In other words, marketers can expect to pay $3.60 for one set of eyes on the foremost social network. Reports U.K.-based Marketing Magazine:

Criticism of the announcement was widespread and immediate, noting that impressions give no account of engagement. Vitrue chief executive Reggie Bradford countered that he was coming to that, and “shares”, “comments” and “likes” would feature in a subsequent study.

While it is sometimes difficult to measure ROI in social media, pointing to “Like” as an indicator of success is seen as a problem by many, including Feedback’s own Dean Browell, who was interviewed for the article. A “Like” may simply be someone entering a competition or seeing something intriguing on a company’s Facebook page – but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a person is instantly wedded to a brand.

The article continues:

The truly curious thing, according to Dean Browell, executive vice-president of US social media strategist Feedback, is that so many brands seem happy to unquestioningly reach for the large numbers – and the less nuanced, the better.

“There’s an unusual shift happening now,” says Browell. “At first, marketers were clamouring for very specific data they could hang their hat on as a reason to go into social. Now, you have brands doing social and being OK with not measuring it.

“They are in love with the ‘like’ and, unfortunately, many of them aren’t asking who these people are who ‘like’ them, and what is the quality of the ‘likes’ they are getting.”

While many top brands view an individual Like on Facebook as a huge value, a good social media and digital practice comes down to more than just numbers. With careful methodologies in place, a great deal of meaningful data should emerge from a brand’s presence online and its fanbase, giving a company insightful feedback on its customers and stakeholders. This is data that impacts marketing departments, sure, but also gives key information to sales teams and C-suites.

For more, check out the article, Social Media: The value of a Like here.

The Drum –

The London presence will be headed up by Feedback president and CEO Jeff Thompson and executive vice president Dean Browell Ph.D., alongside vice president Anna Lucas.

Mrweb–

The team examines and analyzes online chat across relevant sectors, including clients’ own brands and their competitors, then uses Feedback’s proprietary ‘Human Filter’ service to deliver information and insight.

Promotional Marketing –

The company has partnered with London-based integrated creative agency 23red to offer a full suite of communications services to customers. Both agencies are part of global network Worldwide Partners Inc. In its first two years Feedback has already helped UK and other European agencies win new business and worked with a variety of international clients.

Campaign Live/Brand Republic-

Thompson said: “At Feedback, we believe that social media is an accelerant to traditional media, and should not be an afterthought or seen as a frivolous must-have to keep up with technology. “This approach has delivered enormous success for our clients in the States and we look forward to bringing our strengths and creative solutions to our clients here in Europe.”

We look forward to growing in Europe and keeping our friends up to speed on our progress.

Google Acquires Zagat

Google has purchased Zagat, popular restaurant review site, for an undisclosed sum that is estimated at less than $66 million.  Google made the purchase to improve its local products. As stated in the Google blog, “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”

Facebook Testing Page Recommendations
Facebook is testing a Page recommendation widget, which prompts users to write a recommendation for a Page. Facebook is hoping this widget will make it easier for friends of reviewers to find and connect with Pages.  When questioned about the widget, Facebook responded by saying “We’re always testing new features with small percentages of users to provide us feedback to help improve the service. The tests inform many of the improvements we make to the site and help shape new products.”  Facebook is also testing friend’s filters in the news feed: http://mashable.com/2011/09/08/facebook-news-feed-changes.

Twitter’s Active Users

We finally have a pulse on how many active Twitter users there are. Typically, Twitter likes to share number of users, which is currently around 200 million, rather than active users. This week, Twitter finally broke the news that there are over 100 million active twitter users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users logging in everyday. Adding to these stats, Mashable explained that “Twitter now hosts roughly a billion tweets every five days, 230 million tweets every day, and has hit a new record for tweets per second: 8,900.”

Smartphone Satisfaction
Apple should be grinning over the recent study completed by J.D. Power and Associates on Smartphone satisfaction. The study, which surveyed 6,898 Smartphone owners, found that Apple Smartphone’s had the highest customer satisfaction. Criteria included overall satisfaction, performance (35%), ease of operation (24%), Smartphone features (21%), and physical design (20%). Apple scored 830 points based on a 1,000-point scale. The industry average, for comparison, was 788 points. HTC was the closest to Apple with 801 points. See the full study here.

