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While most of us in the Internet marketing “industry” were all aghast at the Facebook privacy problem of ’09 , the rest of the world could have cared less. You know those people, right? The ones who don’t live and breathe this stuff to the point that all perspective is lost? These are the ‘everyday’ Facebook users who don’t give a rip about Mark Zuckerberg and the continued search for 7,000 people who care enough to impact any policy changes with the social media giant. So those regular folks pushed Facebook to a point where it had never been before: the number one site during the Christmas holiday. ReadWriteWeb tells us Christmas is a holiday that brings people together, so perhaps it should be no surprise that Facebook has become a part of millions of peoples’ Christmas experiences. For the first time in its history, Facebook was the #1 most visited website in the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, according to traffic analyst firm Hitwise today. Makes sense doesn’t it? Personally I was more prone to using Skype rather than updating everyone but that is certainly a personal preference. So while the site finished third for the year behind Google and Yahoo Mail it was certainly a milestone to be seen as the Christmas site of choice. Last year Facebook finished second in this contest to Google but was able to flip positions this year. See what a year of gigantic growth can do for you? Wonder if Santa will be as nice to Facebook next year after the rest of the world catches on that their “goings on” at Facebook aren’t as private as they used to be? Comments

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Facebook Nabs #1 Honors For Site Visits On Christmas Day

Online retail websites experienced significant growth in November as the holiday season officially kicked off, according to a new report from comScore. Among the top gaining retail sub-categories were toys, consumer electronics, and department stores, each growing more than 30 percent compared to October. Toys sites attracted 27.4 million Americans during the month, representing a 33-percent increase from the previous month. Toysrus led the category with more than 14.8 million visitors (up 82%), ranking as the fourth top-gaining property in November. The LEGO Group landed in the second spot in the toys category wit 3.8 million visitors (up12%), followed by Disney Shopping with 2.6 million (up29%) and AmericanGirl.com with 1.9 million (up 44%). “November marks the official start of the holiday shopping season as millions of Americans search for gifts and deals both online and in stores,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “With nearly 4 out of 5 Americans online visiting a retail site during November, the Internet clearly represents an increasingly important channel for retailers during the holiday season and beyond.” Consumer electronics sites grew to 52.8 million visitors during the month, a 32 percent increase over October, led by Best Buy with nearly 25 million visitors and Walmart Electronics with 9.9 million visitors (up 139%). Radio Shack ranked third with 5.1 million visitors, followed closely by eBay Electronics with 4.8 million visitors (up 12 %) and Buy.com with 4.4 million visitors (up 11%). Online department stores saw a 33 percent gain, reaching nearly 81 million unique visitors in November. Walmart led the category with 46.2 million visitors (up 62%), followed by Target with 38.8 million (up 43%), Sears with more than 19 million (up 36%), JCPenney with 15.4 million (up 34%), and Macy’s with 12.7 million (up 38%). Online shoppers flocked to coupon sites, making it the #3 gaining category in November, growing 33 percent to 37.5 million visitors. Coupons, Inc. landed in the top spot with more than 8 million visitors (up 9%), followed by EverSave.com with 5.3 million visitors and RetailMeNot with 5.1 million (up43%). BlackFriday.Info experienced a huge surge in activity, increasing more than 1,000 percent to 5 million visitors. GottaDeal.com saw traffic increase 955 percent to 1.8 million. The month of November saw online spending increase 10 percent versus a year ago to reach nearly $12.3 billion in sales. comScore noted that the comparison is against a very weak November 2008, due to the economic crisis. Black Friday hit $595 million in online sales, an 11 percent increase over Black Friday 2008. Cyber Monday reached $887 million in online spending, up 5 percent compared to a year ago. Google sites led the U.S. search market in November with 65.6 percent of the search queries conducted, up slightly from October. Yahoo trailed with 17.5 percent share (down 0.5 points from October), and Microsoft at 10.3 percent (an increase of 0.4 points from October). Ask grabbed 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL with 2.8 percent. Have You Read This? > Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers > Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday > Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales

