Facebook, StumbleUpon Rock Your World!

I am glad that I didn’t follow through on my decision last year to close my StumbleUpon account. I was getting tired of SU, finding myself particularly annoyed with certain network changes that seemed to limit my ability to connect with people through this popular bookmarking service.

In addition, SU appeared to be going the way of Reddit—gamed and controlled by nasty people whose idea of free speech is to hurl invectives at other users. Cowards!

But I stayed on and have no regrets with my decision. I certainly don’t use SU as frequently as I once did, but I have also found that most of the cowardly users have now been contained. Life is good and, if a March 2010 StatCounter GlobalStats survey of top social media sites is accurate, then sticking with SU was a good decision on my part.

Yes, SU rocks your world if you use it: only Facebook outperforms it in sending traffic your way.

According to Stat Counter, Facebook is credited with racking up 48 percent of all social media hits, but SU is a strong second as it adds 25 percent to that mix. And Twitter? Not as important as some might think, generating just 10 percent of all hits. YouTube, Reddit, Digg and MySpace round out the next four spots, offering small amounts of traffic in comparison.

SU has never been a dud when it comes to social media—far from it. As recently as June 2009, SU was ahead of Facebook, but the world’s most popular social networking site soon soared while SU began to slip. Recent traffic reports reveal that Facebook has lost some of its steam while SU has recaptured what it had lost, but in all likelihood it will remain Facebook first, StumbleUpon second, with everyone else a distant third or beyond.

One of my chief reasons for staying with SU is that I was connected with so many people through this service. As I contemplated dropping SU, I realized that I would be saying good-bye to a significant number of people I followed and who followed me.

There really wasn’t a reasonable alternative: I don’t use Facebook all that much and Twitter just doesn’t offer the scale of the others. Besides, my traffic stats continued to rise thanks to SU interaction, bringing visitors and new customers my way.

Every social media/networking site has its benefits and faults but Facebook, with more than 400 million users and StumbleUpon, with its nifty bookmarking arrangement, capture more than two-thirds of all social media hits.

Looks like I’ll have to rethink my Facebook strategy next!

Amusing Myself With Twitter

I had to check my blog archives to see where I’d mentioned Twitter previously and came up with just two occurrences. The first mention was in June 2007; the second one in December 2008.

That first occurrence was within an article I titled, How I Found You Online, where I marveled at the different ways I discovered people via the internet. At that time, I relied a lot more on forums such as Digital Point and Sitepoint as well as social media sites including BUMPzee, MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog to connect with people. Back then, I was a new user on StumbleUpon and was still stopping in on MySpace on occasion.

But it was my last comment that brought a smile to my face, particularly my comment about Twitter:

I plan on joining LinkedIn eventually, but I think I’ll sit Twitter out.

Yes, it just took me just seven words to explain that I wasn’t planning on using Twitter, likely for the reason that I saw no point in using it.  After all, Twitter was only a silly way for people to send one liners to each other all day, right? Who had the time for such nonsense?

Well, things certainly do change in the world of social media as I am basically forum free these days, choosing to meet up with people through their respective blogs and key social media sites. Yes, I even connect with a handful of people through email, but if you’re looking to IM me, that won’t happen — but feel free to send me a tweet!

It must have been an article I read, such as Mihaela Lica’s very first article on Sitepoint titled, “Twitter’s Little Known SEO Value,” that piqued my interest in Twitter. I’ve been following “Michi’s” writings for several years now and her candid explanation of Twitter caused me to revisit the site, digging a bit deeper to see what it is all about.

I joined Twitter long ago, have posted a bunch of links in the in the interim, but my network wasn’t much to brag about. But, this past week I invited a number of people to connect with me via Twitter, tripling my contacts and putting some life in my exchanges with other members. That move brought in a number of high end users, professional tweeters who add interesting stuff and make Twitter worthwhile.

Sure, there are some people who seem to be having conversations with nobody but themselves, but I’ve also come across a handful of really good articles that I probably wouldn’t have found had I not started using Twitter. In those cases I’ve read the article, posted a comment and, in a few situations, shared that information with someone else.

Mihaela’s article is a good read, making no silly promises that Twitter will do something that it won’t. But it was her last statement that I found most interesting (and true) — If you can make people come to your site via Twitter, then this is an SEO advantage you cannot afford to miss. – something I am taking into consideration as I tweet may around the site.

Oh, by the way, if you want to follow me on Twitter please click on the little tweety bird and you’ll be brought to my profile page for a connection.