Among the companies with access to tons of this type of data is AddToAny, makers of one the most popular widgets that lets content sites provide their readers with an easy way to share stories across multiple social media sites.

According to AddToAny, Facebook now dominates sharing, with 24 percent of shares from the widget consisting of users posting items to the social network. That handily beats out email (11.1 percent) and Twitter (10.8 percent), making the world’s most popular social network also the most popular service for sharing content. This is undoubtedly welcome news at Facebook, as the site continues to emphasize sharing and readies its own real-time search engine.

Interestingly, if you combine all of Yahoo’s properties – Delicious, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, and Yahoo Messenger – it accounts for 14.4 percent of sharing, making it second on the list. Less surprising, MySpace has fallen well down the ranks with just 5 percent of shares. Other notables include Digg at 4.4 percent, Bebo at 3.1 percent, and LinkedIn at a mere 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, the demise of email sharing isn’t all that surprising considering that on the whole, social networking now has more reach than email worldwide.

Here’s the full breakdown:

Reviews: Delicious, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter

Tags: AddToAny, email, facebook

Source: Sharing on Facebook Now More Popular than Sharing by Email

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Today, I learned on the front page of the Oregonian that almost 3,000 people showed up at midnight downtown because they heard on Twitter and Facebook that there’d be an impromptu performance by Dave Chappelle. Dave appeared at 1am, totally blown away by the size of the crowd, and unable to perform because all he had was a megaphone.

Apparently, there are good, sound business reasons to use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. You can reach thousands of people in a matter of minutes, get feedback on your products, announce your new over-hyped mega-program, and give lots and lots of value to those who eventually buy your over-hyped mega-program.

But business aside, here are five (very) tongue-in-cheek reasons you might want to start using Twitter…

1. Look at me! I’m popular!

Wow… imagine having 10,000, 20,000 or even 100,000 friends and followers! Even the most resolute wallflower can feel the power of having thousands of followers. Who said that the cheerleaders get all the attention?

Now, anyone, regardless of looks, intelligence, or even talent can be popular. Heck, you don’t even have to be clever. All you have to do is Tweet, follow as many people as possible, and have them follow you back.

Re-tweet other, more witty people. Tell people what you’re reading so that you sound smart. My goodness… the ways to reach out and touch people are endless.

2. Hey, I’m cool, too…

Who didn’t want to be part of the in crowd in high school. Even if you WERE part of the in crowd (loser!), now you’re a NOBODY.  At least, you’re not as cool as we are because WE are informed.

We know about ALL the cool stuff happening around town, like Dave Chappelle’s impromptu and SECRET performance. Did you know about it!  Like I said… loser!

3. Objects in this mirror are smaller than they appear…

It is SO awesome that you can Tweet your little heart out to thousands of adoring fans who think you’re the best thing to come along since little Harry Potter.

It doesn’t matter that you haven’t accomplished squat in the world, don’t get more than 5 visitors a month to your blog, or have never owned any kind of business that made you money.

YOU can be a star on Twitter and Facebook!  People who follow you will amaze their friends when you send them a personal Tweet. “OMG! She talked to ME!”

You can become SO big, famous, popular, and RICH beyond belief… The possibilities are simply mind-boggling.

4. Take THAT Match.Com

But maybe you don’t want to be famous. You just want to be loved. You want someone to pay attention to you.

There’s not much in this world that can be more depressing than posting a profile on a dating site and getting little or no response.

“I guess I’m unlovable.”

Well, wipe those tears away, sweetie… Twitter is here to take away your loneliness. Granted, when you first get started, sending out Tweets is like shouting into an empty stadium.  But it does get better…

Before you know it, your witty remark will be re-tweeted across the world. People from places you’ve never heard of will follow you, send you love notes, and let you know that truly… you are not alone.

5. But I REALLY am a business person!

OK. Maybe you are in it for the business and not for the personal glory, power, fame or love (liar!).

There is one really good business reason to get involved in social networking: money.

Yes, dearie. You, too can become a Social Media consultant. You don’t even have to be old enough to drive or drink to become a social media superstar. Just start amassing a big enough following. Once you’ve got enough people following you, simply start doling out the advice.

First, you give it away because you’re just that kind of person. Then, and ONLY because your adoring fans insist on it, you create a small course. That, of course, leads to a longer seminar… and THAT leads to a monthly membership into your exclusive club.

What are you waiting for?

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Although Gmail has already taken some measures to protect users from eBay and PayPal scams, the latest will hopefully put this problem to bed. They’ve added an “authentication icon for verified senders” that displays a key icon next to the name of email senders that the service has verified as authentic.

How does it know that the mail is authentic? Brad Taylor of Gmail explains that “all of the sender’s email is authenticated with DKIM,” which stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. Right now, it’s a feature you enable from the Labs page under Settings, and is only in action on email from eBay and PayPal.

