For you social web fans, Bottlenose has given us some interesting news: it has officially hit version 2.0. For those that may be unfamiliar, Bottlenose is an intelligent social dashboard. We know, “Great, another social dashboard.” But don’t get mad, this is something else entirely.

For those interested in customers, you should use Nimble. If you’re interested in interpersonal connection, you should use Engag.io.If you want a social dashboard designed around ideas, enter Bottlenose.

The Bottlenose name was inspired by the dolphin, which is reflected in its primary feature known as Sonar – a visual representation of your online conversation. Bottlenose maps topics and tags throughout your social network, allowing you to see branches of information, also giving you the ability to dive into each one. This visual representation takes up the right half of your screen using Bottlenose’s default view, as scene above.

Bottlenose is an intensive web application and there’s certainly a lot going on behind the curtain. It’s constantly analyzing your social streams to identify and understand keywords, topics and threads of conversation.

This is all done at the browser level using HTML5 and Javascript – efficiency that feels light and unnoticeable, resulting in fantastic performance.

As Bottlenose continues to refresh itself with new information, it will also keep you up to date with what’s new through notifications. In the left hand sidebar, Bottlenose also has intelligent “assistants” that will suggest new branches for you to explore.

Another very cool feature is the expansion of photos, videos and articles within the stream. There’s also much more context for authors and messages, allowing you to explore interests and conversation threads.

At present, Bottlenose can pull in data and information from Facebook, Twitter, and RSS, however email and additional social networks will be the next new additions. Bottlenose is also opening up their API for interested third-party developers soon, and if you consider the potential for innovation and applications on that front, the relevance of data and information can really get interesting.

Nova Spivack, Bottlenose co-founder, has a vision of a nascent stream OS, an engine that can supply powerful applications with meaningful data.

Bottlenose is free, and if you happen to have a Klout score over 30, you can register and gain access straight away. If not, don’t fret, you can register for an invitation.

Tabfusion is another company jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon, releasing a Facebook tab app to allow users to display their Pins from the interest network on their Facebook pages.

Registered users of either Pinterest or Facebook have the ability to install the app by entering their login information for both sites, finally allowing content to be pushed to a tab on their Facebook page. Tabfusion has said that they only have the ability to post Pinterest feeds so far, but once Pinterest releases the application-programming interface, you will be able to target likes, boards, and pins for integration.

Are you a big Pinterest user? Is it important to be able to push Pinterest content over to Facebook?

When it comes to content marketing and SMM, what factors determine whether an article gets re-tweeted or not? According to HP Labs, we are now able to predict article popularity on Twitter through a variety of factors.

This shows an important evolution in the way we approach both the analysis and marketing of tweets and they way they travel. In the past, there had been primary focus on who was tweeting and re-tweeting as opposed to what had been tweeted. Traditional thinking was based on influence – the more influential the user doing the tweeting, the more it will spread. While this type of approach still remains an important factor, new research has also highlighted that content itself matters.

Researchers have analyzed 40,000 articles tweeted throughout a week back in August 2011, collecting information on the website/agency that authored each article, which outlet was first to tweet the article, and they also categorized the article based on information presented, along with the emotion of the language within the article. Based on these variables, data has showed that there are some articles that tend to be more tweetable than others.

To breakdown the findings that help predict the likelihood of an article getting tweeted or retweeted, check out the big factors:

• Source played the biggest role. The more reliable the source of the article, the greater the chances are of a tweet.

• Should an article mention a well known person, location or organization, it’s also more likely to get the story tweeted. Yes, that’s why you see all those celebrities trending whenever you log into Twitter. Unless it has RIP before their name.

• Articles within popular categories also spread more rapidly. Health, technology, and cats are among the leaders.

One factor that does not appear to influence an article’s tweetability, however, is emotion. Emotional articles are not more likely to spread than objective articles. Brand and information both matter, however the overall tone doesn’t appear to matter much when it comes to sharing. The researchers have also said that their model is 84% accurate.

