given the highest possible priority.

A spokesperson for the charity commented: “When a report is made, they then assess whether they need to call the police immediately or forward it on to us.”

The new reporting system has been developed following a number of incidents which have taken place on the site. Recently, a young woman took her own life through a drug overdose and posted up her intention to harm herself prior to going ahead with the suicide. While her friends actually commented on the messages published to Facebook, no-body raised the alarm or called any external support group for help.

Similarly, a teenage boy in Oxfordshire sent a message to an online friend of his in the USA, expressing his intention to take his own life. In this incident, the friend contacted her parents, who called through to the US and then British police force. They were subsequently able to track the teenager down, take him to hospital and save his life.

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Zuckerberg commented: “A lot has been made about a single Facebook phone, but this year, you can expect to see dozens of phones with much deeper social integration than we have so far. Phones are inherently social devices and the industry is just beginning to discover what’s possible.” The Facebook mogul made reference to the Application programming Interfaces which the site offers, which enables manufacturers of phones to incorporate social networking capabilities in to their operating systems, and also admitted that the company intended to continue interacting closely with mobile manufacturers and providers of operating systems.

New figures released by ComScore show that over thirty percent of online users now use their smartphones to access the internet, as of January this year. Those who owned less capable mobile devices tended to access the web much less on their phones, with only seven percent of users doing so.

This trend for smartphone online access looks set to continue, and Facebook have gained approval from industry experts for supporting new softwares rather than entering in to the hardware market. Gareth Beavis, the mobile editor for TechRadar has commented: “It gives operators and brands the opportunity to shape the system as they see fit. Facebook integration will prove a strong selling point for cheaper smartphones, which lack the sophisticated features of higher-end devices.”

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The metrics produced by MerchantCircle have also showed that the Places application is actively taking business away from competitors, as use of location-based tools have remained static at nine percent for the last two quarters of the year. Despite the increased uptake of the Facebook Places function, many businesses surveyed admit that they do not have the time to devote to the promotion of their business, with almost forty percent of companies questioned stating that they lack the resource to focus upon promotion.

Over half of all businesses spend less than one thousand pounds per year on marketing, and sixty percent of organisations questioned have stated that they do not intend to increase the amount of budget which they allocate to company promotion. Over twenty percent of companies stated that they considered marketing online to be too expensive for their company budget to accommodate.

Facebook Places has now eclipsed rival firm Google’s tools for company marketing, with seventy percent of merchants using Facebook and sixty-six percent utilising Google’s services. This shows an increase of twenty percent from last year. Almost forty percent of people surveyed stated that they found Facebook to be an effective and reliable means of advertising their company products and services online. The data collated by MerchantCircle has demonstrated that Facebook needs to target more small businesses in order to encourage them to use the online marketing possibilities of tools such as Places in order to promote their business online.

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The categories include people who use Facebook for business, charity advocated, and people simply looking to stay in touch with their friends and family through remote contact. Another category is people whom Williams described as ‘Feel-Gooders’ – those who utilise the site in order to benefit from the community spirit available through the site. The research has pioneered a quiz which allows people to identify their character type when it comes to using the social networking site.

Williams took over two thousand users of the site, and found out that mothers were more likely than their children to have a strong network of friends, family and colleagues, going on to have thousands of ‘friends’ linked to them online.

Williams commented: “One reason is because, when you get to 45 or 50 you have not only your friends, but your children’s friends, acquaintances from school and others. Children and teenagers tend to stick to their own age group. Women over the age of forty like to collect as many people as they can.”

“They get involved in games like Farmville and like sending virtual gifts to their neighbours. Feel-Gooders love the community spirit of Facebook and the chance it gives them to learn about other people’s cultures.”

Another group has been identified as the ‘All About Me’ users, who take the site and use it in order to brag about their successes and the everyday details of their life. Williams suggests that these are the “ones most women love to hate. They don’t care if they lose a friend or two along the way – they’re definitely not interested in other people.”

“The most interesting thing, if you look at the research, you can identify these types of people quite easily from looking at their Facebook page. You probably have a few of them in your own friends list already.”

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The investigation which UKOM conducted has shown that people spent in the region of thirty-seven million days browsing the web over the course of April 2010.

