Facebook Approaches 500 Million Mobile Users – Infographic

I do enjoy my cycling and it is a great way to keep fit, socialize and  enjoy coffee all in one capsule of time.

It also is one way of refreshing the body, mind and soul from the the pressures of work and life.
Cycling though can be dangerous, with trucks and cars and other immovable objects threatening life and limb.

But there is a new and alarming epidemic and trend that is making the roads more dangerous and it is the addicted Facebook user checking their timeline on their mobile.

Luckily the police have realized this and in fact in Fort Lee, New Jersey in the USA they have started booking “dangerous” walkers who are not obeying the rules of the road“.

It certainly is about time because it would be embarrassing to report to my friends that I was injured cycling not from a hitting a bus but by being taken out by an over zealous and jaywalking Facebook user on their mobile!

Facebook Understands the Importance of Mobile

Facebook must have been talking to the police about this mobile addiction trend because they have just bought  Instagram which isn’t even a social media website but just a mobile app (a mobile app that just happens to have nearly 40 million users).

Additionally Facebook has increased its focus on mobile in preparing for a mobile and social web that goes  beyond the Instagram acquisition with the purchase of the Android  photosharing app developer “Lightbox” as reported by Techcrunch.

Lightbox creates photo blogs from a users uploads and has been described as the “Lazy man’s Tumblr”



Now before you rush off and try and sign up to Lightbox, the acquisition is not the business or the app but only the team, as it will be closed down by June 15 and you will see its technology emerge as a Facebook mobile feature sometime in the future.

The other common element to take note of with both these acquisitions are that they are photo centric “apps”, because Facebook knows that photos are the highest engaging content on its platform (50% higher share rate than any other type of update on Facebook timelines)

The challenge that still remains for Facebook,  is how they will monetize the burgeoning mobile space.

The Compelling Facts and Figures

One other compelling reason Facebook is aggressively chasing mobile users is that in the developed countries its growth is approaching saturation point.

In developing countries the use of mobile is predominant with telecommunications infrastructure being built around mobile technology instead of fixed.

This is evident with countries like New Guinea (78%) and  Nigeria (81%) having some of the highest Facebook mobile penetration in the world.

• 54% Penetration of Facebook mobile (488 million out of 901 million users)
• Android and Apple share the largest mobile platform usage at 19% each
• iPad is 5% of Facebook mobile usage
• The top 5 countries using Facebook mobile are USA, Indonesia and India followed by the UK and then Mexico

What About You?

How are you going to take advantage of mobile for your business. Do you have a mobile app for your online store. Is your website optimized for mobile?

Can people read about your brand and business on a mobile?

Look forward to hearing your stories.

























View the Original article

Read more...

Twitter Update Makes it Easier for Users to Discover Your Marketing Content

The savviest of inbound marketers know that content creation is at the heart of a successful inbound marketing strategy. But if marketers are consistently pumping out tons and tons of content, what you end up with is a cluttered web that will only get more cluttered, right?

These days, content discovery is a big problem, both as a user and as a marketer. Your audience is constantly struggling to separate the wheat from the chaff, and as a marketer, you're always looking for ways to make sure your content gets in front of the eyes of that audience.

The good news is, search engines and social networks have been trying to make content discovery and delivery a little bit easier lately. For example, we've witnessed LinkedIn's launch of more robust content targeting tools; Google's pushes to reward high quality content and penalize low-quality, spammy content in search; and various other efforts by Google and social networks to provide more relevant, personalized content to its users.

Well, here's one more for ya! Yesterday, Twitter announced an update to its Discover tab, which aims to provide users with content that is even more personalized and relevant to them.

The Twitter Discover tab was originally created to make it easier for users to discover meaningful information without needing to follow other accounts. With Twitter's new update, the tab will now take into consideration additional personalization signals to surface stories and tweets that are popular among the people you follow -- and the people they follow.

How Twitter Decides Which Content to Highlight on the Updated Discover Tab

The Twitter Engineering Blog had a bit more to say about how Twitter determines which content is relevant to a particular user via the Discover tab. Here's how it works:

• Twitter uses a 'graph processing library' called Cassovary to identify a user's connections.
• It then ranks those connections based on how strong and important they are to the user.
• Once it identifies that strong network of users, Twitter uses its search function to find URLs that have been shared by that group of people.
• Twitter then converts the links it finds into stories to display in the Discover tab.
• Before it displays the stories, Twitter does a final ranking of the stories based on how many people have tweeted about them and how important those people are in relation to the user.

Twitter states that this all happens in near-real time so they can surface breaking, relevant stories to users in the Discover tab soon after people start talking about them.

New Discover Tab Design

The update of the Discover tab also comes with a new design, which features avatars of the users who have tweeted about particular stories. You can also view popular tweets about that story from people in your network as well as recent and relevant tweets by clicking 'View Tweets' on any given story, giving you the social context to understand why particular stories are relevant to you. Furthermore, you have the option to easily share your perspective on the story with your followers by clicking 'Tweet this story,' or to retweet, favorite, or reply to tweets about the story.

Content Discovery and Marketing

Twitter has indicated it will be rolling out this new design and functionality to users on Twitter.com as well as for iPhone and Android devices over the coming weeks. Twitter also mentioned that this is just the first of an ongoing effort for Twitter to bring users closer to the content and tweets they care about, so you can bet there is going to be more from Twitter in the future to make content discovery even easier.

As a marketer, think of Twitter's update as yet another way for your audience to discover your content -- and another reason why using social media as a vehicle for content promotion is so important. To optimize your marketing content for social sharing so it's easier for your audience to share the content they love, add share links/buttons to all your content -- every blog article, every landing page, every case study, within every ebook -- you name it! Putting your content out there and making it easy for others to do so will make it more likely that it will pop up in content discovery engines like Twitter's Discover tab for your target audience, especially if it's getting shared by likeminded people!

What do you think of Twitter and other platforms' attempts to improve content discovery? What other implications does it have for marketers?
















View the Original article

Read more...