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We’re spending more time in social media

by Nathan McDonald in News on 27 August 2009 at 15:26

Hot on the heels of Wave 4 of Universal McCann’s Social Media Tracker, Forrester have just published their third annual Social Technographics Profile.

US social technographics profile

The exact stats vary, of course, but both studies confirm the overall trend of higher numbers of internet users spending an increasing amount of time in social media environments. The Forrester blog mainly comments on the landscape in North America, however Forrester’s Rebecca Jennings has a separate report looking at Europe. She notes in this excerpt:

Online European usage of social networks such as Facebook and Bebo has grown significantly — around 30% now engage with social networks regularly, up from 18% last year. Overall, more than 60% of online Europeans now engage with social media on a regular basis.

The Wave 4 Social Media Tracker report shows an increase in most types of social media activity, as the graphic excerpt below indicates:

wave4

The rapid growth in some types of activity has slowed as many markets reach saturation point, though there’s no specific stats for microblogging, or of bulletin board usage, which is heavy in many Asian markets.

Apparently we’re all uploading fewer video clips, though looking at the country spotlights, this seems to be based on a decline in the UK, Germany and Korea – emphasising how important it is to  consider local market differences when developing a social media engagement strategy.

However I’m not convinced this is a long term trend: as video-capable devices and mobile internet usage proliferates, it’s becoming easier to upload, not less (the quality of these uploads is another matter). Could it be the case that some respondents under-reported their uploading habits? What do you think about these stats?

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  • At first I thought it might be because of the new markets in the study (when I saw the above graph)- Belgium, Colombia, Ecuador, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Norway, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, Singapore and Sweden. But looking at the breakdown it's clear that there's around a 5% decrease for the UK, Germany, Austraila and Austria...what I find even stranger is that the numbers for watching videos have also decreased.

    I like the 10 step programme for successful social media (p.g 37), especially the first four points. What would you do differently?What would you add?

    1.Listen to/observe what the target audience is
    doing in social media
    2 Create a “social object” that is relevant to the
    brand and of genuine interest
    3 Segment the target into tribes. Give them
    something they can join.
    4 Allow them to engage via their preferred
    platform of choice—create multiple interfaces
    to your community
  • Nathan - one of the first stable apps for the iphone that potentially might start to act as a catalyst in shifting the balance of video uploading and usage is apps like Mobile Fotos which contains the EXIF data and GPS with the ability to view videos and pics taken within a location. It is likely that the use of the metadata - particularly tags people attribute - or are encouraged to do so by brands - will be a strong driver of uploaded pics and vids. Just a thought.

    M
  • Nathan - good point about greater penetration of video-capable devices having a potential impact on the numbers. Will be interesting to see what happens in the next wave and what new technologies emerge on what platforms. We only need something like the Flip to become sub £50 and there to be some simple editing interface on something like Facebook to see this becoming exponential.

    Also - all the recent crowdsourcing initiatives we are now seeing with community based activities hosted by the likes of Eyeka & ideabounty and inspired by Jeff Howe and John Winsor could very easily become the new cultural norm. I suspect that the video aspect of this will be where the increases will come from in future. Not sure why the numbers are showing otherwise as you say. Interesting.
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