Is the Social Networking Bubble About to Burst?

“Social is running out of hours. Social is also running out of people,” concluded George Colony, chief executive of analyst firm Forrester Research. Eighty-six percent of people have adopted social networking and are already spending more time do it than going to church, communicating by phone, e-mail, and snail mail, and exercising. Maximum capacity reached?

Social Media Advances as Restaurant Marketing Tool

A 2011 National Restaurant Association study confirms that consumers who use social media not only dine out more, but are more likely to become return customers.  While social media use is currently sporadic in the restaurant industry, most agree that agree that social media marketing will become more important within their segment, with Facebook at the top of the list of tools.

Gone are the days of the nicely printed Zagat dining guides.  Yelp, Urbanspoon, Facebook, and the like have become the new go-tos.

Facebook traffic plummets in the US

According to statistics from Inside Facebook Gold analytics service — which gets its information from Facebook’s advertising tool — new Facebook users totaled 11.8 million people in May — an impressive number by any stretch of the imagination. But that compares to the 13.9 million who joined in April, and an average of about 20 million in the 12 months prior.  The number of US Facebook users fell from 155.2 million to 149.4 million during the month of May alone.

On the bright side, Facebook is seeing big increases in Latin America and Asia.