Consumers are demanding, and getting, more choices in how they look at things online. Gone are the days of the whether-you-like-it-or-not banner ads and popups (well, mostly gone). People don’t like to feel “sold”. They do like to show each other things they are interested in. Retailers are learning to stay low-key, and in the case of Pinterest as an image-driven social site, display what they have in a visually-alluring manner.

Pinterest’s traffic quadrupled since September and December alone last year. Significant increases to the websites of retailers who have pinboards followed, of course. There is no data yet regarding how that traffic may convert to sales.

Similarly, ComScore noted that Pinterest had seen a 207% increase in unique visitors between November and December.

Pinterest is one of the hottest properties out right now. The site is valued at around $11 million, with daily ad revenue of $3656.

So yeah, nobody seems to know how much Google+ is growing but they all seem to agree on one thing: Google+ is getting bigger. Experian Hitwise confirms this dubious agreement in a tweet they posted yesterday:

55% in a month is a huge surge and certainly gives substance to Allen’s prediction mentioned above. In case you were wondering what this looks like, Experian Hitwise produced their own graph to illustrate what this boom in users looks like:

Even going with the most generous estimate that Google+ has over 150 million users, that’s still a far cry away from the amount of users that Facebook boasts. CNET reports that Joanna Shields, a managing editor of Facebook for several regions in the world, claims that Facebook has 800 million users with “half a billion” that come back every day.

It remains to be seen if Google+ can keep up the growth of users over 2012 and whether the new adapters to the social media service will stay or whether they’re just curious about the latest networking novelty and will only return to graze the familiar pastures of Facebook. As Google continues to try to distinguish a solid corner of the social media market distinct from Facebook, it remains to be seen whether Google+ will become a legitimate social network contender.

At any rate, Google+ is gaining momentum and I think we may finally conclude that it has surpassed MySpace.com in monthly users. Keep your eye on the prize, Google.

Is StumbleUpon a significant source of traffic to your site? Let us know in the comments.

StumbleUpon has been redesigned. We had a phone conversation with CEO Garrett Camp, VP, Marketing Marc Leibowtz and Director of Communications Mike Mayzel, and the company tells us they consider the relaunch “the most significant and consumer-driven product announcement to date.”

Indeed, it has the potential to make the general StumbleUpon experience more relevant to users, while greatly increasing traffic to websites.

While the relaunch comes with a redesigned homepage, toolbar and even logo (the social button has yet to be updated at this point), it’s really all about two features. One feature, you may already be familiar with – the Explore Box. It’s been in beta for months, but with the relaunch, it’s not any longer, and will appear in the upper right-hand corner anytime someone is stumbling.

We wrote about the feature back in July. I said back then that it could be viewed as “a new way to search the web,” as it lets you stumble through content based on the keywords that you enter into the search box.

Camp tells us, however, “it’s not a full-on search engine,” noting that it has expanded StumbleUpon’s discovery engine from 500 topics to half a million interests. But it’s “not a search engine for everything.”

The second feature is the one you’ll probably more interested in, however. At least a business or a website owner.

That would be channels. Sites, celebrities, brands and businesses can set up their own profiles and get people to follow them on StumbleUpon. You know, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.

Before, sites always had to worry about flooding the StumbleUponiverse (call it what you want) with too much content, and driving users away, or getting content out there at the right time, but this eliminates these worries. In fact, StumbleUpon is essentially encouraging sites to share everything they have by connecting their RSS feeds or Twitter accounts to their channels.

It’s still interwoven with StumbleUpon’s algorithms. Users who follow your channel will see more of your content in the mix as they’re stumbling like usual. StumbleUpon will also recommend your content to users who like similar sites. The company tells us they’ll be implementing more channel recommendation features over time. It won’t just be a one time thing at sign up.

The feature launched with 250 channel partners. Any brand can set up a channel, and once it’s approved by StumbleUpon, the brand’s channel will be live. Here’s what a couple of the launch partners had to say about the channels.

“We’re big believers in ‘discovery’ as the dominant way that people now find content, and we’re excited to be sharing our favorite technology and innovations with the StumbleUpon universe, which is one of biggest ways to discover on the Web today,” said Linda Boff, executive director, global digital marketing, GE.

“We are focused on building an Audi community in the places where our fans interact and share with one another,” says Audi of America Chief Marketing Officer Scott Keogh. “The prospect of someone literally Stumbling onto an Audi image, video, or news story that resonates on a personal level is truly remarkable. We love to see lifelong fans or even casual Audi enthusiasts expressing their natural passion for the brand in the spaces where they connect and share lives with one another.”

I don’t know about you, but I do a fair amount of my stumbling from my phone. This graph from Fast Company shows that mobile stumbling is indeed on the rise (which should also help your traffic – be sure to have mobile-friendly content):

The mobile apps will get access to the content that comes from the channels right away, but you won’t be able to manage your channels from the mobile apps at first, though from the sound of it, this will probably come in the future.

On the site, StumbleUpon users will be able to toggle between the new and old versions over the coming weeks.