At a high level, a lot of this information is fairly common knowledge to those that have been on Twitter for some time now. However, it’s important to remember that pushing your articles to social media is only one step in a larger content marketing process. By analyzing how types of articles perform, you too can promote and predict which articles are more responsive to your own audience and how you can work toward better aligning your content marketing strategy with business objectives.

With Facebook’s IPO buzzing about lately, Facebook value is not only rising in the eyes of investors, but for marketers, as well. From an Internet marketing perspective we could see some real added value with the forthcoming IPO, as it will increase pressure on Facebook to monetize traffic more efficiently.

Retail marketing executives are still in the early days of understanding how advertising on Facebook can be applied on a strategic level that aligns with business objectives, ultimately resulting in a positive, measurable return on advertising spend. Social spending is very new when compared to more traditional SEM/Paid Search done primarily through Google, and the strategy certainly differs in a few big ways, each having their own clear objectives.

As an average, 40-60% of all transactions that originate from a Facebook ad will end in a different channel. When analyzing the data, it can make the return on spend within the social network look lower than it really is.

However, considering a full circle strategy, online interaction on Facebook has also led to more monetization offline;  consumer interaction with brands on Facebook is likely to result in more frequent product purchasing and at higher values.

New, innovative ad formats will also influence advertisers in their decision to increase spend. Facebook pushing out Sponsored stories is an initial example of this; however there is unfathomable potential in creating ads and apps that are inherently social, leveraging even more user data that Facebook already has.

The Media Mix Is Shifting

It’s a fact, money for social media based ads will continue to be extracted from existing media budgets such as print and TV rather than negatively impacting search and display.

Considering consumer behaviour when viewing social ads on Facebook, the response is much like when they see ads on TV. There’s a positive initial response, however when presented with the same ads again, the response rates tend to drop significantly.

Therefore, the most efficient marketing strategy for both Facebook and TV have:

• A brief but powerful campaign designed around maximizing reach, increasing frequency and word of mouth;
• Strategically planned pulse media buys to eliminate ad saturation for consumers;
• Powerful, creative ads that will draw attention, increasing engagement and interaction with the brand.

The application of Facebook and TV can’t be ignored, either. Most people use Facebook while watching TV and tend to engage most in relation to the show while it’s live. If a TV brand wanted to reach out to an audience and increase engagement and buzz online, it would be wise to advertise on Facebook. In 2012 we’ll be seeing a much more coordinated effort between Facebook campaigns and TV, especially as media spend continues to shift away from TV and print to social media platforms, with Facebook taking the lead.

SocialFlow, a service presently being used for social media campaign management by Human Rights Watch, the New York Public Library, the Economist, and Pepsi, became open to the public Tuesday.

During the beta stage, SocialFlow was seen to increase clicks between 40% and 60% per tweet, as an average. Like all good services, this one isn’t free: plans start at $99 per month, which will get you coverage for a single Twitter and single Facebook account. But don’t fret! As part of their new launch, SocialFlow is offering you the first month for any package at a low cost of $1 for the first month. This could be worth checking out to see if there’s true value for you.

Most social media based scheduling services are designed around posting messages when the majority of a user’s followers are online, but SocialFlow is different. They use an algorithm to determine topic interest in messaging, taking a glance into what is being discussed heavily among a follower base, then posting when your post/tweet is most applicable, increasing the chances of a retweet, click-through or other form of interaction.

Social media has reached a point where a lot of campaigns are run through gut feelings and intuition. There are a lot of creative ideas, but the science has been lacking for most. Having the ability to look at the types of different conversations your followers are engaging in, comparing those same conversations against the message you want to post, and then figuring out the best time to send it is clearly highly valuable.

Scheduling with SocialFlow works similarly to HootSuite or TweetDeck, however the key advantage lies in their optimization feature. Messages will sit in a queue and will be sent then they achieve a score between 1 and 100, 100 meaning the message will be sent at the most optimal time.

For campaigns that require full measurement and tracking, users have the choice of integrating their own Google Analytics account to track social media connections, or as an alternative, access to a suite of built in analytics tools.

