- 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/

Still, this does indicate that in the specific situation where people are using Web based sharing buttons, Facebook may well have a strong lead.

Tubemogul says this is “contrary to its stereotype as platform for ephemeral thoughts, Twitter is referring some of the most engaged video viewers out there.”  That may be one stereotype, but others see Twitter as a distribution tool similar to RSS – a list of links of interest.  From that perspective, this does make sense (and makes beating Digg, another link centric resource, even more interesting).

From what I’ve seen in the past, Digg users seem to skew younger and Twitter users older. Can that demographic difference explain the difference?

See the post here.

http://www.tubemogul.com/research/report/21

Are we really taking this report seriously?   Here are some of the key findings (outlined by Business Insider, where I posted this comment).  They are too funny in the saddest kind of way.

1. Teens don’t watch cable?  Right.  Not only is there plenty of research showing otherwise, but why don’t we ask how many teens are willing to cancel cable?  I know my grade schooler hates the idea of no cable.  Take that Morgan Stanley – my research takes a longer term view than yours since my researcher is only in grade school and yours is already in high school.  

2. Teens say ads are be annoying and pointless?  Really?  Cause the rest of us look forward to them (note: sarcasm).  Sure, I’d love my TV and Web content to be free and without advertising along with my free car, free house….Consumers have shown time and time again they not only will put up with advertising, but react positively to it (include teens).  Oh yeah, I hear a lot of 15 year olds hate school and find it pointless and annoying.  I guess schools are going the way of advertising and newspapers.   By the way, teens tend to take more action based on marketing campaigns than most other demographics.

3.  The report said their time and money is spent on  movies, concerts and video game consoles.  Oh.  So you’re just writing about me and my friends in the early 80s.  

4. No teenagers read newspapers regularly since they get summaries online or on television-  Uh.  Really?  So teens were a major market for newspapers before this whole web thing happened?    Oh, and don’t you love the irony of saying teens don’t read newspapers since they see summaries online or on television.   I thought they don’t watch television (see point 1).

But I guess that’s what happens when your acceptable standard for published research methodology are the thoughts (?) of a 15 year old and his friends.

The research looked at 100,000 Facebook users as well as the location 4,500 e-mail messages received.  As noted by the chart below, the more local the sender-receiver, the higher the density of messages. 

This is consistent with what I’ve seen in every day life.  People connect online with those they know offline – and people tend to know people locally.  Not to say there are not global benefits as the tale of lower density of messages may reflect that valuable global reach we did not two decades ago.  However, this type of data is an important reminder that when reaching many audiences, having a local, geographic focus is an important part of being targeting the demographic.

The report makes the overall important point that teens are not wildly different from adults and, from some perspectives (like web browsing), are behind adults in consuming online media.  However,

- Like the general popular (according to Nielsen’s Three Screens Report), teen viewing of TV is up – 6 percent in the past five years (US)
- Teens do browse the Internet less than adults, but we have work time on the Internet that teens to not (I’d like to see a leisure time breakout)
- Teens don’t hate advertising – teens have better recall of online video ads (but, in general) do they have better recall of ads targeted to them).
- Teens do read newspapers and listen to radio

As the report points out, teens are definitely highly engaged in social media, mobile browsing and other new forms of new media consumption.  But not necessarily more so than adults.  In other words, that professional sitting on the train, getting mobile but also reading today’s news in print….that may be tomorrow’s professional as well.

In other words, it’s looking like today’s teens may not be new generation of consumers, but an evolution from today’s adults (but don’t they always say that…).

Read the full report here:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/reports/nielsen_howteensusemedia_june09.pdf

Of course, now I’m looking for statistics on how often people read the Twitter posts they subscribed to determine if it is really a one to many medium, or a many to none medium.

Read the full Harvard post here:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

The company looked at leads driven by Yellow Page ads – the print version.  44% of the leads were URL visits while 56% were calls – so half of the people that used the Yellow Book to find a source then went online.  In other words, they started their search with print, not with an online search.

Read the full release here.

(source: MediaPost)

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.

First, 65% of all Internet users are still reading print papers.  Twitter users reading print less but not that much less – 52% read a print paper.

PEW points out that Twittered users are untethered and reading more news on a smartphone or cell phone (more than double other Internet users).  But the fact that they still read print shows it has a place in the world, just not one that enables it to capture the reader looking for breaking news.