Here’s the gist of the study: People who see tweets from retailers are more likely to purchase a product.

Twitter users who see retailer Tweets are more likely to make online purchases. During the timeframe that Compete analyzed, 27% of general internet users bought something from a retail website. Twitter users, however, made purchases at a rate of 33% from the same sites during the same period. When Twitter users were exposed to a Tweet from a retailer, that purchase rate increased to 39%. This represents a lift of 1. 4X and 1.2X, respectively, and is true across a variety of retail categories.

Furthermore, quantity matters:

The more retailer Tweets people see, they more they visit retail sites and make online purchases. As people are exposed to more retailer Tweets, the likelihood that they will visit a retail website and make online purchases grows. Twitter users exposed to Tweets from retailers on 12 or more days were 32% more likely to purchase from those retailers compared to all users exposed to retail Tweets.

Twitter payed for another study back in October than looked at Twitter’s influence on political donations. That study found that simply being a Twitter users increases a person’s likelihood of visiting a campaign donation page. Furthermore, “this likelihood increases when Twitter users are exposed to political Tweets either from political handles they follow, retweets by users they follow, Promoted Product campaigns by a political handle, or searches on political terms. Twitter users exposed to any of these kinds of political Tweets are almost twice as likely (97%) as other Twitter users to visit an online political donation page.”

Like this most recent study, that study is a pretty strong argument for making your tweets have a larger reach through Twitter’s family of promoted products (tweets, accounts, and trends). These studies are obviously beneficial to Twitter’s advertising strategy, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t true. Exposure can indeed drive a lot of things – purchases being one of them.

You can check out Twitter and Compete’s full report here.

In June, the number was nearly 32 million, up 43.08% month-over-month.

Kontxt communication consultant Morten Myrstad wrote about Compete’s number in a Google+ post, where he compared them to some other social sites’ growth from May to June (numbers are in millions):

Facebook 158,6 (+1,0%)
YouTube 153,8 (+0,75%)
Twitter 42,6 (+0,9%)
Google+ 31,9 (+43,1%)
Linkedin 24,6 (-6,5%)
MySpace 21,9 (-8,0%)
Tumblr 21,6 (+0,1%)
Pinterest 19,4 (+0,4%)

“The Compete numbers are US only and desktop only,” writes Myrstad. “If US still representents about 30% of the Google+ global community, as earlier statistics have shown, Google+ now has more than 100 million worldwide visitors via desktops each month.”

“During the Google I/O Conference in June, Google’s +Vic Gundotra announced that the Google+ mobile traffic is now larger than the desktop traffic,” he adds. “Gundotra also announced that Google+ has 250 million accounts, 150 million active users during a month and 75 million active daily users. The June statistics from Compete seems to confirm the published figures from Google.”

Regardless of how accurate the numbers are, I’m really not getting that ghost town vibe.

This is not a complete list of all publications covering these areas. Still, while some may cover other areas of interest, each is rooted in one of them primarily. The list doesn’t include the more general news sites, such as The AP, Reuters, The New York Times, etc., many of which do cover these areas extensively as part of their overall products. The list is not meant to be the state of the news industry or anything, but just a quick look at our industry’s unique audience landscape. Not all of these sites are necessarily in direct competition with one another. Some are much more niche than others. It’s not about comparing a site that only writes about Facebook, for example, with a site that covers the entire tech industry (or even more than that).

I’ve included a few popular sources of such types of news, which are more aggregators than publications, yet seemed worth including for perspective.

It’s also worth noting that Compete’s numbers are just that – Compete’s numbers. They’re often much lower than what sites’ internal analytics will reveal, and will differ from those of other products.

Finally, I want to stress again, that these are unique visitors. Not pageviews. If we were talking pageviews, the list would no doubt look much different. For example, Reddit announced earlier this year that it hit the 2 billion mark.

But anyhow, on with the list:

Compete lets you look at the data for any domain free of charge here, though they do require a sign-up these days.

On Friday, we looked at Compete’s latest numbers for some of the web’s popular business and tech publications. As previously noted, Compete’s numbers are often lower than publishers’ internal analytics, and it had Business Insider at 2,681,606 uniques for the month of May (U.S. Only), compared to 2,239,178 for WebProNews. The 15 million Blodget announced today are presumably global. For perspective, in light of Compete’s data, WebProNews (based on our internal stats) was at 5.2 million for the month.

It’s interesting to see what Blodget has to say about aggregation. In his post, he writes, “We occasionally hear other media organizations speak ill of aggregation, as though it’s some sort of a bad thing. This has always been mystifying to us. We assume this attitude arose from an era in which big media organizations were like hydrants in the desert–the only place to find news and information.”

“In the past, publications like ours would have had to hire PR firms to send their articles around and beg other journalists to write about them. Now, thanks to the Internet, you all not only choose to read our posts with no prodding from us, you write about them, link to us, raise awareness of our brand and writers, and make it easy for more readers to find us. And we’re grateful for every mention and link!”

