It’s the most wonderful – and probably most stressful – time of the year! Some of us are busy preparing meals to share at family gatherings. Others are anticipating the moment they’ll reveal that perfect gift to their special someone. There are even some of us still putting game faces on to soldier through the tumultuous crowds of last minute shoppers at the mall.

Hopefully by now you are able to put aside your shopping list (and whatever stress comes with it) to simply enjoy the holiday season. If not, however, you can rely on the resources available to you in the BOTW Directory for a little guidance when it comes to finishing your holiday to-do list in a timely rather than frantic fashion.

Planning a big meal to celebrate this year? Find sites that share full collections of Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa recipes for every part of your dinner, from appetizers to desserts. Overachievers in the kitchen this year can even get a jumpstart on planning a New Year’s Eve menu with direct advice from BOTW-approved recipe sites.

Finding your decorations lackluster, but can’t bear to hunt through the remaining scraps at the mall? Now is no time to panic. Instead, turn to BOTW to find easy, family-friendly arts & crafts projects to spruce up your home. Believe it or not, last minute shoppers: there are even a few online retailers listed in the directory still offering options for guaranteed shipping by Christmas day.

Perhaps you are one of the lucky few finding themselves with free time over the next few days. The holiday-themed sites listed in the Blogs Directory can keep you entertained with retellings of past holiday experiences – the good, the bad, and the funny – while you wait for the rest of your family to put the finishing touches on their holiday preparations.

Whether your remaining plans involve nary a free moment, or you’re just trying to kill what time is left before the feast is served and eggnog is poured, take advantage of the resources in the BOTW Directory to help you keep the cheer in this most festive time of year.

Most importantly, from all of us here at Best of the Web, have a happy holiday!

Throughout the 1990s, as the Internet grew more popular among consumers, it became clear that a business without a website couldn’t remain relevant. Now, in the social media age, it’s equally clear that a business’s absence on major social networks is an indication of irrelevance. Knowing that social networks can boost profits, increase brand recognition, and improve customer retention, savvy businesses now face a new question: Which platforms produce the most valuable results in exchange for the time and energy used to optimize brand profiles?

Based on a survey recently conducted by Ask Your Target Market (AYTM), the answer is, without a doubt, Facebook. The survey results displayed not only that more Internet users have Facebook than Twitter accounts, but also that Facebook users are much more engaged with brands.

While 29% of Twitter users follow a brand, more than half of all Facebook users like a brand. Consequently, Facebook users more often mention brands in status updates and share stories from liked brand pages. On both platforms, user feedback shared about brands is generally positive; however, Facebook users are 50% more likely to share solely positive feedback. If a user dislikes a brand or their business practices, the brand is more likely to be ignored than mentioned negatively on Facebook. On the other hand, Twitter users, particularly males, tend to be more critical and include more brand mentions with negative feedback.

The survey also found that 80% of users who like or follow a brand on any of these platforms primarily do so for short updates that include exclusive discounts and promotions. Although 8% of users said company news updates held their interest, this topic was also rated the least preferred type of content from brand pages. Audio updates, or podcasts, are least liked among fans on Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, users are evidently neutral about visual updates such as video clips and links to YouTube content, rating them as entertaining as they are irritating.

Facebook, the original social networking platform, is so far the champion of brand page success; however, the results of AYTM’s survey makes it clear that having brand representation across multiple platforms is essential in order to maintain relevance among consumers. Facebook and Twitter currently lead the social networks in brand representation, leaving Google+ off the radar for the time being; however, businesses can benefit by signing up for Google+ now, as Best of the Web has, and growing their brand page as the platform itself expands into what many anticipate will revolutionize the world of social networking.

It began with Facebook‘s launching of the Timeline layout, and announcing the Open Graph project still in Beta. Then, as mentioned previously here, YouTube underwent its biggest redesign in an effort to personalize the experience for users while integrating more social features. Now, Twitter has continued the trend.