Smartphone Usage

Speaking of Smartphone’s, how is the average consumer using them? According to a recent study by Pew Research, Checking in on apps like Foursquare are at the bottom of the list. The survey, which was conducted on 2,277 adults, found that 92% of Smartphone users send and receive texts whereas only 12% checkin on geolocation services. View the charts below to see how Smartphone activities rank:

-Anna (@alucas9)

“Dean Browell, executive vice president at social media strategy company Feedback, part of Worldwide Partners Inc, agrees that they are few businesses that would not benefit from being social.

However, he points that businesses themselves should not get too hung up on definitions of social media and social business – as their customers give it a second’s thought.

“Consumers just simply operate online and nearly everything they do contains some social element, peer validation or interactive possibility,” he explains. “The only part of social media that is a fad is actually calling it, ‘social media’.”

This isn’t the first time Dean has been featured across the pond. See what Dean inked in June 2011.

Socializing during business is a lot different today than it was years ago. Like, bigtime.

New #4sq Features
Foursquare has made two notable updates to their app this week:

Tips List
They have added a tips list feature, which allows people to categorize a group of places. So now, for example, you can create a tip list for your favorite local bars or coffee shops.

Event Check-Ins
Foursquare has also announced official event check-ins. Foursquare has partnered with ESPN, movietickets.com, and Songkick to populate it’s database with sporting, movie and concert events for you to check-into.

Higher Ed and Foursquare
In an article this week, InsideHigherEd discussed “A recent survey by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth found that 98 percent of higher ed institutions are on Facebook, and 84 percent are on Twitter.” This is a contrast to the 20% of campuses that have adopted an institutional presence on Foursquare. Foursquare use among colleges is expected to rise as officials realize the opportunity to interact with students while they’re on campus. Just think of the engagement opportunities – such as turning a college tour into a virtual check-in game or making students aware of campus events as they’re happening.

Skype Wi-Fi
Skype has a new app for iPhone and iPad users called Skype Wi-Fi. Skype Wi-Fi allows users to connect to more than 1 million Wi-Fi Hotspots around the world. Normally you will be charged by the minute (starting at $.06 per minute), but this weekend only you can try the app for free for 60 minutes. Find out more.

Social Media Marketing Infographic

Mashable Infographic

-Anna (@alucas9)

Who Owns What? The Smartphone Market

According to a recent Nielsen study, Android currently owns 39% of the smartphone market. Apple trails Android OS by more than 10%, owning only 28% of the market. However, according to TechCrunch, Android’s have a rather high return rate. View the following chart to see a breakdown of the market.

Recruitment Plug-in: “Apply with LinkedIn”

For companies who are looking for a fresh recruitment tool, the latest LinkedIn Plug-in may be worth a try.  LinkedIn has created a simple “Apply with LinkedIn” button that companies can embed onto their website.  Then, with one click, Jobseekers can apply for the position with their LinkedIn profile.

Rumors has it…

There’s nothing like a good rumor to get the weekend kicked off. Well, that is at least true when the rumor involves the iPhone. There have been numerous “tipsters” sending out photos of the iPhone5 (rumored to debut in September) and the cheaper iPhone4S (also rumored to debut in September). According to these sources the iPhone5 will be thinner and the iPhone4S will be lighter (due to a plastic back). See the images below and read more about these rumors here.

Promoted Tweets to Followers

Twitter has officially debuted promoted tweets to followers. The new plan allows an advertisers Tweet to appear at the top of followers timelines. Current partners include Starbucks, Groupon, LivingSocial, JetBlue and Sephora. Twitter sugar coats this change by explaining, “We all come to Twitter to connect with the latest information on the topics and people we care about. So when we decide to follow a favorite brand, business or charitable organization, we expect to be among the first to get a special announcement, access to exclusive content or a great offer.”

Netflix On The Rise…. In Price

It appears unlimited streaming and DVD plans from Netflix will no longer be bundled. Netflix announced this week that the current pricing of $9.99 a mo. for unlimited streaming and 1 DVD at-a-time will no longer be available. Rather, users can purchase unlimited streaming for $7.99 a month or they can purchase the one-at-a-time unlimited DVD service for $7.99 a month. As you can see by the image below, many Netflix users took to Twitter to voice their displeasure with the change.

