Amazing how fast this meme has spread:  did you hear?  Twitter’s visitors fell in October! The party is over!

Or maybe not. The information that is generating all this buzz is in the new data that shows Twitter unique visitors declined 8% in October, to a bit under 20 million.  The chart I’m importing here is from Mashable’s article, which uses data from Compete.

Mashable: Compete Data Shows Twitter Flatlining

Not to be outdone, TechCrunch published a trouble with twitters article using similar data, this time from ComScore.  Their chart looks pretty much like the one above.

Can it be true?  I’m betting it’s not.  The unique visitors counts certainly don’t include all the mobile use, and do they include users who never actually go to Twitter to post their tweets, using Tweetdeck or Seesmic or something (someone out there knows the answer to this question — please let me know).

In addition, Twitter just signed big search deals with Bing and Google that are barely off the ground. These deals cannot manufacture Twitter visitors overnight, but they certainly can help Twitter keep operating while they build out their platform — and who knows what we’ll see.  I for one am going to be more inclined to use Twitter now simply because I can post updates to LinkedIn simply by adding #in to the tweet, an upgrade just about a week old.

Twitter is a professional’s tool, a business tool.  So it’s not going to get a lot of purely social users and that limits its growth.  But not its value.  I’m more interested in seeing how intensely people use it to share and communicate with peers, or between company and customer. Building out from the Lists function to give companies private networks has often been mentioned as one direction Twitter can go.  There will be other uses.

I think it still has legs.

Yeah, pretty big topic, but this video is a quick intro, and if you want more, you can link out to YouTube and hear the whole thing.  This is really exciting stuff.  No place for cynicism here.  (Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick and ReadWriteWeb)

Now playing on thousands of screens:  TV is NOT dead!  In fact, we’re watching more of it (or at least the thing is on a lot).

The Center for Media Research has just published some  new numbers on media usage from Nielson.  Near as I can tell, almost no one is ever more than 30 seconds away from watching one screen or another.  And the trends are up, up and up.  If Ray Kurzweil is right, you will soon be organically connected to a screen, or really, become a part of it.

Anyhow, here’s some numbers marketers may love:

TV watchers (people tuned in) in US:

2nd quarter 2008:  281,746,000
2nd quarter 2009:  284,396,000 for .9% increase.

Internet users US:

2nd quarter 2008: 159,986,000
2nd quarter 2009: 191,035,000 for a 19.4% increase.

Watching video on a mobile phone:

2nd quarter 2008: 9,004,000
2nd quarter 2009: 15,267,000 for a 70% increase (from low base, but so what?)

We are consuming more and more and more media.  Jacked into the net anyone?

I know a lot of business owners who are interested in participating in social media like Facebook, Twitter or a blog.  But who’s got the time to keep all that content current?

So lots of people turn to an outside writer for help.  Is that a good idea?

Well, this turns out to have a lot of controversy in the Internet marketing community.  Some people think it’s unethical to publish content that others have written for you unless it’s clearly stated that way.  Others think it’s just like business as usual — when’s the last time the CEO actually wrote a press release?

Small Business Trends just published an article with some ‘ghostwriter’ guidelines for working with outside consultants for making content for your online promotion.  Here’s the issue in a nutshell:  the idea of blogs and other social media is that they are authentic expressions of opinion and experience by knowledgeable people.  But if someone outside your company ghosts the stuff for you, is it really authentic?  Remember that blogs, et al, are very personal expressions. The problem is really about that personal authority behind the statement which is posed in a different way online than it is in traditional corporate communications.

Personally, I think the ghostwriting is not only necessary but is fine to do as long as the information is valid/true and it is not published under an alias or someone else’s name.  You can easily publish blog posts as ‘Company X Staff’ and be truthful about it.

Here’s another attempt to deal with the ethics of the matter (link pulled from the article cited above).

My name is Glenn Silloway, owner of The Net Sells Internet Marketing firm, and these are my actual words.  I promise.

Whoa! This just amazed me.  It’s “old” news now, but a week ago Shane ONeill reported in CIO that Bing search results were fixed.  Yes:  natural search results were manipulated to return pro-Microsoft and/or anti-Apple or anti-Google results.  You need to read this article–I’m not going to repeat the details — and it seems the problem has been ‘fixed’ — though searching Bing for ‘why is windows so expensive’ just now (evening 11 Aug) returned a #1 result whose point is ‘why are Macs expensive?’.

The important thing is, search results have to be trustworthy. Once you blow it on the trust issue, you cannot get it back.  I cannot help seeing Microsoft’s testosterone-driven culture overwhelming its thinking head here.  So stupid, so self-defeating, and most of all, so confirming of what a lot of people already think about Microsoft.

Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed is all the buzz the past couple days, but I’m really more interested in FB’s roll out of a new search capability. This is something that will grow over time — as people learn about it, more content will be added to the network that can be used in search.  But it is clearly another alternative to traditional search, and it is based on peoples’ own preferences and experiences.  That’s the social media advantage!

Now that search bar in the upper right corner of your FB page takes you to a new search page where a great array of results wait for your browsing pleasure.  This is keyword-driven (like all search) so it’s not too useful if you have a really complex query (use Aardvark for those!), but if you’re looking for something more common, like ‘restaurant’ or ‘music’, you’ll get lots of ideas.

The image below is from my own search for ‘music’, filtered by ‘events’.  I found a lot of concerts advertised on Facebook!

