Archive for the ‘Reports’ Category

Online advertising network Chitika conducted a study exploring the interest areas of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Digg users by analyzing the sites that receive traffic from them. 47% of Twitter users are most interested in news while MySpace users prefer video game content.

Dan Freeman at ALA Techsource was kind enough to write up my Library Technology Report on mobile libraries with regard to my discussion of QR codes and their potential uses for libraries and Jason Griffey’s recent blog post about them. They have made the issue publicly available for a limited time via their new online archive, and I have made the pre-print of the report open access via E-LIS.

The NFI Research firm has issued a report listing the Top Public Libraries on Twitter. These are the libraries that are active, make frequent updates, have a good amount of followers, and use the tool to promote communication in their communities. Here are a few who made the list:

19,000+ Followers
1 New York Public Library New York, NY http://twitter.com/nypl

4,000+ Followers
2 Houston Public Library Houston, TX http://twitter.com/houstonlibrary

3,000+ Followers
3 Columbus Library Columbus, OH http://twitter.com/columbuslibrary

2,000+ Followers
4 Kansas City Public Library Kansas City, MO http://twitter.com/KCPubLibrary
5 Hennepin County Library Minneapolis, MN http://twitter.com/hclib
6 Cincinnati Library Cincinnati, OH https://twitter.com/cincylibrary

1,500+ Followers
7 Austin Public Library Austin, TX http://twitter.com/AustinPublicLib
8 Grand Rapids Public Library Grand Rapids, MI http://twitter.com/grpl
9 Boerne Library Boerne, TX http://twitter.com/BoerneLibrary

Twitter has reported that posting activity to the popular microblogging application has reached 50 million tweets per day, or an average of 600 tweets per second.

The folks at Royal Pingdom have conducted a study of 19 popular social network sites to determine the average age of users. According to their report, the dominant age group is between 35-44 which accounts for the largest distribution on 11 out of the 19 sites they surveyed. Here are some other interesting findings:

• The average social network user is 37 years old.
• LinkedIn, with its business focus, has a predictably high average user age; 44.
• The average Twitter user is 39 years old.
• The average Facebook user is 38 years old.

The folks at Creative Cloud have come up with some interesting stats about the popular microblogging application, Twitter. Here are a couple highlights:

• If you printed Twitter it would cover 350 million sheets of paper, which is 37 times the number of pages used in bills introduced in the United States Congress since 1955.
• If you printed Twitter and laid the pages end to end, they would stretch 60,763 miles or two and a half times around the earth.

via Mashable

The annual Horizon Report has been published by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). It profiles six new and emerging technologies which will impact education over the coming years. Here’s a brief recap of their findings:

Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobile Computing
• Open Content

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Electronic Books
• Simple Augmented Reality

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Visual Data Analysis

Should you share your link on Twitter or on Facebook? Which users click more and which spend more time once they’ve landed on your site? Digital Inspiration provides the answers in their post Sharing on Facebook vs. Sharing on Twitter which discusses new ShareThis statistics.

The 2009 EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee has identified five technology trends which impact higher education which include cyberinfrastructure and high-performance computing, open-source learning management systems, product managers in IT organizations, information resource management technologies for libraries, and IT service management. What Technology? Reflections on Evolving Services summarizes the key findings of the committee.

“These white papers address many other strategic areas for each evolving technology: key questions to ask; the implementation challenges; the major vendors and how to judge among them; how to proceed and the issues to be addressed; and the likely impacts in the next three to five years.”

The November 15th issue of Library Journal gives a roundup of America’s Star Libraries - a national rating of public libraries. America’s Star Libraries rates 7,268 public libraries, identifying 258 “best” libraries. This is the second round of ratings in 2009. All rankings are based on 2007 data from the IMLS. This detailed report ranks libraries by:

• Circulation per Capita
• Vists per Capita
• Program Attendance per Capita
• Internet Use per Capita
• LJ Index Rating

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb discusses several reports which show that Twitter is attracting a younger demographic in As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter. There are several interesting statistics included in this post such as: “Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace’s is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.”

“Facebook is getting old. No, people aren’t getting tired of it, it’s actually getting old, as in its population is aging. In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it’s 33, a good seven years older. That’s an interesting turn of events for a site once built for the exclusive use of college students. So where are today’s college students hanging out now? Well, to some extent, they’re still on Facebook, despite having to share the space with moms, dads, grandparents, and bosses. Surprisingly though, they’re also headed to another network you may have heard of: Twitter.”

Educause has published the annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology for 2009. Some of their key findings include:

• Desktop computer ownership has decreased 27% while laptop ownership increased nearly 23%.
• Despite the state of the economy 8 out of 10 freshman entered school with a laptop which was one year old or less.
• 9 out of 10 students use the college & university library website.
• Over 44% of students have contributed content to video websites, over 41% to wikis, and over 37% have contributed to blogs. 35% of students use podcasts.
• Social networking websites and text messaging were used by 9 out of 10 respondents.

Both Google and Microsoft Bing announced yesterday that they have partnered with Twitter to include their updates in all search results. According to All Things Digital, Microsoft has also reached an agreement with Facebook to provide real-time status updates in Bing’s search results as well. These new partnerships are particularly significant as the Pew Internet and American Life Project has recently reported that the number of people who now publish status updates has increased from 11% in December 2008 to 19% as of April 2009.

Technorati has published their annual State of the Blogosphere Report for 2009. The entire report will be released this week over five consecutive days. For this year’s study, Technorati took a closeup look at professional blogging and conducted interviews with several successful bloggers. Here’s a summary of what’s new for the 2009 report:

• “We took a deeper dive into the entire blogosphere, with a focus on professional bloggers
• Professional blogging activities
• Brands in the blogosphere
• Monetization
• Twitter & micro-blogging
• Bloggers impact on US and World events
• Our largest survey ever conducted by market research firm Penn Schoen and Berland: 2,900 bloggers
• Interviews and profiles of some of the leading professional bloggers
• In addition to Technorati index data, we’re also looking at data from search tool provider Lijit.”"

PR firm Edelman has published a white paper titled Engaging the New Influencers wrapping up the key sessions and takeaways of the June New Media Academic Summit held in Washington D.C..

“Edelman convened more than 100 professors of communications, journalism, business and public relations from across North America and Europe to discuss how companies, organizations and media effectively engage their stakeholders through social media. The sessions were led by more than 50 practitioners who guide digital communications strategies within leading organizations – including AstraZeneca, CNN, eBay, Environmental Defense Fund, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Starbucks, The Lance Armstrong Foundation, UPS, and Whirlpool, among others…This report provides best practices and actionable insights into how to engage employees, consumers, investors, regulators and media.”

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