Facebook Represents 7% of all Internet Visits

According to new Hitwise data, 7.07% of all internet visits go to Facebook. Google is the second largest at 7.03%. And Yahoo is a distant third at 3.67%. Equally impressive is how quickly Facebook has gained on Google - since January, they have jumped from ~6.5% to ~7.1%. Much of that acceleration happened in the last thirty days. Just a year ago, Facebook represented ~2.5% of visits.

This data comes a few weeks after Compete released their January report where Facebook surpassed Google in aggregate visits. Furthermore, if Facebook now represents greater internet share by visits, you would imagine that they are therefore significantly ahead by time on site. Google's in-and-out experience combined with Facebook's single-page structure likely result in Google winning the page-view war.

Read more at TechCrunch.

Follow McDonalds on Facebook, Are you Sure?

Several social media best practices - particularly on Facebook - come from big consumer brands: Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Rockstar, Vitamin Water, etc. McDonalds is arguably the biggest brand, but.... Go to McDonalds.com and notice prominent links to follow them on Facebook and Twitter. There is more real estate dedicated to each of these than, for instance, to their restaurant locator:

Click on Facebook and a shadowbox pops up that asks, "are you sure you want to leave?"

It's almost as though McDonald's wants to promote Facebook / Twitter... but doesn't like the consequence of having it occur on Facebook / Twitter. It is also bizarre because the call to action is clearly "Become a Fan on Facebook" - so if I have offered to do so, why ask me to confirm again?

The strangest part is the messaging below the Yes / No. The language is not particularly inviting.... nor does it suggest that McDonald's itself is involved with their various accounts:

"You are leaving the McDonald's Corporation web site for a site that is controlled by a third party, not affiliated with McDonald's."

... But we hope that eventually you do decide to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Farmville Defaults to Facebook Credits

I encourage you to read Eric Eldon's piece on InsideFacebook about how Facebook's most popular game, Farmville, now defaults to Facebook Credits and Payments. As location and geo dominate the blog headlines (Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla), Facebook Credits has managed to stay relatively under the radar... but Facebook's payments platform is important as it is going to be very big. And, despite being young, Facebook Credits is now exposed to Farmville's 84,000,000 monthly actives... that's quite the launchpad.

Brizzly Launches iPhone App & Brizzly Guide

A big, exciting day for Brizzly (whom I have written about more than a few times!). Today they announce two major product launches: 1. Brizzly for the iPhone It is a free iPhone App (download here) and has the same functionality and feel that Brizzly.com has. If you are an avid Brizzly or Twitter user - it's a must:

2. Brizzly Guide

Brizzly has always included Twitter trends with crowdsourced definitions and color. In fact, they also have made it widely available with the Lets Be Trends API. Trending topics each get their own guide pages - which are archived - and feature relevant content from the community, Twitter, relevant sources, etc. You can also access historical information about topics. For instance, Chuck Norris is the #2 trend today (it is his 70th birthday) but you can also see that first appeared as a trend on Jan 16, 2010. In fact, Chuck has quite the robust Brizzly timeline:

You can now read more on TechCrunch: "Brizzly’s Been Busy — Buying Apps, Creating Guides, And Going On Picnics."

Introducing Stickybits

Very excited to welcome Stickybits to the Polaris portfolio and to Dogpatch Labs (both New York and San Francisco). Founded by both Billy Chasen and Seth Goldestein, Stickybits are unique bar codes that can be attached to physical objects and read / shared with mobile devices. You can print off barcodes at Stickybits.com or order a booklet of stickers on Amazon.