There’s a real bottleneck in social media – attention is a scarce commodity. When you keep posting the wrong message, people will ignore you. Don’t burn away that commodity of attention.

StumbleUpon has made a lot of changes lately, many of which have changed the core functionality of the site. They redesigned the site last year, re-focusing the site based on topic features. But there was a very interesting sneak change the other day, one that was unannounced and that changed the way stumbling itself was done. The update has made it impossible to get the direct links for the pages a user is stumbling, unless they opt to not sign in to the site with their standard account. What? Remember Digg? They tried something similar with their toolbar. How did that work out for them?

If you consider the point of StumbleUpon from a user perspective, the idea is to build up a taste graph that will find stories that the user will like. When looking at it externally from a marketing perspective, many websites are dependent on StumbleUpon’s referral traffic, which is something beyond the StumbleUpon user’s direct stumbling experience.

When asked about the new user experience, StumbleUpon’s VP of Business Development and Marketing, Marc Leibowitz, said that they are working on “things in mind to address this concern.”

StumbleUpon’s intention was to “improve the user experience.” And apparently only two-thirds of users would use the Web bar.

So signed-in users will have the Web bar but can’t exit it and visitors can easily close the bar. So if you want to see direct links, you don’t sign in.

This would make sense if..no, it doesn’t make any sense. So for users who want to see direct links and sign out, not only will StumbleUpon be unable to get a sense of that user’s taste graphic, but the user will also miss out on the social and community aspect of the site.

Apparently users would accidently click on the “X” button on the Web bar. This was StumbleUpon’s main reason when deciding to get rid of the Web bar entirely. When users would accidentally click, they wouldn’t be able to go back to their Stumbling unless they want to StumbleUpon.com.

Removing a major feature of the site seems like a drastic solution to a simple problem. Here’s an idea: when the user clicks the “X”, create a pop-up that says something like, “Are you sure you want to leave StumbleUpon.com?”

Given the removal of the web bar, StumbleUpon has had to alter the actual URL, changing the way it’s displayed. This is a benefit for users, but a big hit for those who receive a ton of referral traffic from the discovery engine.

StumbleUpon does offer a Firefox add-on and Chrome extension that will allow you to see the direct URL.

What Does This Mean For StumbleUpon Referral Traffic?

For those sites that are dependent on StumbleUpon’s referral traffic, there really aren’t a lot of alternatives.

In one case, a website who previously generated 70-80% of referral traffic from StumbleUpon now only receives 40% due to the redesign. Now that StumbleUpon is hijacking the pageview, this will likely drop even further.

There is some hope, however. Pinterest.

Sure, the above is an isolated case, but publishers are getting hit, no question about it. Marketers will more than likely begin shifting their content strategy from StumbleUpon to Pinterest given the responsive nature of the users, as well as explosive platform growth. If you haven’t looked into Pinterest from a content marketing perspective, you should, because StumbleUpon won’t be backpedalling on the web bar decision anytime soon.

Pinterest is picking up steam, and to date, 80% of the user base consists of women ages 25-44. Pinterest is unique in now it can impact purchases, and retailers such as Lands’ End, Esty, and Nordstrom have pushed adoption heavily, maintaining a strong presence, and strategy, on the new platform.

From a retailer perspective, it’s easy to create visual storefronts that have the clean, easy-to-browse features of tablet commerce. Pinterest is also a great opportunity to engage with customers outside of traditional Internet marketing. Through images, you can share ideas and trends in the retail social media landscape. Plus, consider the potential for comments on those hot runway models wearing sexy clothing. Muscles Glasses..?

Facebook is really working to make social commerce work. They’re trying to become a mall. Timeline social app launches really seemed like a step in that direction, including fashion and shopping apps from Lyst, Pose, Fab, and Oodle.

Even with new functionality, Pinterest is showing increasingly strong signs that it is a better, more effective, social commerce platform. Monetate analyzed referral traffic from Pinterest heading to five specialty apparel retailers, and between July and December 2011, it jumped 389%. Oh, hello.

