Google+ traffic has risen 30% in the last few weeks since it launched the business pages portion of the site but as this article shows, the traffic has been up and down a lot over the last few months and it's too early to know if this is a true growth pattern for G+ or just a bump due to a new feature of the service.

This eMarketer.com report shows that the projected growth of tablet devices by 2014 will be that 90 million Americans will be using one (which is about 1 in 3 consumers.)

Small businesses are using Facebook more than any other social medium according to research from Constant Contact. While Facebook is the top of the social media list, small businesses are still using email, phone calls, and face-to-face meetings to connect with customers and prospects more often. The full breakdown of mediums can be seen here: 

Wow. That's all there is to say about this week's video: 

 

Apple's iPad commands a dominating lead on the rest of the tablet makers. According to comScore the iPad generates 95.5 of all tablet-based web traffic in the United States. 

A new survey for Jobvite shows that 22 million Americans have gotten job opportunities through social networking. Pretty interesting.

80.6% of online video viewers (which is 71% of Americans web users) watch TV while also using the Internet. This "two simultaneous screens" trend seems to be well embedded now.

This is another great video by Matthew Weathers, a math professor at Biola University. He's done several of these in the past. Great stuff.

 

A good case study can often both teach and motivate about how to do the very things we should be considering for our own businesses. Earlier this week Google's blog featured the Utah-based company Orabrush and how they used YouTube to launch their product. It's one of the better case studies and social media success stories I've seen in a while. They went from just trying to get someone interested in their invention to getting international orders and being picked up by Walmart and CVS here in the States. Not bad for video budget of $500.

The video below tells the full story of how they happened upon YouTube to launch their product. 

Here's the video that really took off two years ago and got the product launched. 

Reddit may not be a website you've heard of, but it's a social news site that has continued to grow and thrive while the once dominant social news site, Digg, has been in decline. This VentureBeat post shows that Reddit got 1.9 billion pageviews in October. That's incredible. Time to check out Reddit if you haven't already.

Interesting post from MediaPost: "Magazine-branded social media platforms reach over one in ten American adults, according to Affinity's American Magazine Study, which found that 27.4 million consumers -- or 12.4% of the country's adult population -- access a magazine-branded social media site every month through computers or mobile devices."

Knowing which channels people use is key to choosing the right ways of reaching a target audience and a new report from Pew Internet Research is helpful for knowing how to reach teens. The research shows that only 16% of teens use Twitter. This number is up from 8% of teens on Twitter in September, 2009. 

I'm pretty sure you've never seen Batman like this. Superheroes can't always have the answers, can they?

By now we’re very aware of how much information is online about companies, but have you ever considered the business advantages of keeping regular watch on what your competition is doing? There is a lot of information your competitors are posting publicly for you to learn more about them if you’re willing to pay attention and fit the pieces together. If you’re curious to begin monitoring your competitors, here are seven ways you can start observing them today:

1. Google Alerts: Google's free alert system is easy to use and easy to manage. You can (and should) be using it to see what's being said about your own company, products, and leadership team, but you can easily set it up to notify you when there are new competitor mentions in blog posts, videos, and online news outlets. Google Alerts can be emailed to you (as it happens, daily, or weekly) or you can subscribe via feed reader. If you don’t do any other form of monitoring, you should at least be using Google Alerts.

2. LinkedIn: LinkedIn was built, in part, to aggregate information about people who work at various companies. Knowing this you can get a sense of what a competitor's team of employees look like, how long they have worked there, and whether they have hired any new people. This may not seem particularly insightful, but consider what discovering a competitor’s new hire might tell you: they’re showing what they’re about to do next. For instance, if you found out your competitor hired a developer who specializes in iPhone apps, they might be revealing that they're about to launch their own app in the near future. Likewise, if you notice several people leaving a company who all do similar work you may well surmise that particular part of the company is either shutting down or at the very least being poorly managed and therefore creating an exodus of people leaving the company.

3. Facebook: Facebook pages are great ways to see how your competition is interacting with their fans. If you're observing your competitor’s page correctly, however, you can find what you're competitors think is working or not working on their pages. For instance, if you find that they begin offering a lot of the same kinds of coupons or incentives, then they may be experiencing a sales bump as a result of this offer and they want to keep at it. This could reveal an opportunity for your own business to try similar offers on your own Facebook page.

