LinkedIn is the #1 business social network by a wide margin.  Of the ~25.3 Million registered accounts that we track, ~20 Million have more than 2 connections. We decided to track more than 2 user connections since most folks just login to check things out when they get the first email invite. Of the 20+ Million users, only 1.9 Million (or 9%) have a blog (Or have chosen to add their blog to their profile).

Plaxo in comparison has 13% bloggers registered of their 16.7 active (more than 2 connections) users.

Xing the European business social network in comparison has 14% bloggers.

Now if you blog for business, you would get about 0.2% to 0.5% referral traffic from business social networks (based on relative comparisons). This is not a large amount, but it all adds up.

What are the top 5 reasons for not listing blogs on business network profiles that we heard from our informal survey of 15 bloggers who we know do not have their blogs listed on LinkedIn?

1. Did not bother to do it. Most people fill out their profile on an as needed basis, instead of all at once.

2. Did not know you could. Funnily enough many people who registered over 3 years ago with LinkedIn or Xing do not bother to come back and add their blog to their profile.

3. Not a significant source of traffic. The relative “engagement” of business social networks compared to others (such as Facebook or MySpace) is lower. Hence most users dont check them out very frequently. Even though LinkedIn and Plaxo have added “Status Updates” as part of their capability, they are relatively recent and over 80% of people still dont use them.

4. Blog is behind “closed doors” or is a private blog. This was the #1 reason given for not listing their blogs. Its unfortunate but true, most business blogs are within the 4 confines of intranets (yes they still exist).

5. Dont have a blog. This was the #2 reason. Although over 140 Million blogs exist and over 45 Million in English language alone, most “business folks” dont maintain an active blog.

Have you registered your blog with your business network profile? If not, why are you not doing it?

Blog World Expo recently concluded their Las Vegas Confab with over 2000 participants (includes bloggers, speakers, exhibitors, event staff, etc). There were 256 speakers and panelists. We did some quick analysis of BWE08 using our solution to give you some interesting metrics and some questions to consider.

1. Approximately 43% of BlogWorldExpo attendees are users of Twitter. This includes people that tweeted about it during the days of event. (we took only folks that had more than 3 tweets and included the offical tag (BWE08), and unoffocial tag BlogWord and Blog Expo). About 6% of BWE attendees took photos and either uploaded them to Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug and Zooomr. If other photographers took photos but did not upload it, we could not track them.

2. The top 3 most active sessionsduring BWE were 1. The keynote (with State of Blogosphere by Richard Jalichandra), 2. The TectSet Party and 3. Evening of the last day – after the event & sessions completed. So, its obvious people made a lot of friends, and said their good-byes and were still trying to keep in touch with the folks they met during the conference.

3. The sentiment of the users got better with the days. Clearly 80%+ of the folks loved the show at the end of day 3, compared to 56% on Day 1. The negative sentiment was the most on day 2 – I am still trying to figure out what session it was that contributed to it.

4. AlthoughTechnorati claims over 70% of bloggers are male, on twitter that’s not the case. Based on our numbers, full 43% of twitter users who attended BWE were women, compared to 57% men. We arenot the only ones to question Technorati’s survey information.

5. Finally photos. Collectively over 2848 photos (as of last night) were shared on Flickr, Facebook, Zooomr and SmugMug. (If you did share elsewhere, we can tell you uploaded photos, but cannot tell it was a part of BWE unless its been tagged appropriately). Flickr got the lion’s share of BWE photos followed by Facebook.

Some questions:

1. What happened on Day 2? Why did sentiment get worse?

2. Is there a better participation of women on Twitter? Or are Technorati’s numbers flawed?

3. I was surprised by the number of Twitter users who were are BWE. I thought it would be higher. So, if you did attend, did you not tweet during BWE?

If you attended BWE, please enlighten us.

Marshall Kirkpatrickidentified 7 social media consultantsthat deliver tangible value. There are some great folks in the list and for sure, there are several more that do add tangible value to their clients. In fact according to ourTwitter analytics on BuzzGain, there about 1.2 Million user accounts.

This includes accounts that have been registered, and have at least 1 friend on Twitter. Of these there are about 14,533 that have the word social in their bio of those about 5,212 that blog about social media, social networking and web 2.0 in general. This list includes people that have an overall marketing (SEO, SEM, brand marketing, etc.) focus, but have an interest in social media.

So in a list of about 5,000 picking 7 is difficult or so you would think. But our initial analysis only rounds up about 25 bloggers who are the experts in social media and related areas. So then again, its a wide ocean, but a few big fish.

