Graphics.ms Blog

Is Social Media Ruining Students?

Statistics:

  • Those that multitask between Facebook and studying have 20% lower grades
  • 79% of students surveyed don’t believe this
  • 85% of Facebook users worked less than 5hrs a week
  • 80% of non-Facebook users that worked over 16hrs a week
  • Facebook users are twice as likely to be involved in campus activities
  • 20% experiencing a feeling of social connectedness among Facebook users
  • They are twice as likely to feel popular
  • 48% of students think they are sadder than their Facebook friends
  • 25% of college students show serious depression in their status updates
  • Students asked to not use social media for 24 hours reported signs of withdrawls such as frantically craving, very anxious, extremely atsy, miserable,  jittery and crazy
  • Facebook addiction is searched 350x more than cigarette addiction
  • Updating Facebook profiles boosts self esteem
  • Students who spend more time on Facebook are more narcissistic
  • 1 in 3 students use social media for study purposes
  • Facebook users study between 1-5 hours, non-users study between 11-15 hours

Is Social Media Ruining Students?

Via: OnlineEducation.net

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Quora – Social Network, Search Engine & More

By: Michael Sim

Quora - the social media search engine
Image Source: http://philbaumann.files.wordpress.com


What is Quora?

Quora, in many ways, is similar to most popular social networks. As a member, you create a profile, fill out a biography and even follow different users. However, it is far different from Twitter or Facebook. Quora is a community and knowledge database that encourages its users to ask and answer questions. Join Quora HERE

Experts

As an expert, you have the ability to answer questions that relate to your specific area of interest or expertise. When you answer a question, other viewers (and the person who asked the question) can rank your answer compared to the others that were posted. If you write the best answer, chances are you will gain recognition for your expertise and a few additional followers. You will also notice that there are many high ranking experts using Quora. You’ll find CEO’s, executives, business owners, startups, venture capital investors, and more. As the public starts to become more aware of its existence, you can rest assured that those who are established early-on as experts will reap the rewards of their expertise and recognition.

Public Profile

The best way to see the value in what you can include in your public profile is to visit mine: http://www.quora.com/Michael-Sim. You can see that I’ve included links to all of my websites and social media accounts within the profile side-bar. You can also see all of the questions I’ve asked, answered and edited from within an easy-to-use tabbed interface.

Ask A Question

Any Quora member can ask a question. When typing in the question in the question search box, you will notice that Quora starts to search its database to compare existing questions with what you are typing. If you’re question is about something very popular, or if its very general, there is a good chance the answer already exists. It’s always a good practice to see if a question already exists and to avoid asking the same question. If the question you wish to ask already exists, it should be easy to find your answer. When asking a new question, you can also tag a question with “Topics”. Almost every Quora member follows a handful of topics that are relevant to their interest. I follow “Social Media”, “Social Networks” and “Business Strategy”. When I am interested to see what questions are being asked within those topics, I simply navigate to my home page (similar to the public timeline in Twitter). By tagging a new question with “Topics”, I know that my question will be in the public timeline of anyone who is following those topics.

Quora's Marketing Potential
Image Source: http://yesformn.org

Marketing Potential

As an expert in your industry, you will typically have a strong understanding of the concerns and demands of your target audience. They have a handful of questions, and you, the expert, have the answers. This knowledge allows you to demonstrate your capacity as a leader in your industry, and helps you to earn their business. Quora can be used to do the same, much like YouTube originally became quite valuable for this using video. Understanding the questions that my clients ask regularly, I can launch a pre-emptive campaign on Quora to ask those questions first. Just last night (4/19/11), I posted a question “What are the best Greasemonkey scripts for business use?”. I immediately tagged my question with relevant Topics, including Twitter (48,500 followers), Web Marketing (11,800 followers), Social Media Marketing (12,200) and several others. That single question now has the capacity to reach over the public timelines of over 125,000 combined topic followers. After posting my question, I then proceeded to be the first person to answer that question. At the end of the post, I included a link to a specific blog post that I created where the viewer can read more information that might prove valuable to their search. After I was done with that, I found other questions that were open (unanswered, or only a couple of short answers) and modified my original answer to fit those specific questions. One main answer then became 5 unique answers. 125,000 topic followers now increased exponentially.

Did the lightbulb turn on yet? I hope it did!

