Facebook has made additional public analytics data available on page profiles, including metrics over time, most popular locations and demographics. This provides marketers insight into how competitors are performing on Facebook. Twitter is selling billions of old tweets to data firms to analyze for marketing purposes. Pinterest's grid layout of images and videos may influence web design by lessening chronology and allowing for endless scrolling ads. A new service called Hashpix allows photographers to sell prints of their Instagram photos.
2. Facebook adds public analytics
• Facebook has made new public insights data
accessible to any user who visits a page.
• Click the “Likes” thumbnail to access this
dashboard.
• Previously, only the “Likes” and “People Talking
About This” metrics were available.
• The new dashboard features a graph that charts
“Likes” and “People Talking About This” over time.
• Additionally, “Most Popular Week,” “Most Popular
City” and “Most Popular Age Group” are new data
categories.
• For pages that are associated with a location, the
module displays three additional items: “Photos
Tagged Here,” “Most Visited Week,” and “Largest
Party.”
• For marketers, this is a new way to understand how
competitors are performing on Facebook.
Source: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/03/01/
facebook-adds-new-public-data-to-page-timelines-
lets-businesses-assess-competitors/
3. Twitter to sell old tweets
• Twitter has sold millions of old tweets to two firms,
Datasift and Gnip, which will analyze them for
marketing purposes, and then re-sell the data to
more than 1,000 companies.
• DataSift’s new product Historics lets companies
extract insights and trends that relate to brands,
businesses, financial markets, news and public
opinion from the past two years. Gnip will only have
30 days worth of data.
• For marketers who haven’t been monitoring social
activity, this data source allows a historical view on
how product launches or marketing initiatives have
been received on Twitter.
• Source/Read More: http://www.reuters.com/article/
2012/03/01/us-twitter-data-
idUSTRE8201IU20120301
• Source/Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/
saas/digging-for-gold-in-datasifts-twitter-archive/
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4. how pinterest may be influencing web design
• “It’s almost like a window-shopping mode,” says
Khoi Vinh, the former design director for
NYTimes.com, about Pinterest.
• Most websites and social networks display
information based on a single-post, reverse
chronological order, but Pinterest orders posts of
images or videos in a grid 6 across, which lessens
the importance of chronology.
• “It flattens the information hierarchy,” describes Jeff
Croft, a web designer and co-founder of ebook
lending site Lendle.
• Unlike search, it is less important for readers to
know what they’re looking for; discovery is
more possible in these horizontal web
structures.
• The Pinterest design allows for endless scrolling: the
reader continuously scans for new content and
imagery.
• The design eliminates the “below the fold”
problem for banner ads; ads appear
interspersed with content throughout the site.
• Already, major media sites such as the Today Show
and CondeNast’s EasyLiving have adopted similar
designs.
• Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/02/07/
pinterest-web-design/
5. hashpix
• Hashpix is an add-on to the popular web service
Instagram
• It allows individual photographers to sell their prints
in 3 sizes—5x3, 8x10, 10x10—for prices ranging
from $18-$22.
• Although the idea is simple, it illustrates how easy it
is for anyone to build off any popular web platform,
brands included.
• Currently, Hashpix is invite-only, and only
Instagram’s top photographers are featured on the
site.
• Brands may be able to sell their own Instagram
pictures—or perhaps books of photo—from the site
in the near future.
• Read More: http://mashable.com/2012/03/01/
hashpix/