Gasta Tech Update : Facebook Users Like Gasta 'Search and Share' apps.

Facebook Users Like to Share Content
by Jason Hahn

Facebook is comfortably ahead of the social networking pack when it comes to the sharing of content, according to data provided to TechCrunch by Gigya.

Gasta.com web sharing tools on the search index for videos, news, weblinks, and advertisers is proving very popular with its vast global regional users. According to Alexa Gasta.com has a 700% increaes in traffic since the launch of the 'search and apps'across the complete Gasta Network. Gasta 'search and share' apps currently share to Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Digg.


According to Gigya, 44 percent of article links, videos, photos and other content from more than 5,000 sites that is shared through Gigya’s widgets are posted to Facebook. These sites include NBA.com, PGA.com and Answers.com, among others.


Twitter received 29 percent of this sharing through social media sites, followed by Yahoo! with 18 percent and MySpace with 9 percent.


AddThis affirmed this finding, as its numbers show that Facebook received 33 percent of observed sharing via the company’s sharing buttons. E-mail was second with 13 percent, followed by printing out copies of the content with 9 percent, Twitter with 9 percent, Favorites with 8 percent, Google with 6 percent and MySpace with 6 percent.


AddToAny, another company with a sharing widget, also shows that Facebook leads the way in terms of sharing, with 24 percent of such actions heading to Facebook.


In terms of site authentication (entering an existing username and password to log into another Web site), Facebook leads the way in the Entertainment, Live Event Chat and News categories, but with varying degrees of success in each.


In the Entertainment category, Facebook accounts for 52 percent of site authentication logins, while Google accounted for 17 percent. Yahoo! got 12 percent, followed by Twitter with 11 percent, MySpace with 7 percent and AOL with 1 percent.


For Live Event Chat, Facebook led the way with 56 percent, while Twitter followed with 28 percent of site authentication logins. Yahoo! followed with 9 percent, while MySpace had 7 percent.


For News, Facebook led by a slim margin with 31 percent of logins, followed closely by Google with 30 percent. Yahoo! wasn’t too far behind with 25 percent, while Twitter had 11 percent and AOL had 3 percent.


It’s clear that users of different sites appear more interested in different topics, and this might help site owners to better understand how their users share their content and how to make it easier for them to do so.


Sources:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/facebook-44-percent-social-sharing/

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007530

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/02/facebook-corners-44-of-social-sharing.html

Gasta Opinion: Why the forecasters are wrong about digital in 2009

While the pundits may be singing a similar tune when it comes to digital advertising's immediate future, here are a few points they may not have considered.
It's the first full work week of the New Year, and already I'm tired of the constant vacillation in moods concerning the health of internet marketing.
Depending on whom you believe, digital marketing will either follow newspapers into oblivion in 2009, or it will be hit hard but not quite as hard as other media. Hardly any of the pundits give it a positive outlook. And that's a shame, with self-fulfilling prophecies and all…
There are quite a few assertions, though, that are fairly consistently questionable from pundit to pundit when it comes to predicting digital's future. Among them:
1. Failing to grow at the same rate as last year is some sort of failure -- If digital advertising grew at 10-15 percent last year, and it will hit only 7-9 percent growth this year, that's not a failure. Accelerated year-over-year growth for any market sector, whether it be manufacturing, biotech engineering, or financial services, is unsustainable in the long term. Things have to slow down at some point. If digital advertising slows down but still grows in an economy where the word "Depression" is still commonly used in headlines for op-ed pieces, I think we're doing rather well, thankyouverymuch!
My other issue with this is that more marketers are doing things with digital that are not classified as advertising and probably don't get tracked by the prognosticators. Suppose your recommended solution to an e-commerce client is not to buy a bunch of ad banners, but instead to pay to have their digital shelf presence enhanced. Is that advertising? No. Does it address the business problem your client is trying to solve? Most definitely. Will such a deal get picked up by the powers-that-be who track internet spending? Probably not.
2. Video and social media need an ad model -- It's true that in order to make money the way that Yahoo, MSN, and Platform-A do, Facebook will need to improve its ad model. And yes, something will have to come along that can replace pre-roll and overlay ads in video. But hinging digital's growth potential on these ad model conundrums is a mistake, I think.
If video advertising won't scale appropriately (and I do believe it will to a certain degree in 2009), marketers might turn to other non-advertising ways to leverage video. Viral strategies, video syndication, and content sponsorship are all ways of making video work in ways that enhance the bottom line without registering on someone's radar as an ad spend.
As long as social networks can continue to capture everyone's attention the way they have in the last few years, I doubt the lack of an ad model will put them under. Not as long as I'm spending what I do on things like Facebook gifts and Facebook ads. I think there's a lot of potential in something like Facebook ads -- not the big banner deals they do, but the smaller, targeted buys that would appeal to small business marketers. I've used Facebook ads both to recruit people for positions at Underscore and to try to sell my home. In both cases, sub-$100 investments have yielded huge gains. If Google still has plenty of potential to roll up many thousands of small, self-serve ad deals in order to make money, why not Facebook?
3. Performance-based advertising will be where the growth is -- I've seen this prediction made by many of the pundits, followed by some Google-flattering comment about how search will drive modest growth in 2009. In the short term, this might be the case, but I think we've already seen what happens in digital when too many advertisers shift their focus to DR and performance-based digital media. Things quickly get crowded. Clearance issues abound. Lead and sale volumes drop sharply unless concessions are made with respect to price and environment. This is how we weathered the last downturn, and display never really went away and experienced a rebirth when the economy turned around and marketers learned to trust digital again.
I question these three assertions, and I'm skeptical that the equation is as simple as many of the pundits make it out to be. I'm also optimistic for another reason: Analysts and pundits who don't work in digital on a day-to-day basis often have trouble understanding the dynamic of how marketing budget decisions are made. I see a lot of potential out there for marketers and brand managers to come to the conclusion that their diminished budgets can't afford last year's levels of broadcast, and for those marketers to consider digital-heavy or digital-only options for marketing campaigns.
However, it turns out in 2009, I don't think we should resign ourselves to slowed growth or declines this year. People who work in digital tend to be people who thrive in chaos. There's certainly a good deal of chaotic behavior out there in the floundering economy, and I wouldn't be surprised if we figure out how to capitalize on it this year.
Tom Hespos is president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.

Gasta News:Mobile internet is growing eight times faster than PC-based web

Mobile internet is growing eight times faster than PC-based web
The mobile internet is growing eight times faster than traffic to the PC-based web, according to the first set of mobile data from Nielsen Online.
The research company has released its first Mobile Media findings which show traffic on the mobile internet increased by 25% to 7.3m during 3Q 2008. The survey found 25% of mobile internet users are aged 16-24 compared with just 12% who are older than 55.
BBC News is the most popular mobile internet site, attracting 1.7m
Kent Ferguson, senior analyst for Nielsen, said the mobile web was a great opportunity for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups. "People often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are," he said.

Gasta what is Digg?

The new Gasta web.20 services are designed to compliment services like Digg to enable users to share content and recommend 'stuff' to each other, the only diference between gasta's new services and Digg is that Gasta offers everything on the one page right before your eyes.

This is what Digg is all about.

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.

How do we do this? Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images to Podcasts — is submitted by our community (that would be you). Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.

And it doesn’t stop there. Because Digg is all about sharing and discovery, there’s a conversation that happens around the content. We’re here to promote that conversation and provide tools for our community to discuss the topics that they’re passionate about. By looking at information through the lens of the collective community on Digg, you’ll always find something interesting and unique. We’re committed to giving every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing.