And Pete Cashmore, of Mashable,  explains to CNN this new web battleground…

Facebook this week announced a new way to express your interests — a "Like" button that's set to appear all around the web. Click the button, and the Web page is shared with your friends.

What's more, every "Like" you submit ensures Facebook (and its partner sites) can deliver a more personalized experience to you.

It's a simple yet powerful feature — one that delivers a significant blow to rival Twitter. Once the network effects take hold, it's frankly hard to imagine how any company could unseat Facebook's social networking dominance in the months to come. Without a counterattack, even Google may one day be dethroned.

Facebook vs Twitter: Size Matters

Twitter, Facebook's direct competitor, has so far been unable to match the social network's growth rate. Twitter has 100 million users; Facebook has 400 million. The size of the network is important, since Web publishers and Web developers want their products and services to gain the greatest exposure possible — given the choice, they'll choose the social platform with the most users.

Publishers, for instance, may choose to put a Twitter "Retweet" button or a Facebook "Like" button on their pages. Given that the majority of Web site visitors have Facebook accounts, the choice becomes an easy one.

Not to mention that Facebook's button's are far more powerful: They tell a visitor how many friends have liked a story, while an additional widget suggests other stories you might like. The "Like" button will accelerate Facebook's growth by spreading its tendrils to every corner of the web.

Likewise, Web sites can offer the ability to "Log in with Facebook" or "Sign in with Twitter". Conversion rates will likely be higher for those sites that choose Facebook. In every case, the biggest site wins.

Twitter's Developer Troubles

Meanwhile, Twitter's relationship with its developer community — the coders who fueled its growth by creating Twitter applications for phones and the desktop — has hit a rough patch.

Twitter's acquisition of a popular iPhone app and the release of an official application for BlackBerry users has led some developers to wonder whether they should build Twitter applications at all — won't Twitter just release an official application for every device and kill off all the upstarts? Facebook's Like buttons and new tools, by contrast, offer endless possibilities for developers.

Unless Twitter can reboot its growth and convince developers that building Twitter applications is worthwhile, Facebook will surely extend its lead.

Google Vs Facebook: Personalized Search

Facebook looks set to challenge the web's biggest players, too: Google is under seize by Facebook's new-found ability to target search results and ads.

Google dominated the web in the era of interlinked Web pages. Every link from one Web site to another counted as a vote, determining the most relevant pages for any search term. The result: An unbeatable search engine.

Except that links between Web pages are no longer the most abundant source of relevant recommendations — instead, people are sharing links with friends on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now Google is paying those sites for access to public updates, but it lacks key data that would allow true personalization of search results. Google doesn't have a complete list of your friends, combined with a list of their interests. Facebook does.

Facebook is in a position to build the world's best search engine: One that delivers results based on your friendships and interests. The launch of the "Like" button, meanwhile, means that Facebook will know more about your individual preferences than ever before.

Facebook: The World's Best Ad Network?

Google makes the vast majority of its money from ads — these ads typically match your search terms, or the content of the Web page you're viewing. Google has certainly worked to personalize these ads, but its knowledge of your friends and interests is more limited than Facebook's. The data gleaned from thousands of Facebook Like buttons around the web could make for an ad network that rivals Google's AdSense.

Google's Social Stumbles

If Google is to maintain its once insurmountable lead in search and advertising, the company surely needs to perfect social networking.

Google Buzz, the search giant's most recent foray into the social space, received criticism from privacy advocates who noted that a user's email contacts were made public upon signup. The early hiccups may have been fixed, but Buzz has so far failed to catch on. Other social projects from Google — OpenSocial, Google Friend Connect — are so latent at this point that few are even aware of their existence.

If Google is to fend off the Facebook threat, it needs new ways to mine a user's interests and social connections. The hard way would be to develop a new competency in building social applications — something Google has struggled to do. The easy way? Buy Twitter.