-Anna (@alucas9)

No. 1: “We need to be on Twitter because [competitors’ names] are.”

No. 2: “I want to retire before I have to learn this crap.”

Thankfully, the latter we’re hearing less and less, but in many cases people are fleeing to the former instead of a more reasonable middle. This often begins when someone up high finally gets a smarter smart phone. They start dabbling in mobile apps, they become Angry Birds addicts, and all the bright and shiny social media services start to make more and more business sense. It’s not unlike the phenomenon where your mom finally gets into email and starts sending you forwards you haven’t seen in 20 years.

There’s nothing quite like C-Suite-level pressure on communications departments regarding technological and social media needs. You had jobs – full-bodied, fire-fighting, day-and-night jobs – before social media showed up. Then the fires found new places to burn and the amount of work rose, but there was at least a point where you were considered the expert and could make the executive decision to pursue, monitor or ignore certain channels and technologies. Yet, somewhere in the last two years, the number of “experts” seemed to double. Then triple. They seem to be made up primarily of twenty-somethings dubbed social media savants solely because they like gadgets. And then one morning, the boss walks through the door and asks “Why aren’t we on this?”

So how do you respond? How do you filter the stream of information and find the relevant gems that might actually help boost your campaigns, brand visibility and, let’s hope, make you more effective or efficient at your ever-growing job?

The answer is to focus on your audience first. Then the concepts. Those two things will inform your strategy better than trying to understand and keep up with the technology. It’s also, not coincidentally, the underpinnings of our company’s philosophy at Feedback: listen and learn first. We tend to be hypercritical of new technologies, but it’s out of love. We try and take the longview and sometimes we’re frustrated because the promise and the reality is misaligned. Take the well-funded app Color, for example. We love what it could mean, but it falls short. Still, we have to be careful not to dismiss it completely and instead just watch. And that takes a level of patience that is sometimes hard to muster in this day and age.

- Dean (@dbrowell)

P.S. We’ll be examining this and more in an exclusive article in Spectrum, the publication of the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD) due this fall. Check it out.

Surprise: 50% of iPad subscribers click “Allow”

50% of users who subscribe to online publications opt-in and allow Apple to share information with developers such as their name, email, and zip code. As CNN Money reports, “this discovery is “the surprising reason publishers are finally saying yes to Apple.””

Google Music Beta to stream 20,000 songs for free, official! (updated)

Google beta launched a cloud streaming service called “Music Beta by Google” that streams over 20,000 songs for free. The service allows you to create a playlist or select “Instant Mix” to have a playlist auto-created based off of one song. As Engadget described, “Google’s service will essentially mimic the music locker functionality of Amazon’s Cloud service, albeit without the ability to sell songs direct to consumers. Ouch. Unfortunately, Google’s plans to launch a more feature-complete service were derailed when discussions with the labels broke down.”

Facebook Finally Launches Improved Photo Tagging

Facebook has improved photo tagging. Users can now tag photos with the names of Pages and can tag people who aren’t on their friends list (as long as privacy settings allow for it).

EXPOSED: Facebook’s Plan To Plant Anti-Google Stories in the Press

Busted. Facebook has admitted to hiring PR firm Burson-Marsteller to raise concerns over Google’s privacy act (aka plant negative press). This plan backfired when blogger Chris Soghoian decided to publish emails from Burson asking him to write a negative piece on Google.

GrouponLive: An Online Ticketing Deals Marketplace From Groupon, Live Nation

GrouponLive is a new joint venture by Groupon and Live nation that is going to offer local online ticketing deals.

-Anna (@alucas9)

Ads That Pay

Facebook will now pay users to watch certain ads. A new ad program launched by Facebook on Thursday will give users 10 Facebook credits per select video ad watched. The credits can be used towards virtual goods (such as purchases within online games) and “real-world goods” (in the form of Facebook’s new Deals service).

Business is Social

A quote from the must-read Wall Street Journal article, Business Joins the Party:

“If you want an example of the power of social media, consider this. Starbucks gets 1.8 million visitors to its website every month, Coca Cola some 270,000. By contrast their Facebook pages get 19.4 million and 22.5 million respectively, roughly 10 times the traffic. And every one of those people has given those companies permission to talk to them.”

