Week in social media: state of social media, #odlrlive, Brits prefer Facebook over toilets…

This week sees Nielsen release some stats and facts about the state of social media from the third quarter of 2011, Oscar de la Renta crowdsources catwalk coverage live on Tumblr, Brits would prefer to live without a flushing toilet than without Facebook, Facebook fans are useful to brands, a fashion party for the social savvy, is social media stopping you getting a good night’s sleep?

The state of social media in Q3

Nielsen has just released some great stats and facts about the state of social media in the third quarter of 2011 (predominantly US though). The study shows that social networks and blogs reach nearly 80% of active internet users in the US and makes up the majority of Americans’ time online. The same report also shows that American’s spend more time on Facebook – Liking and Tagging away – than on any other US website. Another interesting finding is that accessing social media content from mobile phones is continuing to rise with the over-55s driving this growth. Time to target those silver surfers!

Oscar de la Renta to crowdsource catwalk coverage live on Tumblr

The fashion community and its photography loving crowds has embraced blogging platform Tumblr for a while now, and tomorrow American fashion designer Oscar de la Renta is looking to capitalise on this trend. He’s planning on creating a new style of online presentation to his Spring 2012 collection at odlrlive.tumblr.com which will show all photos that are uploaded to Tumblr with the tag #odlrlive in real-time, enabling editors, bloggers, models and viewers at home to  contribute to the display. We’ll be watching for sure – mostly to see if anyone tries to hijack it!

Brits would prefer to live without a toilet than without Facebook

This is social media addiction at its best. When the London Science Museum surveyed 3,000 adults on 50 things they couldn’t live without, Facebook landed on 5^th place right up there with sunshine and clean drinking water. You can find out what the 50 things were here, but it is rather astonishing to think that Briton’s would now rather have access to Facebook than a flushing toilet, central heating, a shower and fresh fruit and vegetables.

Tumblr has second most page views in UK as 10^th billion post is published

Things are looking good for Tumblr which can now claim to have the second most page views on any social network or blog in the UK… after Facebook of course (Source: Nielsen). UK internet users viewed a total of 229.6million pages on the popular blogging platform in the third quarter this year. The New York City based startup had more reason to celebrate this week as it could also announce its 10 billionth post, having grown from 7 to 28 million blogs over the past year. If you’re wondering which ten Tumblr blogs to follow these are pretty good and here are five reasons why you need Tumblr in your life.

Twitter has 100 million active users – will they show Twitter the money?

Microblogging site Twitter celebrates having 100 million active users a month – that’s apparently up 82% since the start of the year – with half of these clocking in every day amid a flurry of new statistics announced by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. He could also reveal that Twitter.com now sees 400 million visitors a month, an increase of 70% from the start of 2011, while 55% of active users are on mobile. The real question though is if its new advertising system will be able to exploit the audience and start making the company some real money.

Facebook fans are useful study finds

New research shows that Facebook Fans are in fact useful, so if you’re working with someone that’s still hesitant to join the party here are some facts to bring to the next meeting. The study found that people are more likely to recommend brands to their friends after becoming fans themselves and that they are more likely to buy products or services from brands after becoming fans. It also appears that Facebook is the preferred platform for interacting with brands (well after ‘none of these’ so take it with a pinch of salt) and that once they’ve liked a brand they rarely ‘unlike’ it (76% said they had never unliked a brand)

What’s your Klout? A Fashion Night Out party for the social savvy elite only

It was bound to happen sooner or later; if you not social savvy you’re not getting ‘in’. This week an invite to a VIP Fashion Night Out VIP party in Florida was sent to various people with a Klout score of 40 and above. OK granted this was part of a plan to get online communities talking about the party – mission accomplished – but it is likely a sign of things to come. Klout is a metrics system that rates your social influence score based on reach, user engagement and how many followers you have. How accurate Klout results are has been discussed for a long time, but it is a fun way of using social media metrics to ensure the most socially engaged will be in attendance at your event (in other words those most likely to tweet, check-in and Instagram your event to the masses).

Facebook introduces Smart Lists
Yes, you’ve guessed it. Facebook’s Smart Lists is pretty much the same as Google+ does when it allows you to group your friends to decide who gets which update or not. However, Smart Lists appear to organise your friends for you which takes away the hassle of having to allocate people to certain lists manually. It is on the other hand somewhat worrying that Facebook appears to know EVERYTHING about your life and those you are connected with by doing so… While still being rolled out, it looks like your ‘friends’ will be divided into three categories: those you work with, those you went to school with and people who live within 50 miles of you. Have you got this new feature yet?

Is social media stopping you getting a good night’s sleep?

A new study shows that social media could have an impact on how well we sleep, with 86% of those questioned saying they spend time on social networking sites when they really should be sleeping. Over half of the respondents (52%) admitted they tweet and like from their beds, which isn’t surprising considering how many of us depend on our smartphones to wake us up every morning.

Are we a nation of online spies?
A survey by Norton (the anti-virus company with the Dolf Lundgren vs a Unicorn ad) finds that more than one in five women check their partner’s emails, messages and social networking accounts – only one in ten men do the same… Apparently more than half of Britain’s couples share their passwords openly with each other and 15% of those that snoop have found something upsetting by being so curious. As they say, curiosity killed the cat – and perhaps a relationship or two.

Twitter sues company to get the rights to the word ‘tweet’

Uh oh, looks like a service called Twittad has registered ‘tweet’ before Twitter could do it. And guess what, Twitter doesn’t like it! Twitter is apparently suing Twittad – which filed for the rights for the word in 2008 – to have the trademark registration cancelled so that it can file for the rights.