This figure compares favourably with figures collated for the same month in 2007, where surfers spent twenty-three million days online. On average each month, a user will spend approximately twenty-two hours browsing online. However, UKOM suggest that the way on which people access the internet, and the activities which they undertake when online, have changed dramatically.

The largest change in usage has stemmed from people utilising the facilities of social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook. Reading blogs has become a key pastime of people surfing online, and keeping up with favourite blogs now accounts for one quarter of all time spent on the web. News websites have grown in popularity, with an increase of 212% for people perusing the internet for news updates. This has amounted to almost one hundred thousand days worth of surfing, in April 2010.

UKOM commented: “Around 9 out of 10 under 35s are internet users, three quarters of 35-54s, and among the 55+ group it’s still as high as 4 out of 10. Internet use is frequent and regular. The audience to the internet builds quickly – almost all users in the past year have gone online in the past month and a quarter of adults claim to use the internet more than once a day. 45% of adults are purchasing products online.”

“62.8% of adults were internet users in the first quarter of last year. By the fourth quarter, this proportion had risen to 66.9%. So, although growth will be levelling off as the medium matures, at year end there were two million more adults online than at the start of the year. Likewise, broadband growth over a similar period penetration grew from 54% to 60%. This probably contributes to more frequent online activity. The number of adults having more than one online session each day grew by around 2.3 million.”

UK companies can use the research by the company by targeting SEO activities to accommodate the new preferences of internet users, providing relevant news copy, streamlining blogs and enhancing accessibility of key preferred sites and information.

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While approximately one billion dollars were raised through clients of Goldman Sachs, the bank themselves put up $500m, assisted by the Russian company Digital Sky Technologies. Even following the remarkable amount generated for the social networking site, a spokesperson for the firm admitted that they would have been able to generate further revenue through the sale of shares, as the offer was oversubscribed. The new revenue generated places Facebook at a value higher than key organisations including Times Warner and eBay.

David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer, commented: “Our business continues to perform well and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing. With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead. We have no immediate plans for the proceeds from the fundraising, but will continue investing to build and expand our operations. We will begin filing public financial reports on 30 April next year.”

The companies who have invested in the site have been asked to pay at least $2m each, and also sign up to other commitments including not selling the shares for at least two years, and pledging not to trade in secondary markets where Facebook trades. This is to prevent any information shared as a result of their investment being leaked in to the marketplace.

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Last week, Google announced that they would not be enabling Facebook users to interact Gmail customers, as the firm did not feel that Facebook management were enabling a reciprocal arrangement between the two companies. In response, Facebook have provided a link for their users which allows people to export their Gmail contact details through a manual PC upload, and then on to the site.

Google has claimed that it feels disappointed with Facebook’s actions, and the events have highlighted the strong sense for rivalry between the two organisations. Facebook is a highly sought-after platform for collaboration with search engines, and already shares information with Microsoft for their Bing search facility.

A Google spokesperson commented: “We’re disappointed that Facebook didn’t invest their time in making it possible for their users to get their contacts out of Facebook. As passionate believers that people should be able to control the data they create, we will continue to allow our users to export their Google contacts.”

A senior researcher from Ovum has commented on the spat: “Facebook is a significant challenge to Google’s dominance of the web sphere and it has decided that it doesn’t want to give Facebook any more advantage. This is Google waking up to the fact that it was the next big thing and that now Facebook is. Its 500 million contacts and links are absolute nirvana for advertising executives and Facebook is a lot closer to its customers.”

“Google is probably the biggest data repository in the world but it doesn’t have that all important social interaction. People want social interaction to be easy. Exposing what you are doing could make some people question whether they want to do it. While a work-around solution to uploading Gmail contacts might be a cheeky response to Google, I’m not sure it will wash with all Facebook users.”

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In addition, Places lists various attractions in the near area, and location information, to make it easy for users to navigate. The locations which are made available to each member are targeted according to their demographic. Facebook has built in some privacy controls in order to mitigate risks associated with divulging too much information, controlling the level of detail which is shared among members.

The new service is already widely available to US members, and now UK users can access the function through their smartphones via the Facebook mobile site. The networking giants plan to roll out the services to other countries shortly.

A BBC news correspondent has voiced his concerns over the new service: “In my mind there is still one big unanswered question to be settled – just how many people are eager and willing to tell the world where they are? The privacy concerns are obvious, though Facebook has done a reasonable job of making sure users know the implications of using Places and have to opt in to sharing their location.”