You could easily imagine this feature being extended to social networks though, as scammers continue to attempt to phish for user’s credentials so they can spam friends and spread malware. Gmail says that they “hope to add more senders in the future” and that when they do, the feature will work exactly the same as it does in today’s test run.

Reviews: Gmail

Tags: ebay, gmail, paypal, phishing, spam

Source: Gmail Makes PayPal and eBay Emails Less Sketchy

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We’ll show you how to quickly get your video creations from your iPhone to Twitter. We’ll also help you understand some of the dos and don’ts for each particular option, to make sure that your newly tweeted videos show up just as you envisioned them. Happy video recording and tweeting!

1. Use YouTube to Post to Twitter

Earlier this month we half-jokingly noted that YouTube is now the TwitPic of video. Why? Well, they finally enabled a long sought after feature: auto-posting of videos to Twitter. Given that the new iPhone now lets you post your videos straight to YouTube from the camera app, you can combine these two great new things and push your videos from your phone to Twitter in no time at all.

Here’s how: Before you share video with YouTube, make sure you update your autoshare settings for the site. All you need to do is connect the services you want to integrate with YouTube. In this case, it will be Twitter, but you also might want to make the connection between YouTube and Facebook and/or Google Reader as well. Once you’ve made the connection, you can forget about manually sharing your YouTube videos with Twitter ever again.

Now every time you record a video, just tap to post it to YouTube from your phone’s camera app, add a title, description, category, and a few tags, and hit publish. Once your video is uploaded, a tweet will be auto-generated and posted to Twitter on your behalf.

The great thing about this method for tweeting iPhone 3G S videos is that you don’t have to worry about shooting your video in widescreen/landscape or standard mode. You can film horizontally, vertically, and for longer periods of time, and YouTube will still format the video appropriately.

2. Email Your Videos to Twitter

The simplest method is just to email your videos to Twitter. The ever-evolving email-to-blog platform, Posterous (now with blog import), has created a dead simple way to get your iPhone 3GS videos from your phone to Twitter via email.

As you would with any other content you want to post to Posterous, simply email the video to post@posterous.com. If you’ve already configured your Twitter auto-posting settings for Posterous, which you can do here, then your video will post to Posterous and automatically tweet out a link.

The Posterous advantage is that if you have cross-posting enabled for a ton of other sites — they do support quite a few — and you just want to share your video with Twitter, you can use the twitter@posterous.com email address. Also pretty nifty is that the subject line of your email becomes the title, the email body becomes the video post description, and tags can be added using the syntax ((tag: video, iphone)) in the subject line.

Posterous is perfect for recording video in widescreen/landscape mode or standard mode, and it will format your video accordingly. The only downside is that videos will need to be short in length, as any videos longer than a minute cannot be sent via email.

3. Get a Video-Friendly App

Although the deluge of video recording and posting Twitter apps has yet to happen, there are a few worthwhile apps that are already supporting posting iPhone 3G S videos to Twitter.

The unreleased TweetReel really is the TwitPic for video, but it’s only available as an iPhone app (coming soon). This nifty app lets you shoot videos (and photos), or grab them from your library, add your Twitter text, and post it to the web. Videos are posted to your TweetReel site (tweetreel.com/twittername), and immediately shared with Twitter.

If you’re looking for something already on the market, check out Twittelator Pro 3.0 [iTunes Link]. The updated app, which costs $4.99, includes a video recording and sharing option that lets you attach videos to tweets, and upload them to the photo and video sharing site yFrog. Just remember to shoot your videos in widescreen mode if you want them to render correctly (ie. not post sideways). We’d also advise you to record videos from the camera app instead, as videos recorded in Twittelator Pro aren’t saved to your library and might disappear should you choose to tweet without a WiFi connection.

Another possibility for mobile video fans is Kyte’s updated premium iPhone app [iTunes link]. The app also comes with a $4.99 price tag and supports video record and upload, with videos uploading to your Kyte channel. To tweet your video uploads from the app, just add your Twitter login credentials to your Kyte integration settings.

More Twitter resources from Mashable:

- 19 Twitter Desktop Apps Compared

- Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips

- Top 5 Ways to Share Video on Twitter

- 5 Ways to Share Images on Twitter

- 5 Terrific Twitter Research Tools

Reviews: Facebook, Google Reader, Posterous, Twitpic, Twitter, YouTube

Tags: iphone 3Gs, iphone app, tweetreel, twittelator pro, twitter, video, video uploads

Source: HOW TO: Post Video to Twitter With the iPhone 3G S

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Twitter’s use in emergencies is well-established: we’re all familiar with the trend of live-Tweeting an earthquake – perhaps in favor of taking cover. Meanwhile, an emergency in Atlanta saw a councilman using Twitter, not 911, to summon help.

