The latest UM ‘Power to the People’ study has revealed that the number of people now online has hit 625million. Of these, nearly two thirds have joined a Social Networking site such as Facebook, Twitter or Myspace.

The growth of social media has been of particular focus to the study. The study questioned 22,729 internet users in 38 countries, which makes it the largest global analysis of social media usage.

It shows that not only are people using social networking sites more and more, but they are using them to do far more things. Users are more likely to use social networks to blog, upload photos & videos and to use their widgets too.

In terms of specifics: 76% of social networkers upload photos; 33.1% now upload videos;  29.1% now write a blog; and 34% install widgets on their profile page.

“Social media is a very fast evolving landscape and one that’s taking an increasingly important role in consumers’ digital lives”, said Glen Parker, research director at UM EMEA.

What does this mean when you’re building a website with WebEden? At the very least, it shows the potential power of people’s online social networks to recommend websites and products. The latest WebEden release allows you to integrate your website with both Facebook and Twitter; invite people to become ‘members’ of your website’; and to update your status from your WebEden website. These call all help you start to harness the power of social networks, in order to drive visitors to your website.

Who has so far had success integrating their site with their social networks? Leave us a comment below.

Here’s a story that might surprise the marketing people: despite social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter being aimed at ‘young things’, a recent study has shown that it is the older generation who are adopting social media at the fastest rate.

Research from online measurement company comScore has shown that people over 55 are more likely to spend their time on Facebook than visit a travel, business or technology website.

In May, almost 70% of those over 55 visited Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.

That being said, these figures still lag behind a younger demographic: 89% of 25 to 34 year olds spending time catching up with friends on social networking websites.

Social Networking for older people is more than just a passing fad, or a quick glance: the average 55 and over spends 3.7 hours per month on Facebook.

Mike Read, MD of comScore Europe said:  “There continues to be a misconception that social networking is the preserve of the young. While those under 35 years old are certainly the more prevalent users, there is both a sizeable and heavily engaged audience of those 35 and older as well”.

What does this mean if you’re building a website that targets this demographic? Well to start with, you might want to consider advertising on Facebook. Facebook has a self serve advertising program that allows you to reach people based on not just their age, but their gender and interest group too.

Mike Read confirms the idea: “Advertising on social networking sites has a better chance of reaching these older demographics than site categories such as business and finance, which is a critical insight that might be lost for those trying to optimise their campaign against target audience segments.”

We’ll be showing you how to advertise on Facebook in an upcoming tutorial.

The second is that this should encourage you to get to grips with the new social networking tools available within WebEden. We’ve made it really easy for you to reach out and market to people in your social networks; invite them to become members of your site; and update Facebook from your WebEden website.

Even if you thought you are targeting people ‘who wouldn’t be into that social networking thing’, this research indicates you might be wrong.

Is social networking trans-generational?  Are you using your social networks to create interest in your website? Leave us a comment below.

In May, as we never tire of pointing out, we catapulted your WebEden Website Builder into the dizzy world of social networking.

Lots of you have grabbed the new tools and are making really good use of them. You’re setting up membership permissions; inviting people from your social networks to become members of your site; and updating Facebook from your WebEden site.

We’ve had feedback too about how the tools could be improved, so we’ve worked hard to upgrade them.

Here’s what we’ve done:

Setting a redirect page after login

Hopefully a popular one this. The update allows you to your members to a ’success’ page after they have logged in to your site. This is a great opportunity to redirecting them to the ‘members home page’, or another page that you want them to look at. You can set the ‘post login page’ on the Settings tab of the ‘People’ section when editing your site.

Disabling Facebook Connect login

Facebook Connect allows new or existing members of your site to login using their Facebook credentials, so they have no need to create a new user account on your site. This speeds up the joining process, and makes it easier for you to attract new members.

It also ties together with the ability to post out a note to your Facebook wall from the ‘Send a message’ section of ‘People’, which is a great way to invite people to join your site.

This update allows you to disable the Facebook Connect login options for members This update allows you to turn Facebook Connect off!

If its so great, why turn it off? Well it seems that it doesn’t always fit with your plans to grow your websites: some customers (especially business users) had requested this.

Once again, you can change the settings to disable Facebook Connect on the ‘Settings’ tab in the ‘People’ section.

Have a go with the updates, and let us know what you think.

Before the Internet came along, it wasn’t always easy for companies to find out what their customers were saying about them. If a customer had a good or bad experience, the most they would probably do is share that with a few friends down the pub, or mention it over a meal with the family.

If companies wanted feedback they had to ask customers to fill out a ‘customer feedback’ form; and ask their customer service agents what customers were actually saying about them.

Both these channels give a very partial view. People giving feedback would be at either end of the spectrum: they had either loved dealing with your company, or had completely hated it.

Now of course, in the era of social media, customers have lots of channels to spread both their good and bad experiences of dealing with a company. Aside from leaving comments on that company blog, they can submit reviews to reviews websites, leave posts on relevant forums, and of course give feedback through Facebook and Twitter of their experiences.

