The trends are clear: more people are watching videos online and spending less time in front of the television. Perhaps more importantly, it’s easier to skip television ads thanks to technology such as Tivo than it is to skip ads online.

With such clear trends, why are companies not embracing online video advertising more?

This Infographic by our friends at BuySellAds has clear implications, but online video ads are only marginally increasing. When will big business start to understand that branding online is much more cost-effective than through traditional media?

Soon.

We hope.

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Learn more about video marketing on this social news site.

One of the most common questions we get when people ask about social media management is, “What exactly is a social media manager supposed to do?”

We know they tweet a lot, Facebook a lot, and chat along a seemingly mundane and endless string, but what do they actually do?

Our friends at SocialCast put together this entertaining and yet eerily realistic Infographic about the hectic schedule that a good social media manager follows on any given day. Social media seems like fun and games to outsiders, but those in the trenches know it’s not only a constant grind, but also one that requires both creativity and empirical thought.

The team over at MerchantCircle are going on the offensive, trying to attract local businesses to use their services to fight corporate retail stores like Wal Mart and Starbucks.

Apparently, it’s working.

The concept isn’t new but they have been able to carve a strong niche by combining social networking with standard directory-style listings to create a service that the important companies (Google and Bing) love and that consumers can utilize. With the trend of reviews and hyper-local advertising increasing in 2011, MerchantCircle is a company that we will be watching closely.

Here is their CEO Ben Smith, IV, appealing to small, local merchants by pointing out that the “big guys like Wal Mart, Home Depot, Starbucks are using the Internet to beat up the little guy.”

The message makes sense.

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Read more about Social Media Marketing on this blog.

The impact of social media on our society is one that is not in doubt. Some, however, do question whether there are true business applications to social media. Is it just a branding tool that big corporations can use or is it something that small businesses can utilize as well.

That debate will continue, but this graphic by Jim Piccolo breaks down the ways that social media was used in 2010. This information can help us to predict and better understand what may happen in 2011 and beyond.Click to enlarge.

This video by Mashable tells an interesting tale about how everyone from an Ice Cream Truck to a Mobile Bistro are able to use social media to promote their products.

Using Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare, food trucks are hits coast-to-coast. One truck claims that 15% of their sales come specifically from Twitter. Who would have known?

(This story has been updated with a newer idea here: A Plan for Social Media Sites (and users) to Give Back)

Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Slashdot, Newsvine, NowPublic, Yahoo! Buzz.  Between these seven sites, traffic to a particular website can easily exceed 100,000, potentially much higher.

With so much power to drive people to various websites across the Internet, why are none of them greatly involved with charity?  I’m not talking about donating – I’m sure that the companies or their executives donate.  I’m talking about making a difference.  I’m talking about using their power to drive traffic and applying it to charity websites.

The reason that they don’t is that they (other than Slashdot) are strictly driven by the actions, likes, and intentions of the users.  You could argue that there is a human hand or two manipulating the system from time to time, but that’s an entirely different post.

Would it be wrong or unjustified to use the server-busting power of their front pages for an occasional bit of  philanthropy?  It wouldn’t be hard to do at all.  There would be those who would cry out “don’t preach to me” or “keep your humanity to yourself” but for the most part, I believe the communities would embrace it.  Who knows – they might just learn something from time to time that has more substance than lolcats and bacon.

Digg could very easily create a category for charity.  They could hire a handful of people to moderate the category more closely than others to keep the spam to a minimum.  The threshold could be lowered a bit (if necessary, though it probably wouldn’t be) to get a story or two a day on the front page.

As with all categories, if a user doesn’t want “charity shoved down their throat” they can always turn the category off completely.

Reddit could adopt a different type of charitable technique.  By making a charity subreddit that was featured as one of the  primary selections on the front page and making it a default, the subreddit would grow quickly.  No need for moderators – the community self-moderates well.

Even better, they can integrate their technology into a new site dedicated to charity, activism, and philanthropy.

Slashdot is clearly more tech-niche-oriented, but their control of the front page is a perfect way to make sure that tech-related stories involving charities (there are plenty) received attention from time to time.

Newsvine and NowPublic have strong communities that really pays more attention to original stories written on the websites by the users than most of the links posted there.  It would take the users themselves, especially the “powerful” ones, to take more of a stand and write about charities (then link to them, of course).  Still, the sites can help promote it through special sections dedicated strictly to charity and posted on the front page.

Yahoo! Buzz – still a tough one to understand from a traffic perspective, but potentially the most powerful of them all.  As with Slashdot, the super-popular stories are hand-picked, so squeezing in a story or two every now and then for the sake of righteousness would be a piece of cake.

StumbleUpon already has a way to implement charity into their system.  They have an advertising platform that allows people to buy Stumbles for a nickel.  Why not open that up and allow some charities to join in?  They could easily send a conservative 500-1000 people a day to a page with a 5 cent discount given to charities.  My math is spotty at best, but I believe that comes to a total cost of none, both for the charity and for StumbleUpon.  If it does well, the charities can always purchase more than their low daily quota.

