social

While it’s probably not fair to attach the “No Fun League” tag to the NFL in this instance it certainly makes for a better headline, so there. The league, which earlier this year linked itself to the US Marine Corps and others by limiting social media use by its ‘employees’ has expanded those terms before the start of the regular season.

Social Media's rise in popularity has created some very real problems for the Internet and its users. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have seemingly opened the floodgates to security troubles, and over the past few weeks, this has been accentuated by a number of issues and studies.

Social networking sites in the U.S. accounted for more than 20 percent of all display ads viewed online in July, with MySpace and Facebook combining to serve more than 80 percent of ads, according to a new report from comScore. "Over the past few years, social networking has become one of the most popular online activities, accounting for a significant portion of the time Internet users spend online and the pages they consume," said Jeff Hackett, comScore senior vice president.

Many popular social networking sites typically make personal information available to companies that track users' browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people, according to a new study by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). "When you sign up with a social networking site, you are assigned a unique identifier," says Craig Wills, professor of computer science at WPI.

Users of social networks are giving away vital information about themselves and their whereabouts that is being used by criminals to create a list of targets, according to a new report by the British-based insurance firm Legal & General. The report "The Digital Criminal," found 38 percent of users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter have posted status updates detailing their vacation plans and 33 percent have posted status updates saying they are away for a weekend.

Social media has become a common communication tool in the U.S., driven by the fact that Americans' time on social networking sites has increased by 73 percent in the past year, according to a new survey from Minneapolis-based Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law. When it comes to using social media in a corporate setting, fifty-one percent of executives surveyed said they fear social media could reduce employee productivity, while 49 percent said that using social media could damage a company's reputation.

The majority (53.1%) of Internet users belong to at least one social networking site, but the amount of time spent on the sites is somewhat short, compared to overall time spent online, according to a new report from Burst Media. Among 18-34 year olds, 40 percent spend less than 30 minutes per day on sites like Facebook and MySpace. The top content categories for that demographic actively seek out entertainment news (48.6%), gaming (40.5%), local/national news (37.3%) and social media (35.5%).

Press releases are a form of online marketing that we don't discuss very often. They don't have the new and exciting appeal of social media or even search engine marketing, but they've been around a lot longer and are still working. In fact, they can play right into those other forms.