New research done this June by Anderson Analytics of 5000 U.S. social media users says that 71% "can't live without Facebook." Life without Twitter could be tolerated by 43% making 57% saying it is vital to their lives these days.
As for the most "valuable network" the study shows 75% touting Facebook, 30% naming the business centred LinkedIn and only 12% giving Twitter the #1 designation. Makes sense to me given the more social nature of Facebook overall.
Twitter is a much different social media animal that Facebook I think. It is more issues and activist oriented. That is especially true if you use a program like Tweetdeck.com to organize you Tweets and messages in themes instead of just chronologically. Chief Marketing Officers are trending towards Twitter according to a recent Business Week story. Part of the reason is you can find and target different social network communities using Twitter. One CMO comment was the Twitter users are the "loudest" group online - a sentiment I share.
The Anderson survey estimates that 110 million Americans are regular social media users. That is 36% of the population. Men are more active in all three social media than women partly because men are less likely to be concerned about meeting strangers on line. Facebook has women participating than men 56% vs 44% but LinkedIn has more men than women 57% to 43% participants. The average social media networker will visit sites 5 days a week and about 4 times a day for an hour each and every day.
Social media is changing the nature of communications, relationships and information sharing. It is horizontal and community based with a richer definition of community than neighbourhood.
Interesting post. Just the other day there was a television commentary that also commented that the requirement to be "pluged in" is also gereating certain human characterisitics.
ReplyDeleteFor my own experience I have advanced beyond phone messages and calls and use text wherever possible so it is easy to see the rise in accessable social media use.
Call me old school if you will, but nothing beats face-to-face communication, even better when done so over a beer. I don't use any of those things you mentioned above, and my life is fine. I also have an uncle who never once wore bellbottom pants, and his life turned out okay too.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing for me George is that I make more time for F2F and have more F2F meetings now that I am connected virtually - and they are with more and different and very interesting and engaging people too. But that may just be me.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment, Ken. While I will not give away the identity of the Enlightened Savage, it was through his weblog that that particular individual and I got together. I have discussed politics with a much wider group of people and met more people because of weblogs and twitter than I would have otherwise.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a matter of your life being empty without social media, so much as social media is slowly replacing the "hangouts" where one would meet like-minded individuals. Furthermore, it allows us to cross borders in a way that we could not before. We could go to the conference in country X, or discuss the issue online through twitter, in a public way that anyone can join in.
Thx Kirk - I will not give away the ID of the ES either but I have enjoyed sharing a few enlightening conversations with ES over a cold adult beverage.
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