.

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Halloween stats porn...

Want to know what the hottest Halloween costumes are this year? Or maybe you’re a contrarian, and don’t want to be seen in the same costume anyone else is wearing. Or maybe you’d like to know what the most popular candy is this Halloween, 2011.

You came to the right place. Find out what’s hot and what’s not by checking out the spooky stats on our Halloween infographic from Webtrends, showing you which costumes and candy garnered the most buzz.

According to Webtrends, the data used to create this infographic represents online mentions from October 1-24, 2011 and is an aggregation of Twitter, blogs, online news sites and other social media sources.

Infographic courtesy Webtrends

More About: costumes, Halloween, webtrends

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stats porn

Last week I did a Webinar with my friends (and Convince & Convert sponsors) Argyle Social about social media timing. I use Argyle Social to send most of my tweets, Facebook and Linkedin updates et al, and the guys at Argyle (which specializes in advanced metrics and social reporting) agreed to put some of my crazy theories to the test.

We uncovered a great many interesting factoids, and even some “non-advice’ including the finding that if you’re a B2B company what day you tweet (within the work week) is irrelevant.

The big take-away (I hope) from our Webinar is that AVERAGE PEOPLE CARE ABOUT AVERAGES. Listening to some huge survey that says “on average, the best time to tweet is 2pm Wednesdays” is a mockery in stereo. First, that data is totally bogus, and whomever propagates that crap should know better. Secondarily, YOU should know better. The reality is that YOU need to determine what’s right for YOUR COMPANY.

As we talked about in the Webinar you need to create a defined hypothesis, and test that hypothesis with enough data to be significant statistically, while ensuring that you are not changing more than one variable at a time. Easy? Nope. Important? Yep.

Social media success is exiting the era of sympathy, and entering the era of science. Are you ready?

The reality is that your results may vary. However, one finding that we uncovered in the research is that there may be a large opportunity for B2C marketers on Facebook on Sundays. We found that few companies publish status updates on Sunday, yet engagement (clicks divided by audience) is 30% higher that Saturday, and even higher that than versus weekdays.

I know your community management team may be at church and/or gorged on buckwheat pancakes and apple-smoked bacon, but this data from Argyle Social suggests that you need to try Sunday Facebook posts, even if they are staged in advance. (recording of the Webinar available at: this link.

Which of our findings did you find most interesting?

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Funny!

Netanyahu Roll doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like Rick Roll, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the subject of an amusing meme that resulted from a photo uploaded to his Facebook page.

Bibi Bombing (Bibi is the prime minister’s nickname) started when the photo below appeared on Netanyahu’s Facebook page. It depicts Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Hamas in 2006 and recently freed, meeting his father for the first time in five years, with Netanyahu in the background, almost looking like he was inserted via Photoshop.

Thanks to some creative and funny people, as well as Photoshop, that picture turned into these:

Finally, Netanyahu responded with a doctored photo of his own, with the caption, “Dugri, you made me laugh.” Dugri is Arabic and Hebrew slang for straightforwardly.

Many thanks to Eti Suruzon for the tip.

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Am really going to try and do this this year!

We’re celebrating yet another 24 hours of Flickr on Friday, November 11, 2011!

It is always amazing to see the great projects you create in the Flickrverse and how passionate you are about them. Whether they are regular projects like 365, 52 weeks, or 100 strangers, or special occasions like the 24 hours of Flickr, Flickr 888, and 10/10/10.

This year, we are going to celebrate Flickr 11/11/11, yet another 24 hours of Flickr. Take a photo anytime when it’s November 11th where you are, and share it in the group.

And to up the ante, our friends at MOO are going to offer unique Flickr 11|11|11 products that will be available shortly after the submission period ends, giving you a nice discount on their lovely products.

So, mark your calendars and save the date for yet another 24 hours of Flickr on Friday, November 11, 2011.

Shared by Paul
Am really going to try and do this this year!

We’re celebrating yet another 24 hours of Flickr on Friday, November 11, 2011!

It is always amazing to see the great projects you create in the Flickrverse and how passionate you are about them. Whether they are regular projects like 365, 52 weeks, or 100 strangers, or special occasions like the 24 hours of Flickr, Flickr 888, and 10/10/10.