Regardless of what they do, it is important and practical that they do something.  Times are tough for many.  Charitable giving is naturally down as a result.  With the power that they wield, it just makes sense that they should use just a small bit of that power to help make the world better.

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For more social media opinions, visit Social News Watch often.

Hello friends!  I want to compile a list of social media websites.  All of them.

We all know the basics – Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Propeller, etc. – but what about the others?  There are probably three hundred trillion of them, give or take, and I would like to compile a complete list.  If you know of any, please post them here in the comments.

Thanks!

OK, so everyone knows that the majority of Digg users lean to the left on most political issues.  Everyone on Digg should know that Huffington Post leans way to the left on all political issues.  It’s natural to think that the site would have a huge following on Digg and would get a ton of front page stories.

Over 7 a day – that’s a little overboard.

Still, that’s what happens to stories when they are submitted to Digg.  With a careful use of clever, tilted headlines and an aggressive user base,  HuffPo has had 52 stories hit the front page in the last 7 days.  This is not new.  In fact, there are times when this would be a low number.  They have tremendous traffic and take advantage of the traffic for Digg’s sake with a nicely placed Digg button accompanied by a request to “support” the story.

Here is an image that tells a lot about the current Digg front page:

Support is an understatement.   A conservative estimate would put the HuffPo as receiving over 3 million page views per month from Digg.  In case you missed it, let’s highlight that statement:

“A conservative estimate puts HuffPo as receiving over 3,000,000 page views per month from Digg.”

With smaller sites fighting for attention and offering similar, often superior content, is it fair for HuffPo to bully its way to the front page so often.  It doesn’t appear that the Digg algorithm itself favors the site – at least the last 12 submissions have had over 200 Diggs before they were promoted.  One had over 350.

Here is an example.  HuffPo found a story on Politico, added three words to the headline and an opening paragraph, then quoted the source for the rest of the story:

• HuffPo
• Politico

There is no way anyone can tell me that the paragraph that HuffPo wrote, which basically just stated that other sources found the information, makes it front page material, but the entire other story that they quoted does not.  Yet HuffPo had their paragraph/quote/linkjack hit and the actual story did not.

Digg should add a part to their algorithm (or improve the current one if it already exists) that makes it more difficult for sites like the Huffington Post to reach the front page.  We are not suggesting that there should be penalties, but should submissions be graded on a curve?  Quality should be more important than the bulk that some sources have behind them.  If a site consistently gets a ton of Diggs, it is either being promoted by users (which rarely happens with HuffPo) or they have a built-in system that gives them the ability to generate a ton of Diggs every time.

This is not an attack on HuffPo itself.  It’s team “gets it” when it comes to social media and Digg in particular.  Still, there is no way that any one site should hold a 5% share of the homepage.  With close to 20,000 stories submitted daily, is it fair that 1 site would have such a large presence?

The answer to that question is simple.

No.

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Read more about Digg and the Huffington Post on this blog.

First, a disclaimer about this experiment and the analysis.

In retrospect, this experiment was flawed.  The subject matter and style of delivery was very clearly geared in favor of one of the combatants.  When it was initially conceived, it was decided that the experiment would best be delivered through a post that announced itself.  By checking traffic statistics on a post titled: “The StumbleUpon Digg Experiment”, there would be equal billing, equal exposure, and most importantly, equal chances through the delivery methods to give both sides a chance.

We were wrong.

In retrospect, it is clear that the title and subject were more geared towards a social experience.  While Digg offers ways to share stories with friends, it isn’t nearly as suited for this as StumbleUpon is.  The very nature of SU is designed to where members passively share stories they like by stumbling and reviewing them.  Digg requires active participation by people to see the story.  Stumble requires nothing other than clicking and waiting for websites to be served to them.

The Digg traffic of lore says that websites will get tens of thousands of visits in a short period of time.  The problem is, not all stories get this kind of traffic when they hit the front page.  Because they have to be actively clicked on, people have to have an interest to click.  This story, while more popular than past stories that have hit the front page of Digg from this blog, still didn’t have the universal appeal to get a ton of traffic.

Stumblers are, by their nature, more interested in stories about SU than Digg users are interested in stories about Digg.  This and other factors make this experiment somewhat flawed.  Thus, the results were tremendously in favor of StumbleUpon.

Detailed statistics are being compiled.  We are breaking it down hour by hour, noting traffic spikes and comparing them to specific times of reviews on SU.  The data so far is interesting, but for those interested in the general results, here they are:

Story posted early in the morning, PST, December 14th.  It was Dugg shortly after being posted by ThinkingSerious. Then, it was Stumbled by hockeyguru around 7:00 am PST.

