Digital Buzz Blog is one of my favorite reads.  And they recently posted some stats which I believe came from Media Bistro.  Now, after you read the stats below, I’m going to give them to you in the exact opposite way.  Tell me if any of the story seems any different.

Version 1:

It was a huge year for Social Media and here is a great infographic that rounds up the key Social Media Statistics to kickoff 2012. It’s pretty impressive to see that Facebook has grown to more than 800 million active users, adding more than 200 million in a single year. Twitter now has 100 million active users and LinkedIn has over 64 million users in North America alone.

A few interesting take outs for social media statistics in 2012:

Facebook Statistics 2012:

• An average Facebook user has 130 friends and likes 80 pages
• 56% of consumer say that they are more likely recommend a brand after becoming a fan
• Each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared

Twitter Statistics 2012:

• 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter
• 55% of Twitter users access the platform via their mobile

General Social Media Statistics 2012:

• 30% of B2B marketers are spending million of dollars each year on social media marketing
• Nearly 30% of these users are not tracking the impact of this marketing
• 20% of Google searches each day have never been searched for before
• Out of the 6 billion people on the planet 4.8 billion have a mobile and only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush

Facebook Statistics 2012:

• An average Facebook user is only connected to 130 of the people in their rolodex, address book, company phone tree and email database, and are only fans of 80 of the brands which they purchase or evaluate
• 44% of consumers say that they are NOT more likely recommend a brand after becoming a Facebook fan
• There are roughly 800 Million Facebook users, and each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared, meaning the average person shares just 4 pieces of content per week.  With 1 out of every 7 online minutes spent on Facebook, lots of people are lurking but not sharing. 

Twitter Statistics 2012:

• 66% of marketers have NOT generated leads using Twitter
• Almost half  (45%) of Twitter users cannot access the platform via their mobile, and are limited to using it on their personal computer.

General Social Media Statistics 2012:

• 70% of B2B marketers are spending LESS THAN a million dollars each year on social media marketing
• 80% of Google searches each day are repeat searches

Complete Infographic can be found here:

Well the U.S. World Cup team is out.  Sad day last Saturday.  

But thankfully, a combination of high drama, strong ESPN/ABC coverage and a Saturday afternoon match provides a nice segue from soccer stories back into the world of marketing.

According to TVBytheNumbers.com:

The 2010 NBA Playoffs averaged a 3.6 U.S. rating and 5.7 million viewers across ABC, ESPN/ESPN2 and TNT, up 3% in ratings and 5% in viewership from last year (3.5, 5.4 mil), and up 9% and 16%, respectively, from 2008 (3.3, 4.9 mil).  A seven-game NBA Finals more than made up for several sweeps in the second round and consistent declines in the Conference Finals.  

Given those numbers, I was interested to find out how many more people would watch the NBA playoffs than a World Cup soccer game.  Well, according to ESPN:

Saturday’s game, which began at 2:30 p.m. EDT on ABC, received an 8.2 fast national rating, ESPN said Sunday. It was seen in 9,455,000 households and by 14,863,000 viewers. Only the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, featuring the United States and China at the Rose Bowl, averaged more households (11,307,000) and viewers (17,975,000) for a soccer game. An additional 4.5 million people watched Sunday on the Spanish-language Univision.

Wow.  To put those numbers side by side:

• US vs Ghana Soccer Game: 8.2 rating, 14.9 Million viewers (ABC), 19.4 Million viewers total (ABC+Univision).
• NBA Playoff average: 3.6 rating, 5.7 Million viewers

Now I know it’s not a fair comparison, since the NBA playoffs also included cities like Oklahoma City where only 3,500 of the 10,000 people with electricity actually know how to work their remote control.  So to be fair, here’s data from the most watched basketball games of the year:

• Game 7, NBA Finals: 15.6 rating, 28.2 Million viewers
• Game 6, NBA Finals: 10.4 rating, 18.0 Million viewers.
• Game 5, NBA Finals: 10.8 rating, 18.7 Million viewers.
• Game 4, NBA Finals: 9.9 rating, 16.4 Million viewers.
• Game 3, NBA Finals: 9.6 rating, 16.0 Million viewers.
• Game 2, NBA Finals: 9.2 rating, 15.7 Million viewers.
• Game 1, NBA Finals: 8.6 rating, 14.1 Million viewers.

So the U.S. vs Ghana game comes in just under Game 1 of the NBA finals.  I expect that’s much more than ABC expected.

It’s Sunday and about 122 degrees in Seattle, so with time to goof around, I thought I’d do some quick stats analysis on the MLS Playoff race.

In the East, it looks like everyone but New York is still in the hunt, as the other 6 teams have between 21 and 30 points. In baseball terms, that means the 6th place team is 3 games back with 13 to play. So, that’s a pretty close race. In the West, it’s a similar chase, with 5 teams between 27-32 points, and a 6th team lurking with 23. So in the American system, realistically 12 out of 15 teams have chances at 8 Playoff births, so that seems to indicate a pretty nutty race to the finish.

So for fun, let’s say we played the same way as the EPL, and just had everyone racing for the title without a playoff system. On the left is what you would get as you enter the final third of the season. Still a remarkably tight race. Everyone is chasing Houston, but 11 teams are still really within 3 games with 11 or more to play.

