Marc Baumann

As the Web matures, a greater volume of our attention and focus continues to shift from other mediums to the Web for not only purchase considerations but also for content discovery. Nielsen released a new study that documents the extent of this shift and also captures an evolution in our online behavior as we augment traditional search engines with the search boxes within social networks. As such, Google is no longer the only hub for content discovery. The statusphere is introducing new channels that now serve as our attention dashboards and it’s the collection of streams of consciousness from those we choose to follow. Collecta, Twitter Search, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed, etc., serve as the gateways to insight and enlightenment. The Nielsen study fielded in August 2009 consisted of 1,800 participants in which they looked at three main consumer segments using search (Searchers), portals (Portalists) or social media (Socializers) as their primary vehicle for content discovery. - Marc Baumann

Chick-fil-A's recently launched microsite, EatMorChikin.com, is the latest attempt by the restaurant chain to turn its cows -- well-known from TV commercials -- into viral marketing thoroughbreds. Its launch follows the company's successful build-up of one of the biggest Facebook presences in the restaurant niche. Meanwhile Chick-fil-A's Facebook page has become one of the few run by a restaurant chain to tally up more than 1 million fans. Fourteen months ago, Chick-fil-A had just 20,000 "fans" at the site, while a freelance, non-paid enthusiast named Brandy Bitzer had started the fan page without any communication with the brand - Marc Baumann

Last week launched the social revolution for search. Microsoft’s Bing fired the first shot by announcing search deals with Twitter and Facebook and, at the Web 2.0 Summit, launching its Twitter integration. Google fired back almost immediately though, completing its own deal with Twitter and, perhaps more importantly, announcing a new feature: Social Search. Social search combines results from your friend’s blogs, Flickr (Flickr), Twitter (Twitter), FriendFeed (FriendFeed), and a wide variety of other social media sites (so long as your friends have connected their social accounts to their Google (Google) profiles) with Google’s regular search results. The feature will go live this afternoon, and can be found within Google Labs. The experimental feature, once activated, will display relevant search results from your social circle at the bottom of the search results page. This could be travel photos, a recent blog post, a set of status updates, or other information Google pulls. - Marc Baumann

Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. This piece, and the knowledge I learned from the incessant hours invested, demonstrate why brands do belong on Twitter. No other medium gets you inside a business or brand quiet like Twitter. - Marc Baumann

Did you know Facebook is a great tool for your business? Is your company utilizing the new features of Facebook pages to do social media marketing? If you are not yet leveraging the power of social media to boost your sales or engaging your customers, it is time you seriously take action on this front. - Marc Baumann

What's a megatrend, you ask? It's something big. I'm talking really big. Think of a giant unstoppable tsunami of change transforming society as we know it. Think global warming scale -- then apply it to mass human behavior. Think glaciers carving the grand canyon of consumer sentiment. Here's a megatrend: "Social media has permanently transformed the way people connect and share information." - Marc Baumann

Google Alerts, once the secret of savvy online marketers and social media experts, have become the de facto way for the masses to keep one eye always on the web. While there have been attempts to apply the instant alerts concept to Twitter (Twitter), we haven’t seen an application get the formula completely right yet. Perhaps we spoke to soon, as we just discovered Listiti, a new web-based application that promises to do one thing: send you email alerts whenever tweets from specific Twitter Lists match your specified query. - Marc Baumann

In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order: - Marc Baumann

According to a new study from Pew Internet and American Life Project, technology does not lead to social isolation, as many often suspected. Instead, researchers found that online participation and mobile phone usage leads to people having larger and more diverse core discussion networks. - Marc Baumann

In my presentation at WordCamp New York City, which I am super stoked to be giving, I’ll be covering the topic of, “Lifestreaming: The New Future of Blogging?” We’ll be exploring ways to bring in all of the different social media sites to one aggregated source, how to keep your lifestream up-to-date via the mobile lifestyle and whether too much transparency is a bad thing. - Marc Baumann

More evidence of Twitter uptake among young people comes from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to a September 2009 survey, 33% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use a status update service, a significant difference from the research firm’s previous poll on the subject. This meant young adults were more likely to tweet than users ages 30 to 49, who had previously been considered the core group for Twitter. - Marc Baumann

Pizza Hut announced last week that it has generated more than $1 million in sales from its iPhone and iTouch application within three months of launch. The app, which enables users to order pizzas and other foods as well as play games, offers an ongoing 20% discount on all orders. - Marc Baumann

In what appears to be indicative of Twitter's success and growing popularity, a new gadget has hit the market that has been developed specifically - and solely - for users to send and receive tweets. TwitterPeek, a $99.95 device with a QWERTY keyboard, color screen and click-scroll wheel offered through Amazon.com, could prove to be the hot selling item for the holiday season. On one hand, it's less expensive than a smartphone upgrade. On the other, it could also prove dud-worthy if demand never materializes. - Marc Baumann

Google recently changed the rules of Web search with a relatively low-key innovation that I expect will permeate the search engine giant’s future strategy. Google Social Search is an experimental program that integrates content from a user’s social network into search results. Don’t underestimate the value of social search. Compete.com estimates that search.twitter.com attracted nearly 3,000,000 unique visitors in September. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to Google, but it’s up 550% year-over-year. Now that Twitter has a deal with Microsoft to deliver its search results over Bing (and speculation is that a deal with Google will follow) we are likely to see more creative efforts to integrate social content.Three years from now, the SEO tactics we’ve work so hard to learn may seem quaint indeed. - Marc Baumann