Yesterday the social networking site announced plans for a redesign that, like YouTube, aims to create a more personalized experience for users. Unlike the community video site’s plans, however, Twitter’s update will include big changes for brands. Some say this redesign was strategically launched to compete with Google+ in this regard, and that putting brands in the spotlight will even lead to a decrease in popularity for brand pages on Facebook.

Twitter’s new brand pages are currently available only to a select few (its 21 advertising partners including American Express, Best Buy, Jet Blue, Bing, and McDonald’s) and will slowly be made available to others over the next few weeks. Those with personal accounts can get early access to the new Twitter through Android and iPhone applications, or on the mobile site. Updates to the desktop version of personal accounts will, like the brand pages, be rolled out to users in the coming weeks.

The biggest changes to Twitter for all users, brands and personal accounts alike, include four new tabs: Home, where users can find all the most recent updates from followers; Connect (@), where users can see direct Tweets and replies; Discover (#), where users can search for terms and find trends; Profile, where basic user information can now be elaborated upon in depth. The promise of more personalized features is delivered through the Discover and Profile tabs. Before conducting a search, users will automatically find information based on previous Tweets in the Discover tab. Under the Profile tab, larger avatars are enabled and users can access direct messages, follower lists, favorites, and photos.

Brands will now be able to post a Promoted Tweet free of charge. The Promoted Tweet is placed at the top of the page’s timeline in order to feature important updates directed towards followers or the general public. Other changes seen in this new version of Twitter include a reversal of the standard two-column layout. The timeline of updates from followers previously took up the majority of the screen from the left column. The new Twitter, however, mimics the layouts of new YouTube and original Facebook, placing profile and static information in the left column, and the constantly updating timeline on the right.

The aim of this new design, besides encouraging a more personalized user experience and implementing enhanced brand pages, is to simplify the way users search and follow people and topics on Twitter. The streamlined layout and the addition of the four essential tabs make this update easy to adjust to for existing users, while giving the site a more user-friendly appeal for newcomers. Stay tuned for Best of the Web’s enhanced brand page on Twitter as soon as it becomes available. Be sure to follow us @BOTW for daily updates, @BestOfTheWeb for company information, and @BOTWLocal for news from the Local Directory.

If you have yet to visit YouTube today, consider this your notice: the community video site has completely revamped their design. Users who are not registered on YouTube will notice these changes on the front page, where the display layout is now reminiscent of a social network news feed. This has to do with the overall aim of the redesign: more personalized video searching, viewing, and sharing. Is there a better way to personalize a user’s social interaction with a website than to make it look more like every other social networking website?

Once you adapt to the visual changes on the homepage enough to log into your YouTube account, you’ll find little use for the site’s search tool. The site now incorporates a comprehensive navigation tool, allowing users to browse and filter through subscriptions, recommendations, or view the most popular videos site-wide. The “Add Channel” option allows members to find popular channels in an array of categories and easily subscribe to them without touching the search bar.

YouTube members can still click their username at the top of the screen to access personal favorites, likes, history, and playlists. New activity from a user’s subscriptions, however, now appears in a fashion similar to Facebook’s news feed. This simplifies viewing the information users already had access to. Rather than visiting a channel and seeing that user’s recent comments and newly added friends, they appear on the homepage, but these updates can be hidden in favor of displaying only newly uploaded content.

YouTube’s new focus on a more personalized experience plays its part in the homepage display. The default view of updates from subscriptions is determined by what users have previously viewed and liked. The navigation bar gives users the option to view videos shared by friends on Google+ and Facebook. YouTube members can also personalize their channel through some new template options that publicly display their social interactions on the site.

Regardless of what prompted this user-oriented redesign, it makes sense for YouTube, which enabled sharing capabilities on videos long ago, to streamline their newest social features. Internet users are constantly seeking ways to simplify and customize the stream of information they receive online. Being new and flashy is appealing for a short while, but members of the Internet community cherish the underlying consistency of their favorite websites. Therefore, although some might consider it unoriginal, mimicking a layout that most users have grown familiar with through social platforms is a clever balance of newness & stability for a site aiming to encourage personalization and socialization.