This year, we are going to celebrate Flickr 11/11/11, yet another 24 hours of Flickr. Take a photo anytime when it’s November 11th where you are, and share it in the group.

And to up the ante, our friends at MOO are going to offer unique Flickr 11|11|11 products that will be available shortly after the submission period ends, giving you a nice discount on their lovely products.

So, mark your calendars and save the date for yet another 24 hours of Flickr on Friday, November 11, 2011.

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This might make me use Google+ move...

The changes, which are “highly requested,” according to Google software engineer Alan Green, include a new design and the retiring of features like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader, which will be supplanted by Google+.

You may “feel like the product is no longer for you,” Green writes, in which case you can export your subscriptions, friends, likes and shared items to another RSS reader. Google gave Reader a social makeover with follows and friending in 2009, when Digg, among other social news services, was much more influential.

Like Google Buzz, which was retired last week, those social features are being excised as the company focuses on growing Google+.

More About: Google, google buzz, google reader, rss reader

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Not sure searching for it will make it happen...

If Google search trends can predict where flu will break out in advance of actual reports of flu, can search trends also predict where revolutions are brewing? Judging from search trends in Egypt, Greece, Spain and the United States, it appears that all you need to know which way the wind is blowing is a good search tool.

Here's how searches for the word "revolution" have been trending in the U.S. over the last twelve months:

read more

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Good to see some life in flickr still

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has grown to include occupations in cities all over the United States and the World. Did you know you can use the Flickr map to find out what other cities are being occupied and see images from the protests?

Go to the Map, search for ‘occupy’ and sort by most recent. Then just scroll to see images from all over the world.

You can also center over a particular area and then search for ‘occupy’ sorted by recent as in this map of the U.S.

The most recent images change every minute but currently you can see images from New York, Washington D.C., San Diego, San Jose, Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, etc.

Images continue to flow in so save this search and reload it later to see new images as the protests continue.

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Love this

When my brother was about 10 years old, he received a kiddie camera as a present. It was covered in purplish plastic that lent it an indestructible air. Attached to the camera was a yellow hand cord, perfect in length for a small child to swing around as he walked. And so, my brother, walking by the San Francisco Bay, swung his camera and launched it straight into the water. Oops.

Too bad he didn't have a sweet panoramic ball camera, a throwable (though perhaps not waterproof) green ball complete with 36 mini-cameras. Thrown up into the air, it delivers 360 degrees of high-perspective image. In addition to awesome images, it’s technology you can play with. Awesome.

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Interesting that most sharing of URLS still happens via copy paste

When are people most likely to share content on the web? How do they prefer to share it? What services are they sharing to most frequently? These are the burning questions of the age of social media. Bookmarking and sharing service AddThis just might have the answers.

AddThis is celebrating its fifth birthday with a deep dive into its data pool. The Clearspring service has analyzed five years’ worth of sharing data — and has summarized its findings in the infographic below.

What does the data tell us? Sharers apparently don’t suffer from the midweek blues, at least when it comes to passing along web content to friends and followers; we share the most on Wednesdays. And the most active time of day for sharing comes bright and early at 9:30 a.m. ET each day.

More intriguing is how the world prefers to share. AddThis data suggests the majority of us prefer to share by copying and pasting URLs from the address bar to emails, IMs and social sites. We do this 10 times more frequently than we share via buttons and other tools. How old-fashioned of us.

Keep in mind that this data only looks at sharing activities powered by AddThis — it’s not the complete sharing picture. Still, given that the service reaches 1.2 billion users each month, it’s likely to be indicative of wider trends.

More About: AddThis, sharing, Social Media

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Whether or not hashtags will win anything for anyone in 2012, we can be sure that every major event related to the elections will be live-tweeted, just as the Occupy Wall Street protests have been. Over at the New Organizing Institute’s blog today, my friend Melissa Ryan has some excellent advice for people using Twitter to cover rallies and other gatherings as they happen. Some of her tips:

• Don’t worry about covering everything (just cover what you can).
• Promote the work of your fellow live-tweeters.
• Stay with the (hashtag) trends. Respect the hashtags being used by your fellow tweeters and be aware that they sometimes change or evolve.
• Stay charged (with electrical power).
• Have a backup (networks fail at the worst moments).

