OneUpWeb recently released the results of an eye-tracking study on Google’s new real-time results integrated into SERPs—and it looks like the search giant might have just wasted $15M (the estimated cost of Google’s deal with Twitter).

The study segmented web users into two groups: consumers and information foragers. It took consumers 7.09 seconds to look at the real-time results, even though they’re listed just below the news results and before the organic results. In fact, they scrolled below the fold to view the image results before they fixated on the real-time area, the eleventh area they focused on.

Information foragers took slightly longer to turn to the real-time results: 7.39 seconds. It was the thirteen area their eyes focused on—but the first 12 areas were all just above the real-time results in the news results. (The search task here was to research a selected current news item using the search engine of choice—for 89% of all participants, that was Google.) (Side note: I’m not sure why the times in the above graph are so much higher than the numbers OneUpWeb also provided that I used in these paragraphs.)

The second search task was segmented by group—the consumers were to look for a product they were considering to buy for themselves or for someone else as a gift. Information foragers were to again look for information on a current news topic. Interestingly, in this second set, consumers were five seconds faster than information foragers to focus on real-time results.

Meanwhile, 20% of consumers and 30% of information foragers actually clicked on real-time results, as opposed to 69% of consumers and 60% of information foragers that clicked on the top 5 results excluding real-time.

I’ve long argued that real-time results will only be helpful for a very small, select set of data—and for that set, most people would know to go to Twitter or Facebook in the first place anyway. I’m not the only one. The Guardian’s Charles Arthur points to several others who feel the same way, most notably Nick Carr, who sardonically chronicles the efforts to organize the web’s information around 140-character ephemera.

And yet Google insists that this information is useful and must be foisted upon the user. Aruther quotes Marissa Mayer last summer:

We think the real-time search is incredibly important, and the real-time data that’s coming online can be super-useful in terms of finding out whether – something like, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those types of patterns emerge, so there’s a lot of useful information about real-time interactions that we think ultimately will really affect search.

Apparently users don’t quite agree yet.

What do you think? Are real-time results useful?

Last week, Chinese officials reported that Google was in talks about their threats to leave the country (or only partially) if they’re forced to continue censoring search results. Also, Chinese officials reported that Google was not in talks with the government.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt declined to comment on the state of negotiations a conference in the United Arab Emirates today. However, he did say that “we’re in active negotiations with the Chinese government, and there is no specific timetable,” although he promised “Something will happen soon.”

Google announced a hacking attempt targeted at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists in January. They suspected that the attack may have originated in the Chinese government on some level, and announced they would no longer agree to censor search results. However, nothing has changed—yet.

Soon after Google’s statement, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on the matter, urging China to review the breach as well. This prompted suspicion that Google’s withdrawal threats were directed by the US government. Schmidt denied that today:

“The Google action was not in any way advanced or coordinated with the U.S. government except post-facto,” he said in response to questions. “Google’s discussions are with the Chinese government, and they do not involve the U.S. government. The U.S. government’s doing its thing unrelated to Google.”

Schmidt’s statement is pretty open-ended: “something” and “soon.” What kind of timeline do you think we’re looking at—and what do you think the end result will be?

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

It’s always the darkest before the dawn.

Whatever the cliché being thrown around in Redmond, it must be working, because Bing’s US search share continues to nudge ever upwards.

According to comScore’s data, Bing climbed from 11.3% to 11.5%, likely stealing that share from the "we’ve given up on search" Yahoo, which dropped from 17% to 16.8%.

The only kink in Microsoft’s plan to catch Google? Google’s share increased too–up from 65.4% to 65.5%.

Lots of cool Twitter statistics coming out of Barracuda Networks new study (pdf).

Where do I start?

• 21% of Twitter users are actually using the service–meaning that have at least 10 followers, follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times.
• 74% of Twitter users have less than 10 followers! However, that number is improving with a 30% increase in the number of users with 10+ followers (since June 2009)
• 60% of Twitter users follow less than 10 people
• 34% of Twitter users have more followers than others they are following, showing an 70% increase from 20% in June 2009
• 73% of users have less than 10 tweets, as compared to 79% in June 2009.
• 49% of Twitter users joined between November 2008 and April 2009–the period when many celebrities jumped on the Twitter bandwagon
• Twitter’s growth spiked at 21% in April 2009

Lastly, who tweets the most? Those with around 1,000 followers do:

I’m guessing that’s the sweet spot of actually being able to engage and keep-up with your followers.

