Facebook Dominates Social Content-Sharing

While Q3 2009 data showed e-mail on top for content-sharing, February 2010 information from social optimization platform Gigya points to Facebook as the Web’s top social sharing hub.

Almost one-half of article links, videos, photos and other content shared via Gigya’s widgets are posted to Facebook, with another 29% broadcast through tweets.

Social Media sites used by US Internet users to share online content

Social sharing widget AddThis also distributed the most content on Facebook (33%), followed by a long tail of other options. Similar results were posted in summer 2009 by the AddToAny sharing widget; Facebook, with 24% of shares, took the top spot.

In addition to sharing content with contacts, social site logins are often chosen as a method of user authentication on third-party sites. Facebook was No. 1 for this purpose as well, but usage was dependent on content type, indicating that Facebook users may be most concerned with sharing fun, entertaining content on the network.

Breakdown of sites used to share information and content

The social giant’s 52% share of authentications on entertainment sites dropped to just 31% on news sites, where Google made a close second place showing with 30% of logins. Yahoo! also boosted its share to one-quarter of news site authentications.

Global Time Spent Social Networking Rises 82%

Global consumers increased the amount of time they spent on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter by 82% in December 2009 compared to December 2008, according to The Nielsen Company.

Time, Unique Audience Increases for Social Networking Sites

In December 2008, global consumers spent an average of three hours, three minutes and 54 seconds on social networking sites. That amount of time increased to five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds one year later. In addition, unique audience increased 27%, from 242 million in December 2008 to 307.4 million in December 2009.

Facebook Increases US Dominance

Facebook dramatically increased its dominance of the US online social networking market between December 2008 and December 2009. In December 2009, Facebook recorded about 110 million unique visitors, a 100% increase from 55 million unique visitors in December 2008. Myspace, which remained the second-most popular US online social network, saw its number of unique visitors drop about 17%, from roughly 60 million in December 2008 to roughly 50 million in December 2009. While Twitter only recorded 18.1 million unique visitors in December 2009, this represented 579% growth from 2.7 million unique visitors a year earlier.

Aussies Love Spending Time on Social Networks

Australians’ reputation for sociability transcends into the virtual world. Although Australia only ranked number nine on the list of countries with total social network unique audience for December 2009 (9.9 million), on average Australians spent the most time on social networks for the month (six hours, 52 minutes, 28 seconds). The US by far led in unique audience during December 2009 (142 million) but came in second in terms of time spent on social networks (six hours, nine minutes, 13 seconds). Japan had the second-highest unique audience monthly total (46.5 million) but came in 10th for time spent per person (two hours, 50 minutes, 21 seconds).

Facebook Beats Text, Email

In one sign that it is truly becoming a dominant means of communication, a recent survey by Prompt Communications indicates that among a pool of 300 consumers in Boston, 96% of them use Facebook to communicate with friends and family on a regular basis. While Facebook trailed the phone at 99%, it beat text messaging at 93% and email at 91%.

Women and Social Media Podcast

Social Media College Technology Podcast Series

A new episode in our Podcast series is now available for download, in this episode Mike Andrew looks at new research on the Impact of social media amongst US female internet users and the influence that social networks and blogs have on the purchasing habits of females.

You can also download a copy from here!

Listen to this post as a podcast

Social Media Influencing 28% of Holiday Shoppers

A couple of weeks ago during a webinar I conducted I mentioned the fact that social media sites or networks would be the most popular search engines over the holiday period, and some new research from ComScore has backed that up.

Nearly $16 billion has been spent during the first 36 days of the 2009 holiday shopping season (since Nov. 1), marking a 3% increase vs. the corresponding days last year, according to new data from comScore, Inc., which also found that 28% of US shoppers say social media has influenced their purchases this year.

The most recent week ending December 6, 2009 reached $4.6 billion in holiday spending, heavier than any individual spending week in 2008 but still below two individual weeks in 2007, comScore said.

Weekly Holiday Retail Sales Chart

The week began with strong weekday spending, led by $887 million on Cyber Monday. It ended on a softer note with negative year-over-year growth rates during the weekend.

