'Money For Nothin'...:' Facebook 'Likes' More Profitable Than 'Tweets?'

Who's up, who's down? The business of measuring and monetizing social media connections is still in its infancy. New data emerge almost daily touting one or the other. In the report below, an on-line service for conference promoters claims more tickets were sold more profitably via Facebook than Twitter. This result confirms earlier research showing that Facebook is the most valuable social medium...so far. Which is sort of like saying a five year old child is a more valuable business generator than her peers...so far.

Michael Sebastian has the data in Ragan's Daily:

"A new study says Facebook “likes” are more profitable than tweets—but don’t go stripping all the Twitter share buttons off your site yet.

The study was conducted by Eventbrite, an online service for conference promoters, which tracked how many tickets to events were sold via tweets compared with Facebook “likes.”

The result?

“Over the last six months, sharing activity on Facebook equaled almost 4 times the amount of sharing on Twitter,” Tamara Mendelsohn, the director of marketing at Eventbrite, wrote on the company’s blog.

Specifically, a Facebook “like,” which Mendelsohn said is the “closest comparison to a tweet,” reaped on average $1.34 in tickets sales. Tweets drove an average of $.80.

“We’ve also seen the value of the Facebook ‘Like’ steadily increase as adoption of it has taken off,” she added.

Eventbrite used in-house social analytics tools for the study.

Of course, the Eventbrite study focuses on a narrow sector of social media—and only 1 percent of people who visited an events page shared it with friends; 10 percent who bought a ticket did the same—but it does add fuel to the argument that Facebook is a more valuable tool than Twitter for brands.

A 2010 study found that the average value of a Facebook fan of the social network’s 20 biggest corporate brands is worth $136.38. Meanwhile, a report from last year on Social Network Success said the value of a Twitter follower ranges from less than a penny to more than a hundred dollars.

In February, Gawker Media chief Nick Denton said that Facebook is the most important sharing tool for his blog sites—so important he stripped Twitter share from the stories