Google’s Business Photos

Watch this video on Google’s new Business Photos, which allows participants to showcase the inside of their business (similar to street view only it gives you a look at the inside). Business owners can take their own photos and Google is also hiring photographers to snap photos of business interiors. Businesses can apply here.

(Also, watch this video for a laugh)

Current Events & The Changing News Landscape

President Obama made a major announcement on Sunday night, broadcasting that Osama Bin Laden was dead. See some of the ways social media played a role in the dissemination of the news:

• One Twitter user, @ReallyVirtual, live tweeted the raid on Sunday without even knowing it. He relayed the news of helicopters and gunshots. Once he found out about the purpose of the raid, he tweeted “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”

• Many social media users found out the news before the presidential address. As the NYTimes reported, “Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, some CNN watchers had already heard the news.  Unconfirmed reports — that turned out to be true — of Osama bin Laden’s demise circulated widely on social media for about 20 minutes before the anchors of the major broadcast and cable networks reported news of the raid at 10:45 p.m., about an hour before Mr. Obama’s address from the White House.”

• The White House released a photo on Flickr of Obama and his security team watching the raid from The Situation Room. The picture is quickly to becoming one of the most viewed images on the photo sharing site. The photo (shown below) already has over 2,000,000 views (for those curious, click this link to see the Flickr photo that has the most views to date.)

AT&T’s Groupon Competitor

Can we say crowded? AT&T is launching a Groupon/LivingSocial/Facebook Deals/Google Offers competitor. AT&T’s YP.com will start sending daily deals to consumers who opt in. The daily deal service will initially be offered in L.A., Atlanta, and Dallas-Fort Worth.

-Anna (@alucas9)

Happy #EarthDay!

Many online users are taking to Twitter and Facebook to show their support for Earth Day. You can join in the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #EarthDay or keep updated on Facebook by liking The Earth Day Network.

Some Earth Day deals to be aware of:

• Starbucks: Bring a reusable mug to Starbucks for free java or tea
• The Disney Store: Bring in 5 disposable plastic bags for them to recycle and receive a free reusable shopping bag.
• Lowe’s: They will be giving away 1 million trees on April 23rd.
• National Park Service: For Earth Day, The National Park service has made all National parks free from April 16-24^th.

Noisy Tweeter Feature

Twitter is testing a new feature to deal with noisy Twitter users. The feature appears to hide tweets if a user posts several times in a row. As the following image shows, the users most recent tweet will still be displayed and will be followed by a collapsed bar that you can expand if you want to see the other tweets. Learn more at TNW.

Photo from The Next Web

I “Like” Birthdays

Happy Birthday to the Facebook “Like Button.” The like button debuted only one year ago at the f8 conference and has since become one of Facebook’s most popular features.

InsideFacebook highlighted some of the stats behind the button:

• 10,000 websites integrate with Facebook each day
• More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook (including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites)
• Over half of the 25 fastest growing Comscore U.S. retail sites use Facebook
• Media sites that adopt the Like button average a greater than 300% increase in referral traffic from Facebook

High-tech Dining

Check out the article E la Carte: Table-Top Computers Bring Restaurants To The Future (With Bonus Trivia!) by TechCrunch. It highlights a new high-tech way to dine. E la Cart, a computer based restaurant system, debuted this week. At the lucky 20 restaurants using these systems, diners are given a portable tablet-like device complete with the restaurant menu, games, and more. Diners order by selecting what they want on the device and their requests are sent right to the kitchen. And when they’re all finished, diners can even even pay with E la Cart. It is certainly an interesting concept to keep an eye on.

Can Not Cloud Compute

On Wednesday, Amazon experienced major connectivity and latency issues with their cloud computing system, which eventually led to a temporary system collapse. As CNN reports,

“The trouble was apparently due to excessive re-mirroring of its Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes — this essentially created countless new backups of the EBS volumes that took up Amazon’s storage capacity and triggered a cascading effect that caused downtime on hundreds (or more likely thousands) of websites for almost 24 hours.”

Foursquare, Quora, Hootsuite, and Reddit were among those affected. As FathomDB founder Justin Santa Barbara pointed out, “Cloud computing is still in its infancy, and today’s events make it clear that we still have a lot of work to do.”

-Anna (@alucas9)