20% of Tweets are Directly About Products

About 20 percent of tweets contain requests for product information or responses to the requests, according to Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State.

"People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services," said Jansen. "Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services."

Also, while many marketers worry about what people may say about their firms, "a lot of the brand comments were positive," Jansen says.

Jansen, along with IST doctoral student Mimi Zhang, undergraduate student Kate Sobel and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, investigated micro-communicating as an electronic word-of-mouth medium, using Twitter as the platform. Their results were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.

The researchers examined half a million tweets during the study. The team looked for tweets mentioning a brand and why the brand was mentioned -- to inform others, express a view on the brand or something else -- and found that people were using tweets to connect with the products.

"Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge and customer relationship," say Jansen.

And though some are uncertain about Twitter's enduring value, Jansen sees Twitter succeeding, because people and businesses are starting to make profits from it, using it as a creative way to market their products.

"It may be right up there with email in terms of its communication impact," Jansen also argues.

Who Uses Social Networks? Everybody, says Forrester Research

Who uses social networks? "Everybody," says Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran. Adults younger than 35 are nearly universally involved. Only three percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 10 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds are socially "inactive."

What’s more, a staggering 89 percent read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch user-generated video, read forums or customer ratings and reviews. Nearly the same percentage maintain profiles on social networks and visit social networking sites.

Almost half create content, far higher than any other age group.

Adults ages 35 to 54 rapidly increased their participation on social networking sites Compared with last year, this group grew its participation by more than 60 percent, and now more than half of adults ages 35 to 44 are in social networks.

About 38 percent of adults ages 45 to 54 use social network sites regularly. About 20 percent of users in these age brackets produce content. About 70 percent read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch user-generated video, read online forums or user reviews.

About 70 percent of online adults ages 55 and older use social tools at least once a month. About 26 percent use social networks and 12 percent create social content.

What Makes a Business "Social"?

For the past couple of years, businesses have been trying to figure out what it means to be "social," to create "communities" of users, prospects and customers.

The concept is hard to understand, in some ways. Every business satisfies some understood end user want or need, selling products or services that are an answer for those needs or wants. So social networking is seen as a better way to connect with people, and buildconnections between people, in an environment that is conducive to the company’s success.

Some of us call this a shift from "push" marketing to "pull" marketing, from "promoting products" to "inviting people to be part of a conversation about shared interests."

Jahin Mahindra points to Chick-Fil-A as an example. The firm knew it would have a hard time competing against other giants such as Kentucky Fried Chicken. So instead of "selling chicken," Chick-Fil-A created a gathering spot for mothers with children.

Almost all Chick-Fil-A buildings are constructed with indoor play areas for children. Wi-Fi has been added to many locations to ensure the parents can flip open the laptop at the table while junior plays in the jungle gym. Employees routinely pass through and refill drinks or even clear tables as if users were dining in a more formal establishment.

What this has done, in many Chick-Fil-A locations, is create a place for the desperate housewives to gather and nosh on weekday afternoons, Mahindra says.

"It’s not about the food; It’s about the social environment created that is conducive to buying the food," says Mahindra.

"If you have a location, make visiting your location a social event," he says. "Why do you think many bookstores now have coffee shops built in?"

"If you’re a meeting place as well as a place to buy things, people will frequent your location for reasons other than buying stuff," he says.

That's admittedly a tougher thing to do in a business-to-business setting than in a business-to-consumer environment, but the principles are the same.

"Teens Don't Tweet?" Not True

One of the most actively discussed topics in the Twitterverse over the past couple months has been the idea that teens don’t tweet as much as older demographics, and certainly not as actively as teens who use other popular social networking sites. But that might have changed, abruptly over the last few months.

According to new data from comScore, younger users – specifically those in the 12-17 and 18-24 year-old demographics – are Twitter’s fastest growing audience segment.

The share of visitors to Twitter under the age of 35 is increasing at a breakneck pace. The most notable positive shifts are evident among the 12-17 and 18-24 year old segments, which are coming at the expense of the 35+ segments, comScore says.

“Teens don’t tweet”? In just a few months, that seems to have changed.

Social Networking Now Nearly Universal

More than 80 percent of online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month, say researchers at Forrester Research.