1. Ask a question about your own area of expertise

2. Give it a detailed explanation

3. Tag it with as many relevant “topics” as you can

4. Be the first to answer your own question

5. Find similar questions to the one you just answered

6. Modify your answer to fit those questions

7. Tag those questions (if they aren’t already) with relevant topics

8. If you did your job well, the next expert in your industry will be competing with YOU for the best answer. Since you got there first, and put in the time to make sure you had the best answer, there’s really nothing to compete with. An answer is an answer, and can only be answered in so many ways. So now when anyone (in the future) types in the question that you’ve already answered, they will visit your question and your answer will at the very top to greet them. You get the credit, establish yourself as the expert and potentially get a new follower. As time goes on, this person may contact you or visit your website. This creates an opportunity for you to invite them to talk via email or phone, provide consultation and convert a lead to a sale. All the while you are building your reputation as an expert, and as we all know, the value of word-of-mouth is priceless.

no spam in Quora
Image Source: http://www.inboxprotector.com


Spam Deterrant

Another great feature is that Quora automatically turns an http://website(dot)com string into an active link. It also automatically adds a “nofollow” tag to the HTML of the link, which helps deter spammers from using Quora as a back-links forum. In case that last statement was a little confusing, search engines like Google use back-links to help determine page rankings in search engines. Spammers will post their links anywhere they can in order to trick Google into assigning their website a higher page rank. With the “nofollow” tag, search engines do not index those links, therefore it does nothing to increase website page ranking. After all, a website’s value shouldn’t be determined by how many places you can spam a link to it, but by the actual content contained within. Good job Quora! If you post a short answer, an answer that does not carry much value, or simply rehash what others have already said, chances are your answer will get voted down among others already in the list. This is Quora’s way of allowing the community to determine the value of the answers that are posted, and help reduce the visibility of irrelevant or value-less answers. Spammers, Quora is NOT for you.


TIP: Don’t start answering every question that you can find with very little information and start including links to your websites. Your efforts to market yourself will be very obvious, and you will probably get flagged and eventually removed. Take your time to answer questions professionally, logically, and to the extent of your ability.

Customer Service Potential

One VERY valuable feature that Quora does not actively broadcast is the fact that every user has an accessible RSS stream from every section of their profile. I can create one from my main activity stream http://www.quora.com/Michael-Sim/rss, questions I’ve asked http://www.quora.com/Michael-Sim/questions/rss, and answers I’ve given http://www.quora.com/Michael-Sim/answers/rss by simply adding /rss to the end of each page’s URL.


Note: You will need an RSS reader to view the content of the RSS streams. Otherwise you may only see plain text when you click a link listed above.

If you use the marketing strategy that I mentioned above (asking and answering your own questions), you can easily use Quora as a FREE customer service portal and F.A.Q. RSS stream. For example, a company could use Quora’s RSS stream to populate their F.A.Q page (on their website) with questions they’ve both asked and answered about their products/services. Rather than having those questions hard-coded into their website, they can easily manage them directly from Quora. They are also taking advantage of the social media effect, allowing the Quora community to have direct access to that information. Quora users can ask new questions, and the company can easily answer them within Quora. If the question is popular, the company can then “re-ask” the question, answer it themselves, and have it feed directly back into their F.A.Q. page. Customer service using SaaS and Social Media: Brilliant!

Learning Curve

Quora does take a moment to get used to. I didn’t “get it” on my first visit, and the lightbulb moment didn’t happen until after the first week. That’s why I created this article. I want to help my viewers cut down the amount of time it takes to understand the website, see its marketing value, and jump on board while things are still new. Being an early adopter in this situation is VERY much worth your time. Try going to YouTube to teach someone about SEO, Social Media, or Website Design (add your own area of expertise to that list). You’ll easily find 100′s if not 1000′s of others competing for the same audience. Getting on board now increases the chances that you will be recognized as an expert in your industry when this site reaches its critical mass in membership.

Take a look at a few of the questions I have asked, the way I format the question, and how I’ve used Topics to categorize the question.

1. What are the best Greasemonkey scripts for business use?

2. How do you launch a product without the fear of your competition copying you?

3. Is it unrealistic to believe social media could lead to economic reform on a global level?

4. How do I approach or pitch a private VC or Angel Investor the RIGHT way?

Have questions? Feel free to join me in my public and private chat rooms by clicking the image below. I am typically available from 9-5pm CST M-F. I generally keep the private chat option open all day, whereas I only use the public chat room during group discussions or webinars.