Do you intend to promote a branded StumbleUpon channel? Thoughts about the redesign in general? Let us know in the comments.

A few days ago, there were reports circulating that Digg had lost 50% of its U.S. traffic over the last six months. This was based on data from Quantcast.

Digg has now put up a blog post saying that this is not the case. They provided a screen cap of their visitors overview from Google Analytics.

You can see that they have over 17 million unique visitors for October. You can also see that visitors are on the way up since August.

Digg’s Ben Fork-Williams says, “Note this is worldwide traffic; visits from the United States over this period are consistently 50% (49.57% in October).” He then shares the following stats:

• Digg Newsrooms have been in beta for a month, and page views per visit are up 3x versus classic Digg.
• Higher engagement from Facebook fans, with users coming from Facebook spending an average of 15 minutes on site as compared to 10 minutes for other logged in users.
• 23% increase in daily users on mobile since the launch of Digg’s revised iOS app with Newsroom integration.
• 51% of Digg traffic is direct.
• 13 million times every month someone types Digg.com into a browser.

When I look at Digg these days, I still see interesting content, and at its core, that’s really what it’s all about. It still fulfills that function. The Digg counts on these articles don’t really mean that much to me. Whether there is an article with 3 Diggs or one with 200, I’m still seeing a wide range of interesting links that I may not have otherwise seen, and there is value to that. That doesn’t mean I can’t look at Reddit or StumbleUpon as well.

The point its, Digg is not dead, and there is plenty of room for a lot of content discovery sites. Mobile, as illustrated by that stat the company shared, is a key to this too. It’s easier to find time for all of this content discovery when you have access to it in your pocket at all times.

Do you use Google+ regularly? We’d love to know.

While the fact of declaring it “dead” is debatable, there are some definite signs that should cause Google to be concerned. For instance, Dan Reimold, the Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampa, wrote a post entitled “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town,’” in which he not only called the social network dead, but he also gave a bleak prediction:

“At worst, in the coming months, it will literally fade away to nothing or exist as Internet plankton,” he wrote. “At best, it will be to social networking what Microsoft’s Bing is to online search: perfectly adequate; fun to stumble onto once in awhile; and completely irrelevant to the mainstream web.”

In an interview with WebProNews not long ago, Reimold told us that he came to this conclusion after he realized that he wasn’t finding anything on Google+ that was more interesting or different from the information he was already finding on his other social networks.

Also, a chart released by Michael DeGusta showing the inactivity of Google’s own management on Google+ has done nothing but add to this negative outlook. However, since this chart was released, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, has begun to use the service.

The biggest blow for Google and its social network was probably last week when Steve Yegge, one of its own software engineers, accidentally published a not-so-flattering post about Google+ on the network itself. In the post, Yegge essentially pointed out what his employer was doing wrong with Google+, making statements such as:

“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it.”

And this: “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”

Yegge’s post was intended to only go out to his Google circle but was instead shared publicly.

More recently, data analytics firm Chitika released some research that gives Google yet another reason to be concerned. The company looked at Google+ before and after its public launch in late September. Even though Experian Hitwise reported that Google+ grew 1269 percent in the week following its public launch, Chitika’s data shows this surge was only temporary.

Gabe Donnini, an analyst with Chitika, explained to us that the traffic to Google+ grew to peak levels immediately after the public launch but then fell over 60 percent shortly after.

“We just looked at the stats to investigate this trend, and as it turned out, there was a sharp spike and then a sharp decline almost immediately after the days following Google+’s public beta,” he said.

Donnini told us that he believed the traffic spike was driven by the publicity surrounding the public launch. However, Chitika decided to investigate further and extend the research period beyond the week after Google+ opened publicly. What it found was that the downward trend actually got worse. According to its research, the largest drop in traffic for Google+ was more than 70 percent.

Last week in Google’s Q3 earnings report, CEO Larry Page proudly said that Google+ had surpassed 40 million users.

“Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark,” he said. “People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!”

This is a large number especially considering that the network has only existed for a few months. But, as Chitika data shows, it doesn’t mean that all these users are active.

According to Donnini, the lack of activity from users is due to many reasons. First of all, users can’t import or sync their existing networks into their Google+ network.

“There’s very little incentive to share if you don’t have anyone to share with,” he said.

He also believes that users are inactive because it took Google a long time to make its API available to developers. As he explained, a large part of the success of social networks is due to the network of services that are built on the overall platform.

“By not providing a developer API in which a useful network of services could be built for their users, Google basically made it much harder for their users to find a way to (a) stay on the site, and (b) they kind of lowered the utility of Google+ as a site for their new userbase,” he said.

He also pointed out, “They don’t need to become Facebook, they need to become what Facebook is going to become.”

Interestingly, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Google+ czar Vic Gundotra spoke about the social network at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday. Both indicated they were pleased with the progress of Google+, and Brin even said, “I’m not a social person myself… [but] Google+, I instantly found compelling.”

Gundotra also said that Google+ would allow support in the near future for pseudonyms as well as for Google Apps users to be able to log into Google+ with their accounts. He also indicated that brand pages would be coming too, but not as quickly as the other features.