Facebook's Success is Not Guaranteed

While Facebook is perfectly positioned to lead the next charge, success is by no means guaranteed. Twitter is set to release "annotations", a way to append extra information to Tweets. Google has enough money on hand to buy, well, whatever it wants.

And Facebook's user base is volatile: They may one day decide to embark on a mass exodus, causing Facebook to fall like MySpace and Friendster before it.

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Social media is transforming the way companies do business, and this guide provides some insight into how you can take advantage of it. You can learn powerful methods of using social media to help generate sales and to track customer needs as they evolve, as well as information specifically for small businesses on how social media can fit into your marketing plan.

This guide also sheds light on how you can measure the effect that social media has on your business and monitor important metrics as you grow. 

Sections include:

• How Social Media Can Help Drive New Sales
• The ROI of Social Media
• Use Keywords to Help Get Your Blog Noticed
• Devise a New Product Line With Social Media
• Monitor and Measure Your Social Media Efforts
• Cardmember Profile: Freshpair: Online Retailer Takes Fresh Approach to Building Customer Base
• Upsell and Cross-Sell to Customers Using Social Media
• Social Media Resources
• Glossary of Social Media Terms

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Google Search Across Twitter Archives

Replay Twitter history for any subject.  New feature allows you to search for topics at any point in time across Twitter’s public archive.

Starting today, you can zoom to any point in time and “replay” what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter. To try it out, click “Show options” on the upper left corner of the search results page, then select “Updates.” The first page will show you the familiar latest and greatest short-form updates from a comprehensive set of sources, but now there’s a new chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period. Here we’ve searched for [golden gate park] and browsed to see March, 2010:

Of course, Twitter has its own search engine, which was made even more powerful with its acquisition of the Summize search tool. But while Twitter’s built-in search is great for current topics, it’s sort of clunky for dealing with tweets from the past — particularly since you need to rely heavily on Twitter’s advanced search page.

Google’s alternative Twitter archive search is more visual, and has the ability to help you find what you’re looking for without dealing with advanced search options. To use it, simply click the “Show Options” link on any search results page, and then choose “Updates.” You’ll be presented with the most recent updates around your search term, but you can also go back in time using the chart at the top of the page.

The feature will let you see what the Twitter-verse thought of a particular topic at any given time, and will also be useful for tracking your own past Twitter conversations — something which is far more difficult than it should be for a service that prides itself on conversation..

Google’s Twitter archive search is being rolled out in English globally over the next few days, and will initially support tweets going back to February 11, 2010. Eventually it will support the entire Twitter archive, back to the very first tweet on March 21, 2006. If you’d like to try out the feature now, check out this link.

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Hootsuite, a social networking navigation and management startup, today launched several new collaboration tools targeted at public relations agencies and groups who often work in teams to publish and manage through their various social networking channels, like Twitter and Facebook.

Any social network account in HootSuite can now have multiple Team Members with varying permission levels.

With the new Team Management system, you can:

• Invite other HootSuite users to share your Social NetworksRequest access to someone else's Social Network
• Assign Team Members advanced permissions
• Add RSS feeds to any Social Network you have access to
• Consolidate all your HootSuite accounts

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I understand in today’s marketplace the need for automation grows as companies seek to cut costs across the board. Streamlining a process down to a science and eliminating as much human interaction seems to be a growing trend but does it work for marketing a website and for SEO… Manufacturing yes, Internet Marketing to humans? No Way.

There is not a SEO software program on the planet that can successfully step into the shoes of your audience and try to anticipate what their online behavior or patterns might be at that given moment. There is something that will always require a human touch, search engine optimization and Internet Marketing equally requires the human marketing touch.

When optimizing a website you need to stop and think about each page and really determine what kind of user you want to drive to that specific page. Which keyword you chose to target on that page will deliver a certain type of end user. This thought process is something a computer program is not going to be able to nail down correctly. What if you are torn between two keywords or phrases and both deliver a slightly different end user, do you think a software program would pick that up and pick the right keyword? Most likely not. Software can be used to do many research tasks like keyword research or design but software cannot write a custom crafted meta tag and description like a human could.

