ComMetrics weekly review: Control, profits and stats in social media

We are back with another week’s worth of tidbits, tools and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, blogging and posting on Facebook or Twitter.

In case you missed previous weeks’ memorable moments on social media, just point your browser to:

ComMetrics weekly review – social media going’s on

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So here come the highs, lows and oddities I discovered through my various social media channels.

Sunday, Monday

Social media expert Soenke Dohrn brought another paper to my attention, this time about how many degrees we are removed from the person we want to connect with. While we know about six degrees of separation, with Twitter it is supposedly only 4.12 degrees.

The Twitter network effect – 4 hops to success

The paper also mentions that a re-tweet reaches 1,000 Twitter users on average, regardless of how many followers the first tweeter has. But one re-tweet quickly results in several more, demonstrating the fast spread of information via this channel.

Tuesday

SPSS (originally Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, now a division of IBM) released a new add-on for its statistical software package that will allow users to monitor social media space as much as possible. In contrast to Mashable, which simply released press material supplied by IBM’s public relations office, we tried to analyze where and how this tool succeeds or fails, but news about the tool is still sketchy. Still, several people have raised concerns about the possible usefulness of this product.

=> IBM first – SPSS = Add-on for sentiment analysis & monitoring

Wednesday

We held another successful webinar entitled ComMetrics University – Bill Gates, Greg Grunberg, Lukas Podolski, Ronaldinho and Kaka.

While the feedback has been good, Deborah Drake and myself are still learning to leverage one another’s strengths and talents. We have succeeded in improving cadence, making it more interactive and finishing within about 22 minutes, three minutes less than we had scheduled.

While we finish presentations in about 16 to 18 minutes, answering questions from participants and responding to comments takes a bit more time.

Read some of the ideas, feedback and opinions in the social media monitoring group.

Why not join us this Wednesday for

2010-05-19 – What makes us better at social networking?

=> Want to influence the content of an upcoming webinar? Join the discussion – Is this building brand or being obnoxious?

Thursday

Thursday was a public holiday in most of Europe so things were relatively quiet. Nevertheless, I took the time to look at 30 very creative ads, including Bosch by the Von Matt crew and others. Just enjoy, some of this stuff is pretty amazing.

=> 30 superb ads – something to watch during your next coffee break

Friday

Here we go again: Facebook has decided to make our lives even more difficult. We now have:

–

Pages

that represent an

organization

person

–

Groups

for

communities of interest

, and

–

Community pages

that are theoretically about topics, causes or experiences, but can also be about brands, apparently.

The problem is that Facebook does not give owners any way to control community pages that may be about their brand. I found a very good, must-read kind of blog post about this challenge here:

Why Facebook’s community pages could give brands headaches

Saturday

Have you ever asked yourself how many people use social networks? Some estimate around a billion.

Social networking has been following Silicon Valley’s motto of Ubiquity first, Revenue Later (URL) for years, so high diffusion of this type of networking practice is clear. But is it profitable? Well, here things get a bit fuzzy.

While a billion users mean social networks have achieved the first objective of ubiquity, some estimates indicate revenues of $6 per user, per year. Of course, that’s hardly enough to pay taxes and have enough left to keep a roof over your head and put food on the table.

=> Social networking: Not profitable so far for shareholders

Sunday

I asked myself what to tweet about today or where things are happening, but decided instead to take some time off.

But later in the day I came across another Twitter tool that is falls somewhere between vanity metrics and providing useful information, if you use bit.ly (or minu.me) as your URL shortener. The tool tells you which tweets people like the most: I did not know that not long ago I had a tweet that about 1,000 people clicked on even though I have only 700 followers.

=> See most-clicked tweets, which ones your followers liked – interesting metrics

That wraps up this week’s social media diary. Please let me know how you feel about it – your opinions matter to me!

Article source: ComMetrics weekly review: Control, profits and stats in social media