How do Stickybits work? 1. Place the sticker on something (like a card or a flyer) 2. Scan the sticker with the free iPhone and Android apps 3. Attach digital "bits" to it (video, photo, music, etc)

The creative possibilities are endless and, when it officially launches at South-by-Southwest next week, we are all excited to see what users come up with. Here is a relatively uncreative example in action: I attached a Stickybit to my laptop - you can scan this specific barcode to see a photo and video of it... or to add bits yourself:

More about Stickybits and the launch: TechCrunch:The Secret Lives Of Objects: StickyBits Turn Barcodes Into Personal Message Boards Peter Flint: Introducing Stickybits DogpatchLabs.com: The Launch of Stickybits

A 'matchbook' of Stickybits (order yours on Amazon!)

Stickybits.com: Register, Login, Track & Share

Facebook iPhone Usage +20% from Post-Logout Promotion

When discussing marketing and product strategies, I sometimes come across as a broken record! One of things I preach is the power of change. A button's color, an ad's call to action, or the placement of a marketing module can each have a profound impact on user interaction. Of course, the only way to understand is to test... and the only way to effectively test is to have proper tracking place (don't yet? try KISSmetrics). Here is yet another example of a relatively minor change that has had very significant impact. It should serve as motivation for web and product marketers to test, trial and iterate.

Facebook recently added a post-logout promotion for the Facebook iPhone app. Nothing fancy... and nothing that required real engineering effort:

The effect: in under a week, Facebook iPhone usage soared by 20% in under a week:

Vitaminwater Connect: 100,000 Free Bottles Via Facebook

Vitaminwater has introduced its newest flavor: Vitaminwater Connect (named after Facebook Connect)... and they are giving away 100,000 free bottles of Connect to their 1.2 million Facebook fans. If you remember, over the last few months, Vitaminwater ran a major Facebook campaign that allowed fans to create their own flavors and vote on the best concoctions: "made by fans, for fans on Facebook": The announced flavor is Vitaminwater Connect... which will arrive in stores shortly and carry the Facebook logo on it:

As it prepares to hit shelves, Vitaminwater is giving away free bottles to the first 100,000 Facebook fans who request one. Users request their free bottle via their fan page and the coupon "tab":

Once you request the bottle, two interesting things happen:

1. you are encouraged to share your discovery to your Facebook friends... which is how I found this offer

2. you receive a confirmation page that also changes the fan page's logo to denote that you have accepted the offer (notice the "request accepted" portion of the graphic)

As we have seen time and time again, people love offers, samples and customized 'stuff' (product, content, etc). With the Connect flavor campaign, Vitaminwater has effectively crowdsourced the flavor, marketing and launch.

Hurry and get your free bottle by becoming a fan at http://www.facebook.com/vitaminwater

As SERPs Get More Crowded, SEO Gets More Challenging (With New Opportunities)

Internet marketers used to optimize for the "first page" - in other words, being one of the top ten natural search results. While there was declining value with each search position, you could still derive significant traffic from lower positions. But as Google gets smarter and more sophisticated - the search page gets more and more crowded.... which significantly heightens the importance / impact of high rankings... and weakens the value of lower positions. Think about how Google's search results have gotten more crowded. Depending on the query and category, search results pages now include a mix of: photos, news clippings, product data, stock quotes, Twitter mentions, mp3 tracks, etc. SERPs have become more crowded, more colorful and - sometimes - distracting.

While the SERPs have changed dramatically and impacted traditional SEO, it also represents an opportunity for other creative traffic drivers. I have written about the SEO benefit of Facebook and Twitter, but there is significant, proven opportunity around photo, blogging, product and xml optimization.

Below are two screenshots of a newsworthy query (CJ Spiller - NFL Combine standout) and a product query (Tag Heuer). Notice how much of the SERP is not traditional "organic" results.

3.5 Million Facebook Updates At Peak of Olympic Hockey Game

Great stats from Facebook regarding the Olympic Hockey game yesterday afternoon:

Olympic Spirit: The sending of status messages on Facebook peaked Sunday at 2:29 pm PST and 2:54 pm PST during two significant goals in the Olympic hockey finals: when the U.S. tied and Canada won. More than 3.5 million status updates were sent during the time frame of those key plays, twice the pace of the rest of the day.