Online Real Estate Technology

Twitter says it is stepping up security measures for the popular messaging service, following a series of high-profile breaches by hackers hitting media organisations and others.

Twitter said it would implement a new login verification system, ‘a form of two-factor authentication’ which is ‘a second check to make sure it’s really you’ when a user signs in.

‘Of course, even with this new security option turned on, it’s still important for you to use a strong password and follow the rest of our advice for keeping your account secure,’ said Jim O’Leary of Twitter Product Security.

Some recent attacks took over Twitter feeds and delivered fake tweets using the accounts of Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, Financial Times and other news organisations.

Last month, hackers spooked markets after breaking into AP Twitter account and falsely reporting President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House.

Twitter said the new system would be an option for users, allowing them to require a verification code for each sign-in.

‘You’ll need a confirmed email address and a verified phone number. After a quick test to confirm that your phone can receive messages from Twitter, you’re ready to go,’ O’Leary said.

The security system will send a text message to the user’s mobile phone with a verification code that would be entered for the login.

The Syrian Electronic Army, which appears to be aligned with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, has claimed credit for hacking AFP, AP and other news organisations.

Earlier this month, the Twitter feed of satirical US news website The Onion was also taken over by the Syrian group aiming to inject its own sardonic spin on the deadly conflict.

The Onion posted details of how its feed was hijacked, describing how emails were sent to some employees in a phishing spoof to gain access to passwords.

Twitter said in February it was hit by a ‘sophisticated’ cyber attack and that the passwords of about 250,000 users were stolen.

Another month has flown by and it is now time to report our Australian Social Media statistics for April 2013.

As I have mentioned in the past, social media growth in Australia has slowed right up. The larger networks are now reaching saturation point and not growing like we saw in 2010 and 2011.

In Australia both Facebook and LinkedIn are happy to speak with members of the press about Australian user numbers. For some reason Twitter has never been so willing.

Last month I got a response from the official Twitter Australia, Twitter account – in regards to a question I have long been asking them: How many Australian’s are on Twitter?

This is a strange reply as Twitter have commented many times to the media about the US user numbers.

April 2013 stats:

(Please note the numbers below are the number of Unique Australian Visitors to the site over April).

1. Facebook – 11,489,380 Australian users/accounts (down approx 220).
2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs (steady)
3. Blogspot – 3,000,000 (down 200,000)
4. WordPress.com – 2,900,000 (steady)
5. Tumblr – 2,800,000 (up 200,000)
6. LinkedIn – 2,700,000 ( down 57,000)
7. Twitter – 2,167,849 Active Australian Users (see calculation below)
8. Instagram – 1,083,924 Active Australian Users (see calculation below)
9. Flickr – 860,000 (up 10,000)
10. TripAdvisor – 830,000
11. Pinterest – 630,000 (down 10,000)
12. MySpace – 300,000 (steady)
13. Yelp – 220,000 (steady)
14. Reddit – 180,000 (up 10,000)
15. Google Plus – approx 100,000 (my estimation *revised*)
16. StumbleUpon – 95,000 (steady)
17. Foursquare – 51,000 (steady)
18. Digg – 33,000 (steady)
19. Delicious – 31,000 (steady)

Read more »

It appears Aussies are starting to suffer from ‘Facebook fatigue’, according to new data from a social media monitor.

The data, collected by social media monitoring firm Social Bakers, shows around 115,000 less people have logged on each month since the beginning of 2013 – with almost 400,000 users walking away from Facebook since December.

‘When Facebook was starting up they got a lot of people on and it was very novel, but the novelty has worn off a little bit, so now people are scaling back use,’ Social media marketing expert at the Queensland University of Technology Business School, Professor Larry Neale, told News Limited.

And it’s not just Down Under – in recent years, millions of users in the US and Europe also started deactivating their accounts.

A spokesperson for Facebook Australia disputed the figures, News Limited reports.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

Twitter has began to allow ads to be targeted at users based on the words written in ‘tweets’ and messages forwarded to followers at the popular social network.

Previously, contents of Twitter messages relied on algorithms that pool the interests of users to send them potentially relevant ads in the form of tweets ‘promoted’ at the top of feeds.