He’s right. You don’t hear that too often from traditional media publications, some of which have historically been quite defensive about news aggregation.

It was only a year ago we were reporting that Business insider had surpassed popular social media news site Mashable in Uniques (based on Compete data from that time). As you can see from the Compete list, Business Insider is in the upper tier of business sites, in terms of unique audience. It will be interesting to see if it jumps up further, on a list dominated by sites like CNET, Forbes.com, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Businessweek.

Of course, there are plenty of factors that could be contributing here. For one, Business Insider is pushing out a ton of articles these days, and on a variety of topics. It’s not all tech, or even all business at this point. It’s pretty much become an all-purpose news source, leaving the name “Business Insider” a little misleading. That’s not to say they don’t cover business well, but visit the site, and you’ll find sections on Tech, Media, Sports, Lifestyle, Politics, Travel, Etc. The content will still often have a business angle, but not always.

This kind of branching out into other content areas by previously niche publications has drawn some criticism. In fact, a TechCrunch writer recently blasted Mashable for this kind of thing (which I defended here). Interestingly enough, Business Insider has also been known to syndicate articles from other sources, including TechCrunch itself.

Business Insider puts out a ton of content. They seem to be going for almost a Huffington Post-type thing. In terms of unique visitors, it seems to be playing out well for them so far.

It’s worth noting that Compete’s data is all U.S. and has been subject to its own share of criticism. Last week, we ran a piece, in which Compete’s Damian Roskill, Managing Director of Marketing, compared Compete data and Google Analytics data to Apples and Oranges.

We reached out to Compete to discuss this a bit, and Damian Roskill, Managing Director, Marketing at Compete tells us, “It’s really like comparing apples and oranges – both methodologies have their strengths and their weaknesses.  Google Analytics doesn’t actually track people – it tracks cookies.  This means that when people change computers, or delete their cookies, you can have double counting that goes on.”

Compete’s methodology has four basic components. They are (as described in a Compete white paper):

1. Multi-source panel – combines both recruited panelists and licensed clickstream data from partners, resulting in a very large and representative online consumer panel;
2. Harmonization algorithms – proprietary processes and technology that work together to integrate Compete’s multiple data sources into a unified online
   consumer panel;
3. Sophisticated normalization techniques – unique processes that weight, calibrate and project metrics across panel sources resulting in accurate base audience measurement data;
4. Metrics that matter – analytics on site visitation, audience profiles, media exposure, search term usage, cross-shopping, conversion, competitive behaviors, and audience segmentation

“In contrast, a panel is a sample-based approach – we track about 2 million US consumers – a percentage of the total internet audience here in the US – and then we use computer modeling to project behavior from our panel to the general internet audience,” says Roskill. “The upside is that a person is a person – you don’t have the double-counting.  The downside is that you can sometimes get undercounting of smaller websites.”

“Also notice that we are currently only doing US consumers – so people often send us a Google Analytics number that includes all international users as well as US consumers – the two aren’t comparable in that way either.”

Certainly an important point to note.
 
“Bottom line, the approaches are complementary rather than either/or – what should make sense is that the two methodologies should be similar directionally.  But comparing the numbers doesn’t really provide much value.”

In my experience, they generally are similar directionally in most cases.
 
“What we think can be meaningful is combining the two approaches – essentially using a cookie-based approach and combine it with a panel based approach and use them to provide validation for each other,” says Roskill.

The fact is that you can compare data from any number of analytics tools, and you’re going to get different results. It’s when they tell dramatically different stories that you need to investigate further. Luckily there are resources explaining how data is collected. Compete’s white paper, for example explains its methodology. Google Analytics has an entire help center, and there are plenty of articles on the web discussing it.

With all the value that Facebook is creating, is it safe to say that it is becoming more valuable than a brand’s own website? Let us know your thoughts.

A recent study from Compete addressed this issue in part by comparing the extent to which consumers visited the Facebook pages of certain brands to how often they visited each brand’s own website. Among the 40+ brands that were analyzed, Walmart, State Farm Insurance, and BMW had the most unique visits to their Facebook pages.

But, in terms of comparing the traffic, iTunes’ Facebook page received more traffic than its domain did. Lincoln Merrihew, Managing Director at Compete, told us that Apple is using its iTunes Facebook page as a “storefront.” Going forward, he believes that more brands will use Facebook in this same way.

So, what does this information mean? According to Merrihew, brands should definitely pay attention to Facebook, if they aren’t already. However, he also says that they need to consider the quality of the traffic. When brands drive people to their Facebook page, are the consumers looking to make a purchase, or are they just there to look around?

In other words, he believes businesses need to have clear goals for what they want their Facebook pages to accomplish. The iTunes page, for example, is set up like a store for users to download music. Progressive Insurance, on the other hand, has a Facebook page for its spokesperson Flo that is more for engagement and relationship building.

“Everyone wants to be on Facebook, [and] everyone wants to use it, but then [it's] understanding the quality of what you’re getting,” said Merrihew.

