Twitter just decided to replace its automatic URL-shortening service, forgoing TinyURL for our friends bit.ly. Those of you who use TweetDeck know that the desktop application has been automatically shortening your URLs with bit.ly for a while, but Twitter itself has always used TinyURL. This is actually pretty handy, as bit.ly tracks all sorts of analytics on the links, such as how many people click on them, when you sign up for an account. Congrats to bit.ly and the Betaworks folks!

—Alyssa

Facebook announced that it has reached 200 million members today, which means if it was a country, it would be the fifth-largest in the world.

—Alyssa

The amount of press Twitter has been getting lately (yes, we talk about it a lot on this blog, too!) is disproportionate to how popular it actually is, especially in comparison with Facebook. However, this is probably because the mainstream is just starting to discover Twitter now, whereas everyone already knows about Facebook (which is why your mom just friended you, and then tagged you in her “25 Things”).

—Alyssa

On the Social Media Explorer blog, Jason Falls mentions how Quantcast can help with public relations. I use Quantcast daily to track the reach of our online media placements, and I probably couldn’t do my job without it!

—Alyssa

The joining of British celebrities has been cited as the reason UK Twitter membership rapidly increased 10-fold over the last 12 months, according to Hitwise.  Would you join Twitter because of John Cleese?

-Maria

Scott Malish addresses one of the issues we’ve been discussing a lot lately in FirstWord Digital: how to most accurately measure the ROI of our online PR campaigns.

PR pros must live and breathe social media and think up new, unique ways to use it for clients. But at the same time, it is also up to us to be able to measure the impact those social media channels are having for clients.  And to go even further, it is time for the industry to push clients for their business data - whether it’s sales, web traffic, whatever - so that PR can measure the effectiveness of their work against it.  This will not only help improve levels of client service substantially, it will hold PR accountable. And by doing so, we will have the opportunity to become true business partners and not just a “nice to have” extension of marketing.

Especially in the online brands sphere, it is becoming more and more necessary to work with our clients’ back-end Web developers for access to traffic data and detailed analytics. As public relations professionals, it’s also our duty to educate our clients about the fact that ROI consists of more than just numbers. The wise Paull Young pointed me toward this article, which maintains that outcomes (the degree of success of your campaign) are more important than outputs (how many eyeballs saw it).

Hits, subscribers, friends and tags…measure dissemination, not change in opinion, impact or action. They measure outputs, not outcomes.

In an ideal world, we’d be able to judge our PR successes solely and subjectively on the positive influence it had on its audience. Yet pragmatic publicists know that for the vast majority of clients, numbers are still king. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work as hard as we can to change those attitudes.

—Alyssa

We talk a decent amount about measuring social media ROI here at M Booth, but still feel as if the industry has not come up with a definitive answer.  Although we do know that the definition is one that is steering away from metrics and more toward engagement, there’s still no clear strategy.  This article from MarketingProfs.com takes a look at what social media superstars like Gary Vaynerchuk have to say about the issue.

-Maria