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There’s good news for online retailers: Forrester is predicting a 10% growth rate for you guys!

In fact, online sales will increase from $173 billion this year to a healthy $249 billion in 2014. Along with that growth comes a nice bump in online retail’s share of all US retail sales: up from 6% to 8% share.

Forrester says our spending on clothing, consumer electronics and computers will lead the growth spurt.

Have you heard of the Streisand effect?

Long story short, in 2003 Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for $50 million because he took photos of her home. She said the photographs invaded her privacy. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the world had no clue of the existence of these photographs until after she filed the lawsuit. Filing the lawsuit created a greater issue than if she had just kept quiet.

Enter Lindsay Lohan.

The almost popular, but now notsomuch, actress is suing E-Trade for, get this, $100 million for naming one of its TV babies “Lindsay.” Apparently, Miss Lohan believes that she has obtained “single name” status–like Madonna or Oprah–and that everyone that sees the milkaholic manboy-stealer will instantly think of her–and that will ruin her stellar reputation.

Says Lohan’s lawyer:

“They used the name Lindsay,” Ovadia said. “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.” Ovadia wants an injunction to force the spot off the air, and the Lindsay camp wants every last copy of the commercial

Actually, no one was talking about Lindsay Lohan, until this lawsuit. Oh wait, maybe that’s the point. No one was talking about you, so file a $100M lawsuit and get everyone talking about you again!

Alternatively, why not actually make a movie that we think is good?

Social media or networking or whatever it is you want to call it continues to grow at exponential rates of speed. With the “announcement” of Facebook getting its own location based service in place the concerns over privacy and safety of information continue to grow as well. Twitter realizes this concern and is working to make Twitter free from malicious users especially in light of recent phishing attacks that have created some concern in the Twitter world.

In a Twitter blog post entitled “Trust and Safety” the company says that it is concerned and is working to make the world safer for tweeters of shapes and sizes.

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Sounds good and this comes on the tail of a recent Biz Stone post that described what had been going on in Twitter due to successful phishing attacks.

The new feature will not be something that most will notice and Twitter is focusing on one main area of the service that is most susceptible currently to this kind of attack.

Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.

So Twitter is framing these efforts in trying to earn your trust and improve your safety on a “proactive” basis. I wonder if they are just trying to look like the antithesis of Facebook who throws down tablets off Mt. Facebook and lets the chips fall where they may regarding privacy and other issues. Whatever the reason, it’s the safer way to go in a world where privacy looks to be less available with each passing day.

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Facebook is going to be joining the frenzy to help everyone not only know what people are thinking but also where they are thinking it. As we move more toward a world of this total view of another’s life you can be sure that Facebook wants to be involved. With the rising popularity of Foursquare, Gowalla and other location based “services” it makes sense that Facebook be here. In the bigger picture, however, this is likely to be more about taking on Google for local advertising dollars. After all, money has to be made correct?

The New York Times Bits section reports

Starting next month, the more than 400 million Facebook users could begin seeing a new kind of status update flow through their news feed: the current locations of their friends.

Facebook plans to take the wraps off a new location-based feature in late April at f8, the company’s yearly developer conference, according to several people briefed on the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss unannounced services.

In preparation for the introduction, Facebook updated its privacy policy last November. The new policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.”

On reports like this where there is the “unauthorized” source that is talking about unannounced services I always have the picture of a clandestine meeting under a gas lamp picture. Two shadowy figures exchange a note and keep walking on a lonely street in the fog kinda thing. Then I wonder who these “sources” are, if they are really unauthorized or are they part of the new age of PR which is more about leaking information than announcing it. Officially Facebook is staying mum.

Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the company wasn’t ready to discuss any possible location-based features. “We’re constantly experimenting with new things around here, but we don’t have any details to share right now,” she said in an e-mail message.

It appears as if Facebook will remain friendly to the developer community on this one as well according to these “sources”. With estimates that 100 million users access Facebook daily via a mobile device (which represents 1 in 4 total Facebook users) this service is primed for quick adoption for those who like this kind of thing. As a result there is money to be made and allowing a business as usual attitude with the Facebook development community only makes sense.