December 14th, 2007:

• Traffic from StumbleUpon: 15,694
• Traffic from Digg: 8,463

Surprised?  So was I.  Traditional thought is that Digg wins the short race and SU catches up over time.  Again, the subject matter/headline were geared to get Diggs, but not actual visits.  Another thing to note as that this story made it to the “Top in All Categories” box on the front page.  Less than a minute later, it was buried off that page after getting 24 hits.  Stories that do can get a huge bump in traffic for that day.  Some stories whose statistics I have seen have gotten twice as much traffic or more from being there than they did when they were initially on the front page.

December 15th, 2007

• Traffic from StumbleUpon: 4,761
• Traffic from Digg: 2,357

This is actually a very encouraging number from Digg.  Considering most of the traffic came from people when the story had to be found on deep inner pages, this is a huge number relative to the original day’s response.  Stumble traffic, if anything, was a little disappointing, as some stories get 80% of their initial day traffic on day two.  Despite the positive reviews still rolling in on day two, the percentage compared to the first day was low.

December 16th, 2007

• Traffic from StumbleUpon: 3,689
• Traffic from Digg: 349

There is the drop that happens with Digg.  There is also the famed residual traffic from Stumble.

Again, let me be clear.  This story was unintentionally geared to for SU.  The results are not a real representation, as stories that aren’t about Social Media will still have the normal results of Digg wins the first day and SU may or may not catch up over time.  The subject matter appealed to SU’s manner of delivery.  One digg is one digg and helps very little.  One stumble and especially a positive review by the right person can generate a chain reaction, a viral effect that can snowball into more and more stumbles.

Thank you to all who participated by reading, sharing, stumbling, and digging this story.  We want more data.  If you have statistics from posts other than social media themed ones, please contact us.  We want to explore, analyze, and share the data.

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Read more social news stories on this blog.

(The results are in.  Read them at StumbleUpon vs Digg).

Bloggers and webmasters out there who watch their traffic as closely as we do have been amazed by the “Stumble Effect”.  Many know about the sudden burst of traffic that comes from the “Digg Effect” when a submission reaches the front page of Digg (or even better, if it reaches the “Top in All…” section on the frontpage).  This is normally a day of joy (or terror if your server bombs) followed by limited tricklings of traffic.

Stumble has a different, more steady infusion of traffic that it can send to a website that gets stumbled, especially if it is hit by multiple top users.  The effect is sustained, but more importantly, can be rejuvinated by a thumbs up and/or review by the right person/people.

Digg, on the other hand, has the advantage of having “controlled” traffic.  Anyone watching their posts as they’re submitted and rising on Digg can pinpoint if and approximately when their page will go popular.  You know when the traffic is coming and you know when it will stop.

The thing that truly piqued our curiosity was something that happened last Sunday.  This blog has had several stories hit the front page of Digg and other social networks and has received a ton of Stumble traffic over the weeks.  Last Sunday, someone “powerful” Stumbled a story.  Shortly after that, someone else with power stumbler status reviewed it.  Ninety seconds later, our server was dead, and it took an act of congress and an upgrade in equipment to get the site live again.  That never happened with any of the Diggs.

So, let’s experiment.  The idea has been percolating for a while, but James Pegram’s Blog beat us to the punch.  No worries.  The post was excellent, but there is a ton more that can be learned.  On Digg, as stories move down the front page and on to the next, the traffic slows, like tall rollercoaster freefall that hits tremendous speeds, then gradually levels out and slows.  Stumble is like a bumpy rollercoaster in the dark.  You know the traffic will go up and down, you just don’t know when it’s going to go up, nor when it’s going to stop.

A quick note about incentive: This blog makes next to nothing in ad revenue.  That can be expected, as almost all of its traffic is generated by social media users who are normally too web-savvy to click on adsense or purchase from an advertising banner.  Most, in fact, surf the web so much that they are now “blind” to these forms of marketing.  Then, there are those who use browser extensions to block the ads altogether.

For this experiment, we won’t put any adsense or advertising in the story, just so nobody thinks there are ulterior motives involved.  The sidebar will have the coffee banner (there more for asthetic purposes, as nobody buys coffee from a social media blog) and some text ads, but the story itself will be cleaner than any others on the site.

That should make our $0.63 average daily revenue plummet, but for research, no sacrifice is too great.

No, this article will track the traffic generated as well as hour by hour, sometimes even minute by minute updates to the data stream.  Who’s Stumbling, how may Diggs, times on front page, added Stumble reviews — the list will grow as more data becomes available.  We’ll watch who stumbles it and when as well as where it moves on Digg.

There are potential drawbacks.  Despite the fact that this website does not make enough money to cover the hosting, there will be those who think it’s a ploy to somehow put cash in our pockets.  There will be those who get some kind of joy out of messing experiments like these up.  They will bury it on Digg and thumb it down on Stumble.  I’ll give it a 30% chance on Digg and a 50% chance on Stumble.

All data will be posted here with times and results as they become available.

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Read more info at the Social Media Blog.