I’ve been talking about Foursquare a few times this year, and how both companies and consumers are taking advantage of the locationed based social network and app.   Foursquare gain popularity over the past year, and had roughly about 500,000 users last week.  A half-million users isn’t bad, but it looks like the network is growing now at rapid speed.  With the South by SouthWest festival happening right now in Austin, Texas, Foursquare has gained “100,000 users” in the past 11 days. 

The company tweeted right before their new 100,000 user saying they were almost there.  The company also says that there has been a surge of friend requests on Foursquare, so users can see where there friends are actually at.  (more…)

Although many warn against it, most of us use Wikipedia at least now and then.  If you’re not familiar, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, which anyone is allowed to edit.  So whether you’re looking for information on Abraham Lincoln, Kazakhstan, or the history of cheese, it’s bound to be on the site somewhere.

While the site can be a very useful tool, many think something is missing from the site.  Videos.  So leave it up to the Open Video Alliance to head an online campaign which will hopefully bring videos to the online encyclopedia. (more…)

We often here of studies that find consumers who follow or fan companies or brands on a social networking site, like Facebook or Twitter are more likely to purchase products or services from them.  Once again, the latest study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies confirms that.

Amazingly, the study found that consumers who follow companies or brands on Twitter are 67% more likely to buy from them, while 51% are more likely to buy from a brand that they follow on Facebook. And when it comes to recommending companies and brands to friends, 79% said they were more likely to recommend them if they were on Twitter and 60% if they were on Facebook.  (more…)

For as long as many us can remember, Google has been the most visited site on the web.  You may recall, that during Christmas & New Years Day, Facebook was the most visited site for the day, but Google quickly took that spot back.

However, HitWise said during March 7 and March 13 Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited site in the US, and the trend looks like it will continue.  For the past year, Facebook’s popularity has continued to grow, while Google’s ranking has remained on a stable path.  (more…)

Occasionally, we talk about some of the latest Twitter facts to see how much the site is growing.  We have seen both the amount of users and the numbers of tweets each month continue to grow, with an occasional slow down.  But a new study from Barracuda Labs, a Web security company, shows that not even a third of the users are tweeting.

The study looked at an astonishing 19 million users, and defined a “True Twitter user” as someone who has at least 10 followers, is following 10 others, and has at least 10 tweets.  Seems simple, right? Surprisingly, only 21 % of the 19 million were defined at a true user.  So 79% of twitter users rarely even use their account! (more…)

AJ Bombers, is a popular burger place in Milwaukee owned by Joe Sorge.  On Sunday, Sorge’s sales were up 110% thanks to the new social media  application FourSquare.  161 FourSquare users checked into the restaurant at the same time, that’s between 25-35% of Milwakkee’s FourSquare user population.

So what brought 161 FourSquare users to this already popular burger joint?  Sorge decided to promote the restaurant with the idea that customers could unlock a Swarm badge, which is awarded to those who check in at a location with at least 50 other users at the same time.  (more…)

A new report from comScore shows that online video views are up compared to the same time last year.  And in fact YouTube, the leader in online video, had views up 50% compared to January 2009.  

In January more than 32.4 billion videos were viewed in the US alone online.  YouTube, owned by Google, had 12.8 billion viewed videos, taking up roughly 39.5% of all viewed online videos.  ComScore reported that the average YouTube visitor watched an average of 94 videos throughout the month of January. That means there were about 136.2 million YouTube viewers in the US (that’s give or take 44% of the entire US population). (more…)

Lip-syncing, crazy weathermen, and dancing babies are just some of the types of things we expect to see on YouTube.  But what about using the site as away to post a Missing or Found ad, like one you might see on a street pole.  Well, two Canadians used the video site to do just that.  Josh Rimer and Craig Weckerle are two Vancouver residents, who were walking around city the night of the Olympics Opening Ceremony.  As they were walking they came upon a red case with a Sony HD camcorder inside, just laying on the sidewalk. 

So, they decided to create and post a video to YouTube, in hopes to find the owners.  And indeed, with more than 10,000 views it worked.  (more…)

A few months ago, YouTube announced they would begin supporting closed captions on videos.  Since that time, we here at iePlexus have been using the feature on all of our social media news briefs, and have even been praised for our use of closed captioning. 

However, now YouTubers now have a feature which should make enabling closed captioning easier.  It’s known as YouTube auto-captioning. YouTube says auto-captions will help YouTube users reach a larger audience in a simple matter.  (more…)

The Shorty Awards, the equivlent to the Academy Awards for Twitter users, were held last night at the New York Times Tower in New York City. CNN anchor, Rick Sanchez who was the first main stream journalist who used Twitter as a connection with viewers through his show, hosted the ceremony handing out awards in a total of 28 categories.  The second annual ceremony is held to share “the diverse ways Twitter can be used to create the best real-time short form content.”

William Shatner made a brief appearance via webcam, not only to congratulate the winners, but also share some of his favorite tweets from his new show, which is based off a Twitter account.  Suzi Orman & Facebook’s Marc Zuckenberg also made a video appearance, which was one of the highlights of the night.  All the winners who gave acceptance speeches were limited to 140 characters, the amount of characters Twitter users are restricted to when they tweet.    (more…)