The iPlatform » social network marketing

Facebook beating Bebo at its own game

joshuamarch — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:45:00 +0000

New research carried out by the Dubit Informer Panel (30,000 young people in the UK) shows that Facebook is winning the social network war in the UK on almost all measures. Although there are slightly more registered 12-17s on Bebo, the usage stats show that Facebook has replaced Bebo even among the youngest demographic. Their findings:

12-17s – membership
Bebo is the SNS with more registered teenagers 12-17 (67%); Facebook (FB) 64%; MySpace (MS) 54%

12-17s – usage
FB is used more frequently than Bebo. 53% use FB at least once a week, and this usage increases at the older end; Bebo 42%; MS 30%. Gender is also important: girls are more likely to register with, and use, Bebo.

16-25s – membership
83% have a profile on FB; MS 51%; Bebo 36%. Registrations on FB are evenly spread across all ages, from 16 to 25, but MS and Bebo registrations decrease significantly as age rises.

16-25s – usage
FB is accessed by 70% of 16-25s at least once a week (the second most used website just below Google); MS 23%, but steep decline as age increases.

When Facebook was first growing among the closed university networks, Bebo managed to gain a leadership position amongst a younger audience unable to access Facebook. This is clearly reflected in the stats showing that more 12-17 year olds are registered on Bebo than anywhere else. However, Facebook’s pure relentless pursuit to be the social graph identity provider of the web is now paying huge dividends, with Bebo (and MySpace) falling to the wayside in every single demographic, even taking over Bebo for usage in the 12-17yr old category. We’re strongly recommending all of our clients to focus their strategies on success in Facebook rather than spread themselves thinner across the other networks.

Facebook release ‘connection’ targeting for adverts

joshuamarch — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:55:39 +0000

Facebook have released a new feature in their advertising platform allowing you to targets users connected to your fan pages, applications, groups or events. This potentially could be powerful as a way of promoting new content to users, maintaining interest, and cross selling. Although we always recommend seeding content, applications and features directly to your fan pages and groups, it’s never advisable to keep spamming your fans – this offers a low nuisance way of maintaining communication, on a performance (pay-per-click) basis.

For targeting new users, this will also allow you to purposefully not target current users, ensuring maximum user acquisition.

Check out Facebook’s note on the new features for more information.

Facebook Public Profiles Now Have Viral Invite Mechanism

joshuamarch — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:31:11 +0000

Facebook have been making a number of additions to their ‘public profiles’ recently (what used to be called fan pages); the latest of which is to add viral invites to pages, as All Facebook report. This means that a fan of a public profile can send direct invites to their friends, similar to applications. The effect of this won’t be dramatic, as if people really wanted to share a page with their friends they could do it with the share feature, however this could be a stronger call to action for users; and it’s certainly something which brand owners of pages have been calling for.

Get in touch if you’d like help developing your Facebook brand presence.