So, two questions: 1) Why does the MLS have such a competitive race down the stretch, and 2) How does this compare to a league like the EPL?

Question 1 is interesting. One *could* surmise that the talent is of low enough caliber in general that most of the players are kind of the same. You could also surmise that the hardest thing to do in soccer is score, and the MLS just doesn’t have enough scorers so you see a lot of ties. Another acceptable answer is that in the middle of the season, players are asked to join their National teams for World Cup Qualifying, Confederations Cup or Gold Cup. The best players get picked away, and they are probably on the best teams, so all of a sudden a top team loses two-three starters and gets drubbed a few times.

Now let’s compare “Points per Match” between the EPL and MLS. Quite simply, the best teams in EPL win more than the best teams in MLS. Which confirms our theory of a lack of good scorers leading to more ties.

Now, it’s easy for a snobby European to say, “Playoffs have no business in soccer. We use tables and season long standings to decide our league winner.” (Which is true, except they also have an FA Cup Tournament which is really a long playoff, and also, in the lower divisions top 2 records automatically get promoted, but the 3-6th place teams battle in a 4 team playoff to see who else gets to move up.)

While I would ordinarily side on the side of English football and tradition, I have to admit that having the Sounders in the middle of a 6 team race for 4 Playoff spots is pretty exciting. 

However, is the playoff system causing more ties?  Are teams just trying to get a single point in order to be the 8th best team? If that’s the case, maybe the EPL system would be better for the MLS.  So what do you think is better – a league where everyone is in the hunt the last few months of the season, or a league where there is more motivation to get a win instead of a tie, even if it means more teams eliminated earlier?

All you need is Yahoo Finance and a F5 button.  Refresh every minute or so, and watch the market change 50 points at a time.  Really fun.  Seriously, good times.  Thats a 900 point swing by the way from 9:30 to 3:30.

I hate taking stuff off TechCrunch, since you probably already saw this report there.  But you need to know these ad spending stats, so it’s worth seeing twice.  So, here’s the question I have for you – Will Online ad spending keep going up, or are we about to get nailed by the recession so all ad spending, including online, goes down next quarter?

I mean, if a company that manages money for a living, doesn’t know how to manage money, then reallly, what chance do any of us have?  Here’s a stock chart you don’t want to see in your portfolio…

Not that I pay attention to thtis stuff…but I noticed my Alexa ranking today is 1,044,445.  I only need to catch 44,445 sites to make the top Million.  I don’t know why exactly that seems interesting.

MocoNews reports that Hillary Clinton will add mobile marketing to her campaign promotion arsenal.  The article states,"“Clinton’s text-messaging initiative targets the 230 million American cellphone users – a sign the campaign is hunting for every possible vote in her bitter battle with rival Sen. Barack Obama. It’s only a matter of time before campaign ringtones are sold."

The U.S. found a new tool in how to communicate on a one to many way in times of crisis today.  On this national day of sorrow and disbelief, Facebook.com proved that the world of social networking extends past sharing pictures and music tastes.

One LA Times Article includes the following paragraph.  "University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak received a call from her mother in Maryland — Virginia Tech, she learned, was a death scene. Rather than tie up the cellphones of friends who attend the school, the 19-year-old history major checked their pages on Facebook, the social-networking site. ‘I was able to immediately find out who was OK,’ she said. ‘Without Facebook I have no idea how I would have found that out.’"

The site has also become a place for people to share support.  One group has over 1,300 members.  This condolences group contains over 2,600.  Here’s a prayer group with 2,100.

In real time yesterday, Bryce’s Journal was a source of up to the minute information, which led to an interesting moral argument.  The CBC TV network posted to his blog comments section asking him to call and provide his account on the air in addition to the blog.  This became a source of hostility for the blog readers, who felt that their reading the accounts was not voyeurism, but that a major TV network relaying those accounts would be exploitation. Bryce’s Journal continues to be a source of pretty startling emotional writing.

There’s little doubt that this tragedy could have been avoided if news of the first shooting, and warnings to get off campus, could have been conveyed in a more efficient manner.  I think we can look at social networking, especially in the mobile space, as something to considered for emergency response.

Here’s what happens with highly paid people with big egos and small imaginations make decisions – They solve problems that don’t exist.

Amazon.com, rightful owner of Alexa.com data, shut down the very helpful Statsaholic.com Web service.  Statsaholic only exists because the people at Alexa weren’t building all the features that people wanted to use.  Now Amazon has blocked Statsaholic, and are copying those features into Alexa.com.   

In a MBA Case Study (especially a Harvard one), this is probably the smart response.  And in 2 years, will anyone really care?  But we start losing innovation when the "Microsoft problem" permeates across other companies.  When people think, ‘Well it’s useless to do something new because someone big will just steal it from me later anyway," the whole web economy takes a step backward.  Out of all the challenges Amazon can go solve, I don’t get why "Screwing Statsaholic" should be at the top of the list.  Plus, marketing guru Seth Godin is somehow associated with Statsaholic, so I’m not sure why you would want to make an enemy of him.

In the meantime, there’s a Mozilla hack that gets Statsaholic working again.  Check it out here.