Thomas Edison famously remarked that genius was “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” For bloggers this means that if you put your effort into it, you can create a blog that gathers a following. If you look at a group of bloggers, one with a worldwide following and the rest with small audiences, the former will not necessarily be the best writer, the funniest, the smartest or even the one with the most inside info or useful tips. The great bloggers you follow yourself could have varying amounts of these characteristics. So what separates the good bloggers from the ones with larger followings? Many call it the “x factor.” Since this is a bit amorphous we’ll touch on it later. You can take your first steps toward creating an engaging blog that builds a loyal following by following some simple guidelines. There are definitely tips, techniques and tools that will get you there and equip you to compete in the blogging big leagues. We’ll return to the “x factor” after getting you to that starting line. Audience as foundation Know your audience. Marshall McLuhan observed almost 50 years ago that the world was transforming into a “global village” through mass communication. The global village is here. People don’t log on to the Internet to be lectured. They log on for information, but also for intelligent dialogue – for exchange, for discussion, for sharing – with people like themselves. Know your audience and the information and conversation they are looking for. You need to engage your readers and speak directly to them with a personal touch, a sense of inclusion, and even a hint of intimacy. Blogs are about relationships, and relationships are about discussions and dialogues of all kinds. The “Monologue Era” is over. Your blog will succeed to the extent that you connect with your audience. In our Dialogue Era, if you offer people something useful you can become a resource. People bookmark resources and return to them repeatedly, expecting more of the same. Once you have defined your audience you must set about adding value to their visits. Provide information helpful to your audience. Write clearly and don’t try too hard – be natural but concise, instructive but conversational. Produce useful, supportive and brief pieces that people can apply – today, tomorrow, whenever. That will show they can return for more information without wasting their time. Blogs are not articles, so keep them to the point, but do not enforce an arbitrary word limit. Your length will depend on your topic and your audience – make every word count. Draw them in, move them along To engage an audience in the first place, craft interesting headlines that invite readers in and use subheads to move them along and allow them to scan for the specific information they are looking for. The flow is enhanced if you keep sentences shorter rather than longer, and active rather than passive. Don’t posture, pretend, boast or brag, and always maintain a healthy skepticism and sense of humor. You are not writing great literature, your helping your neighbor. Finally, always review your output and rewrite where necessary. During this process, make words “pay their rent” by weeding out unnecessary ones. You have many things to consider, a number of bottom lines – plural. Bottom line: You need to read about writing, learn how to edit and refine your technique over time. Bottom line: You need to learn the particular writing techniques that have evolved around blogs, like how to craft good bullet points, when to use them, how to use the page layout to your advantage and so forth. Bottom line: You have to continue reading your competition and your colleagues, often one and the same, and analyze what works and what doesn’t. Bottom line: There are a lot of bottom lines in blogging. Go forth and blog Coming full circle, then, let’s consider that “x factor” again. Although it’s not possible to define it quite precisely, we know where it is located. It is in you. It is your personality, your spark, your unique outlook. Be yourself, not what you think they want you to be. In that jigsaw puzzle that is “you” there are many traits and abilities, opinions and truisms, dreams and fears, and the sum total of them all is what adds up to “you” – and no one else – and your own real personality coming off the page is often what engages people. How can you inject “you” into your writing? There’s only one way to draw it out, of course, and that is to write. Since you are forming relationships, do what Dale Carnegie advised about 80 years ago and ask small favors of your readers. Invite their comments. Ask for their opinion. Encourage them to express their point of view. This tells them you value what they think. More importantly, it engages them and makes them a valuable active participant (instead of a passive visitor), a member of your community, and part of an ongoing and growing dialog. This is what will lead many of them to make the all-important cognitive leap that will have them bookmark your blog, link to your posts, tell all their friends about it and continue the dialog. The leap occurs when readers stop thinking of themselves as readers, and start thinking of themselves as “stakeholders” – readers that interact with you. If you can convert readers into stakeholders, you’re on your way.

