Google‘s proliferation of the +1 button continued Wednesday as the company added the feature to image searches.
The button, which was introduced in March as an answer to Facebook’s “Like,” is equivalent to a stamp of approval from Google users. Over the past few months, +1s have appeared next to news articles, on websites and even in ads. (more…)
Online behavior tracking has been successfully employed for nearly a decade, but its tools do not uniquely identify users, and rightfully so. Tracking was only designed to group users into audience segments; for example, golden retriever owners who live in San Francisco, CA, or baseball and wine enthusiast females in their 30s who live in Seattle, WA.
Of course, certain laws restrict combining offline data sources with online user behavior tracking. Therefore, how do brands get to know users individually, rather than as one of many in an audience segment?
Require a social network login to access your website. You request permission to access visitors’ social profiles and, when approved, you’ll have an opportunity to build a wealth of knowledge on the individual user. Learn about their hobbies and interests, friends, likes, age, marital status, places visited and alma mater. And the best part is that your users have consciously opted to share this information with you.
Google Plus started out growing faster than any social network has so far, but may not be able to compete against Facebook longer term.
The appeal is not sticking because many of the people that quickly flocked to Google Plus have made their way back to the comfort and familiarity of Facebook.
In fact, the inability to keep users engaged has some observers wondering just how long Google Plus will be able to survive.
After a running start, Google+‘s growth may be slowing down a bit. A report from Experian Hitwise found both traffic and users’ average time on the social network fell last week in the U.S.
Total visits to Google+ declined about 3% to 1.79 million in the U.S. for the week ending July 23 compared to the previous seven days, according to the research company. The site received 1.86 million visits the prior week. Average time on the site was down 10%, from 5 minutes, 50 seconds to 5 minutes, 15 seconds.
Akamai might not be a household name but between 15 to 30 percent of the world’s Web traffic is carried on the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company’s internet platform at any given time. Using data gathered by software constantly monitoring internet conditions via the company’s nearly 100,000 servers deployed in 72 countries and spanning most of the networks within the internet, Akamai creates its quarterly State of the internet report. The report provides some interesting facts and figures, such as regions with the slowest and fastest connection speeds, broadband adoption rates and the origins of attack traffic.
Follow