4. Blog comments: Most companies have well vetted the posts on their blogs, but they don’t usually take the same due diligence when they respond to people in the blog comments. The comments are less formal, more off the cuff, and in general more likely to give you some inside information if you watch them long enough. Likewise, Facebook and Twitter comments will give you the same kinds of insights if you watch the way your competitor responds. Similarly, you may find people complaining about the same thing on the competitor’s Facebook page which could reveal to you a flaw in their product and therefore an opportunity for yours.

5. Twitter search: It goes without saying that you can monitor what your competitor is saying on Twitter by simply looking at their Tweets. What you won’t know, however, is what other people are saying about your competitor on Twitter. Just following your competitor’s Twitter feed won’t give you the full perspective of what you can learn about them via Twitter. By searching for all mentions of the competitor and any products or services they may offer, you can also see how well they are responding to these mentions. You’re not just monitoring what your competitor is saying through social media, you’re also monitoring what other people are saying about your competitor through social media. 

6. Twitter and Facebook pictures: I once saw what appeared to be fairly boring Tweet from the CEO of a nationally recognized nonprofit that included a picture. The CEO was taking a picture of some family who came to visit him at his office. What the CEO never realized was that the white board behind the family members had some organizational information on it that probably wasn't meant for public knowledge. It showed clearly what some of the organization’s upcoming goals were and how those goals compared to a year ago. I was blown away at everything he was unknowingly sharing. I've seen similar things from pictures taken from business meetings. Keep an eye on any "behind the scenes" type of photos your competitors are sharing because they may be giving you more information than they think.

7. Foursquare and Gowalla: The numbers of people checking in on location based social networks like Foursquare or Gowalla are very small compared to the number of people using Facebook or Twitter, but for people who use them, they tend to reveal a lot about themselves. This can become a competitive advantage for you if you know who some of the people working for your competitors are (start with LinkedIn) and can find them on one of these services. If you find them, they may reveal information about conferences they’re attending, suppliers they use, or new locations where they may be looking to expand their business. 

The bottom line is that there’s a lot of information being shared today that might not seem interesting to competitors alone, but when you combine all the data you may discover your competition is giving you significant insights into their business. 

According to this eMarketer report, Facebook gets $7 of every $10 spent on social network advertising. Further, "in 2012, Facebook will tally $5.78 billion in ad revenues, garnering 72% of all social network advertising revenues and 6.1% of worldwide online ad spending."

As the holiday season gets closer there's a lot of advertising going into 3D HDTVs but according to some new data from Retrevo.com, the majority of people who plan to buy an HDTV this year are not going to go for the 3D version. Only  22% of people who plan to get an HDTV are going to buy one with 3D. Another 23% of that group will do it if the difference in price isn't too much more than a standard HDTV. The study cites that programming limitations and disliking the glasses are two big reasons people don't want 3D televisions. 

New research from Nielsen/McKinsey's NM Incite shows that a majority of people using social media are looking for deals and coupons. "Nearly 60% of social media users visit social networks to receive coupons or promotions, with 23% saying they do this on a weekly basis."

This video is quite funny. If you ever want to sell a used car this video may provide some inspiration about how you could do it next time around. Enjoy this used Corolla car commercial.

 

It's not often that I hear about a new website or social media tool that gets my attention but there's one that has of late: Pinterest. 

If you haven't heard of Pinterest, it's a virtual pinboard that lets you save pictures of things you see online. Whereas most online bookmarking services focus on saving and categorizing links, Pinterest focuses on pictures.  

This may not seem like a particularly interesting technology, but it's taken off like crazy over the last few months and the large majority of its users are female. 

Pinterest: Growing Like Crazy
According to Compete.com, Pinterest (now just over a year old) has become one of the top 1,000 websites online and is getting almost two million visitors per month. You can see the rapid growth particularly in the last six months in the chart below:

Anytime something takes off this quickly it's clearly uncovered something interesting. Pinterest doesn't seem to be a fad either. Those who use it see it as an unending source for inspiration and ideas.

The business implications for Pinterest aren't clear yet. I'm working with a few clients to determine if and/or how Pinterest might work for them. As with anything new that springs up like this, it's good to observe it for a while. Pinterest has an evolving culture and it's going to be important to make sure you understand that culture before you start thinking about any business opportunities. 

Pinterest is currently in an invite only status. If you'd like to check it out, leave a comment below or email me (bill@microexplosion.com) and I'll be happy to send one your way.