“What I don’t buy is the idea that millions will look at Facebook, spot that Joe is in a cafe just yards away and Tracy is in a pub across the road and then arrange to meet up. Perhaps I am too old to get this, but it strikes me that Places is aimed at quite a small section of the social network’s users.”

The person behind the launch of Places has responded to queries about what the service will offer, and why it has been developed. He explains: “We started seeing that in status updates people were saying things like ‘going to the gym’ or ‘hanging out with Joe and Sue,”. We realised that this is something that people do every single day, telling their friends where they are. The natural thing is to build a product that takes advantage of this and makes it easier, more convenient and more social for them to do what they’re already doing.”

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The news comes amid ongoing reports that Facebook is growing in strength and popularity, eclipsing its rival sites MySpace and Bebo. According to the Financial Times, this new figure demonstrates that Facebook is now enjoying an even higher value than anticipated by industry experts. The price associated with site now puts it ahead of other internet powerhouses such as eBay and Yahoo, which are worth $30.1 billion and $18.3 billion each.

A reporter from the Financial Times has commented: “Common stock in Facebook is trading as high as $76 a share as investors scramble to get a piece of the company before it files for an initial public offering, which analysts say could be the biggest technology IPO since Google’s $1.67bn flotation in 2004.”

“While Facebook and other successful Silicon Valley companies, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Zynga, are delaying their IPOs because of perceived weak appetite on the public markets, some investors are not content to wait. They are acquiring stakes in technology companies while they are still private, hoping that their eventual IPOs will send share prices even higher.”

Facebook has a membership of approximately 500 million, and at the moment is funded through a combination of venture capital and investment corporations. Although there is no firm date for the company to float on the market, reports suggest it will take place at some point next year. The company has gone from strength to strength since it was founded in 2004 by internet pioneer Mark Zuckerberg, a graduate from Harvard University.

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In addition, the application then attempts to attract people to a survey online, which scammers gain money for, each time it is filled in. the application is one of a number of scams which have attracted people, only for them to be bombarded with spam and illicit messages.

The scam does not actually enable users to download a ‘dislike’ button, and by the time the application gets to this fake stage in the process, users are already being compromised. The application updates user’s pages without permission, and encourages other people to download the fake application.

A spokesperson for security firm Sophos commented: “One thing we commonly see is that the message starts ‘OMG, shocking video’, and they appear to come from your Facebook friend, giving it a ringing endorsement. The ‘dislike’ button is the latest in a series of “survey scams” that include links to a video purporting to show an anaconda vomiting up a hippo. Many people are giving permission for completely unknown apps.”

“The surveys appear to be from genuine companies, and as far as we can tell, they appear to be legitimate. It could be that the firms are not policing their affiliates properly. The add-on also appears to be legitimate. Although Facebook could respond quickly, it should police the development of rogue applications more closely. Anyone can write a Facebook app – these scams are constantly springing up.”

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When one considers the traditional role of the teenager in a conventional stereotypical family, words such as ‘uncommunicative’ and ‘secretive’ spring to mind. However, social media is designed to pull even the most taciturn personality out of their shell, and teenagers are no strangers to baring all online, sharing their deepest secrets and thoughts with friends through sites such as Facebook.

This has worked very well for years, since social media took off as a popular way to communicate with other people. However, there is apparently a growing number of parents who are learning to surf the net specifically to enter the shadowy world of their children’s online networks and discover what they are doing, thinking and feeling at any given time.

This new trend has been concretized by a site which has sprung up recently: www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com. The site is dedicated to posting up Facebook screen shots showing conversations between shocked, outraged or funny parents and their offspring. The site is proving popular, having been showcased on a number of television shows recently as the ultimate example of social networking gone too far.

The examples of what parents say or do either to embarrass or shame their children are rather hilarious. Comments range from the sarcastic to the downright embarrassing, as doting mothers join the network to remind their children to stop smoking, clean their rooms, wash up or please call home. There is something extremely endearing about the fact that kids are prepared to highlight the teething problems from when their parents first join the site, and the lengths some parents will go to, in order to identify what their children are up to, Googling acronyms and trying to keep up with the net generation’s antics.

While still in its fledgling form, there is no doubt that this new site will grow in popularity and stature as more parents find their way online!

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