Twitter produce manager Nipoon Malhotra said the new feature would allow ‘advertisers to reach users based on the keywords in their recent tweets and the tweets with which users recently engaged.’

Malhotra gave the example of a concert venue being able to target local music lovers with tweets promoting upcoming shows by bands they have raved about in messages at Twitter.

‘Users won’t see any difference in their use of Twitter; we’re not showing ads more frequently in timelines, and users can still dismiss promoted tweets they don’t find relevant,’ Malhotra said in a blog post.

Twitter is expected to earn $US582.8 million ($A563.55 million) globally in ad revenue this year and nearly $US1 billion next year, according to industry tracker eMarketer.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

Facebook has started transforming the stream of updates from friends at home pages into a ‘personalised newspaper’ with news ranging from the personal to the global.

The News Feed on home pages at the leading social network has been revamped to get rid of clutter and present ‘bright, beautiful’ stories whether they are insights from friends or trending news of the day.

‘I think there is a special place in the world for this sort of personalised newspaper,’ Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in introducing the overhauled News Feed.

‘It should have a front page and top news section or let you drill down into any topic you want.’

Facebook began rolling out the new News Feed ‘very slowly’ at its website reached by desktop or laptop and planned to begin adding it to its smartphone and tablet applications in the coming weeks.

Each News Feed will automatically be tuned to the interests of individual Facebook users, according to technical lead Chris Struhar.

Pictures in the feed will be gleaned from posts by friends or online pages people have indicated they ‘like’.

If a Facebook user follows pages from CNN or other professional media organisations, top shared or trending stories are displayed.

Music or film lovers should see News Feeds touting fresh developments regarding bands, stars, movies, songs or other related subjects.

Struhar told AFP ‘we hope you get all you need’ without having to leave Facebook.

While the amount of content shared at Facebook has soared, the amount of time people have to spend at the social network remains limited, inspiring the drive to more efficiently connect people with news they most care about.

‘Of course we all want to share with our friends, but we want updates from our favourite publications, artist, world leaders and more,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘This is the evolving face of News Feed.’

News Feed will give more prominence to major stories being shared by friends in the social network; trends at third-party applications such as Pinterest or Instagram, and weave in important personal bits such as a cousin with a new job.

‘When I wake up in the morning and see all my friends are sharing the exact same news story or video, I know it must be something big,’ said Facebook director of design Julie Zhuo.

‘You get a richer, simpler, more beautiful News Feed focused on the things you care about, what your friends are saying, and what is trending.’

Story source: www.bigpond.com

A vest developed in Massachusetts Institute of Technology lets Facebook users hug one another no matter how far apart they are.

A Like-A-Hug vest on display on Friday at the website of designer Melissa Kit Chow was touted as "wearable social media" that inflates to embrace wearers whenever Facebook friends "Like" items they post at the social network.

Chow worked with Andy Payne and Phil Seaton in the MIT Media Lab to create the puffy black vests, according to her website.

Like-A-Hug lets hugs "be given via Facebook, bringing us closer together despite physical distance", Chow said in a post describing the vest.

And, provided the sender is also wearing Like-A-Hug, a recipient can return a hug by squeezing their own vest to deflate it.

Chow described herself as a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design who subtly skews everyday interactions with the environment for "a reawakening of a sensorial spacial experience".

Story Source: www.ninemsn.com.au

Social media and search advertising are projected to be the most popular advertising tools this year, each cited by 24% of respondents to a PointRoll survey [pdf] of US marketing professionals, conducted by Kelton Research and released in March 2012. Display advertising followed closely, chosen by 22% of respondents. There was then a significant drop-off to online video (11%), mobile or tablet ads (7%), and mobile or tablet apps (6%). Just 1% chose email, text/SMS, or social gaming. Search advertising is more popular among respondents at director level or above, compared to those in supervisory or managerial positions (30% vs. 19%).

Most Will Increase Spend on Digital Channels

In fact, a majority of respondents are planning to up their spend on a variety of digital channels, a position that traditional channels are not slated to share. Among digital channels, the largest proportion say they will increase their spending on social media marketing or ads (79%), closely followed by those who will increase their budgets for mobile marketing or ads (75%). A comparatively fewer 55% say they will increase spending on search advertising, though this compares favorably to just 7% who will either decrease spending (3%) or not use this tool (4%).

