A new report from comScore concludes that Facebook now accounts for over 31% of the display advertising impressions in the United States. In addition, Facebook is on track to break one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) impressions for the year. This strength in advertising is assumed to be one of the reasons Facebook ad costs have gone up 40% this year.

You have probably noticed that you don’t see every update from every person that you have as a Facebook friend or every group that you “like.” This is in part because most people look at “Top News” rather than “Most Recent” in their News Feed. But even if you have it set for “Most Recent,” Facebook has a default setting which only displays those updates from friends and pages you interact with most.

So how do you show up in a users News Feed? Facebook uses a system called EdgeRank to determine if a user should see your content. They look at the relationship between the creator and the user, interaction with the object (likes, shares, comments, etc.) and timeliness.  If this is soemthing you care about (and you should if you are trying to do anything on Facebook) Social Media Examiner has a great article about EdgeRank and things you can do to improve your chances of being seen.

Interesting article from Practical Ecommerce last week addresses the issue of the benefits of having someone “Like” you on Facebook.

Eight main reasons are outlined:

1. Expression of Affinity
2. More Engaged Users
3. Email Marketing Capability
4. Viral Syndication of Content
5. More Traffic to Website
6. Becomes Part of Facebook Graph
7. More Effective Advertising
8. Likes Lead to Insights

This final one is deceptively important. While it is last on this list, I have found it to be critical. Knowing what age groups and cities are most interested in a Facebook fanpage is critical to decision making. Of course, to get there you need at least 10,000 fans. Another reason to spend some time and budget on your Facebook fanpage.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Twitter is in “advanced talks to pay $50 million for TweetDeck.” This looks like the next step in Twitter’s strategy to get more control over their platform. As noted in before in this blog, Twitter is in the process of making changes and has already shutdown some services that leverage Twitter’s news stream.

I admit it. I am one of those people that had an iPad on the first day they were available. I did the same thing with the iPad 2. I have noticed that it has really changed the way that I work. I use my iPad a ton while away from the office and at home. I check email, stream Netflix and Hulu, read news and, yes, I even play Angry Birds. But am I alone?

A March survey from admob by Google shows that tablets are changing the way users work and interact with media.

• 43% spend more time with their tablet than their desktop/laptop
• 1 in 3 spend more time on their tablet than watching TV
• Most people use tablet at night on weekdays

And what are people doing on their tablets?

• Playing Games – 84%
• Searching for Information – 78%
• Emailing – 74%
• Reading the News – 61%
• Accessing a Social Network – 56%
• Consuming Entertainment – 51%
• Reading e-books – 46%
• Shopping Online – 42%
• Other – 19%

Take some time and read the full presentation here.

Interesting article posted yesterday at ReadWriteWeb about the future of “checking in.” You remember all the fanfare last year don’t you? Foursquare, Gowalla and others were all the rage. Facebook and Google integrated the ability to check in.

But where has all that gone and what are the current trends? Mark Watkins explores this in his article 2011: The Year the Check-in Died. He looks at the current numbers, reasons it is going to falter and things that may be able to save it.

Various outlets including the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Google is making some changes to YouTube. The changes include overhauling the homepage and rolling out a series of premium channels which will include professionally produced originalcontent.

Lots of people tend to forget about the importance of YouTube. YouTube is not only a place to see a college kid pulling a prank. It is one of the most used search engines in the world. It has long been the go to place to search for video clips or to host video content for your web site.

But this move seems to indicate that Google is trying to position itself to deal with the changing way people watch television and video content.  In a world with Netflix, Hulu and AppleTV, Google’s changes to YouTube seem to indicate that they too want to get involved in this evolution.

There’s a report out of the UK this morning that Twitter may introduce new branded pages that would be similar to Facebook. These would potentially allow companies and organizations to encourage users to engage with them on Twitter.

This is one of several options Twitter is exploring to increase revenue.

I have been asked many times about what the best time to tweet is. Some are convinced that evenings are best. One person told me that Wednesday mornings between 8:00 am and 10:00 am was scientifically proven to the best – but they couldn’t find the article.

Dan Zarrella is the kind of guy that really tries to figure this stuff out and uses real numbers to get there. Now, I must admit that I don’t always agree with him but I attribute that more to my experience with specific clients than to an overall disagreement with his findings. Some of his conclusions:

• Tweeting  more frequently leads to more followers but the opposite is true with Facebook.
• Tweeting later in the day and later in the week results in more retweets
• Click-through rates decline as you tweet more links in an hour.  If you send more than six links in an hour, click-throughs drop dramatically.

If you have a chance, you can view the slides from his March 30, 2011 presentation after the jump.

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Facebook will now allow users to convert their profile into a business page. They’ve even set up a Help Center on this specific topic. This should help all those people that set up their business as a user and built content and “friends” and really could not figure out how to convert over to business page and turn all those friends into fans – I meant Likes…