Maya Swedowsky
In this week’s Nielsen Online Webinar, “Consumers in Control: Social Media Strategies for Retailers and Brands,” I will be highlighting two key social media opportunities for Retailers: listening and engaging.
No one can deny just how prevalent social media has become, from Facebook to Twitter, its meteoric growth is hard to ignore*. But why is it absolutely imperative that retailers pay attention and get involved? The answer is simple, and dates back to pre-Internet days: the purchase consideration process has always been a social endeavor. Before the advent of social …

May 2009 data from Nielsen Online shows that people continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites than ever before, with total minutes increasing 82 percent year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 67 percent year-over-year in May 2009. Twitter.com was the fastest-growing Web brand in May 2009, increasing 1,448 percent year over- year, from 1.2 million unique visitors in May 2008 to 18.2 million in 2009. Despite being the fastest-growing brand year-over-year, Twitter’s month-over-month growth has begun to slow, increasing 7 percent from April. The …

On June 4, Jon Gibs, Vice President, Media and Agency Insights, Nielsen Online, discussed stickiness, the social networking ecosystem, and online advertising with Fox Business.

As theories circulate about the actual dollar value of sites like Facebook and Myspace-analysts recently placed Facebook’s worth at $10 billion-there is no question that people continue to gravitate in droves towards social networking and blog sites. In the U.S. alone, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009, making it the No. 1 social networking site when ranked …

Melissa Davies, Nielsen Online
It has been impossible to escape the news about swine flu (or H1N1 virus) this week. One of the most interesting developments this week has been watching the way people are using the Internet, and specifically social media, to connect with one another around this issue. As of yesterday, buzz volume about swine flu in the blogosphere was still on its meteoric climb, far surpassing discussion levels for the peanut butter/salmonella scare that happened earlier this year or, for a different reference point, recent pop singing sensation …

David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online

Our recent post about how the majority of people who use Twitter wind up abandoning the service received a lot of great coverage and feedback. We also received a healthy amount of criticism from the Twitter community who were concerned that our study sold Twitter short because it failed to take into account applications and other websites that feed into the Twitter community.
So, as an update, we went beyond just Twitter.com, adding in more than 30 websites and applications that feed into the …

Karen Watson,  Managing Director, Government & Public Sector Sales, The Nielsen Company
One hundred days is scarcely enough time to draw any firm conclusions about a new president’s capabilities. Even so, Barack Obama has garnered considerable respect for his media skills. Pundits have dubbed him the “new media president;” while some of the most cynical among them believe his underlying strategy is to end run traditional Washington gatekeepers by communicating more directly with constituents sympathetic to his agenda. But his fans and critics alike may be missing the bigger picture.
“As audiences …

Maya Swedowsky
President Barack Obama’s inauguration marked the beginning of a new era, which included the launch of a dramatically overhauled White House Web site. President Obama wasted no time ensuring that the official site, WhiteHouse.gov, represented a continuation of his campaign’s masterful use of the Internet and social media.
During President Obama’s first month in office, it seemed like the overhaul had paid off with unique visitors to WhiteHouse.gov reaching an all-time high. However, as the novelty of having an Internet-savvy administration seemed to wear off, so did the visitation rate, …

NOTE: See the important update to this story here.
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David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online

Oprah embarrassed herself on it with a stuck caps lock. That guy from Punk’d competed with “the most trusted name in news” for audience. A befuddled Jon Stewart shook his fist at it in anger. Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months with no small thanks to celebrity exposure. People are signing up in droves, and Twitter’s unique audience is up over 100 percent in March. But despite …

Online advertising remains strong, even as ad spending has decreased across other media, and MySpace has benefited from this trend with several large-scale campaigns from auto makers.  But in recent months, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in terms of monthly unique audience and stickiness: its monthly unique audience grew 177 percent in the last year compared to a 9 percent decrease for MySpace and time per person on Facebook went from 1 hour 8 minutes in March 2008 to 3 hours 16 minutes in March …