Facebook's New Search Interface

On the downside, when I tried to find ‘music san luis obispo’ there were no results. Come on SLO musicians!  Get with it and get on Facebook.

This is another example of Facebook’s huge advantage of having all that profile information from hundreds of millions of users and businesses.  You couldn’t usefully add a search capability to a small network (not enough results possible), but when you have this kind of scale, it becomes valuable.  The network effect means that FB will continue to grow because it has these capabilities.  The big get bigger.

I wonder if there will come a point where the personal connection people feel with their networks gets so diluted that the information in the network overall begins to degrade, in quality and/or in quantity.  In a way, that’s what happened to MySpace.  Thinking of the goose that laid the golden eggs here.

Not long ago we talked about Microsoft the monopoly using its vast power to squash would-be competitors. Now it seems almost like poor Gulliver being tied down and lashed by the tiny knives of its Lilliputian enemies.  It just can’t get no respect.

Until Bing?  The NY Times has written that Bing delivers credibility to Microsoft’s search efforts, finally, pointing to its gains in query volume since its launch in May.  Yet most of those gains seem to be coming from weaker challengers like AOL and Ask (another perennial search pretender), and the industry’s talking heads don’t think people will switch to Bing for good.  Why bother, when Google delivers the goods?

To rub salt in the wounds, Google recently announced its own frontal assault on Microsoft with its plan to develop the Chrome OS for netbooks.  Google’s language in the announcement almost seems like it’s taunting Microsoft: So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be…Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system…

Google describes this as the operating system for people who spend most of their time online and invites developers to begin making applications for it.  I am betting that they will.

Sometimes I wonder at Google’s need to take it to Microsoft, but I think I get why they do.  From the user’s point of view, you want to have a framework of programs and applications that work together – interoperability is essential.  Once you begin to use a set of products that are integrated like this, you tend to keep using all of them.  There is a price to pay to use applications outside the network because it can’t have access to all your information and preferences.  Once you are inside one of these families of software, you will see the ads running there, and not somewhere else.  So both Google and Microsoft are extending their offerings and necessarily moving into the other’s space.

There’s almost no one alive who hasn’t got the message that cloud computing is the future, which seems to give a natural advantage to Google in the long run.  But no one knows for sure.  And sure enough, Microsoft continues to try to reinvent itself by moving into the web services with its Azure platform.

Then, just yesterday, Microsoft announced it would be offering light versions of its flagship applications Word and Excel as Internet-based programs to compete with Google’s successful Apps.  Here’s the leader from Marketwatch on Microsoft’s announcement:

Microsoft Corp. on Monday made the latest edition of its Office software suite available for testing and plans to make key applications such as Word and Excel available over the Web – acknowledging burgeoning competition from Internet giant Google Inc. and others.

I’m glad to see this. Letting Google define our total existence online is not a good idea, even if it were true the G didn’t “do evil.”  We need this competition — they will make each other better.

You know it had to happen, but it’s still depressing. We are hearing more and more stories about scams and spamming on Facebook and other social media sites. Unfortunately, you just have to be careful with all that personal data you put on those sites — it can be used against you.  See some security tips below.

Sid Kirchheimer, writing in the AARP Bulletin (yes, I am THAT OLD), profiled a Facebook scam that the victim could only watch as it unfolded.  A thief somehow hacked Bryan Rutberg’s Facebook profile and changed the passwords so Rutberg no longer controlled it.  He then posted a status update telling Rutberg’s friends he was in trouble overseas and needed money.  Some sent it to a fake address in London and into the thief’s hands.  Rutberg tried to warn his friends via his wife’s profile, but the clever thief has ‘defriended’ her, so the messages were not delivered.

Kirchheimer theorizes that Rutberg may have inadvertently downloaded a program that sent his keystrokes to the thief, who could then gain control of his accounts.  This kind of identity theft is only going to increase and it will be global.  Kirchheimer offers some very useful tips for increasing your security online:

• Don’t click on links provided in messages—even from friends—unless you check them with a phone call or off-website e-mail.

• Get program updates by going to the company’s website, not through a provided link.

• Make your Facebook account private so that only friends can see your details.

• Scan your computer regularly with an updated antivirus program

• Be suspicious of anyone—even a “friend”—who asks for money over the Internet.

Sad.  But human nature is not a thoroughly happy thing, is it?

For all other commentators and I raise expectations of great things from Twitter, it has not yet made the big breakthrough to popularity in numbers.  Not that 20 million subscribers is puny!  But research published today by the Center for Media Research (based on a Harris poll) indicates Twitter is still reaching a small proportion of the audience, even among the 18 – 34 year old early adopters.

While 74% of the 18 – 34 group report having a Facebook or MySpace account, only 8% of them subscribe to Twitter and just 4% use it to send messages.  Twitter use to send messages is actually a bit higher among 35 – 44 year olds, at 5%, but the use of it drops to 1% or less for everyone over 45.

I still think Twitter will prove to be a game changer.  I don’t think it’s primarily a communication tool, however, which is what Facebook is.  It is a news source, and a search tool.  And as it grows (OK, if it grows) it will gather enough volume to allow specialized conversations about narrow topics of intense interest to any number of groups.  General news will spread virally among the groups through their interconnections, and search tools will capture information about queries in almost real time.

At some point, nobody will tweet about what they had for breakfast.  But they will report interesting things to people who care about the same things.

Bloomberg posts today that Time Warner is close to spinning off its loss making AOL unit, maybe as early as tomorrow.  Wow, talk about a long fall.