I’m still not sure about how I truly feel about SOPA and PIPA – both pose a variety of pro’s and con’s toward modern life and business as we know. However, seeing content like the above re-written for our naive minds to handle is nothing new. My good friend Kevin posted an intersing thought on Facebook this morning:

SOPA is nothing new. History has taught us well. With the invention of the printing press, everyone could print and it allowed newspapers, encouraged thought, and then gave way to dissent. It was regulated, books and newspapers were banned. We now have safe books and newspapers.

Same thing happened with radio; anyone with a two-way radioset could broadcast, it allowed small groups of rebellion to form and encouraged thought and then dissent. Rules were put in place, radio now belongs to an elite few playing safe messages and Top 40 songs.

Along came television – it was regulated pretty much straightaway and now we have safe programmes we know we can let our children watch without giving it a thought.

Fast forward to 2012 and we have SOPA. Thing is, the Internet does not belong to an elite few (like print, radio and television before us). The Internet, and its collective power, is bigger than governments and political leaders. It is faster than any form of media before us, much bigger and more influential. More is at stake. Our lifestyles and lines of communications are at stake.

Thing is, do we trust ourselves?

We’ll do you? Personally I’m amazed that we’ve even got this far without internet censorship – seriously it’s been almost 20 years in the western world since the introduction of the internet. I’d be completely for it but there’s some key reason’s why I’m not – PIPA won’t stop piracy and SOPA will cripple publishers & the internet economy.

PIPA: Pirates are smart – they’ve always been one step ahead. This won’t change a thing. New domain, new server. Heard of UserNet?
SOPA: Will I still be able to write my own tailored description on ebay? Write this blog post like this?

Truthfully I don’t have the answer. I don’t think anyone outside of governments does. I do however get some sort of comfort in the sense that the people co-oridnating these law’s know things that we’ll never.

But anyway, back to my first point, what were Google’s top algorithmic changes in 2011? highervisibility.com have releasd this lovely infographic rounding up the years most significant algorithmic changes.

The latest comes from Videoinfographs.com, where last week they released the video titled “The World of Social Media 2011″ – showing all the latest facts & figures about social media.

Statistics I Found Noteworthy:

• 11% of the world is now on Facebook (Dec 2011)
• There are now more Facebook users than motor vehicles – 800,000,000 Vs 750,000,000.
• Every 60 seconds there are; 510,000 posted comments, 293,000 status updates & 136,000 uploaded photographs
• Twitter is now at 225,000,000 users – although I’m not sure how many of these are bots….
• Aged demographics of LinkedIn’s population are: Age 18 – 24 = 21%, Age 25 – 34 = 34%, 35 – 54 = 36% & 55+ = 7%
• YouTube has over 490,000,000 unique visitors each month generating 92,000,000,000 page views
• Lady Gaga overtook Ashton Kutcher to be the most followed person Twitter with 15,864,000 followers

Surprised by these statistics? I can’t help thinking how or rather when the rate of growth will slow – especially with regards to the Facebook population.

2011′s Remembrance day is even more special – on the 11 hour of 11/11/11 we will host our 2 minute silence & war memorial services on a date that won’t happen for another 1000 years. Not only that, but its also the 90th year since the Royal British Legion began Remembrance Day.

Show your respect digitally and wear a poppy profile picture on your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or other social networking accounts.

Want a Poppy Profile Picture to?

If you want one to, right click & save the remembrance day profile image below and set it as your Twitter or Facebook profile picture.

Transparent Profile Picture

Facebook Poppy Profile Picture for Remembrance Day

Regular Profile Picture

Poppy profile picture for Remembrance Day

Don’t forget to share the digital poppy with others.

Also make a remembrance day donation on-line.

Thank you

Takethislollipop.com calls this out big time. Check out the website, allow the app access to data just as you would a friend and see what happens.

Dare to take the lolly?

I’m sure it grabbed your attention right? Don’t you think it’s kind of ironic that you made friends with it? It got your photos, knows your friends, found out where you live! Its probably scared you into being a little more careful with your Facebook information hasn’t it. Is this what we needed? Personally,

The question on my mind is – where do we draw the line around 3rd party access to personal sources like the OpenGraph? Should advertisers even be allowed access to it? The truth is our data can and is misused.

To promote Google+, Google has concentrated on leveraging its owned assets – giving little or no attention to paid & earned channels. We’ve seen a revamp of the Google homepage, a Google wide top-navigation banner, +1 in search results & even Google+ sharing buttons – all giving prominence to the Google+ Social Network.

The latest update comes to Adsense. I received the email below from the Adsense team stating; Google will start rolling out the +1 button to both text and banner advertising creative’s. Something I hoped Facebook do a long time ago – so much so that I made a “like” button enabled banner.

Hello,

In the next month, we’ll introduce the +1 button and personal recommendations to display ads. The +1 button will begin to appear on AdSense for Content and AdSense for Mobile Content display ad formats — image, animated gif, and Flash. +1s will be one additional signal to help determine an ad’s relevance and we’ll continue to show the ads that will generate the most revenue for you.

We previously launched the +1 button on Google search and for publisher sites to make it easier for people to share and discover content across the web. Soon, your users will be able to endorse specific ads and make the ads more likely to appear to their social connections. We believe that these recommendations could help your readers notice ads on your site more, leading to higher returns for you over time.

If you prefer not to show the +1 buttons on display ads on your pages, you can opt out in your account. For more information please visit the Inside AdSense blog.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense team

Kudos Google.

As Kevin (Nerdfreak) demonstrates above it’ super easy, all you need to do is paste your link to the comment box. Don’t worry if you aren’t seeing the change yet – Facebook are still rolling this out.

Why do this?

When Facebook makes a user interface update it usually for 2 key reasons; 1) Improve user experience & 2) To make them more money. It’s obvious this update improves user experience, but how will this change make Facebook more money I hear you ask?

Well, in my opinion Facebook is an ecosystem right. Facebook generally prefers that people around within that eco system. Let’s just say for arguments sake that 1billion links are shared a day on Facebook – that’s a lot of people leaving the eco system. We’re all short of time these days – I believe this modification to links gives users the information they need quicker which subsequently helps reduce the need for users to leave Facebook. Google do a similar thing – they try to gives users instant answers to search queries without the need to leave Google.

LikeVsPlus.com lets Facebook’s like button battle it out against the Google Plus button. Cool. On the 7/7/11 Facebook had 7k likes vs 15k Google +1′s

Which do you prefer? Do you even care?

Mike Hickinbotham – 9:18 PM – Public

Question for G+: Do Australian businesses effectively cultivate relationships with brand advocates?

Do Australian businesses effectively cultivate relationships with brand advocates?

If social media is perceived as a golden hen, then brand advocates could be the golden eggs marketers seek to get their hands on. Research conducted by Dr Kathleen R Ferris-Costa at The University of …

It got me thinking about brand advocates. What if there aren’t any? Or, what if your advocates can’t reach a substantial amount of potential consumers. So I replied to Mike’s interesting post with the following thoughts:

I don’t think Social Media is always perceived as a golden hen, silver bullet or the answer to everything. Often brands think of Social as an all in one solution – I disagree – it’s often a lot more work & sometimes far less effective than some of the more measurable / effective channels like EDM or Search for example.

But… If Social Media IS a golden hen – then of course advocates do hold the key to success – even more so in an E-commerce environment. But what about the huge portion of consumers who’s time online is spent connecting with friends – not to read blogs or connect with highly influential people – I.e. like The Teens, Tradies’ or even Grand Parents? How are they influenced? I’d like to think they were encouraged by their peers & friends – in a word-of-mouth fashion – like the old days.

With that in mind, if brand advocates are not available or effective in certain niches, how do businesses effectively cultivate positive mentions between small clusters of people – the ones who actually buy the product?

There is now real answer (in my eyes) at this stage. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please, I’m actually quite bugged by this one.

(Updated Post – Reason: I’d had a few beers and wrote in what looked like English – now fixed.)

Hubspot released this useful slideshow titled: 12 Essential Facebook Stats [Data]

Should your business become active in Facebook? To help you make an informed decision about your company’s Facebook strategy, Hubspot compiled these fantastic Facebook business stats.

1. 93% of adult US Internet users are on Facebook. (source: BlogHer, April 2011)

2. One out of every eight minutes online is spent on Facebook. (source: ComScore, February 2011)

3. The average Facebook user spends more than 11 hours per month on Facebook. (sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2010 & Facebook Press Room, 2011)

4. Facebook is overtaking Google and Yahoo in total time spent online. (source: ComScore, August 2011)

5. Facebook has become the top choice for social sign-in. (source: Janrain, April 2011)

6. Facebook has become the preferred way to share content online, second only to email—for now. (source: Chadwick Martin Bailey, September 2010)

7. The average number of “likes” per post on a brand’s Facebook page is 54. The average number of comments per post is 9. (source: Visibli, April 2011)

8. More than half of B2B marketers agree that Facebook is an effective marketing tool. (source: Outsell, December 2009)

9. More than half of small businesses agree that Facebook is beneficial to their business. (source: Ad-ology, November 2010)

10. More than 1/3 of marketers say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)

11. The number of marketers who say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased 83% in two years. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)

12. 67% of B2C and 41% of B2B companies that use Facebook for marketing have acquired a customer through this channel. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)

Interesting statistics I’m sure you’ll agree. I found the stat; 1 in every 8 minutes spent online in the US was on Facebook very alarming – Facebook is growing quickly in the US. Still, i’m not sure how this compares to Australia. The Aussies spend the most amount of time on Facebook on average 8.19 hours a month. In terms of total time online, the average Australian spends 21.75 hours per week online (TV only 15 hours) which is a whopping 33% of all leisure time. In 2010 the average Australian spent only 17.6 hours online.