Facebook stakeholder suggests Google+, Twitter marketing appeals to ‘power users’

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and owner of 4 percent of Facebook, said that Google+ and Twitter have taken “power users” from Facebook. Marketers might take this insight into consideration as they choose audience-appropriate platforms for social media marketing campaigns

Power users, Parker says, are essentially users that contribute more content to social networks than the typical Facebook user. Having users with great influence move to Twitter or Google+ is a positive for those networks, and for marketers who able to share branded content with these key social users on the networks. Yet, both platforms are trying to increase their user bases, while Facebook seems to grow every day without any truly aggressive campaign.

According to Parker, recent adjustments made to Mark Zuckerberg’s social site, including the Subscribe function and improvements to Lists, are aimed at allowing Facebook users to control the data that appears in their feed better. Rather than seeing everything, they see only what they care to.

In spite of these Facebook adjustments, Parker says Google+ has the potential to overtake Facebook’s market share – much like Facebook appropriated MySpace users. Plus, Twitter and Google+ already have “relevancy” checks to content similar to the ones Facebook has just rolled out. Twitter has a limit on the information anyone sees with its 140-character limit, meanwhile Google+ launched with Circles and has quickly rolled out various privacy tools to address any concerns impeding its rapid growth.

For marketers, the evolution of these social networks will be critical in guiding the investment of time and resources moving forward. Social media marketing campaigns are often split between several different websites, but it may become necessary for specific elements of campaigns to be targeted at different networks as Google+ attracts more users.

Though Parker’s point on “Power Users” may prove true, Facebook still has an 800 million-user head start – and the company is innovating to maintain interest. At f8 last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the company’s latest massive overhaul, Timeline, aimed at fostering nostalgia in those who have used the platform since its launch in 2004, as well as newer users beginning their exposure to social media now, Brafton reported.

Social media marketing opportunities grow as more Tweet from their smartphones

Market research firm comScore reported this week that the mobile social media user base has grown 37 percent in the last year. More than 72 million Americans used social media applications on their smartphones or tablets this month, with Facebook leading the way at more than 57 million mobile users.

According to comScore, Facebook mobile access grew 50 percent from August 2010 through August 2011. Twitter and LinkedIn, while having fewer overall users, experienced greater growth, increasing 75 percent and 69 percent, respectively

In terms of activity, 69.5 percent of mobile users update statuses or send Tweets from their handsets, while more than 53 percent used the Twitter application to post a link to a website.

For marketers, the expanding mobile social user base places an especially large focus on social media marketing, as potential conversions through this channel are now substantially greater. Ensuring that websites include content that supports local SEO may especially help drive foot traffic to nearby stores.

In terms of mobile operating system use, Brafton reported recently that Google’s Android is the most popular. The company recently unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest iteration of Android, and it will be rolled out to various handsets in the coming months.

LiveGO: One app for IM, Facebook, Twitter and Google+

Back in 2009, I asked for one social network to rule them all because I was tired of following friends, status updates and location check-ins on multiple platforms. That hasn’t happened, and now I have at least a half-dozen apps on my smartphone to navigate the crazy social currents. But there is some smart software that can, at the very least, mildly aggregate social networking activity. LiveGO is one of the newest such apps for iOS, and I took it for a brief spin on my iPod touch this morning.

LiveGO is essentially one app that houses both instant messenger accounts as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ activity. The software actually started up in 2006 as a web-based IM client called MessengerFX, and the web roots show through in the app. From a technical standpoint, the software is mainly an IM client with wrappers for the social network services, so you won’t see redesigned clients for Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Instead, LiveGO integrates the standard web interfaces for each.

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As a result, it offers a single app where you can quickly switch between social networks with the press of a button. Sure, you could run each app individually in iOS and multitask between them, but I find it much faster to just tap a button in LiveGO to move back and forth between networks. And the software is a full-featured IM client that supports MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and GTalk. LiveGO also supports IM notifications, but only for three hours after inactivity or closure of the application.

Again, LiveGO is more of an aggregator and doesn’t add new functionality to social network management, but it’s free and might be a faster way to stay in tune with friends on different networks.

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