Click to chat live with Michael Sim

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The Top Greasemonkey Scripts for Business

First and foremost: What is a Greasemonkey? Greasemonkey is a custom script add-on to the popular web browser Firefox. It allows independent developers and programmers to customize the user experience and interface of a wide variety of websites. After installing Greasemonkey, simply visit the links listed below to view the script that you would like to install.

However, before getting started, I strongly suggest moving over to Chrome. If you’re a social media person like myself, then use Rockmelt. It’s built with Chrome, but it does a much better job of side-panels (edges) for allowing you to display your favorite task icons.

Then install TamperMonkey (Chrome equivalent of Greasemonkey for FF)
https://chrome.google.com/extens…

*These scripts work with either browser type. Rockmelt and/or Chrome are just my preferred browsers.

**Use these scripts at your own risk. Read all reviews before installation.

***Many of the scripts below are being recreated as Chrome Extensions. Check to see if there is an equivalent first.

1. http://userscripts.org/scripts/s… – Facebook Invites: Invite people on Facebook to be a friend. Be VERY careful using this though, as Facebooks TOS will shut you down if you get carried away with inviting everyone you see. If you need to know how to use it, post a question in Quora to me, and I’ll do my best to give you a walk-through. Suggestion, do not use bulk add, instead use the option to middle-button click people and add via their profile. No more than 20-30 adds per day MAX.

2. http://userscripts.org/scripts/s… – Greased Lightbox: Everyone loves the lightbox image gallery feature (click thumb, screen darkens, image appears). This script adds it to nearly every instance on the web where there is an image gallery, Google Image Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, MySpace, deviantART and more.

3. http://userscripts.org/scripts/s… – Google Multi-Account Login: If you use more than one Gmail account, this script allows you to quickly switch back and forth between them.

4. http://userscripts.org/scripts/s… – Remove Facebook Ads: Does what it says… removes Facebook Ads using inline CSS (hides divs that contain ads)

5. http://userscripts.org/scripts/s… – Facebook Fixer – Enhancements for Facebook: bigger profile pictures and photos, easier viewing of albums, links to download videos, showing people’s age and sign, google calendar integration, bookmarks, keyboard shortcuts & more. Fully customizable!

The following content is sourced from the following blog post: Best Greasemonkey Scripts

- Blogger -

- Bloglines -

- Del.icio.us -

  • Del.icio.us Prettifier – Drastically improves the look of Del.icio.us.
  • Dejalicious – Tells you if the site you are looking at is already in your Del.icio.us bookmarks (adds + or -)
  • Fav.icio.us – Adds the websites favicon next to its bookmark.

- Digg -

  • Comment Box Sidebar – Makes the comment box appear where you are currently at rather than at the top of the page.
  • Diggmenu – Adds a Digg menu to your browser.
  • DuggMirror – Changes all Digg links to their DiggMirror links automatically so you never have to worry about broken links again.
  • Digg.licio.us – Adds a “Save It” button just below the “Digg It” button allowing you to click to add to Del.icio.us.
  • Digg Comment Helper – Highlights the most popular comments.
  • Google Search – Replaces Digg’s search engine with Google search.
  • Hide Buried Comments – Hides all buried comments (and their offspring).
  • Reddit on Digg – Adds Reddit comments for the same article to the equivalent Digg article.

- eBay -

  • Currency Conversion – Converts all currency to your currency of choice. Great for finding out how much you will have to pay for auctions and such that are listed under another currency.

- Facebook -

  • Facebook Auto-login – Automatically logs you in to Facebook.
  • Facebook Fixer – Makes profile pictures larger, shows additional menu items, adds people’s age to their profiles, and changes redirected links to direct links.
  • Facebook Remove Feed Advertisements – Removes the feed advertisements on your Facebook feed.
  • Facebook Auto-Colorizer – Changes the pages colors to match the dominant colors in the picture on each profile page.
  • Make Facebook Green – Allows you to change Facebook to green (or any color if you add a hexadecimal number to the javascript).
  • No Facebook Apps -Makes it so you don’t have to see Facebook applications when you view Facebook profiles.

- Firefox -

- Flickr -

  • FlickrBox – Enhances browsing on Flickr.
  • Flickr Image Blocker – Blocks annoying hovering images over the picture (to prevent you from saving the images).
  • Flickr Photo Magnifier – Adds a small rectangular magnifier allowing you to see greater detail on Flickr images.
  • Flickr Shades – Changes Flickr to white letters on a black background. You can customize the script to colors of your choice.
  • Multi Group Sender – Overrides the Send to Group button allowing you to send to multiple groups.