This makes it so much easier for companies to find out what their customers are saying about them. And it means there is a lot more ‘colour’ and texture to their feedback, rather than a polarised view of ‘brilliant’ or ‘rubbish’.

And apart from finding out what customers are saying, it also gives companies the opportunity to take part in that conversation. If its a good comment, then a company can  give thanks; and if its a bad one they can respond by trying to resolve that customers’ issue, or at least put their side of the story.

And from a product point of view, listening in to what your customers are saying about your product has to be one of the best ways to find out what you need to do to improve that product.

Despite all these opportunities, research out this week from digital communications company Quba has revealed that only half of businesses monitor what people are saying about them on the web. Just a third of businesses have someone who actively manages their online reputation.

Here’s a graph showing it all, published in New Media Age magazine:

For reasons we’ve stated, the reality is that all business should monitor what people are saying about them, and respond to it too. Doing this is called having a ’social media strategy’.

Check out how to develop your Social Media Strategy in ‘What are your customers saying about you part 2‘.

We’ve talked before about cyber-squatting. This is when someone registers a domain name that is the same or similar to a company or brand, in order to profit from that supposed association.

And last month – just as Britain’s got Talent was reaching its teary zenith – we revealed that not only had many of the contestants names been registered as domain names; but that some had had Facebook and Twitter accounts opened in their name too.

The registering of brand or celebrity names with social networks is a new development in cyber squatting. Now that Facebook has started to give out customised web addresses, and of course MySpace and Twitter allowing users to select their own /name extension, the cyber-squatting game has got a whole lot more complicated.

Consumers are increasingly using social networks to communicate with businesses. Sow now, not only do companies and individuals have to defend their brand by buying up all variations of their brand name as domains; they also have the dizzying task of registering their brand name with social networks too. And as new social networks are springing up all the time, this is going to be quite a task.

The New York Times put it like this: “somewhere out there on the Web, another new service or social network is on the rise, threatening to start yet another online land grab”.

To fill this need of brand owners, a few new services have been launched, which claim to protect brand names on social networking websites. Here’s a couple:

Namechk.com: Lets you check that your brand name is available across hundreds of social networks. Just type in the username you want, and it will let you know on which sites that username has been taken.

And then there is:

KnowEm.com: does the same sort of thing, but will also register your name at the sites, and then send you the username and password. For a fee of course.

I guess the first question is: are you using Social Networks to market your website? We hope that with our latest social media release you’re starting to get to grips with that! And have you found your name to already have been registered? Have you yourself tried registering a company name with a social network? Leave us a comment below.

Lots of you have grabbed to new social networking features of the WebEden Website making system with both hands. Last week we showed you how to send out membership invitations to your website. This time around we show you send updates from your WebEden website to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This really is exciting stuff!

How did you get on? Leave us a comment below

Last week we announced the launch of a range of new features of the WebEden website making system. These features put your WebEden website at the heart of your social networking sites. The feedback so far has been very positive. However every new thing always takes a bit of getting used to, so we’ve put together video tutorial that shows you how to add members to your site.

Have a go and let us know how you got on!

WebEden is today (hopefully) catapulting itself into the world of Social Media, Social Networking, and Web 2.0. Whilst we’ve talked before about how to best make use of Social Media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote your site, with our latest update we’re trying to put your WebEden site at the heart of your Social Networking activities.

What are we talking about?

Want to know how to grow your website with more members and advocates? How to interact, manage and develop a better relationship with your visitors? Want to create members-only/client-only pages or sections? Want to post information or updates from your website to Facebook/Twitter? Build a collaborative website with edit rights for different people?

Well then, the membership release is what you’ve been waiting for! After many months of development it has finally arrived, jam packed with new features and a lot of improvement. Read on for more detail…

This release sees a whole new membership section with a number of improvements to make it easier for site owners to attract, manage and communicate with their members.

In particular, the main areas of improvement are:

a) to make it easier to invite members to join;
b) to ensure members become members of the site only and no longer have to create a SiteMaker account;
c) to replace ‘SiteMaker’ branding in the join process with the site owner’s own look and feel;
d) to allow site owners to create site administrators;
e) to make managing page permissions easier; and finally,
f) to enable integration with some Facebook and Twitter services.

More detail on these features is provided below. While there are over 100 new FAQs in the Help section covering the various new features, we will aslo be publishing some specific articles over the coming weeks. These will highlight more of what’s new, what’s improved and how you can make the most of it.

Getting new members

It’s now possible to invite new members using your Windows Live or Gmail address books. Alternatively, you can also just copy and paste a list of emails addresses if you want to transfer them from an offline address book. The content of the invite email can also be customised by you. As a site owner, it is now possible to create a member yourself, while in edit mode. Previously, the site owner would have to ask the new member to come to his or her site and create an account before being able to assign any access/edit rights.

