social-media

Facebook is entering into a partnership with Nielsen for a new advertising offering on the social network. Dubbed BrandLift, the initiative will use Nielsen’s market research expertise to reach the more than 300 million members on Facebook.

“Nielsen is the leader in measurement and is an excellent partner for us as we look to provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data,” said Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.

Rolling out as a test to a few advertisers this week, BrandLift uses opt-in polls on Facebook’s homepage to measure consumer attitude and intent about brands. BrandLift will roll out to all advertisers in the coming months.

“Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen’s online division. “We will now be able to add deep knowledge of this important social network to our unmatched media measurement and consumer insight across all three screens. Together we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how Web content and online advertising affect consumer behavior.”

Through the partnership, Facebook and Nielsen hope to provide advertisers with more accurate market data in a more timely fashion. Additionally, the polls are easy to create and should reduce the upfront time needed to conduct campaigns.

Members have not been forgotten in the process. Polls will be spaced out so as not to bombard any individual user. Additionally, no personally identifiable information will be collected from the polls.

Let’s have a little informal poll right now. What’s your reaction to the Facebook-Nielsen partnership? Will you use BrandLift in your social marketing campaigns? Leave your survey answers below.

If you’re a Twitter user, you’re used to @ tags. When you reply to a Tweet, you put @username and then type your reply. When you ReTweet someone, you use @username, as well.

The @ symbol was used on blogs long before Twitter came around, so that people could address specific commenters directly.

Now, Facebook is jumping on the @ bandwagon. If you want to reference another Facebook member in your update, use the @ symbol and start typing in their name. The twist is that the @ symbol won’t appear in the update, but it will hyperlink the name of the person you’ve tagged.

Additionally, those who’ve been tagged will get a notification, and they’ll be able to remove their name from your update.

What do you think of Facebook’s incorporation of friend tagging? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

If you were to ask around social media and online marketing professionals how to measure the influence of a Twitter user, you’d probably get a variety of answers. That’s because there are a variety of success stories.

Some organizations use it as a broadcast medium; some are conversationalists. Some have a ton of followers, others have fewer but establish more concrete relationships.

So, who has the best influence? Is it the person with the most ReTweets? Is it the person with the most responses to an average Tweet?

The Web Ecology Project is attempting to answer those questions with their new report The Influentials: New Approaches for Analyzing Influence on Twitter.

Reading the 18 page PDF, I felt like more questions were raised than answered, but what’s great about the report is the careful consideration it gives to the different ways to measure influence.

Far too many people seem to place importance on sheer number of followers. But there can be powerful influence among those with smaller numbers of followers as well.

We know this from other studies showing the power of reviews and the trust consumers place in the opinions of friends and family.

And even though the Web Ecology Project itself came to such conslusions as “Mashable is more influential than CNN,” reading through their report ultimately reveals that measuring influence really depends on how you define it.

Looking at some of their data shows how challenging these tasks are. The Web Ecology Project chose some of the top Twitterers in Entertainment, News, and Social Media according to how many followers they have.

But what are all of those followers doing with those Tweets? Check out each Twitterer’s percentage of ReTweets, Replies and Mentions by number of their total responses:

The less well-known you are the more effort you have to put forth to generate responses. Ashton Kutcher gets tons of responses for his Tweets, which are smaller in number than other less-known Twitterers, such as the social media gurus. In other words, if no one knows who the heck you are, you’re going to have to work your butt off to be influential on Twitter.

How do you measure influence on Twitter? Is conversation or broadcasting more influential? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

Do you like to talk? Do you use more than the average number of words other people use a day? Do you get blank stares and/or smile-and-nods as you go on and on about how cute your baby is? Then you’re probably just a little frustrated with Twitter’s 140 character max.

Don’t worry. A new site is out there to help you update in all of your long-winded glory. Woofer (found at Woofertime.com for all you direct URL typers) dubs itself as a “macroblogging” service that has a minimum of 1400 characters. Don’t adjust your screen. That’s 10 times more than you get with a Twitter!

I decided to take a stab at the challenge of a 1400 character Woofer. After all, I am a professional writer. Here’s what I came up with:

I’m not sure why they decided to name this Woofer. I’m not offended by the name. I first typed in Woofer.com which was a site about audio services, which makes sense. You know, subwoofer. I think the choice of a dog as a mascot is an appropriate, if obvious, one. I’m not totally sure what breed of dog that is. It kind of looks like a Bulldog-Chihuahua mix. A weird mix indeed. Probably heavy on the Chihuahua. Because if you’re going to think about the concept of Woofer requiring a lot of characters, you naturally think “What breed barks a lot?” And definitely, Chihuahuas bark a lot. Though, many would say it’s more of a “yapping.” Which begs the question. Why didn’t they name this “Yapper.” I suppose that would have offended some long-winded people. But really, is Woofer any less offensive? Either way, you’re kind of calling people who talk a lot dogs. Then again, Twitter users are called Twits. I’m pretty sure i’d rather be called a dog. Though, it is kind of funny to think of the “power users” of Twitter as just little birds that hang out at your outdoor table at Panera just hoping you’ll drop food for them to eat. Then again, a few months ago, we took my dog with us to lunch and put out some cheese for her to eat (she loves cheese) and rolled our eyes as she was scared of a teeny tiny bird came along and stole her cheese. She’s a golden-spaniel mix. She’s like 100 times bigger!

If you’re important enough to have a Facebook Page (as opposed to an individual profile like the rest of us), then you’re getting the ability to simultaneously update Facebook and Twitter – directly from Facebook.

Ok, to be fair, Facebook pages include organizations such as LIVESTRONG who actually have important things to say than, say, celebrities talking about red carpet events or their jeans.

Still, it would be nice if that functionality would roll out to the rest of us – not as an application, but as a bonafide Facebook feature. And hey, with that recent FriendFeed acquisition, that shouldn’t be too hard, right?