About 24 percent of online users create content, while 37 percent post responses. About 21 percent use real simple syndication. Some 51 percent maintain personal profiles. Fully 73 percent of online users read blogs, watch online videos or listen to podcasts.

Among online users 35 or younger, social networking is nearly universal, with 90 percent participating in some way. Among those 55 and over, about 66 percent now are participating.

Are Younger Users Cooling to Social Networking?

U.K. communications regulator Ofcom says the percentage of 15- to 24-year-olds with a profile on a social networking site has dropped for the first time, from 55 percent at the start of last year to 50 percent this year.

Some have suggested this means younger users are abandoning sites such as Facebook that no longer are attractive now that their parents use the sites as well.

The other explanation is that users are starting to settle in at fewer sites, says comScore.

Younger users are increasingly moving towards Facebook as their primary social networking destination, and using other sites less.

Inertia A Challenge for Yahoo, Microsoft

It's always hard to get users to change their habits. That is one reason media and content companies spend so much time and money on promotion and marketing. And it appears that applies to the ways people find content as well.

According to comScore, one obstacle the Yahoo!-Microsoft partnership faces is changing user habits. The reason is simply habit. Users who search on Google tend to stick with Google for most searches, comScore notes. About 69 percent of users conducted their searches on Google-owned sites.

Users of the engines at the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft Sites conducted 32.6 percent of their searches on the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft Sites, but a much higher 60.7 percent of their searches on Google sites.

In the content business as well as in the real world, friction and inertia require inputs of energy to "force" objects to change direction.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/8/comScore_Study_Highlights_Challenges_and_Opportunities_for_Microsoft-Yahoo!_Search_Partnership

ESPN to Limit Social Networking

New technologies, especially those that arrive in the enterprise space from the consumer space, eventually reach some point where corporate managers feel the need to establish policies that serve enterprise business requirements.

In the latest example, ESPN has issued 12 guidelines to its employees about social networking.

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites.

They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

“The first and only priority is to serve ESPN-sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content,” the new rules say.

Violating the new guidelines could lead to suspension or dismissal.

Similar struggles occurred when mobiles started appearing in the workplace, when email started being used and when Web access moved into the workplace as well. In many cases, employees tried blanket prohibitions, before gradually figuring out how to protect business information and interests while still allowing employees to use the new tools.

The same will happen with social networking tools.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/sports/05espn.html?_r=4&ref=sports

Facebook Can Get You Fired

About eight percent of corporate executives surveyed by Proofpoint say they have terminated

employees for disclosing confidential, protected or simply embarassing information put up on socialnetworking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, up from four percent who reported doing so in 2008.

About 17 percent of respondents said they had incidents of that nature this year, compared to 12 percent in 2008.

But email still seems to be a more-common reason for terminations of this sort. About 43 percent of respondents reported they had investigated an email-based leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months.

Nearly a third of them, 31 percent, terminated an employee for violating email policies in the same period, up from 26 percent in 2008.

About 18 percent of respondents say they had investigated a data loss event from a blog or message board in the past 12 months. About 17 percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly nine percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation, up from a disciplinary rate of 11 percent in 2008 and a termination rate of six percent in 2008.

More respondents also reported investigating video-related exposure events. This year, about 18 percent have had to do so, up from 12 percent in 2008.

About 15 percent of respondents have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing or posting policies in the past 12 months, while eight percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation.

Even short message services like texts and Twitter pose a risk. About 13 percent of respondents

investigated an exposure event involving mobile or Web-based short message services in the past 12 months.

About 38 percent of respondents say they now read or analyze outbound email before it is sent.

As more U.S. companies reported their business was affected by the exposure of sensitive or

embarrassing information (34 percent, up from 23 percent in 2008), an increasing number say they employ staff to read or otherwise analyze the contents of outbound email (38 percent, up from 29 percent in 2008).

In addition, companies are regularly ordered to produce employee email as part of legal actions,

exposing its contents to outside scrutiny. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) of large US companies report that employee email was subpoenaed in the past 12 months.

24% of U.S. Mobile Users Possibly Are No Longer Voice Centric

About 13 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners say they "never" make calls on their devices. Altogether, about 24 percent make calls once a week or less, according to Lightspeed Research. That's a shocking statistic for devices known as "mobile phones."