Even the parody isn’t so new: in May, the satirical news site The Onion joked that a dorm room fire “was quickly located and extinguished by authorities after 38 people Twittered that they were ‘fleeing a fire’”.

Reviews: Digg, Twitter

Tags: fire, parody, twitter

Source: In Case of Fire, Do Not Use Twitter [Pic]

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I can guess what you’re thinking. “This guy is either blind, insane, or both.”

Before you pass judgment, allow me to explain. I am seeing boat loads of social media networking. OMG… the sheer VOLUME of networking that’s going on today with social media is staggering. People are accumulating Twitter followers faster than my fleece jacket picks up cat hair… and you see growth of Twitter daily (85% in the past couple of months alone).

Facebook is getting its share of attention as well. It’s not unusual for someone to send a tweet to their 10,000 followers, have that tweet posted on their Facebook page, and then receive hundreds of re-tweets and replies to the Facebook page.

That, my friend, is called “Networking.”

Social networking is great. You get to interact with a wide variety of people, get some feedback on what you’re doing, and let people know about you, your business, and your life. Sometimes this can lead to new business.  That’s the function of networking: you build relationships, get some referrals, and through natural “network trickle” you’ll get some new business.

And as a CRM (customer relationship management) tool, social media is a godsend. You’ve got INSTANT access to both customers and prospects to squelch rumors, answer questions, post surveys, and learn about what’s working and what’s not working. But it’s still networking. It’s not marketing.

Marketing is all about getting leads for your products and services. You direct your marketing efforts toward qualified prospects. They read what you have to say, feel that you can help solve their problem, and they check you out. If you then do a good job of selling, you increase your bottom line.

After all… do you want more friends or more customers for your business?  Yeah… probably both, but what good are thousands of Twitter followers if few of them buy from you?

Let’s Get Things Straight About Social Media

“Media” refers to a means of communication. TV, radio and newspapers are all forms of media. The internet is another form of media where ideas, thoughts and advertisements are communicated.

“Social” media implies a means of inter-communication between many parties. While TV, radio and newspapers are one-way communication, the internet offers the means for instantaneous communication between multiple groups of people.

That’s all it is — a form of communication. We’re talking about tools that enable people to communicate with each other. In its simplest form, that’s all social media is.

You then have to ask the question, “Why do people feel the need to communicate with others?”  There are two main reasons people use the internet form of media:

1. They have a “social” need for interaction with other like-minded humans; or…
2. They have a “personal” need to solve a problem, stop a pain, or reach a goal.

So, when you’re using social media to communicate, you should know whether you’re helping to satisfy a social need or personal need. Think about it…

Do people willing spend money to solve a social need (interaction with others)? Usually not. However, they WILL spend money (and quickly) to solve a pressing problem, stop a pain, or sometimes to help them reach a goal.

<b>Social Media Networking</b> is when you interact with people at the social level, and <b>Social Media Marketing</b> is when you interact with people at the personal level. That is, networking is mostly about having conversations, while marketing is mostly about solving problems.

Now… with this distinction in mind: Are you networking, or are you marketing when you use social media to communicate with others?

Just curious….

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Look for my prediction about Twitter at the end of this article…

Not necessarily.  More than likely, you’re caught in the act of doing social media networking, and not social media marketing. There’s a distinct difference (for now), and if you think about it, you’ll see the point.

Marketing is about getting leads for your business (today). It serves no other master than lead generation. And while sales and marketing are deeply intertwined (much to the chagrin of both departments), they are still separate beasts. Marketing generates the leads, and sales convert those leads into paying customers.

The distinction between marketing and sales blurs somewhat with online marketing. You’ll have your lead generation systems — advertising, content syndication, joint ventures, etc.  These systems drive leads to your online sales team — your landing page, ethical bribes, autoresponder emails, newsletters, etc.

The key difference between traditional marketing/sales boundaries and what happens online is that your sales efforts should also be part of your lead generation system… and this is especially true when it comes to using social media.

Social Media Marketing Versus Networking

You’re beginning to see the distinction, right? Social media marketing is exactly what it says it is – marketing using social media tools and systems. When you think about marketing in terms of lead generation, you can see that certain social media tools were designed as networking tools, and not marketing tools (although this is changing… see below).

It’s the difference between running an advertisement (marketing) and attending a conference with your peers, or even at the local Chamber of Commerce. The goal of the ad is clear – generate leads and make sales. The goal of the networking event is to broaden your base, engage in meaningful conversations with others, and hope that these conversations lead to referrals.

Whenever you engage in any kind of social media – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or content syndication – take a few minutes to decide if you’re networking or marketing.  More than likely what you’re doing is networking; that is, building a referral base. Think about how you can turn this into a marketing effort as well.