I’d definitely echo her points, particularly the ones about covering what you can and about promoting the work of others. When we’ve live-tweeted events for my day job at NWLC, I’ve typically stayed in the office to retweet posts from our participants over the organization’s main Twitter feed. This way, we get individual perspectives that add up to much more, particularly when we supplement our own posts with retweets of those from outside activists and organizations.

Every piece helps to create a fuller picture of what’s happening for people around the world who are following along, often literally, since different people will tweet photos of different aspects of the event. Plus, retweeting other activists helps you share the love, which they’ll likely do in return. And you never know who’ll be the one to capture that magic Macaca moment.

– cpd

More than in any other race to date, Americans may experience the 2012 presidential election through precisely targeted phone calls, visits, tweets and Facebook posts — messages not from the candidates themselves, but from their own politically active friends.

If those messages come, they won't be random. As campaigns become more savvy about their data on supporters and voters, they are also becoming more and more sophisticated in the way they plan voter contact. This is already leading to new tools, like one built by NGP VAN and used in an ongoing labor campaign, that don't just encourage users to spread the message of a campaign — they help each supporter make a data-driven decision about who to contact.

read more

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Cute

The Hangout, announced Friday on the Dalai Lama’s Google+ profile, will take place Oct. 8 at 10:30 a.m. South African time (GMT+2.00). That’s 4:30 a.m. ET in the U.S. The live video conversation will be part of the Inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture in Cape Town, South Africa. The event coincides with the archbishop’s 80th birthday on Oct. 7. A link to the Hangout will be available approximately 20 to 30 minutes before it starts.

The Dalai Lama had originally planned on visiting South Africa in person this weekend, but visa woes prevented the holy leader from entering the country. However, that didn’t stop the Dalai Lama from posting a video (below) on Google+, wishing the archbishop — an activist who first rose to prominence opposing apartheid in the 1980s — a happy birthday.

This was all done on the same day the Dalai Lama joined Google+. Another post on the social network welcomes the Dalai Lama’s potential Google+ followers with a mission statement of sorts: “He frequently states that his life is guided by three major commitments: the promotion of basic human values or secular ethics in the interest of human happiness, the fostering of inter-religious harmony and the welfare of the Tibetan people, focusing on the survival of their identity, culture and religion.”

While the Dalai Lama may be new to Google+, this isn’t his first social media presence. He also has a Twitter account with more than 2.5 million followers, along with a Facebook page with more than 2 million fans.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Jan Michael Ihl

More About: Dalai Lama, desmond tutu, Google, Social Media, social networking

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Ok - this could be a fun use of QR codes

Here’s a circuitous route to free advertising on Google: An Austin, Texas, firm will install QR codes on rooftops in an attempt to sneak into Google Maps.

Phillips & Co.’s new proposition, called Blue Marble, offers a “space-accessible profile” for businesses, cities, schools — anyone who wants to raise their profile. In addition to catching the attention of the odd plane passing by, Phillips says in a statement that Google Earth has been downloaded 400 million times and “by integrating a readable code into the space-accessible profile, mobile users can access dynamic marketing programs, videos, digital coupons and other content while viewing the specific geographical location.” (Actually, Google announced on Wednesday that the app has been downloaded 1 billion times.)

In addition to showing up in Google Earth, the codes would also surface in Google Maps, which makes use of the former with Earth View.

Getting that done will set you back $8,500 plus a recurring $200 support fee. Those charges include creating the QR code and installing it. However, the program seems best for marketers that are in no great hurry: It takes about a year for the code to show up on Google Earth.

More About: Advertising, google earth, Google Maps, Marketing, QR Codes, trending

Which site offers more privacy, Facebook or Google Plus? A pretty good comparison between the two appears in an infographic below.

Peer One Hosting created the infographic that illustrates how neither site outdoes the other in the way of privacy.

Update: See Kevin Bondelli’s reponse, #ColinDelanyIsRight About Hashtags. And, note that the original article turned ME into a hashtag.