Right now, only 1% of Facebook fans are engaging with brands. Is this because of lack of strategy on the company’s end, or the platform? Last year Facebook announced their integration with eBay, which could be a step in the right direction.

Even still, Facebook is conflating their social graph with an interest graph, making the assumption that your friends like what you like. If you look at the platforms, Facebook is built around the social graph first and foremost and Pinterest is interest graph focused. Your Facebook friends may eventually find themselves on Pinterest, but the intention of Pinterest is not to be a social platform. It’s about interest. Because users are organizing around interests, Pinterest is a very natural platform for shopping. The visual aspect is a major benefit here, too. Facebook’s focus is on the overall user experience and keeping everything social, which makes shopping a bit unnatural. How about distrust with Facebook’s long-standing privacy issues? Yeah, don’t forget about that one.

Facebook is expanding its lead in the display advertising industry, accounting for 28% of U.S. online display impressions in 2011, ComScore has released. Facebook had 21% of all impressions, the number of times an ad is displayed for users, in 2010. ComScore also reported that Yahoo remained in second place with 11% impression share. Microsoft/Bing was third, coming in with 4.5%, followed by Google at 3.6%.

The large number of people present on Facebook, over 800 million, is very attractive when given the ability to target users based on demographics. If you break it down from a dollar perspective, Facebook has raked in 16% of U.S. display ad spend last year, up 12% from the previous year, eMarketer reports. Display ads consist of photos, banners and videos, rather than the traditional text links that have been dominant for search based ads.

Facebook, based out of Menlo Park, California, is targeting an initial public offering perhaps as early as this week, heading for a potential valuation of between $75 billion and $100 billion, people close to the company said last week. Should the IPO move forward, we can bet the resources will help Facebook maintain the lead in both social networking and display ads.

A source has told Business Insider that we may be seeing brand pages officially announced on February 29th. According to the source, Facebook plans to make the announcement during their invite only Facebook Marketing Conference.

The Facebook Marketing Conference will be held in New York on February 29th, parts of which will be streamed, and will be featuring a keynote by COO Sheryl Sandberg, VP of Advertising & Global Operations, David Fischer and VP of Product Chris Cox. Sounds like a team to make a big announcement to us.

From a marketing perspective, this is big news. Given the way that Facebook has pushed brand pages into the News Ticker and has also allowed for direct referencing in status updates and comments, it will be interesting to see how Timeline will be setup to further take advantage of this extended technology.

Also, given the launch of Google+’s brand pages awhile back and their continued integration of social search and push into other Google products, you can bet that the introduction of Timeline to businesses will be significant.  Until then, marketers have had the opportunity to get up to speed on strategy and functionality.

Will we see Timeline launching on pages at the end of February? Take a look at the graphic below, originally posted by Mashable, for a creative mockup of a potential page decked out with Timeline customization. Are you looking forward to the change?

Dan Zarella, a social media scientist with HubSpot, has released a report illustrating how you can get the highest number of click-throughs when tweeting. We knew some of the information presented in the infographic below, such as Tweeting between 120 and 130 characters will increasing the likelihood of getting retweeted more frequently than longer and shorter tweets, and sending tweets as a slower pace will result in more clicks. Other findings were interesting, however. Specifically, the increase in click through rates for tweets containing “daily is out”, which is posted by paper.li users.

Remember, if you’re driving traffic to your own site through Twitter, you can do a similar type of analysis through Google Analytics. By creating an Advanced Segment in analytics, you will be able to accurately measure on-site performance for traffic sources that you choose. For something like Twitter, once tweeted you can see how those users have engaged with your content and site, analyzing and refining your content marketing strategy based on popular content, layout and design and more.

If you’re not doing so already, be sure to register an account with a URL shortening service that will give you access to their own analytics. This will give you a good idea of click through performance but can also track the shortened URL should people choose to share it on other social networks or post it on other sites, as well.