One might draw several conclusions from the results. It is possible that, for many users, the mobile is helpful, but not something that adds value on a daily basis. The other likely conclusion to be drawn is that text communications are, for many users, a preferred or reasonable substitute for voice, as email has displaced a huge amount of voice communications.

If so, the findings indicate the clear emergence of usage patterns centered around texting or mobile Internet activities rather than voice, and the importance for mobile service providers of migrating revenue models to primary reliance on data-related services and applications.

In many cases, it would seem to make sense to lead with data plans and features, and then add on voice only afterwards. It also would seem to make sense to plans and devices specifically optimized for text and Web applications.

That would be a reversal of historic practice, where voice plans lead and text plans or data plans are an add on.

But the practice would not be without precedent. Most BlackBerry users likely are more interested in mobile email than mobile voice. They want the voice feature, as many users buy primarily for voice, but want the texting feature. Most iPhone users likely value mobile Web access as much as voice or text messaging.

The point is that mobility has become a multi-product business, with lots of different ways to create devices and service plans that appeal to different user populations.

Social Networking Ad Spend up 13 Percent in 2010

After about a three percent dip in 2009, U.S. ad spending on social networks is expected to climb 13 percent in 2010, with another eight percent rise in 2011, researchers at eMarketer say.

Nokia, AT&T to Unveil Phone for Social Networking

AT&T plans to sell the Nokia Surge, a handset optimized for social networking and messaging, starting July 19, 2009. AT&T will sell the Surge for $79.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a mail-in rebate. Without the contract, the phone will sell for $130.

The phone will use an advanced Web browser with Flash support to view sites in full HTML or watch YouTube videos. Additionally, AT&T will supply the phone with their popular network features, including AT&T Navigator for GPS navigation, AT&T Music for Napster music support, and AT&T Video Share for one-way video conference-like calling.

Nokia is not positioning this phone against their high-end Nseries or Eseries smart phone devices, but more as a mid-range smart phone, which many of us would argue is the sweet spot for users who are big on social networking but unable or unwilling to spend much more for a smart phone.

The Symbian S60-based smart phone features a full QWERTY keyboard, a browser with Flash and supports IM, text or e-mail, sending multimedia messages, AT&T Video Share and updating and connecting to popular social networks.

The Surge also features a 2.0 megapixel, GPS capability, AT&T mobile music and AT&T video share. Through the pre-installed JuiceCaster users can share videos and pictures from the Surge to sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

The "Nokia Surge hits the sweet spot between a quick messaging phone and a smartphone because of its low-price and strong feature set," says Michael Woodward,AT&T VP.

The Surge also features a microSDHC expansion slot and Bluetooth with stereo audio support.

Shift to Online, Mobile, Social Marketing Will Slam Traditional Media

Forrester Research predicts that interactive marketing in the United States will near $55 billion and represent 21 percent of all marketing spend by 2014 (click on image for larger view).

Search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing are the categories that will benefit.

More significantly however, overall advertising in traditional media will continue to decline in favor of less expensive, more effective interactive tools and services. With dollars moving out of traditional media toward less expensive and more efficient interactive tools, marketers will actually need less money to accomplish their current advertising goals.

The majority of current online budgets appear to be earmarked for search marketing, even though the search landscape is rapidly evolving to include real-time updates and also social, community and micro networks.

Mobile marketing spending will grow at a 27 percent rate over the next five years, reaching $1,274 million in 2014.

Social media marketing will increase to $3,113 million in 2014 from $716 million in 2009, with a 34 percent growth rate.

Owned social media assets (like internal blogs, community sites) are really the only emerging media getting traction in today's economic climate, Forrester says.

Children Do Not Like Being on the Same Social Networks as Their Parents

Apparently, children do not especially like belonging to the same social networks as their parents. Or so it would seem, based on 2009 Facebook demographics.

Though Facebook users grew 513 percent in the 55 and older demographic, usage by college and high school age users dropped 20 percent, says iStrategyLabs.

If you have, or have had, teenagers, you are not surprised by this finding.

Click the image for a larger view.

Online Usage: Social Networking Grows Most

Users spend more time using social networking sites, less time on communications and more time on content sites in early 2009, compared to 2003, according to the Online Publishers Association.