While many of the social media tools are intended for networking, social media content syndication is pure marketing.  You connect with the interest or desire of your target market, draw them in with valuable content, and lead them to your landing page where you can capture them as a qualified lead.

[Social media content syndication is simply the distribution (syndication) of your valuable content through social media syndication sites, such as Digg, Delicious, and Social Median.  This differs from article marketing, in which you distribute your content to article directories like EzineArticles and PitchEngine.]

There IS a time and place for social media networking, even if you’re a good-sized company. Just know the difference between marketing and networking, and use the tools appropriately.  When you network, you create relationships that help build your referral base. It gives you a chance to nurture your customer relationships and create new referral partners. When you’re marketing, your aim is to create a qualified lead who eventually becomes a paying customer.

And this leads me to my Twitter prediction…

As I watch the leading Twitter users, I’m seeing them break into two camps:

1. Business owners or marketers who want to use the system to create leads…
2. And others who just want to stay in touch.

The marketers and business owners are desperately trying to figure out how to use this system to make sales. Some are blatant about it and are either ignored or “Unfollowed.” Others are using Twitter as a form of social media marketing. That is, most of their Tweets are announcements about a new article on their blog.

If the article is of interest to a follower, he or she will click on the link, read the article, and perhaps download the accompanying special report or sign up for the newsletter. In doing so, they have become a lead for the business. This is an example of marketing. If they then re-tweet the original tweet to their followers the original tweet can become viral. This is an example of social media networking.

I believe that we will continually see more overlap between marketing and networking, especially with things like Twitter that were created solely for networking (creating conversations).

The key to this evolution will be a redefinition of “marketing” to mean “relationship generation” instead of “lead generation.”   We’re already seeing this happening, and it is working like gangbusters in the Internet Marketing world.  When you focus on creating relationships by providing value to your target market AND their friends and colleagues, you build trust.

And when you build trust, you simultaneously create referrals and leads. Conversations lead to interest, amplify an already existing desire for a solution to a problem, and lead people to trust that you can help. When you DO help, they tell others.

You will see Twitter and Facebook become more about value-creation and less about status updates. Purists will hate it, but savvy marketers will reap the rewards.

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Maybe you’ve done some homework and you placed a few header tags and image alt tags on your pages. And there may even be the slight chance that you took the time to optimize your copy with your primary keyword phrases and industry-related phrases.

Now what?

How to you get the search engines (Google in particular) to notice all the cool stuff you did to search engine optimize your web site?

Playing With The New SEO Kid On The Block

There’s a new kid on the block who is shaking up the old search engine optimization gang, and he means business.  The old gang has built their reputations, tools, and mega-empires on things like article syndication and creating massive amounts of what they call “Link Love.”

“Go forth and create hundreds of thousands of back links,” they say.

The new kid just smiles quietly and goes about beating them to a pulp in the search engines with the 2.0 version of his magic wand.  While the old gang is still going to every street corner in the world to hand out their link love flowers, the new kid creates buzz without leaving the comfort of his home.

What’s his highly secret trick?

It’s completely legitimate. It doesn’t try to fool anyone or anything with “black hat” tricks. It’s above board… and it’s so danged easy that a complete neophyte can make it work without knowing WHY it works.

It’s called Social Media Syndication.

It even sounds better than “Link Love.”  Social media syndication is simply the “syndication” of your blog posts to social media and social networking web sites.

There are a number of web sites whose sole purpose is to create buzz about blog posts. These are sites like Digg, Delicious, and Social Median.  They exist to create buzz, to let people know what’s hot, and to promote the most interesting, useful, or relevant blog posts.

Google apparently loves this kind of buzz even more than the old link love system.  The real trick, though, is in HOW you create the buzz in these social media sites.  You can’t simply do it by yourself.

If you try to syndicate all your posts yourself, or create a bunch of dummy accounts with the social media sites, you’ll just end up getting blacklisted and wasting your time. However, if you want to get this kind of system working for you, there is a cool new option.

Long-time SEO guru Charles Hefflin experimented with a number of techniques and options before he came upon his holy grail idea.  What’s he has done is both simple and effective. He created  a “community” of entrepreneurs who agree to syndicate each others’ blog posts. It’s brilliant — and it is working better than he ever expected.  The larger the network, the more buzz each community member’s blog post will get.

The concept is simple, too. As real people “clip”, “digg”, “bookmark” and comment about your blog post, more people who are NOT part of the network will take notice. And as that happens, the search engines will also take notice. Thus, you get the best of both worlds – free traffic from word of mouth and free traffic from higher search engine rankings.

In the world of SEO, this may be the thing that’s better than whatever it was that was the best thing before sliced bread was invented.

The bottom line:  While you still need to pay attention to onsite SEO, you’ll probably get a lot more bang for your buck with social media syndication today than with any other system or tool.

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