For an example of how the online communications ground is constantly changing under candidates’ feet, check out Adam Hochberg’s excellent Poynter article on the Republican hijacking of the #attackwatch Twitter hashtag started by the Obama campaign. The background: earlier this month, the Obamans launched Attackwatch.com, a successor site to 2008′s FightTheSmears.com that crowdsources the process of identifying and countering online critics. Unlike its earlier counterpart, Attackwatch.com has a social media component, part of which is a Twitter hashtag for supporters to use.

But of course, hashtags don’t care who types them in, and conservatives quickly jumped on #attackwatch and began using it as a platform to make fun of the President. Hashtag hijacks are nothing new (liberals and conservatives do it to each other all the time), but this one was prominent enough that it attracted media attention and led to claims that Obama has lost his online mojo (something helped by the fact that Attackwatch.com’s design is harsh on the eyes and on the campaign’s potential opponents — not exactly happy-friendly-hopey Obama ’08).

All is lost! Which is bunk, of course, and the source of the “this election’s not going to be won in hashtags” line above. It’s one of several quotes from a discussion Hochberg and I had last week that appear in his article, and please note that of course I’m not arguing that Twitter’s going to be irrelevant in the 2012 election.

But let’s have a sense of proportion: a hashtag here and there is trivial compared with the grand sweep of presidential politics. Twitter’s a powerful tool to spread messaging and influence the opinion leaders, but it’s not the end-all of online politics — it’s just one weapon in the political arsenal. Now, if Obama’s email fundraising and mobilization go to hell, his video strategy backfires, MyBO crashes, his Facebook followers un-friend him in droves and no one clicks on his Google Ads, let’s talk.

I hope the campaign learned a few lessons about social media from this episode, though — blogs, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook had already diluted politicians’ ability to impose a political narrative in 2008, and Twitter’s main effect is to speed up the trend (it excels at spreading a meme in a flash). Message control is dead — and hashtags were born to be hijacked.

– cpd

Facebook users are injecting a little java into their status updates in honor of National Coffee Day.

As part of National Coffee Day, chains including Dunkin Donuts, 7-Eleven, Thornton’s, and Klatch Coffee are offering free or discounted coffee. And Facebook users are excited.

Here are 10 of the most over-caffeinated ones, including a couple of potshots at Starbucks, which elected not to participate in National Coffee Day.

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Amidst the Facebook-centric society in which we now seem to live, it’s important to remember that groups of people around the world use social networks differently. We’ve taken a look at the social media breakdown in 10 countries — how they’re engaging with social networks, blogs and Internet culture.

Based on data provided by Nielsen, Facebook is clearly the favored social network. However, you might be surprised to see how runners-up like Twitter and LinkedIn rank on a global scale.

Take a peek at our infographic, and please let us know in the comments below which social networks are popular (or gaining popularity) in your country of residence.

Editor’s Note: Because reliable data about emerging online markets like China and India is difficult to source, they were regrettably omitted from this graphic.

Infographic design by Nick Sigler

This series is supported by Vocus‘ Social Media Strategy Tool, a free online tool which lets you build your own custom social media framework in six easy steps. It helps you determine your organization’s goals, explore the latest MarketingSherpa research data, and create your own workbook packed with the strategies, tactics and resources you need. Try it today!

Infographic design by Lorena Guerra

More About: features, mashable, Mashable Infographics, Social Media, Social Media Infographics Series, social networks

As we continue to work through our Angry Birds addiction, this playful infographic offers some consolation. We’re not alone in our attraction to flinging the flying fowl, but would like some answers, and this infographic is happy to oblige with lots of solid research.

Why can’t we stop playing this game that started on iPhone and now keeps spreading like wildfire on multiple platforms? Why is it so darn fun? The expert market researchers at AYTM (who aren’t affiliated with Angry Birds creator Rovio in any way) consulted psychologists and dug into boatloads of statistics to find the answers:

Angry Birds infographic courtesy AYTM

More About: angry birds, Gaming, infographics, trending

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Flickr Member Jason Powell has done a project called Looking Into the Past: September 11, 2001 to commemorate the events of 9/11.

In the description of each photo Jason includes a link to the original image from 2001. To create the New York City photos, he worked with member Michael Foran who let Jason use his photos from Sept 11, 2001 for this look into the past. Below are Michael’s original photos.