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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.”
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.”"
“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.”
Adam Ostrow at Mashable blogs about new data from ComScore reflecting Twitter’s growing popularity among younger demographics. These new stats show 12-17 and 18-24 year olds as Twitter’s fastest growing audience segment, contradicting the July Nielsen report, “Teens Don’t Tweet“.
“As the Twitter audience has mushroomed in recent months – to 21 million U.S. visitors in July 2009 (note: this number represents visitors to the Twitter.com website and does not include API or mobile Twitter usage) – the younger age groups are the ones flooding in the fastest.
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.”
The September 2009 issue of Walt Crawford’s Cites & Insights is now available. Be sure to check out this issue for an in-depth update of the state of both public and academic library blogs. Walt discusses the following:
Universal McCann has published Wave 4 of its Power to the People report on social media which has been tracking consumer Internet usage since 2006. For this study UM questioned 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and March 2009 “making it the largest global analysis of social media usage.”
According to the report, users are increasingly focusing their digital lives around social networks such as Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace. They are still taking part in photo sharing and blogging, however they are now doing it via their social networks. Other findings include:
Nearly two-thirds of all active internet users have spent time managing a social networking profile, and 71.1% have visited a friends social network page.
Video watching is now at 83% amongst active internet users.
Mobile internet usage has now reached nearly a fifth of all active internet users. Seventeen percent now access internet on the move as well as at home, work or college.
Widgets continue to thrive with 34% of social network users installing them for their own use and 24% installing them to impress visitors to their profile page.
Jenny Levine has written another comprehensive Library Technology Report on the topic of gaming in libraries. Gaming & Libraries: Learning Lessons from the Intersections takes a look at common themes being shared by librarians and includes five case studies.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Lessons We’ve Learned from Society
Chapter 3: Libraries, Videogames, and Civic Engagement
Chapter 4: A Powerful Draw Beyond Youth Culture
Chapter 5: The Benefits of a Planned Approach
Chapter: 6 Gaming as Fundraiser
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Finding More Lessons
eMarketer has published statistics which reveal that 41.6% percent of Twitter users use the microblogging application to keep in touch with their friends. Other findings include:
Secondarily, men were interested in finding news and women in updating their status.
Users under age 35 were more interested in broadcasting their status than their senior counterparts.
Older users were more likely to use the service for work-related purposes.
More women interacted with friends, family and celebrities than men, but men were more likely to follow bloggers.
Stan Schroeder at Mashable reports on the iStrategyLabs study of Facebook’s demographics in Facebook Users Are Getting Older. Much Older. According to their analysis, the social network’s userbase is shifting older, with growth in the 35-54 age range growing 190.2% between January and July of this year and users older than 55 years a whopping 513.7%.
A new Nielsen report on the myths and realities of teen media trends reveals How Teens Use Media. Here are a few of the findings:
Teens are NOT abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more
TV than ever, up 6% over the past five years in the U.S.
Teens love the Internet…but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online—far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes.
Teens watch less online video than most adults, but the ads are highly engaging to them: Teens spend 35% less time watching online video than adults 25–34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television.
“The majority of respondents primarily use their phones to make calls, send text messages and take photographs, although they like to know that the other functionality is potentially available. respondents’ use of different forms of media on their mobile phones was mostly limited to viewing photographs. Some used their phones to listen to music or watch videos, but very few used them to listen to podcasts or audio books and only a small number read ebooks or journal articles. Some respondents commented that they prefer to use their iPod or other media player to access these other forms of media.”
The Wired Campus points to a new study titled How People Are Using Twitter During Conferences presented at this year’s EduMedia Conference in Salzburg, Austria. The paper surveys academics at five recent conferences to determine the usefulness of Twitter as a communication “back channel” at these events.
“Microblogging at conferences seems to be an additional way of discussing presented topics and exchanging additional information. It is not limited to the face-to-face audience or the location of the conference. Microblogging rather allows virtually anyone to actively participate in the thematic debates. Our research shows that several conference speakers and attendees are using Twitter for various purposes. Communicating and sharing resources seem to be one of the most interesting and relevant ways in which one microblogs.”
The American Library Association has published a 40-page report titled The State of America’s Libraries stating that “Library use increases dramatically as economy sags; funding declines”.
“A Harris Poll released in September revealed that 68 percent of Americans have a library card, an increase of 5 percent since 2006. In-person visits increased 10 percent in the same period, and 76 percent of Americans had visited their local public library in the year preceding the survey, compared with 66 percent two years ago. Online-visit data were even more remarkable: 41 percent of library card holders visited their library websites in the year before the poll, compared with 24 percent in 2006.”
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