Site Level Membership

Previously visitors to a WebEden site who wanted to join as a member were required to complete a two-stage sign up process: firstly, they had to create a SiteMaker account; secondly, they then had to join the site. Now, all new sites will be built with Site Level Membership, which means that visitors join the site in a one step process. It also means that the members are free to choose a username that is unique to that site alone. Previously, usernames had to be unique across all usernames for all members of the sites built by the partner.

Sites built before the launch will be able to upgrade their site to site level membership, therefore getting access to all the new features provided under site level membership. However, this is not mandatory and in fact some sites use the WebEden wide membership so that they can run a number of sites with shared logins.

The join up process now involves setting up a join page which contains a new customisable login/join widget where the site owner can create a branded experience explaining the benefits of joining their site. Previously, the join process took place in a SiteMaker editor style popup window Emails from the site now refer to the site’s name and come from the site email address. Previously, some account emails were from the SiteMaker Team and mentioned SiteMaker.

Site Admin

A new role of Site Administrator has been created. A site admin has access to all the toolbar functions, but any information regarding the site owner, such as billing details, are not accessible. This feature is particularly useful for website resellers.

Managing members and page permissions

It is now possible to set up permissions for multiple pages at once. The interface on the settings panel has been improved to make it much simpler to understand what permissions have been given to individual members as well as each group.

You can now create groups and drag and drop members into those groups from a single panel. Site owners can now view and update members’ email addresses and send them an email that allows the member to reset their password (as long as the site is using site level membership)

Integration with Facebook and Twitter

It is now possible to allow visitors to become a member of your site using their Facebook login credentials, therefore making it easier for users to register as they won’t have to create another username and password.

You can also link your site with your Facebook account enabling you to post notes and updates on your wall about your website so that your friend network on Facebook can hear about your site or be updated with any changes.

It is also possible to send updates to an associated Twitter account to communicate with your twitter followers about your site.

NB. If you have your own domain name you’ll have to get a Facebook Application key to use the Facebook features. You can do this in the new ‘People’ section on the ‘Settings’ tab and we’ll talk you through the process. It’s quite simple.

And that as they say is that. It’s taken a while for us to get our heads around it all, but we’re sure you’ll get to grips with it much faster. Let us know what you think and we hope you enjoy the new tools!

To give you a helping hand we’ve put together a video tutorial that shows you how to add members to your website.

And here’s one that shows you how to send membership invitations.

And finally, here’s how to send updates to Facebook and Twitter.

More interesting research is out this week, once again from Hitwise. It shows the continuing growth in traffic of Twitter. UK visits to the micro-blogging service have gone up 6 times this year, and are up an amazing 32 times between March 2008 and 2009.

Here’s a nice graph:

This is despite the fact that other research has found that 60% of Twitter users leave in the first month.

Twitter has now entered the top 50 websites in the UK, outranking major players such as he Daily Mail, RightMove, MSN UK Search, Directgov, and all retail websites - with the exception of eBay, Amazon UK, Play.com and Argos.

Even though it has had such strong growth, Twitter is still only ranks the 5th most popular social networking site.

But where is the traffic coming from? Its perhaps an indication of the increasing interconnectedness of social networking platforms, that Twitter’s largest source of traffic is actually Facebook, which makes up almost 20% of all its’ visits. Its possible to ‘tweet’ from your Facebook page, and you can also update your Facebook status from twitter too.

But once people arrive on Twitter, they’re also following links they find there in order to move on: twitter is the 36th biggest source of traffic to other UK websites.

The top four downstream categories of websites from Twitter are Entertainment, Social Networks, News & Media and Lifestyle.

Are you tweeting? Do you want to follow WebEden on twitter? Do you see the point? Leave us a comment below.

Hitwise, the online traffic measurement company, has produced some new research indicating that visitors to online retailers dropped for the first time in the month of March.

In the UK 8.6% of all Internet visits were to online retailers, as opposed to 9.7% for the same month in 2008.

Whilst it’s normal to see a traffic drop in this sector in Jan and Feb, which follows the retailing binge of Christmas, March normally shows a healthy bounce back in traffic.

According to the research, the traffic dropped as consumers adapted their shopping behaviour to the global recession. Since more people are feeling the pinch, they decided to spend less time shopping and more time doing other things.

So if overall traffic to online retailers is down, which traffic source specifically is in decline?

Paid search traffic dropped from 28% to 23% of the total, compared to a year earlier, which shows that online retailers are investing less of their revenues back into pay per click search marketing.

Since overall Internet traffic hasn’t declined, what are people doing instead? Well one beneficiary of the change in behaviour are social networking sites, which took an unprecedented 9.8% of all visits in the same month.

Hitwise director Robin Goad said: “The growth of social networking, online video and the continuing popularity of news websites has meant that an increasing proportion of consumers’ online time in the UK has been devoted to online media.”

Do you sell products on your website? Have you seen a traffic drop in March? And as a consumer do you think you’re shopping online a bit less that you used to? Leave us a comment below.