Julianne Pepitone at CNNMoney shares traffic stats from Hitwise showing that Facebook was the most visited site in the U.S. for the week ending March 13th, beating out top-seat Google for the first time for a full weeklong period.

Mobile App Market to Surge to $17.5 Billion by 2012

Stan Schroeder at Mashable shares the findings of a recent study showing that “mobile app downloads should jump from 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012.”

Facebook One Step Closer To Real Social Search?

Raj Dash at All Facebook tells us about an upgrade to Facebook’s search feature that includes more results that are related to your social graph on the network, in addition to “globally relevant results.”

During his keynote address yesterday at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Twitter cofounder Ev Williams announced @anywhere.

Essentially, @anywhere will enable users to tweet from any website, allowing simple sharing of any piece of content that a Twitter user wants to highlight. Williams goes into a little more detail in a blog post:

“We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com.”

Williams says that the only action site owners will need to take is dropping in “a few lines of javascript.”

There’s no word of a launch date, but a few sites have already signed up to participate: Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

The question will be whether most site owners are willing to adopt @anywhere. If it’s a simple and secure process, and non intrusive to the overall user experience, then why not?

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch tells us that Brightcove, an enterprise-level video publishing platform, plans to announce signing EMI Music to its client roster.

Foursquare Hits 347,000 Check-ins In A Day

Samuel Axon at Mashable tells us about location-sharing service Foursquare’s record-setting day, with nearly 350,000 check-ins on Saturday, mainly due to the SXSW festival.

Big Changes Are Coming to Digg: More Power to Publishers, Less Power to Top Diggers

Frederic Lardinois at ReadWriteWeb previews upcoming changes to the social news sharing site, which were announced over the weekend.

Photo Credit: Nick McGlynn

The South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) festival officially kicked-off today in the Texas state capital of Austin.

If you are unfamiliar with SXSW, here’s a blurb from its website:

SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.

A little social network company called Twitter received an enormous amount of attention after its unveiling at the festival three years ago. And just 12 months ago, location-based service Foursquare continues to enjoy its time in the limelight after the company was showcased.

This year, General Motor’s Chevrolet wanted to partake in the fun. Not only is the company a major sponsor, the Detroit-based automaker decided to become part of the action too. According to a USA Today article, here are just a few of Chevrolet’s SXSW social media campaigns:

- Chevrolet partnered with Austin-based location service Gowalla. Gowalla (a competitor of Foursquare) users who “check in” to various Austin venues, can try to win virtual goods, which can then be redeemed for free Chevy rides.

- People who download the Chevrolet augmented reality iReveal application to their smartphone can unlock 3-D models of Chevrolet vehicles.

- Chevrolet also supplied eight vehicles to popular bloggers and social media users who documented their travels from their hometowns to the festival. Before the roadtrip, which started Monday, Twitter users submitted ideas to @chevrolet for the travelers to participate in while on the road and document on their social media channels. One featured traveler, Nick McGlynn, who traveled from New York City to Texas, uploaded videos, photos, and text updates to his blog.

Chevrolet came up with very cool and innovative ideas for a company (and a city) that could certainly use the Texas sunshine.

Barb Dybwad at Mashable shares an in-depth interview with MySpace Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones who are planning to bring the ailing social network back to life.

Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses

Nick Bilton at The New York Times tells us about a new analytics dashboard that Foursquare is planning to roll out to business owners in the very near future.

Facebook’s Coming Location Service: Feature for Users, Platform for Apps

Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook points out that next month Facebook is planning to launch a social check-in feature, similar to Foursquare, that will allow users to share location information with their friends.

Unfortunately, cheaters may be prospering on Foursquare.

These cheaters could very well be uncrowning your coveted Mayor status at your favorite Starbucks. They may be racking up all the points and kicking your butt on this week’s leaderboard. They may be ‘checking-in’ all over town swiping up badges, all from the comfort of their couch.

Last Month, the Los Angeles Times published “Confessions of a Foursquare cheater” about a California man who thought it would be funny to become the ‘Mayor’ of the North Pole. From that idea, Jim Bumgardner (the cheater) later wrote about 10 scripts that would check him into different venues every 20 minutes.

Ok, so being the mayor of the North Pole is kind of a cool idea, but as Bumgardner stated in the article, Foursquare should be accountable for its security.

“My goal was to eventually reveal my findings, so Foursquare would be motivated to tighten their security. But obviously I was having a bit of fun during my land grab.”

According to Bumgardner’s blog, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley commented on Bumgardner’s post regarding his North Pole mayor crown. Crowley states:

“On one hand, we want everyone to be able to check-in from anywhere on any device. We’ve never liked the idea of creating a service that only your coolest friends with the coolest phones could use so we made sure any user on any phone would be able to check-in (SMS. mobile_web)

On the other hand, the social game really works best when you can rely on GPS accuracy to police the checkins – if you’re not really there, you shouldn’t get credit for being there, right?