- GMail -

- Google AdSense -

  • AdSense EPC/CPC – Shows the cost-per-click (aka earnings-per-click) you’re getting on the AdSensereports page.
  • Prevent Accidental Clicks – Makes it so you can’t accidentally click on your own advertisements on your website.
  • Google Ads Remover – Blocks every Google Ad including SERP’s.

- Google Docs and Spreadsheets -

  • Google Doc Download – Adds a drop-down box to download to MS Office, Open Office, PDF, etc.

- iGoogle (Personalized Homepage) -

  • BeautyBlue – Nice blue theme for your iGoogle page.
  • Google IG Max – Maximizes the removal of extra space to save room. Removes headers, footers, along with reducing the size of many elements on this page.
  • More Rounded Corners – Allows you to round the corners of your modules.
  • Remove Extra Space – Removes all the extra space on your iGoogle homepage.
  • Remove the Header – Allows you to remove all module headers. You can also remove the footer with this script.
  • Remove the Plus – Removes the + symbol next to each link within the modules.
  • Replacing the Google Logo – Allows you to put any image where the iGoogle logo is (requires some hard coding).
  • Resizeable Columns – Allows you to resize your homepage’s columns to look how you want.
  • Transparencies – Makes the header image transparent to improve the look of your homepage.

- Google Maps -

  • GZoom – Allows you to zoom beyond the normal limits.

- Google Reader -

- Google Search -

  • Ultimate Google Search – Script organizes Google search results into two columns, numbers them, grabs each website’s icon, and much more.
  • GoogleEnlarge – Hover over a Google image to see an enlarged version of the image in a pop up.
  • Google AutoPager – Eliminates the “Next Page” button and automatically loads the next pages results at the bottom of your page. (Works with the Google Preview extension for Firefox)
  • Google Two Column – Displays search results in two columns (Ideal for people with wide screen monitors)
  • Google 100 – Shows the first 100 search results instead of the default 10. You can also show a different number of results by doing the following 4 steps:
    1. Visit Google.com.
    2. Go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> User Script Commands.
    3. Choose “Set Google Results Per Page”.
    4. Enter a number between 1 and 100.

- Miscellaneous -

- StumbleUpon -

  • Best Friends – Create an area for your top StumbleUpon friends, just like on other popular social networks. There’s no limit to the number of best friends you can add, but no one else will see them. Your friends are arranged in alphabetical order.
  • Count Likes – Adds the number of “Likes” to the Preference and About sections of StumbleUpon.
  • Del.icio.us Stumbles – Allows users to add links to Del.icio.us, then click a link to Stumble all bookmarks.
  • Quick Tag – Suggests popular tags and personal tags to help you tag your links faster.
  • Preview Posts – Adds a preview button to the StumbleUpon forums and your personal Inbox.
  • Tag Toplist – Displays a top list of the most-used tags, and allows you to sort sort alphabetically or by tag count.
  • WYSIWYG – Formats your reviews and comments in a WYSIWG editor.

- Wikipedia -

  • Wikipedia Animate – Powerful script that animates the history of changes on the Wikipedia article. It highlights recent changes and provides a timeline slider.

- WordPress -

- YouTube -

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Social Network Statistics 2011

Facebook:

  • Average user has 130 friends on the site (KB)
  • Average user sends 8 friend requests per month (KB)
  • Average user spends an average 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook per month (KB)
  • Average user visits the site 40 times per month (KB)
  • Average user spends an 23 minutes (23:20 to be precise) on each visit (KB)
  • Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events (KB)
  • Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month (KB)
  • 200 million people access Facebook via a mobile device each day (KB)
  • More than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each day (KB)
  • Users that access Facebook on mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook compared to non-mobile users (KB)
  • Facebook generates a staggering 770 billion page views per month (KB)
  • Facebook has more than 500 million active users (KM)
  • 50 percent of @facebook active users log on in any given day (KM)
  • Each day, 55 million status updates are made on Facebook (KM)
  • Each day, 35 million people update their status on Facebook (KM)
  • More than 150 million active users currently access @facebook through their mobile device (KM)
  • Global Audience of 656,870,980 people (CFB)
  • US Audience of 155,235,060 people, 23% of Global Audience (CFB)
  • 8,695,560,138 Visits per month (QC)
  • Gender: 55% Female, 45% Male (QC)
  • Age (QC)

    • 3-12: 4%

    13-17: 22%

    18-34: 42%

    35-49: 20%

    50+: 12%

  • Ethnicity (QC)