Its no secret that newspapers and print publications are having a rough time adapting to social media and citizen journalism. Its fairly simple to see the equation to get better (but a whole lot difficult to implement) from a business standpoint. Thanks to market forces the revenues are lower and expenses are higher.

How does a newspaper get revenues higher? – diversify sources of it -besides advertising (print or online) and classifieds.

How do you cut costs? – remove print and reduce staff (journalists).

So what changes can we expect in 2009? Newspapers will:

1a. Partner with bloggers (experts) to create highly specific content for niche reader and layoff reporters / journalists. The bloggers themselves will be initially “paid” for with increased “readership” and a “platform to create their personal brand”. I expect it will be 2011 or 2012 before these bloggers they recruit will actually be paid for in cash.

1b. Create regional networks of citizen-reporters ( a-la About.com circa 1999) to source local content from local providers. This is a no brainer. The outsourcing of local content is already taking place to highly sub-regional or mini-metro self-employed or unemployed citizen reporters.

2. Abandon the print edition for subscribers and make print only for off-the-rack purchases (albeit more expensive). Print is on its way out. I expect more publications to abandon print (citing green credentials, high costs, etc). The ones that will print will take their “best of online content OR create a custom bind for racks – which will be distributed primarily to airlines, hotels, etc. for off rack purchases.

3. Remove wire service (AP, Business Wire). This also already happening in the “cut costs” bucket.

4. Use their “objective” nature to rate local providers and adopt the “Angie’s list” type model for recommending local services. This falls in the increase revenue bucket. Another example of such a service is Yelp (restaurant recommendations). I expect newspapers to start partnering with crowd sourcing content providers to generate hyperlocal “community of interest or location” type services.

Really understanding what services are required by “local” users that they are willing to pay for and provide those. “Pay per action” model will be a big beneficiary.

5. Be a provider of demographic data and detailed local information to marketers. Newspapers will be more willing to sell their treasure-trove of information about local readers and help marketers in their campaigns.

What do you think? Am I a missing something?

Image credit: J Fortune on Photobucket

Its no secret that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is an extremely popular show with over 2.1 Million viewers (primetime), over 50,000 Internet only viewers and an extended audience of over 35,000 per episode. The favorable audience demographics (with over 60% younger than 35 years of age, over $67,000 in annual income, pre-disposed Democratic and very aware of pop culture, news and politics) has seen advertisers flock to the segment with over 67% repeat advertisers.

We analyzed the guests for 136 shows (there were fewer shows, thanks to the writers strike) in 2007 and 144 shows in 2008 (Oct 30th 2008). The show no doubt has a very current affairs and politics bent and is fairly liberal in its bias but we were more looking for 3 things:

1. What topics/themes or categories were important for The Daily Show viewers?

2. What was the “effect” on book sales from a slot at The Daily show?

3. What the net (online) PR effect of the exposure that The Daily Show brings you?

So what are the top 3 tips to be a guest on The Daily Show?

1. A overwhelming number of guests were from Politics (2008 – 47% and 2007 – 38%) or related fields (Thanks in big part to the elections). Celebrities and media personalities were second. Science and technology were relative blips. Except Bill Gates in 2007, no other technology personalities were in the lineup.

Tip #1: If you want to get on The Daily Show your best bets are writing about the effects of anything on Politics (both current and historical). So if you can talk about the effect of technology on fund raising for the elections, or the effect of Youtube on campaign ads, you’re probably a shoe-in.

2. Delayed Gratification: Only 17 times (out of 144 in 2008) did the authors make the top searches on Google Trends. That too a day after the show. We estimate this was due the fact that most of the guests were already “well known” but that would not explain the lack of searches for “the promotion” to appear on Google Trends. Meaning, what they were promoting – either a book, a movie, etc. should have appeared on the top searches, but that was not the case in a majority of the cases. The delay on Google trends also indicates the “Tivo effect” or the fact that over 35% of the people watching the daily show either tape it and watch later than its live broadcast or view it on the Internet.

Tip #2: We dont have Amazon book trends or Movie trends, to know the full effect but we can confidently say that appearance on The Daily Show should be part of your PR / book promotion strategy not the cornerstone.

3. The Net PR effect: Since 2007, The Daily Show has been posting entire episodes of the show online on their website, which has limited the ability to view the sharing trends on YouTube. But if you analyze the Digg, Discussions threads, Twitter and Social Bookmarking effect of the show, it ranks among the top on social media. The only shows that rank better are Two and a Half Men and Dancing with the Stars. For more on the details we cross-checked with our friends at Social Sights.

Tip #3: To measure the net effect of your PR with The Daily Show you have to take into account the “virality” of its spread, not just the viewers on TV or the 30-40K viewers per episode online.

What other metrics would you analyze to see the effect of The Daily Show?