Conversely, out-of-home marketing or ads will get an increase from just 16% of marketing professionals, on par with the proportion who will decrease spending in this area. And while 15% will budget more for traditional marketing or ads, 21% will scale back their budgets. Even so, traditional marketing channels still get a big chunk of budgets: 57% of marketing and advertising executives in organizations with revenues of $10 million or more said that most of their spending in 2011 went to traditional efforts.

Audience Targeting Proves Exciting

Meanwhile, audience targeting (49%) tops the list of industry trends that respondents are excited about, ahead of other movements including cross-screen media (40%), web TV (30%), Facebook marketing (37%), social gaming (22%) and digital out-of-home marketing or ads (19%). Excitement about audience targeting is higher at the directorial level and above than at the supervisory or managerial level (56% vs. 44%).

Some of that excitement may be related to necessity: 17% of respondents said that identifying the right audience has been holding them back from doing their job more successfully. According to March 2012 survey results from Acxiom and Loyalty 360, just 49% of company executives agree that they know who their most loyal customers are, and the best way to reach out to them and get them to engage with their brand. In fact, just 10% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, while about one-third were neutral and roughly 1 in 5 disagreed.

Marketers Using Numerous Tools and Partners

Data from PointRoll’s “Marketing Tools Study 2012? indicates that 28% of marketing and advertising professionals use at least 7 tools during a single campaign to reach their target market, while 62% use between 3 and 6 tools. To help with their efforts, roughly 3 in 10 respondents call on at least 10 partners to help them during a campaign. Even so, this sometimes has the opposite effect than intended: about one-third say that managing multiple vendors typically prevents them from doing their job better, and 1 in 10 say that working more efficiently with vendors is their biggest goal this year.

Other Findings:

• Marketing professionals would pay a company an average of $107,500 to manage an integrated digital campaign.
• Increasing sales (31%) and ROI (28%) are the goals most commonly cited as marketers’ most important for this year.
• Slightly more than half of respondents say that inefficient ROI tracking and measurement has hindered their success at work.
• Almost all respondents predict they will use online video this year. The most popular formats are in-banner (60%), in-stream (49%) and dynamic or customized video ads (42%).
• Roughly 2 in 5 respondents believe that they are behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing.

About the Data: The PointRoll data is based on a survey of more than 250 marketing professionals from across the US at supervisor level and above, conducted in January 2012.

Story source: www.mikeandrewconsulting.com/blog

Although roughly 3 in 4 SMBs use email marketing tactics such as organic list growth and web-based sign-up forms to generate leads, just 41% include a sign-up form on their Facebook fan pages, according to a survey released in February 2012 by GetResponse. And while a majority optimize their newsletters with clear, recognizable, branded from field names and addresses, less than half include social sharing icons in their newsletters.
SMBs appear to be behind the curve in this regard: according to a survey released in February 2012 by Econsultancy, in partnership with the Email Experience Council of the DMA, 69% of US organizations are including social sharing icons in their emails, while a further 13% have a plan in place to do so.

Segmentation Also Not Widespread

Data from GetResponse’s “The State of Email Marketing in SMBs” indicates that only 42% of the SMBs surveyed segment their lists based on either subscriber personal data or subscriber actions, such as opens and clicks. List hygiene is poor, too: just 38% report removing inactive contacts, and only 36% try to re-engage them through re-activation campaigns. SMBs also seem to be ignoring the risks posed by bad addresses: only 53% use mailing systems that automatically process soft and hard bounces and take appropriate actions to the addresses.

Legal Compliance Better, Though

72% of respondents indicate that they use a confirmed opt-in email model, and 71% provide unsubscribe links in their emails. Overall, the marketers surveyed cited an average deliverability rate of about 97%, with the vast majority reporting no problems with delivery to most major client inboxes.

Largest SMBs Not as Socially Integrated

SMBs with more than 500 employees tended to report higher adoption of various list building and sign-up form optimization strategies, such as using sign-up forms to grow lists, collecting contacts offline using paper sign-up forms, and telling subscribers specifically what they will receive. However, these larger companies were far less likely than companies with 11-250 employees to run a Facebook page with a newsletter sign-up form (57% vs. 82%), indicating that they may be underestimating the power of social media integration. Similarly, they were less likely than companies with 11-250 employees or 251-500 employees to use social sharing icons.