The human element will always be a factor when communicating with other humans. It would be like asking a program to come up with an award winning design campaign for your brand. What if a software program puts in a keyword that is completely wrong for your business and you don’t catch it. Then you could be wasting the opportunity to build more targeted visitors.

Search engine optimization also requires a certain element of experience. An SEO software product can not by substituted for experience, but experience can play a role to help utilize an SEO software product. The experience of doing certain online efforts and analyzing the results only to tweak and refine to streamline even more. This is only acquired over time. This type of experience is invaluable and SEO software just doesn’t have the capabilities to analyze what works and what doesn’t. If your website generates only a small number of visitors but your conversion margins are very high does the software understand this? Who is to say something works over something that doesn’t? Every business will have their own tools and benchmarks for measuring their own success.

If you are thinking about trying to use software to market your business think again, if you have a good amount of SEO and/or internet marketing experience as a business owner, marketer or web master, then there are software products out there that can help automate certain tasks to make you life easier, but it will not do the work for you! For instance, I use several excellent products to do my job, (Keyword Discovery, Compete, Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, etc.) I don’t only rely on these tools alone to make important mission critical SEO and internet marketing decisions for my clients.

When you are evaluating SEO software products out there, just think of this: If it was that easy everybody would be doing it. Reaching out to humans and developing and executing a comprehensive strategy requires a human touch and always will.

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90 percent of adults use at least one mobile device: Study

Segmentation of mobile consumers

Nine out of 10 United States adults today use at least one mobile device and 35 percent of mobile phone users now pay $100 a month or more for service, according to Experian Simmons.

Experian Simmons revealed its insight into the divergent and rapidly evolving behaviors and attitudes of mobile consumers in its National Consumer Study. The company evaluated dozens of data points measuring the behaviors and attitudes that consumers have toward mobile communications, information gathering and entertainment.

“Marketers are increasingly looking to mobile as a medium for reaching consumers, but it’s an area that many know relatively little about,” said John Fetto, senior marketing manager at Experian Simmons, Montreal, QC.

“The key feature of the mobile consumer segmentation system is to allow marketers to quickly and easily understand the different types of mobile consumers and identify skews within their specific target audience by tying these segments back to the consumer behavior and psychographic information collected in the Simmons National Consumer Study,” he said. 

Key findings
Experian Simmons found five distinct segments of mobile consumers including mobiriati, social connectors, pragmatic adopters, mobile professionals and basic planners.

Mobiriati, which consists of 19 percent of mobile phone owners, represents the first generation to have grown up with mobile phones. To mobiriati consumers, mobile phones are a central part of their daily life and they cannot imagine life without them.

Consumers who are social connectors – about 22 percent of mobile phone owners – find that their mobile phone is the portal they use to keep up to date with friends and social events.

Pragmatic adopters, which also consist of 22 percent of mobile phone owners, are in the early stages of realizing that there is more that they can do with their phone besides making calls.

Seventeen percent of mobile owners are mobile professionals who user their handset to keep up with work and family life. According to the study, a majority of mobile professionals use smartphones.

Basic planners – 20 percent of mobile phone owners – are not interested in technology or mobile devices. For them, the basic mobile package serves all their needs.

“Regardless of age, Americans are doing more with their phones today than ever before,” Mr. Fetto said.

“Sure, we see differences among generations with younger consumers who grew up using mobile phones adopting mobile activities like checking email and watching video on mobile phones at higher than average rates.

“Across the spectrum, consumers are increasingly viewing these features as standard functions of a mobile phone even if they use them only occasionally,” he said. “Our research also identified mobile consumers’ propensity to switch service providers. Interestingly, consumers most likely to switch are not those who average the least amount of time with a mobile provider, but those who have been with their provider the longest.