Holiday Season travel retail spend

“After a strong beginning to the week, we saw growth rates decelerate over the weekend to put this past week of holiday shopping in line with our 3 percent growth forecast for the season,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “We are anticipating heavy spending for the current week, making it an important determinant for how the holiday season as a whole will perform. Hopefully, we’’l see a return to the growth rates we observed during the earlier part of this past week and that the weekend softness was just a temporary hiccup.”

Social Media Influencing Holiday Purchases

In the comScore weekly holiday survey, comScore asks respondents about the influence of social media on their holiday shopping behavior. According to the most recent survey, conducted on Dec. 4-7, 2009, 28% of those who have begun their holiday shopping this season indicated that social media has influenced their purchases.

Of the types of specific social media that consumers say influenced holiday purchases, the most common:

Social Media Influence on US Holiday Shopping behavior

• Reading a consumer-generated product review (13% of respondents)
• Reading an expert product review (11 %)
• Following a fan page on Facebook to take advantage of special offers and deals (7%)
• Influence by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product (6%)
• Following a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals (5%)
• A friend’s “tweet” about a product influenced their purchase behavior (3%)

“Social media really appears to be emerging as an important marketing channel this holiday season,” added Fulgoni. “On the one hand, its emergence is being driven by increased consumer adoption of these technologies and the exponential growth in digital word-of-mouth that is occurring over this medium. On the other hand, having a social media marketing strategy makes sense for retailers in this environment because it’s cost-effective and shows an effort to get closer to one’s customers.”

Consumers Free to Speak Their Mind Online

Brand marketers know the Internet can be a dangerous place, where they lose control of the message and consumer-created content reigns. That is partly because Internet users now have the ability to create and disseminate blog posts, tweets, reviews and homemade videos around the world. But it is also an effect of the “cyberdisinhibition” the Web provides.

The anonymity of the Internet leads people to behave differently than they do face-to-face. Research from Euro RSCG Worldwide shows that nearly 43% of US Internet users feel less inhibited online, with the effect most prominent among females and users ages 25 to 54.

That can lead to positive and negative behaviors alike. Users are more likely to feel able to meet new people or be empowered to do something they wanted to. But they were also more likely to “lash out” on the Web when they had something to say about a company or brand. One-fifth of Internet users, including almost one-quarter of men, had done so.

“The more interactions happen online, with no direct offline contact, the more likely they are to tilt toward extreme behavior. It’s important to blend both online and offline elements,” according to the “Social Life and Social Media” white paper.

Blending elements is important, but marketers should remember that there remains a distinction between offline and online interactions. Just 25.6% of respondents felt all interaction was the same, and about one-half emphasized the convenience of electronic interaction over face-to-face.

The stigma of online socializing is fast disappearing as well. Although only a minority of US Internet users thought online social groups could be “truly social,” nearly three-fifths disagreed with the idea that socializing on the Web was only for “sad, antisocial types.”

Twitter Usage In The US Continues To Grow

Social Media and Twitter - Microblogging on the rise

New studies from the US have confirmed what we all know is happening with Twitter, and that is, it is continuing to generate strong growth in the numbers of people who are using the social media site each month. Each month, there are 18 million adults who access Twitter, that is a growth of over 200% based on their numbers for the same period last year, and the number of users on Twitter will continue to grow in 2010 by another 44.4%, with around 26 million users.

Back in April, most research companies were predicting the number of users to Twitter at around 12 million, but the massive increase in usage has been due to the micro blogging sites strong growth. In June this year, Neilsen On Line reported Twitters unique browser numbers at 21 million, a growth of 2000% on June 2008.

This figure may be on the conservative side as well, given that a lot of Twitter users access the site via text messages, mobile applications and the many desk top application available.

Whilst these number appear to be good news for Twitter, there is another issue that is affecting the site, and that is the large numbers of registered users who never use the site, in fact half of Twitter it seems has never uttered a Tweet.

There could be a more strategic reason for this as well, I know of a number of consultants who register the user names of competitors to stop them from using their company name or brand. They never intend to use the name just block it forever.

If you or your company are thinking about using Twitter or integrating it into your Social Media Strategy or are not getting the response you would like, why not enroll in one of our corporate training courses, the courses are hands on workshops that show you how to uses social media online and get maximum buy in from your customers.