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Most Businesses Still Only “Experiment” with Social Media

Social media use among businesses has grown significantly over the past year or two, but new research from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit (where WebProNews is conducting exclusive interviews this week), indicates that most businesses are largely still in the experimental stage when it comes to their efforts. There are a great deal of interesting stats to pick through...

Don’t Count Out Facebook as a Competitor to Google

In case you were wondering, Facebook is pretty popular. Google is of course the undisputed king of search market share, but Facebook has the edge in some areas. Social media is the obvious area.  While Google is hoping to make some serious headway here with Buzz, Facebook is far and away the dominant being in the world of social networks. Compete shared some data with us that emphasizes just...

Consumers Getting More Comfortable with Mobile Shopping

As you know, smartphone usage is on the rise, and that means more opportunities for businesses to sell to customers via their mobile devices. We often hear about how important mobile is to the marketing strategy and especially future strategies, but how much are consumers really into shopping from their phones? Retrevo shared some findings with us, and concludes that consumers are increasingly warming...

Good News for Google Buzz – Social and Email Top Mobile Priorities

An interesting study has been released by PR firm Ruder Finn, which finds that 91% of mobile phone users go online to socialize, compared to only 79% of traditional desktop users. Meanwhile, Americans are spending an average of 2.7 hours on the mobile Internet. "Mobile phones have become the way people organize their lives—managing finances, connecting with friends, purchasing products—and...

How Over 400 Million People Use Facebook

Last week, as Facebook celebrated its sixth birthday, the company announced that it was surpassing the 400 million-user milestone. That’s one good reason why it pays for businesses to have Facebook Pages. That’s not the only impressive number though. Facebook has released a whole slew of statistics about how the site is used by those people. Following are those statistics: - More than...

Super Bowl Viewers Spend Game Time on the Web

Last year, 12% of Super Bowl viewers used the Internet while watching the game according to data from Nielsen. Those that used the web spent an average of 24 minutes online during the game. It would not be at all surprising if those numbers increased significnatly this year. "Nielsen found that simultaneous users were most engaged in general interest, e-mail, and online social networks,"...

More Marketing Dollars Shifting from Offline to Online

Econsultancy and Exact Target have released a report based on joint research, polling over 1,000 marketers about their brand reputation strategies. The research found that marketers are slashing their budgets for radio, TV, and print, while looking online to build their brand reputation. The firms say the research indicates there will be a 17% surge in digital marketing spending this year. "The...

Google Offers $5.7 Million In Research Funding

Google said today it is increasing its funding for 12 university projects to further advance research in areas the company is interested in developing. Google Focused Research Awards, totaling $5.7 million, include four categories: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy. "These...

As Companies Relax on Social Media, Threats Increase

Even as social media has grown to be a much more widely accepted form of communication among businesses over the years, there is still plenty of data out there depicting the flaws and setbacks that can occur when social networks are used in the business environment. Just as with email or web surfing in general, there are security concerns, and a new report (pdf) from security firm Sophos claims that...

Number of New Twitterers Increases Significantly

Every month, WebProNews has been looking at Twitter’s growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. In January, we looked at December’s numbers which showed an increase in tweeting frequency, as Twitter surpassed a billion tweets in a month. In January, total tweets sent were the largest on record. However, they increased at 6.34% over December, which is the second lowest...

Internet Explorer Losing its Luster in Europe?

According to data released by the AT Internet Institute, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has fallen to under 60% of visits in Europe. The firm suggests that with widely publicized news of a major security flaw and moves being made by competing browsers, IE’s fall may not be reversed in the very near future. "Out of the 23 countries that were studied, Internet Explorer experienced the...

Report Suggests More Revenue, but Less Advertisers for Google

AdGooroo, a competitive intelligence agency, has released a new report, which indicates that there as has been a decrease in active advertisers for Google, despite projected Q4 gains. "Google experienced a quality purge this quarter and banned what we believe to be more than 30,000 advertisers, accounting for about 5.3 percent of its active advertiser base," said AdGooroo Founder and CEO...

Consumers Expected to Spend $6.2 Billion on Mobile Apps in 2010

Gartner has released some research findings that indicate consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores. Meanwhile, advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide. According to Gartner, mobile app stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free. Gartner also forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores...

Skype Sees Big Jump in International Calls

Skype announced that its share of international calling minutes has jumped by 50% year-over-year. This data comes from a new report released by research firm TeleGeography. According to this report, Skype’s share of international calling minutes jumped to 12% from last year’s figure of 8%. Telegeography says that the volume of traffic routed via Skype is growing at an "astonishing"...

66% of Government Agencies Use Social Networking

A recent study came out this week from the Human Capital Institute and Saba about government organizations’ use of social networking and collaboration tools. The study looked at the effectiveness of social networking in conducting government work, how agency type affects the use, and perception of social networking, and the future expectations and barriers for its use. "This study looks...