“Consumers who have been with the same provider for 4 years or longer are the most likely to say they’ll switch services for a better plan, better phone or better service.”

Additional findings
In addition, there are currently three mobile consumer psychographic scales available, including:

• Switching Propensity: This factor measures mobile consumers’ willingness to switch service providers for a variety of reasons, including improved quality, plan selection and technology.

• Feature Focus: This factor measures the propensity of mobile consumers to place value on new mobile features and technology versus traditional calling functions.

• Traditional Use: Mobile consumers who score above average on this scale would prefer to use a landline phone over their mobile and also lean toward having only a basic calling plan.

“This year may be the year that mobile video really takes off and market penetration is something that Experian Simmons is closely monitoring,” Mr. Fetto said. “Mass adoption of mobile video has the potential to have a significant impact on other media from television to film to even traditional Internet use and marketers need to know how to leverage it.”

“We also believe that GPS-integrated devices will present marketers with an opportunity to go hyper-local in marketing to consumers precisely when and where they are most likely to influence their behavior” he said.

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Yahoo puts into place ambitious mobile advertising strategy

Sketch-a-Search

A senior Yahoo executive discussed the company’s mobile strategy in an exclusive interview with Mobile Marketer.

Yahoo’s mobile initiatives encompass the mobile Web, paid and ad-supported applications, as well as mobile search. The company is especially bullish about the prospects for mobile advertising for this year and beyond.

“Mobile advertising went mainstream in 2009—2009 a breakout year for mobile advertising, and I expect continued aggressive growth,” said David Katz, vice president of North America at Yahoo Mobile, Sunnyvale, CA. “We and everybody else in the industry saw big jumps in revenue last year, but we still haven’t cracked the code on the right mobile ad units.

“For a long time we’ve been saying next year is the year of mobile advertising, but this year we’re saying last year was it, 2009 was the breakout year,” he said. “What’s next is getting much more creative about mobile-specific advertising experiences.

“While we’re all starting to make a lot of money, mostly with experiences that look like PC Internet ads, that is going to change in the next 12-to-18 months as we take advantage of things like device location.”

KFC is targeting college hoops fans on Yahoo's Tourney Pick'Em mobile Web portal

Mr. Katz had a sit-down meeting with this writer at the International CTIA Wireless 2010 Conference last week in Las Vegas.

As a current example of Yahoo’s mobile strategy in action, quick-serve restaurant giant KFC and Southwest Airlines are driving college basketball fans to their respective mobile sites via banner ads within Yahoo Sports’ “Tourney Pick’em” mobile portal (see story).

“We’ve worked a lot on cross-platform buys—in fact, most of the RFPs that Yahoo sees now have mobile in them,” Mr. Katz said. “Last year, our fantasy football app was completely cross-platform, with advertisers such as Subway, Toyota and Southwest Airlines taking advantage of mobile and online inventory.

Last month the Olympics dominated Yahoo's mobile search queries

“Similarly, with our recent Olympics mobile Web site, cross-platform was definitely a trend, and it’s something where we think we have a pretty big advantage because of the huge amount of traffic we see in both channels,” he said. “We’ve integrated our sales force such that the people that sell PC advertising at Yahoo can also sell mobile advertising.

“We also have a mobile specialist force to help them do that, but online advertisers don’t have to talk to different people if they also want to buy mobile inventory.”

Search frenemies
Last month, Microsoft and Yahoo received clearance for their search agreement without restrictions from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to implementing the deal (see story).

“The deal with Microsoft involves them powering the back-end of our search portal, supplying us with the classic set of links,” Mr. Katz said. “What we want to focus on is the user experience of search.

“Now that we don’t have to worry about core plumbing, we can focus on delivering fun, engaging, useful user experiences,” he said. “These new apps are examples of the differentiation we think we will be able to deliver consistently.”

New search apps
At CTIA Wireless 2010 last week, Yahoo released two iPhone applications—Yahoo Sketch-a-Search and Yahoo Search—to make search more engaging for consumers while delivering relevant and powerful information (see story).

