- Email remains the most popular activity.  We continue to recommend making sure all communications are available via email (even before social networks).  Not only is it the most popular, but we’ve observed that people are likely to at least scan all their email messages but not all the friends postings in a social network.

- Less than 20% read blogs.  Other third party and our own research has shown this as well but it’s interesting seeing it come from Forrester as they have a particular strength in the strategic use of social media platforms.   Don’t read these numbers the wrong way, blog based media may not yet be a mass medium but they are still popular with activity audiences (from politics to products) and are a good way to reach influential consumers (those that push their opinions to friends).

Credit to Mashable – http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/social-networking-users-us/

The study found that, across all age groups, TV viewing of all  types was the number one medium (here are the TV numbers).

Other findings included the following:

• On average and across all demographics, computer video averages two minutes (a little more than 0.5 percent) a day.
• Video media is still consumed primarily by TV in the home (yes, including the 18-24 age range)
• But the PC based media is changing the media pie – computer use, the second most popular medium, is now ahead of radio (number 3) and print media is fourth place.
• Consumers don’t seem to be avoiding TV advertisements – viewers were saw 72 minutes of ads and promos a day.

What I did not see was how the use of multi-viewing – watching TV and using PCs at the same time – impacts TV viewing.  However, the evidence seems to be overwhelming that as of today, TV continues to dominate the media landscape.

So why does this study seem to be at odds with the hype about the death of TV?  There are two probable reasons: first, the hype extrapolates from relatively small shifts in behaviour today to forecast major shifts tomorrow.  So, hype may in fact become fact, but it doesn’t reflect today’s reality.  Second, a lot of reports on new media consumption habits focus on just several types of media and rely on people self-reporting their habits (the VCM study used observation of all types of media consumption).  This can skew results.  Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research for Ball State’s CMD, which led the project, found the following:

…people generally cannot report accurately how much time they spend with media…some media tend to be over-reported whereas others tend to be under-reported – sometimes to an alarming extent. Clearly, that kind of variance puts in question one’s ability to draw meaningful conclusions, and it convinced us that the observational method is the only real way to achieve accurate and reliable results.

This is not a forward looking study but focuses on what consumers are doing today.  This is critical to consumers as while we want to be prepared for potential shifts in media consumption habits, we need to communicate based on consumer behavior today.

According to Parks Associates, 33% of US households with broadband are interested in  connected set top boxes.  Later this year, awareness and interest may continue growing as connected TVs, no set top box needed, are launched (connect the TV to the router and start using those widgets, streaming video etc).

What’s interesting is that Gen Y, the up and coming generation of information consumers, are interested in the social media features – chat and recommendations both faired well in their interest.  This may go up if, as the new connected TVs are rolled out, these types of widgets are well executed. 

What this all means is that instead of Web video and social media killing TV, TV stands to continue to be major means of communicating with major audiences.  As often happens, changes in the media ecosystem tend to be an evolution and not a revolution.  Communicate with people through TV will not die away but will evolve.