He also said that, as brands establish their strategy, they should consider if their customers are more comfortable on Facebook or on their website. Once this is figured out, a business can determine where it should be focusing its traffic efforts.

Social media strategist Sally Falkow recently wrote about this issue and pointed out that while social channels would likely be a leader in online business communications in the future, they still would need to be connected to a website. She wrote, “So it’s not that you no longer need a website, it’s just that if you don’t integrate social features and connect your social content with your corporate website it will become irrelevant.”

So, even though opinions are probably divided on this issue, it is something that businesses need to think about and plan for in regards to the future.

"With over 450 mobile devices in North America and an average of 10 new phone launches each week, how do shoppers decide which phone is right for them? How do marketers influence these purchase decisions?" asks the Google Tech Team, previewing the report.

There are some very interesting numbers in it. Here are a few: 

- At the beginning of the purchase process, 42% did not have a a specific carrier preference, while 78% did not have an OEM preference

- 5% bought a new smartphone because they wanted more features, while 22% bought because they saw a new phone they "had to have"

- 62% of consumers who searched for a newly launched mobile device purchased one, and the average consumer conducts 13 searches throughout the purchase process

- There was a 29% increase in the number of online resources used in research

- 63% of people who bought phones in stores researched their purchase online

There is plenty more statistical and visual data within the report. View it here.

About 47% of T-Mobile smartphone users use their phones to find local branches and ATMs, while 45% of AT&T users and 36% of Sprint users reported doing this (see chart #1 for data).

According to the survey, 34% of T-Mobile users use their phones to pay bills, followed by AT&T users (31%), Sprint users (23%) and Verizon users (21%).

While the numbers were lower, 19% of T-Mobile smartphone owners used their phones to buy/sell stocks. 11% of AT&T and Verizon users also bought/sold stocks, while only 8% of Sprint users reported buying/selling stocks.

73% of smartphone owners reported using their devices for at least one shopping-related activity during the holiday season.

Currently, 38% of smartphone owners conduct leisure travel research on their mobile devices (at least some of the time), according to the findings. This compares to 27% using mobile for leisure travel bookings, 20% using for business travel research, and 15% using for business travel bookings.

The findings present an interesting look at how people are using their devices to interact with the mobile web and make decisions.

Compete shared some data with us that emphasizes just how big Facebook is, and just how seriously it should be taken. If these stats from Facebook weren’t enough for you, Compete points out that Facebook has surpassed Yahoo as the #2 site online in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors, just under Google.

In December, according to Compete, Facebook’s unique visitors in the U.S. had increased by over 121%. That’s pretty incredible, because I seem to recall Facebook being pretty popular in late 2008 too.

In terms of social media sites, none of the others even come close in the U.S. – not even the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube: 

So Facebook is already bigger than the second largest search engine. Add to that, the fact that search on Facebook itself is rising. According to comScore, Facebook’s search query percentage increased by 13% from December to January, growing to 395 million searches:

Greg Sterling notes, the numbers in the chart "are likely internal searches on Facebook for content or friends, rather than web search. This is not the same thing as people conducting searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing more generally. And 13 percent growth is certainly strong, but not "phenomenal.’"

Facebook’s search feature, which has been emphasized somewhat with the latest redesign, lets users search people, pages, groups, apps, events, posts by friends, posts by everyone, OR web results. Sterling makes the case that internal Facebook searches are different from web searches one would perform on Google, but in some ways, Facebook search simply goes places that Google doesn’t (while also going Places that Google does via the Bing-powered web search).

Facebook is almost like its own web in some ways, and that is becoming truer all the time as Facebook gets more of users’ time spent online (which it is doing through status updates, news, apps/games, videos, music, events, and possibly email in the future…we also suggest Facebook consider adding blogging to the mix).

Look at this newly released data from Nielsen about time spent online. In January (in the U.S.), Facebook users averaged 7 hours a month on the site. As a point of comparison, Google users spent about 2 hours.

In some ways, that doesn’t really take anything away from Google, because Google’s job as a search engine is to get you where you need to be to find what you’re looking for. However, Facebook users appear to be finding plenty of stuff they are looking for along with stuff they didn’t know they were looking for, as well as just hanging out and being entertained. With Facebook’s search feature, they’re able to find what they’re looking for without having to leave Facebook until the search result (at least theoretically).

Whether you think Facebook’s search growth is "phenomenal" or not, you can’t overlook the fact that more people are using the search feature, and some unknown percentage of that is pulling from Bing. Maybe this should be construed as a good reason not to overlook your Bing SEO efforts. Maybe it’s also another reason why Facebook should be viewed as one of Google’s key competitors (along with Microsoft, Yahoo, and increasingly Apple).  Actually, Sterling points out that Google recently listed Facebook officially as a competitor for the first time in its annual 10K filing.

Google is seemingly going after the market that Facebook dominates with the launch of Google Buzz, but status updates are just part of the big picture. Search is just part of the big picture. It’s all about getting the user’s attention, is it not? Here are some tips for running a good Facebook page.

What do you think? Discuss here.