Are these additions enough to save Google+?

Last week, Google began allowing users to join Google+ without an invite. And according to the Hitwise data, this led to a massive influx of users all wanting in to the new service. From the week ending September 17th to the week of September 24th, traffic to Google+ grew 1269%. It received around 15 million total visits in the U.S. last week.

They also note that this data does not even reflect mobile traffic or traffic from the Google Notification Bar (Google’s little black personalized bar).

This massive growth catapulted Google+ into the top ten of Experian’s “social networking and forums” category. Before opening up to the public, Google+ was the 54th most visited site in that category. Now they are the 8th most visited site, just behind MySpace. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are the top three in that category.

Google+ still seems to be dominated by what they describe as “influencers” and “early adopters.”

This is undeniably good news for Google. Not everybody has been that optimistic about Google+’s chances of survival and growth lately.

Adding to the good news, “unofficial Google+ statistician” Paul Allen released his estimates regarding total users. He projected that Google+ has surpassed the 50 million user mark and that they are adding 2 million new members every day since allowing everyone to join.

Anyone that is not logged into WordPress.com can visit a site and see the button in the bottom right corner. When they click it, they’ll be asked to enter their email address to be notified when a new post has been added to your blog.

“Although the functionality is similiar to the Email subscription widget, after testing various prototypes, we learned more people clicked on the button and signed up if it were called Follow rather than Subscribe,” says Berkun. “We also know subscribe suggests to some its something you pay for, whereas follow has no such connotation.”

It’s interesting how “follow” presents something of a social media connotation, but really it’s all about email. Mark another point for email in the email vs. social media debate.

If for some reason, you don’t want to display this button on your blog, you can turn it off by going to the dashboard, clicking settings, then reading, then email.

The button only appears when people aren’t logged into WordPress.com. There’s already a follow button that appears when you’re logged in, in the admin bar at the top of the screen.

This week, WordPress also launched version 1.5 of WordPress for Android, which includes follow functionality

Yesterday, Italian designer Missoni launched a 400-piece collection at Target. And yesterday, Target felt the full force of fashion-hungry online shoppers as their website crashed multiple times and was pretty much non-functional for most of the day.

The site didn’t become functional again until early this morning, as a Tweet from Target claims that online sales resumed sometimes around 6 am EST.

Apparently, Target knows how to create buzz for a product launch, and this time it worked a little too well. Missoni is a fashion house known for colorful, abstract patterns and the use of a variety of fabrics and materials. I’m not really in tune with the current trends in fashion at the moment, but apparently they are kind of a big deal. And Target’s Missoni collection offers the products for a fraction of the cost one would pay normally. Popularity + bargain = your online infrastructure taking quite the hit.

Both the official Target Twitter account and the Target Style account spent most of the day yesterday and part of the day today fielding tweets about the down site. All in all, the two accounts must have responded to dozens, possibly over a hundred specific complaints.

Of course, it wasn’t just the website that saw a spike in traffic. Retail stores were swamped as well, as you can see from this picture posted to a Target blog All the way up here.

One little thing about that blog. It’s billed as the blog of Marina, the spokesmodel for Missoni for Target. The thing is, Marina is a giant doll. She even has a Twitter account that says “I’m little Marina and I’m a real doll -joints hinges and all. Target and Missoni have hired me to cover their new collection.” Here’s a video clip of her in action at an undisclosed event. Trust me, it’s not creepy at all…

Why? Basically, because Twitter’s API gives access to so many different third-party apps and various other social sites. Many of your referrals that are actually coming in by way of Twitter might not show up as referrals from Twitter.

A study we reported on in July found that only 24.4% of clicks on links shared on Twitter actually had twitter.com as the referring site. 13% of clicks from Twitter had another site as the referrer like Facebook or LinkedIn. And 62.6% of clicks from Twitter didn’t have any referral information at all.

In a nutshell, Google analytics might be listing your traffic from Twitter as traffic from Facebook or direct traffic or a number of other things.

A few months ago, Twitter announced that all links shared on Twitter.com as well as through third-party apps using Twitter’s API would contain a special t.co URL. In theory, this helps referrals from Twitter actually show up as referrals from Twitter.

Today, Twitter is doing more to ensure that you know exactly what you’re getting from their service. They have announced Twitter Web Analytics, an analytics tool “driven by the acquisition of BackType” (BackType is a social analytics startup that Twitter snatched up back in July).

Twitter is a powerful platform for websites to share their content, and drive traffic and engagement. However, people have struggled to accurately measure the amount of traffic Twitter is sending to their websites, in part because web analytics software hasn’t evolved as quickly as online sharing and social signals.

The tool will let you see the amount of traffic being sent toy your site by Twitter referrals, let you “understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network,” and also gauge just how effective that Tweet Button on your site really is.

With the tool, you can also see your most-shared links by day, week or month – either based on Tweets or by clicks.

The tool will be rolled out to a small test group this week and will go public in the next few weeks. An API is also on the way, although no specific timeframe was announced.