Of course there will be plenty of concern about security and privacy because Facebook has turned itself into the poster child for how not to do new things and thus open the door to criticism. Maybe this information “leak” is designed to let the air out of any arguments that this new offering will face. I admit, my inner ‘conspiracy theorist’ is strong today.

So what do you think about this new, soon to be (we think), offering by Facebook? Of course, the details are sketchy but you must have an opinion on the general idea, right? Chime in. We’re listening but we’re not telling you from where .

Online Publishing Skills: Communicate Better By Learning How To Listen

Robin Good: Skills required. People always ask me "What kind of skills do I need to be like you? Do I need to study..." No, do not study. Do things. The skills are really be able to communicate. "I thought it was something more. What about the computer?" "Yes, the computer..." "Only communication?" "Yes, communication." People think that communication is something ephemeral. Something like "You need to know how to talk". "I know how to talk". But they do not realize how little each one of us has developed the skills to really communicate. You go to meetings, you go to parties, you meet somebody on the street they introduced to you. 85% of the times it goes like this: "Bkladsghkajdnvkamdnflkjflakjnadsmfn!" Your turn: "Attatatatatatatatata!" "Ah! mnmtbamnamnbnmt!" It is kind of a competition on who has got the worst story, or the more interesting one. We call that a conversation, but we are not really picking up anything from the other. We are not really putting ourselves in their shoes or empathizing with them or trying to find out why. I am exaggerating - I know - but look how many time when you talk is just noise filling the air in turns. My turn, your turn. Some people take long turns and that makes it more difficult... That communication is something else. It is about understanding something that does not have to do with words and communicating. It has to do with reality. "What?". Yes, reality. Communication is all about - in my little humble view - understanding that reality is an ephemeral thing. And that there are millions different realities. There is no one single, tangible final thing that is there unmovable, everything moves, that you can count on. This, for example, escapes many people. Sometimes because they got too much into school, into Church or into something else, and they think that there is one ultimate way to look at things. My belief is that, if you are going to be a communicator - even if you work for CBS or some other bad companies like that - still, you need to know that there are multiple realities, multiple viewpoints. What are those great journalists and reporters doing - the ones that are acclaimed for something - they look at the news from different viewpoints. They do not sell themselves to one viewpoint. They do not stand only on one side, even if it looks like the good side. They always have the courage to go and look at the other side of things. That ability to have empathy for who is in front of you and trying to understand what they are trying to communicate, or if they are going for a monologue because they just want feel great inside themselves - you need to develop those skills by listening. listening, listening, and really listening. It is all about listening.

Online Publishing Skills: Think Strategy Before Technology

Robin Good: The direction I think is really valuable for you to take as a reference - if you are going to have the courage to move out of the traditional business job - is to consider that the future is all about learning. That means that most people in the future, increasingly, will want to learn something new, and they are going to go less and less inside traditional institutions to do that, because if you can teach me how to cook that sausage like you showed me before with a particular smell that I have never heard before, I would rather take a course with you online - if I can talk to you, if I can see you, if you show me all your secrets - than go in some nice cooking school in Rome that is maybe much closer. Because we do not trust anymore the brands, the companies. We trust individual people. Whether or not they are part of companies. It is the person, specifically, that we go to. The Internet has a tremendous failing item that makes people makes mistakes and that it is too easy to do stuff. You just click and it goes out. You blog, you type, you publish and it goes out. You make a video - YouTube - and it goes out. People think that communicating and publishing is easy. By making that unconscious bridge in their head, they forget to ever stop and think how they want to use this technology. They stop and they do not reflect on building a strategy, a plan, having a road. They start doing stuff, "let's put this... and this other plug-in... the layout... let's change this... another category of content... what the analytics say... let's change this..." It is a busy life, you are a publisher, you are putting stuff all the time. It is like if music could be better by adding more notes, more instruments. "Let's all play." It does not get better, it gets noisy. To make a good piece of music you need to orchestrate it and arrange it, and know the different instruments, and got your hands very dirty with it. The same happens with publishing and communicating online. Unless you have built an appropriate strategy, you cannot really get anywhere. Thinking and developing a plan, by questioning all that it is being told to you outside is the last point of my recipe - the so-called "Sharewood formula".