Other Findings:

• Most SMBs have adopted measures such as regular mailings (70%), personalization (58%), compelling subject line (68%), and stats analysis (61%).
• 69% of respondents indicated that they have a complaint ratio below 0.2%.

For more on email and social integration, visit MarketingVox.

About the Data: The GetResponse data was collected from November 14-28, 2011 from approximately 600 respondents classified in 4 groups based on the business unit size.

B2B Marketers Struggle With Compelling Content

41% of B2B marketers say that producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers is their biggest content marketing challenge, representing a 14% increase from 36% of respondents in 2010, according to [download page] a December 2011 study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute. Data from “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends” indicates that respondents are also grappling with two challenges that go hand in hand: producing enough content (20%), and having the budget to produce enough content (18%). A lack of buy-in from higher-ups in the company (12%), producing a variety of content (7%), and having the budget to license content (1%) are primary challenges to relatively fewer B2B marketers.

Budgets Are a Challenge, But Spending to Increase

Although 1 in 5 B2B marketers cite having sufficient content marketing budgets as their primary challenge, data from the study indicates that content marketing spending is on the rise. Although roughly 26% of marketers’ total budgets are allocated to content marketing efforts this year, the same as in 2010, this year 60% of respondents indicate they will increase spending on content marketing in 2012, compared to just 3% that say they will decrease their spending levels.

The average amount of budget spent on content marketing appears to vary significantly by company size, with a negative correlation between size and budget share. For example, companies with fewer than 10 employees spend 34% of their budgets on content marketing, whereas companies with more than 1000 employees allocate 20% of their budgets.

Meanwhile, outsourcing also appears to be on the rise: whereas in 2010 only 55% of marketers used outsourcing in some capacity, this year that proportion has risen to 62%. When seeking out the right vendors to support content marketing, marketers use a variety of resources, with the biggest increase from last year seen in the use of consultants (32% vs. 27%) and the biggest decrease found in the use of trade shows as a venue to find support (20% vs. 26%).

Brand Awareness, Customer Acquisition Lead All Goals

Brand awareness and customer acquisition are content marketers’ top goals, cited by 68% of survey respondents. Lead generation (66%) and customer retention/loyalty (61%) follow closely, with website traffic (56%), engagement (55%), and thought leadership (55%) also goals for a majority of marketers. Almost half cite sales as a goal, while just 39% report using content marketing for lead management/nurturing.

Content marketing goals appear to be fairly unrelated to overall digital marketing goals: according to a November report from Webmarketing 123, lead generation (46.4%) is by far the most important objective of digital programs for B2B marketers, outstripping sales generation (22.2%), brand awareness development (15.3%), and site traffic generation (11.1%).

Web Traffic Top Success Indicator

Although web traffic is not a top goal among content marketers, it is the leading indicator of success, cited by 58% of respondents. Sales lead quality (49%) follows, while direct sales, sales lead quantity, qualitative feedback from customers, and SEO ranking are measurement criteria to roughly 4 in 10. The least popular indicator of success is inbound links, cited by 30% of marketers.

According to the November Webmarketing123 study, the vast majority (73.9%) of B2B digital marketers use web traffic as a measurement of campaign success, ahead of lead generation (69.2%) website click-through rate (64.7%), and sales (62.5%).

Facebook has officially started rolling out its new Timeline feature that will enable users to show off the most important moments of their lives on their profile page.

The new feature, which was unveiled in early September, will first be introduced in New Zealand before it is rolled out to other countries, the company revealed on its Facebook blog today.

Facebook said Timeline would keep important life events on profile pages while less-important posts would drop off .

"Now you can share photos of what you did last weekend, and updates about how you feel today," the company said in a previous blog post.

"But since the focus is on the most recent things you posted, more important stuff slips off the page. The photos of your graduation get replaced by updates about what you had for breakfast."

The new feature will allow users to choose which life events, such as birthdays or weddings, are permanently illustrated on their profile.

Timeline raised privacy concerns in its development stage, after it was revealed it would be visible on the Timeline when you "unfriended" certain people, social media website Mashable reports.

Facebook said this was a glitch that had since been corrected.

Story: www.ninemsn.com.au