“Other search apps use GPS, city names or ZIP codes to describe location, but none of those are the way people actually tend to think about location,” Mr. Katz said. “We launched the Sketch-a-Search local search experience that addressed that need by letting users narrow their search by tracing a circle with their finger on the iPhone’s touch-screen.

“Right now it is restaurants and hotels, but we will be adding more and more local information and rating information from Yahoo users that will integrate natively with the iPhone,” he said. “Yahoo has been in the local business for quite some time, and we will be leveraging that content for both Sketch-a-Search and our mainline search app.

“Both apps are free, and we haven’t launched advertising in either yet, but we absolutely intend to over time—we’re extremely excited about mobile local search advertising, and we’re doing very well monetizing queries.”

Local mobile search
Local and mobile have a natural affinity.

“Local is going to be of huge importance for Yahoo,” Mr. Katz said. “For Sketch-a-Search, we asked ourselves ‘How do you look at local through the lens of mobile?’”

“Mobile search results should be actual stuff that you care about blocks away from you,” he said. “There are a lot of opportunities to use location—it can be when you’re near a certain point, and there’s also a lot of opportunity pairing location with a time of day.

“We do some of that today, but with location information that isn’t very granular—we’ll continue to get more granular.”

While these new applications are currently only available for iPhone, Yahoo intends to release versions for other smartphone platforms as well.

“In 2009 most of our apps were for iPhone and BlackBerry, and in 2010 we’re adding Android to the mix—you should see Yahoo apps for Android fairly soon,” Mr. Katz said.

“Yahoo is platform agnostic—we go where our users go, and the proliferation of smartphone platforms is a good thing if it gets people using mobile Internet-enabled phones,” he said.

In addition to standard banner ads, Yahoo plans to monetize the applications with paid search listings, and over time, pay-per-call ads, local promotions, coupons and other offers.

The company has also offered click-to-download-in-the-App-Store advertising for more than a year—banners that tie directly into Apple’s iTunes.

Yahoo also has integrated with MovieTickets.com and corresponding click-to-buy-movie-tickets banners.

Mobile video ad units are in development, although Yahoo has been running rich-media mobile ad units for almost a year.

“Advertisers love those rich-media ads, mostly expanding ad units, and mobile video is something there’s a lot of excitement around,” Mr. Katz said. “We’ve added mobile video to the front page of our mobile Web site, and there’s been lots of excitement from advertisers.

“User adoption of mobile video, while accelerating, is still pretty nascent, and advertisers are eager to see those numbers grow,” he said. “Advertisers, in general, are definitely looking for experiences that get the user involved and engaged with the content on the page without disrupting the experience.

“You’ll be seeing some new Yahoo rich-media ad units that are unique and innovative, but all of that stuff still emerging, and our first priority is getting the user experience right.”

While Yahoo’s bread-and-butter for mobile local search is national or multinational brands and retailers with bricks-and-mortar locations, Mr. Katz said that he eventually sees small businesses playing a bigger role.

“There is an opportunity for smaller merchants, but the challenge has always been bringing them into the system,” Mr. Katz said. “One of the best ways to do that so far has been partnering with folks with local sales forces, and over time you may see self-service interfaces for local merchants.

“Uptake among SMBs for classic sponsored search has been mixed, as there’s the impression that it is still fairly complex for the average mom-and-pop shop, so it’s up to us to make it easier for them," he said.

“A challenge we need to address for all advertisers, large or small, is to present mobile search in a way that’s easy to buy—it can be hard for advertisers to specify all of the GPS locations they need to buy.”

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At the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, Ericsson announced that measurement of actual network traffic in 2009 shows that mobile data traffic has now surpassed voice traffic.

The company said data traffic grew 280% in each of the last two years, and should double over the next five years.  Ericsson says the crossover point was December 2009 at about 140,000 terabytes her month…

Here’s a quick video clip of the interview >>>

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