I made this screenr for a presentation at SLOSTC — Hope I get a chance to use it! — so there’s no sound on it because I’ll talking over it (I won’t have good speakers at the event, but online it would work well with voice).

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.

Luckily, there’s a lot of publishers online who DO have beta accounts, so you can get a look at Google Wave in advance even if you are among the unwashed. Of all the short treatments I’ve seen so far, the one I’ve liked best is from Mashable. This was first published in May and updated several times since — it’s still a hot topic on Mashable for good reason.

Now, if you want the long treatment, take a look at this free ‘Complete Guide to Google Wave‘ by Gina Trapani and Adam Pash.  Edited by Trapani with an assist from Pash, you can browse through chapters online at the site in the link.  You will also be able to purchase a PDF download any day now.  Maybe right now.  Thanks to these guys for putting this together.

My biggest problem in this post is that I don’t know how to categorize it.  The Wave is something new.

• The very first step is to listen to what’s being said in the social media world about your company and your product.
• THEN you begin to interact, without a hard sell, building your brand reputation.
• THEN you begin to make sales through these channels because your brand and your authenticity are recognized.
• AND THEN you continue the cycle by remaining engaged with the customer who bought your product.
• And begin again in a virtuous circle.

Qualman has a nice diagram (see below) that captures the idea as an escalator that carries you in an upward direction by continuously cycling steps up around and down.  Continuous monitoring and improvement, one more time.

Socialnomics Escalator of Erik Qualman

Hitwise recent research shows some huge changes in the social media world over the past year. Facebook’s surge seems to be continuing as it climbs toward 400 million subscribers worldwide. First, here’s the numbers as reported in Online Media Daily:

The fall of MySpace must make Rupert Murdock’s teeth ache.  It still has lots of loyalty (a class-leading time on site nearly 30 minutes), but the numbers are hard to look at from an ad network’s point of view.  Nothing here about the demographics on MySpace, but my guess is it stills skews very young which makes it a good target for lots of products aiming at the college kids and younger.

Facebook, though, is catching on with the older crowd.  Fastest growing group on FB is 55+ — all those jokes about Grandma spying on her grandkids by getting on Facebook have been overtaken by the reality that Grandma’s circle of friends is getting into the game as well.  And Facebook is still about personal networks of friends keeping up with each other efficiently and in a convenient way online.

In other words, SEARCH and using online resources to learn about products and services is so common at all ages that it is a MUST for marketers no matter what you are marketing.

Greg Sterling over at Search Engine Land posted some nice graphics about Pew’s Generations Online project.  I’ll share a couple tidbits here, but you might want to check it out.

It wasn’t surprising to me that the Gen X (ages 33-44) and younger Boomers (ages 45-54) make up a big chunk of the adult Internet population (45% of it between them), although the younger Gen Y group is proportionally larger (ages 18-32 with 30%).  And it wasn’t too surprising to see the pattern of certain Internet activities across these generations:  the younger you are the more likely to play online games, use social networking sites, or create a blog.

But what was a little surprising, and encouraging, was that for some activities, there is very little difference in participation rates across generations.  94% of Gen Y use email; 91% of the Silent Generation (ages 64-72) do.  90% of Gen Y use search engines; 85% of Silent.  65% of Gen Y makes online travel reservations; Silent: 69%.  Research products online:  Gen Y – 84%; Silent – 73%.

You get the picture.  Why it matters is this:  the activities that are most likely to lead to sales are common across generations.  Until we get a better handle on how to use all the social sharing, social networking, social news sites out there for marketing products, this will probably continue to be true.  And the change toward social media marketing is not going to be an easy road — the participants in those networks are sophisticated about their independence, and they (mostly) do not want direct marketing appeals.

We are left with limited options for social media marketing.  One important avenue is brand development.  Companies that operate in niches where they can have an impact via brand can benefit from participating in social media.

Of course, then they have to actually participate actively and faithfully, and that’s another story.

However, MySpace users also used their social network much more intensively.  According to socialmedia blog, MySpace users spent 17.5 billion minutes online compared with 9.3 billion minutes for Facebook, generating 40 billion pageviews compared with Facebook’s 18 billion.

Anyway you look at it, these are staggering numbers.  MySpace claims it is succeeding in monetizing this traffic, while Facebook continues to push for user growth.  For me, the more interesting thing is how these giants will push my world around.  We already know that social media generate the huge buzz we depend on for ‘viral’ marketing with content syndication and links between publishers (see the two above?).  But how is that going to affect the core function of search in the online world?

I don’t think Google is worried.  But search functions can become a lot more specialized.  Think about looking for real time insights into a developing event:  wouldn’t you search Twitter?