Users also spend slightly more time using search and slightly less time on commerce sites.

It isn't yet clear how mobile Internet time spent matches up, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the trends should roughly match.

Not many of us would be surprised if use of social networking sites was higher on mobile devices, as a percentage of total mobile Internet time spent.

Click the image to see a larger view.

Has Twitter Growth Suddenly Flattened?

There's something unusual going on with Twitter traffic, it appears. Unique Visitors to twitter.com increased to 19.4 Million in April, surpassing the New York Times for the first time.

Oprah’s first tweet on April 17, 2009 delivered the highest Daily Reach ever to the site, with nearly two percent of all Americans online visiting Twitter.

But there also is data suggesting Twitter traffic has flattened, growing just 1.47 percent (up to 19,728,619 monthly visitors) in May 2009, according to Compete.com.

One possible explanation is that the pool of people with an immediate resonance with Twitter already have joined. Monthly visits to Twitter have increased by 6.99 percent, up to 134,536,240. That might be explained by heavier use among current users, since new user growth apparently has flattened.

10% of Tweeters Produce 90% of Tweets

The top 10 percent of prolific Twitter users account for over 90 percent of tweets, say researchers at Harvard Business School. So what does that mean? Maybe less than you would think.

Some will argue it shows Twitter actually isn't actually as popular as it seems. And at least one other study shows a very-high churn rate of new Tweeters.

"Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent," says David Martin, Nielsen Wireless VP.

Unless that churn rate changes, Twitter ultimately will reach only about 10 percent of Internet users, Nielsen Wireless predicts. A company, service or application cannot churn 60 percent a month and expect any different conclusion.

Twitter's big problem seems to be that so many people do not find it useful. The fact that 90 percent of Tweets come from 10 percent of users is in fact not surprising or unusual.

Others will suggest that the highly-skewed tweeting pattern means Twitter activity is more like a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network. But something similar to this is true of blog posting as well. A small percentage of people supply most of the posts.

A typical social networking site might have the top 10 percent of users account for 30 percent of all activity as well.

At Wikipedia, the top 15 percent of the most prolific editors account for 90

percent of Wikipedia's edits.

The point is that it is user churn, not the disparate distribution of tweets, that are of significance.

The Pareto principle, colloquially referred to as the "80-20 rule" or the "long tail,"

occurs widely in both human and natural domains.

Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days. That would not be unusual if tweets follow the Pareto rule, and they seem to.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.h

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Is Twitter Really a Late Boomer Technology?

Only 22 percent of Generation Y consumers between the ages of 18 ad 24 are using Twitter, according to a new survey by  the Participatory Marketing Network.

Separate data from Nielsen Online shows that the single biggest Twitter cohort is users between 35 and 49.

Social Networking Explodes 83%, Facebook 700%

U.S. users increased their time using social networking apps 83 percent last year, according to Nielsen Online. In fact, total minutes spent on Facebook increased nearly 700 percent year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009.

One wonders what all those users are doing less, as they network more. Even if one assumes multitasking is going on, attention and time still are linear. People can't do more of one thing withoug doing less of another, or at least are attention sharing to the point where it is questionable how much actual attention is being paid to something that is "available and in use."

INQ Mobile to Launch Twitter Phone

Cell phone maker INQ Mobile plans to introduce a "Twitter phone" for the Christmas selling season. The device is intended for sale at prices less than $140, and feature an Internet-based Twitter client, says Frank Meehan, INQ CEO.

The phone will use Internet connections for sending Tweets, not text messages. The idea is to spur usage by eliminating the text messaging charges, and using the mobile phone's data plan, instead.

INQ in 2007 had introduced a mobile device optimized for use of Skype. The move indicates a developing niche in mobile devices and applications: social networking as a lead application.

In a sense, you can think of the BlackBerry as an "email phone" and the iPhone as an "Internet phone." INQ earlier this year also introduced what some call the "Facebook phone," as it is optimized for instant access to Facebook, Skype and other social networking applications.

And the optimization might be working. Traffic on INQ1 "Facebook phones" are three to four times higher than from other phones, says Marc Allera, 3 UK director of sales and marketing.

About 65 percent useFacebook on a regular basis while 50 percent use Windows Live Messenger regularly.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE5513L820090602?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true