But what’s more valuable – a system in which everyone can play & participate? Or a system that places emphasis on the validity of each checkin/post at the expense of all inclusiveness? I think the thing that makes fourssquare so interesting – and yet so difficult – is that it wants to be both things at the same time. And if you survey users, just as many use it for finding their friends as they do for trying to get points / badges / mayorships.

At foursquare, I think we still have some thinking to do on this. We do see a lot of fake checkins (yes, we log and flag them… i think 2-3% of total checkins were ‘fake’ last time we checked) and there are a few bad apples that like to steal mayorships from their couch. We’ve been punting on addressing this because it requires removing some of the magic from foursquare (mayors, points, badges) for users with non-GPS phones.”

What are your thoughts about Foursquare cheaters? Should Foursquare become more accountable with its security, or keep it as is?

Stan Schroeder at Mashable shares traffic and user stats from Tumblr showing strong growth for the micro-blogging platform, in addition to a couple details on Tumblr’s soon-to-be-released revenue generating features.

Foursquare Just Made Your Location History A Lot More Interesting

MG Siegler at TechCrunch reviews a new Foursquare feature that adds a “new layer to your location history data.”

Facebook’s iPhone Usage Jumps 20 Percent In Under A Week

Nick O’Neill at All Facebook takes a closer look at a significant jump in mobile Facebook usage over the past week.

Utpal Dholakia and Emily Durham wanted to explore this void and to find out if businesses really influence consumers when they launch Facebook pages. Dholakia is an associate professor of management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, and Durham is a Jones School alumna and founder of Restaurant Connections, a Houston‐based restaurant consultancy.

The duo decided to conduct a little experiment to see if one Houston-based company could influence its customers offline using Facebook. The company, Dessert Gallery, is a popular bakery and cafe chain.

The team surveyed Dessert Gallery’s 13,000+ mailing list customers, asking their opinions about the bakery and their shopping habits – nearly 700 responded. They then launched the bakery’s Facebook page and invited all mailing list customers to become fans. The chain then updated its page several times per week with contests, promotions, photos, etc.

After three months, the researchers resurveyed the mailing list customers – this time over 1,000 responded. Dholakia and Durham reported their research in Harvard Business Review. Here’s what they found:

> Dessert Galleries Facebook fans increased their store visits per month after becoming fans and generated more positive word of mouth than nonfans.

> Facebook fans went to Dessert Gallery 20% more often than nonfans and gave the store the highest share of their overall dining-out dollars.

> Facebook fans were the most likely to recommend Dessert Gallery to friends and had the highest average Net Promoter Score* — 75, compared with 53 for Facebook users who were not fans and 66 for customers not on Facebook.

> Dessert Gallery Facebook fans also reported significantly greater emotional attachment to the chain — 3.4 on a four-point scale, compared with 3.0 for other customers.

> And lastly, Facebook fans were the most likely to say they chose Dessert Gallery over other establishments whenever possible.

Dholakia and Durham noted that the “results suggest intriguing possible correlations rather than definitive causalities.”

Dholakia stated in a Rice University press release that “we must be cautious in interpreting the study’s results. The fact that only about 5 percent of the firm’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months indicates that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook. Social-media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”

Interestingly, Dholakia and Durham’s Harvard Business Review article states that only  2.1% of the customers on Dessert Gallery’s mailing list became fans within three months. I’m unclear as to why there is a discrepancy.

Either way, there is a strong correlation between Facebook business page fans and their loyalty to the business. It seems clear that businesses need a Facebook presence to develop deeper bonds with their clientele, which company websites can certainly lack.

Has your business seen this type of response after launching your Facebook page?

* “The Net Promoter Score, or NPS®, is a straightforward metric that holds companies and employees accountable for how they treat customers,” according to NetPromoter.com.

While Apple’s iPhone remains the obvious leader in this space, Google has made a considerable impact in a very short time span. Also, the Quantcast chart below shows Blackberry’s RIM OS reversing its recent downward trend.

Regardless which operating system is in the lead, it’s good to see some healthy competition on the rise in the mobile operating system space. It will only lead to greater ingenuity and more choices for consumers.

Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook serves up informative insights into the past, present and future of Facebook’s revenue growth potential.

Toyota Turns To Twitter To Repair Its Image

Leena Rao at TechCrunch takes a closer look at the ways Toyota is using Twitter to help regain its composure after the auto maker’s extensive vehicle recalls.

Vimeo Adds Video Analytics Suite

Samuel Axon at Mashable previews Vimeo’s new analytics package called ‘Plus Stats’ which is now available to paying members of the video sharing site.