Now that Instagram web profiles have been around for a few months I thought I’d check in on the participation and activity of major news brands. I keep coming across things like the Simply Measured study showing that 59% of top brands are now active on Instagram and the news that Instagram has surpassed 100 [...]

The news of layoffs at StumbleUpon reminded me that in compiling some year-end social media referral data I’d noticed that a number of sites had experienced declines in StumbleUpon traffic. To get a better sense of the situation I pulled StumbleUpon referral figures from 2010-2012 for a group of 47 news and content sites that [...]

Which news sites get the most engagement on their Google+ pages? It’s been a year since I took an early look at engagement rates for news organizations on Google+, so I thought I’d revisit the topic and do a fresh comparison. As with my previous comparison, I used All my + to pull data on [...]

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of Facebook posts in my news feed with a specific request to “LIKE” the post. Sports teams are among the biggest offenders:

As Pinterest continues to grow in popularity and usage it is becoming not only an important source of traffic and engagement for publishers but also a good source of links. What types of sites get the most links from Pinterest? I spend a lot of time auditing websites which means I am regularly in the [...]

The demographics of Google+ are typically described as predominantly male and young. But that is not always the case; sites that are geared towards women are drawing a Google+ audience that is largely female. For example, take a look at the +1 Audience Report from the Google Webmaster Tools profile of a major fashion site. [...]

While Pinterest is a natural fit for lifestyle publishers there are good opportunities for broadcast media too. Today Kim Wilson and I are leading a social media workshop for a group of local TV and radio stations. In preparing for the Pinterest portion I took a look at the pinning activity of local TV news [...]

With a new baseball season underway I thought I’d check in on the 30 MLB teams on Twitter and Facebook. Which teams are seeing the most growth? I have not done a sports team comparison post in quite a while, mainly because the figures quickly become outdated and total reach is not all that important [...]

Yes, this is indeed another post about Pinterest. But fear not, I come with real data to share albeit it in aggregated and anonymized format. It is well established that Pinterest offers great opportunities for lifestyle publishers but how well is it paying off in actual site traffic? To get a clearer picture I pulled [...]

The Pew Research Center’s The State of the News Media 2012 is out and the section on What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News makes for an interesting read. The figures on where users get their news links from is already being covered as a sign that Facebook and Twitter may not be as strong [...]