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How to Write Engaging Blogs People Want to Read

New research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 4 percent of cell phone owners ages 12 to 17 have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images of themselves to someone else on a cell phone. Pew found 15 percent of teens that age have received this kind of image of someone they know personally on their cell phone. Sexting was most common among older teens with 8 percent of 17-year-old cell-owners saying they have sent suggestive images of themselves by text while only 4 percent of 12-year-olds have. Pew found that sexting occurs most often in one of three scenarios: 1.

Most holiday shipping offers are set to expire on or before December 18, according to a new study by Shop.org and BIGresearch. Nearly two thirds (62.3%) of retailers’ shipping deadlines for Christmas delivery will fall on or before December 18, with 34 percent of shipping deadlines occurring on December 18 itself. Many of the busiest online shopping days of the year are set to take place this week as shoppers go online to make holiday purchases in order to meet impending shipping deadlines. “Online shoppers don’t need to deal with long lines, store hours or winter weather, but they do need to plan ahead,” said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org . “To entice online shoppers on a budget, many retailers will offer special sales and promotions as shipping deadlines near.” Shoppers looking to save on shipping should also be aware of December 18, as 17.9 percent of retailers said that would be the last day they would offer a free shipping promotion for holiday gifts. According to shop.org’s eHoliday survey, released in October, the majority (79.4%) of online retailers will offer free shipping with conditions at some point during the holiday season, while more than half (57.4%) also plan to offer free shipping without conditions. The popular promotion is one element driving shoppers online, with 33.1 percent of holiday shoppers planning to spend more on the Internet this holiday season because of free shipping. “In this economy, shoppers are taking a look at the entire purchase price – including shipping – before deciding where to shop,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch. “Though free shipping isn’t “free” for retailers, companies know these promotions can set themselves apart from their competition and are relying on them more heavily to bring in shoppers.” For shoppers who miss standard shipping deadlines they may be still able to use expedited shipping from some retailers. More than half (54.2%) of online retailers will offer overnight shipping options for Christmas delivery through December 23.

AOL continues to travel into the brave new world that it is venturing into as the lines have been cut that once attached it to TimeWarner. Of course, there will be a lot of scrutiny which often leads to criticisms but that’s just part of doing business. Another part of doing business as a solo act is to make sure that you lean more toward ‘lean and mean’ which may mean trying to shed some business units that are not going to be helping AOL address its core competencies (which is another matter seeking clarity so feel free to chime in if you are from AOL). TechCrunch is reporting that ICQ, which was purchased by AOL back in the Roaring 90’s (I am not even sure that term makes any sense but I am sticking with it) is getting attention from Google and DST (Digital Sky Technologies) whose biggest splash in ’09 was giving more money to Facebook . ICQ, which AOL acquired in 1998 for $400 million, has 33 million worldwide monthly users, according to Comscore. But 8.3 million of those are in Russia, where it hold the no. 1 spot for instant messaging. That explains DST’s interest. It also explains some of Google’s interest as they struggle to get a proper foothold in that market. We concentrate heavily on the Internet marketing world for the English speaking world but the growth for companies like Google etc are in the large international audiences. Consider that Google has introduced 38 new search products over the last 70 days and language translation is heavily featured. Of course there would be significant interest in acquiring a ‘ready made’ audience in Russia. Is DST thinking the same way for Facebook? Why not, especially when the rumored price for ICQ and its users was somewhere north of $250 million but not likely anywhere near its price of 11 years ago. It could be a true bargain. . As with many business activities timing is an important part of the measure of success or failure. Since AOL is in a position to move ICQ and please its shareholders the timing may be right for a little showdown at the Siberian Corral between DST and Google. Interesting: yes or nyet? Comments

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AOL Might Be Looking To Sell ICQ