    • Caucasian: 75%

    African American: 13%

    Asian: 5%

    Hispanic: 6%

    Other: 1%

  • Household Income (QC)

    • $0-30k: 14%

    $30-60k: 24%

    $60-100k: 30%

    $100k+: 32%

Twitter:

  • In the past year alone, the average number of tweets per day has nearly tripled from 50 million to 140 million. (HP)
  • Tweets generally spike during a significant cultural event, and recent figures have been staggering. On March 11, the day of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, Twitter users exceeded the average daily tweets by 37 million–that’s 177 million tweets in a single day. (HP)
  • 572,000 new accounts were created on March 12. For the past month, the average daily sign-up rate has been 460,000 new accounts, and Twitter has also marked a 182% increase in the number of users tweeting from mobile devices in the past year. (HP)
  • 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets. (KM)
  • 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago. (KM)
  • 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month. (KM)
  • 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011. (KM)
  • 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day. (KM)
  • 460,000. Average number of new Twitter accounts per day over the last month. (KM)
  • 182%. Increase in number of mobile Twitter users over the past year. (KM)
  • 31,017,254 Unique visitors over the past 6 months (CM)
  • 59,471 websites refer traffic to Twitter (CM)
  • 1,399,127,428 Average number of visits per month over the past 3 months (December through the end of February) (QC)
  • Gender: 55% Female, 45% Male (QC)
  • Age (QC)

    • 3-12: 4%

    13-17: 14%

    18-34: 45%

    35-49: 24%

    50+: 14%

  • Ethnicity (QC)

    • Caucasian: 69%

    African American: 16%

    Asian: 3%

    Hispanic: 11%

    Other: 1%

  • Household Income (QC)

    • $0-30k: 17%

    $30-60k: 25%

    $60-100k: 28%

    $100k+: 30%

    Sources:

    (HP) Huffington Post

    (KM) Kiss Metrics – Twitter

    (KM) Kiss Metrics – Facebook

    (CM) Compete.com

    (QC) Quantcast – Twitter

    (QC) Quantcast – Facebook

    (CFB) Checkfacebook.com

    (KB) KenBurbary.com

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Top 20 Social Media Statistics Infographics

1. Twitter Territory US States Infographic



Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5446/Twitter-Territory-How-States-Compare-to-the-Average-U-S-Twitter-Grade.aspx

2. The Revised Social Media Effect



Source: http://blog.infographicworld.com/2010/10/12/the-revised-social-media-effect

3. Visualizing 6 years of Facebook – Facebook Growth infographic



Source: http://mashable.com/2010/02/10/facebook-growth-infographic

4. Who’s using Twitter, and How They’re Using It



Source: http://www.flowtown.com/blog/whos-using-twitter-and-how-theyre-using-it

5. When Social Media Attacks



Source: http://www.c-e.com/blog/viewpoints/When-Social-Media-Attacks.html

6. Social Media Facts



Source: http://www.insideview.com/social-media-facts.html

7. The Rise of Social Network Ad Spending



Source: http://www.flowtown.com/blog/the-rise-of-social-network-ad-spending

8. 10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication



Source: http://www.onlyinfographic.com/2010/10-levels-of-intimacy-in-today%E2%80%99s-communication

9. The CMO’s Guide to the Social Media Landscape



Source: http://www.cmo.com/social-media/cmos-guide-social-media-landscape

10. Social Media – The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution



Source: http://engaugemedia.com/blog/2010/4/26/the-biggest-shift-since-the-industrial-revolution.html

11. Building a Company With Social Media



Source: http://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/Social-Media-Building.aspx

12. How Fortune 100 Companies are Leveraging Social Media



Source: http://www.flowtown.com/blog/how-are-companies-leveraging-social-media

13. The Top 20 Social CMO’s Of The Fortune 100 Infographic



Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fortune-100-league-of-extraordinarily-social-cmos-infographic-2011-3

14. The Social Media Effect



Source: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-the-social-media-effect

15. How People Share Content On The Web



Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-social-networking-sites-dominate-sharing-2009-7

16. Twitter Users Profile


http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/twitter-users-profile-infographic

17. Social Media Demographics: Who’s Using Which Sites?



Source: http://www.flowtown.com/blog/social-media-demographics-whos-using-which-sites

18. A Strategic Approach to Using Twitter



Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27132029@N06/3022781883/sizes/z/in/photostream

19. Age Distribution on Social Network Sites



Source: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users

20. Online User Age Statistics



Source: http://businessweek.com

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