This week’s not surprising fact is that 52.2% of internet users log in to Facebook at least once a month. eMarketer says that number will climb to 62% by 2013 and after that, Facebook will simply take over the entire internet and we will all be made slaves to the “like” button.
Okay, that last part is mine, but eMarketer is an expert at predicting things and if they say that 152 million people will be logging on to Facebook by 2013, I believe them. Here’s a chart:
If you are Demand Media yesterday’s Google events were probably a little disconcerting to say the least. The company is just coming out of the quiet period after raising some serious coin in a January IPO. All along they have warned about how dependent they are on results like Google search to drive traffic and that their model could suffer if there were changes in the system that worked to the detriment of Demand’s product.
Now that they are a public company they need to get out in front of these matters more and they tried to do just that yesterday with this post on their blog from Executive Vice President of Media & Operations, Larry Fitzgibbon. (As of this writing the stock is down 3.36% 10:13 EST) Here is the post in its entirety.
Sometimes a farm can just have a bad year. One field doesn’t produce like it has in the past so the quality of one crop suffers while the rest of the farm does fine. Google’s latest update (which Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan is trying to call the “Farmer” update but I am going with the “Discontent” update) is really saying to everyone that general low quality content, no matter where it comes from, is going to get whacked.
Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
Are you addicted to your smartphone? Be honest? Would you break out in a sweat if you lost if for more than an hour? Or even more telling, would you fish it out of a public toilet?
Crowd Science surveyed 800 smartphone users and 1 in 5 said they were addicted! The others. . . . pure denial. 26% of the smartphone junkies were iPhone users while only 13% of BlackBerry owners admitted to jonesing for a cell phone fix.
The heaviest feature users landed between the age of 30 and 49, which is older than most would imagine. It’s nice to know that 89% of those surveyed believed in a phone code of honor saying that it’s bad karma to break-up with someone via text message even though smartphones make it oh, so easy.
In another sign that Facebook is taking over the world, American Idol and mixed-martial arts masters UFC are both moving forward with applications that make the social media site a big part of their plans.
This past January, UFC offered two exclusive mixed-martial arts fights on their Facebook page and watched as 130,000 new people clicked the “like” button. After that, they were sold on the concept and began making plans to do it again and again. Says UFC president Dana White:
“What I like about the Facebook part of it is the social media portion of it. It’s people connecting with other people. My thing is, and this is my philosophy about fights, everybody wants to see a fight. The problem is letting everybody know that it’s on.”
After many rumors over the past twelve months, Yahoo has officially announced the shutdown of MyBlogLog in an email to users:
Dear MyBlogLog Customer,
You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.
After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.
Google has handed out another penalty to a high profile retail site after it discovered that the site’s techniques to get to the top of the SERP’s was not above board. This is the second high profile public flogging by Google of a rogue site in the past few weeks. Couple this with the strong ‘war on spam’ rhetoric and one might think that Google is starting to pay much closer attention to who gets where in their results and how they get there.
The Wall Street Journal reports
Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.
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