Used properly, social media can help you with market research, learn about the type of people interested in your business, and build your customer base with only the investment of time. Using social media to build your site traffic and improve visitor loyalty is one of the biggest trends for 2010, and small businesses everywhere are doing it to make their businesses better and increase their sales.

Even though there’s no way around the requirement for having good content, a social media campaign built as a framework around your great content can sincerely help your efforts along. And you can track your success due to your social media campaign pretty easily. Here’s a checklist of the things you should do to make your social media campaign work hard for you.

Steps to a successful social media marketing campaign

1. Step 1 is the biggie: get involved. Social networking is a giant conversation between businesses and customers and among the customers. Setting up your presence on the big social media sites (Facebook and Twitter are the hot sites right now.) is easy and quick, and there’s no reason not to try it. You’ll be able to increase brand awareness and build up relationships with customers. The marketplace is heavily competitive, particularly with the world economy still lagging, so don’t miss out on the opportunities social media brings.

2. Block out time or assign a staffer to dedicate to social media marketing. Just Tweeting something whenever you happen to think of it and have a minute or two isn’t good enough. Plan for daily updates. Write it into your schedule. It’s like exercising in that if you don’t schedule it and realize that it’s important, you won’t bother. Regular updating and interacting with followers are important enough that they should be part of your (or your staffer’s) regular work schedule.

3. Remember that social media participation is a give and take relationship. Signing up and spamming everywhere will hurt rather than help your business. Twitterers will stop following you the minute they think you’re only on there to spew links and bombard them with ads. It’s only 140 characters, but you can do a lot with it as far as making it actually say something.

4. Check and double check the quality and make-up of your content. If you put up a new “Top 50″ list on your blog and each of the 50 items on the list come with an image, think about what happens if your dream comes true and thousands of visitors at once want to read it. Will it exceed your host’s processor’s bandwidth limitations? You’re better off using Picasa or Flickr for hosting your images so you don’t use up your hosting resources on extras.

5. Add social media vote buttons and badges. Sure, visitors can go to Digg.com and manually digg your blog post, but they won’t. Have a Digg button and make it easy.

6. Be aware of events that are going to swamp your social media posts. Huge news events like earthquakes and celebrity deaths are going to put the strain on the social media networks. It may be best to wait it out for a day or two. Avoid trying to compete with known big events like elections and holidays. Those are days when you can and should keep it light rather than announcing a new product.

7. The corollary to Step 6 is to pick a good time to launch something big. On what days do you pick up the most attention on Twitter and Facebook? What time of day is best? Do it then.

8. Keep a close eye on analytics during any social media campaign. Instant traffic stats are very helpful in finding out what’s working well and what isn’t. Tracking the number of inbound links both before and after a social media campaign is important, particularly if you’re doing a social media campaign as a consultant for someone else. You want to be able to see how well the campaign is working. SocialMention is a good website for tracking chatter about your brand on social media sites. The interface is very simple, as you can see in the screen shot. SEMrush (see screen shot) is a tool that lets you find out what a page is ranking for and other goodies like the Google keywords for a given site.

Socail Media Mention

SEMRush

9. Keep an eye on Digg, Stumbleupon, and reddit to see what type of articles in your niche regularly make it big on those sites.

10. If you can do it regularly and do it well, start a blog. The web is littered with carcasses of old blogs that people started and then abandoned. Don’t let this happen to your brand. If you start a blog, update it regularly. Once a week is good, and once a day is better. Blog posts don’t have to be long, and they don’t have to be Pulitzer Prize material. Blogs are for keeping interested parties updated and engaged. Allow comments (moderated if necessary) and answer at least a few of the comments.

The bottom line is that as a webmaster, you avoid social media at your own peril. It is something important enough that you should devote regular blocks of time to taking care of social media updates, interactions, and metrics. Two similar websites selling the same thing using a similar design or approach can have very different success rates depending on which one uses social media like Twitter and Facebook to their best advantage. Make sure that’s you and not the other guy.

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Related posts:

1. A Social Media Marketing How-to Guide
2. Tips for Marketing Through Social Media
3. The Social Media Spam Problem (a.k.a. Why you have to keep it honest)