Monday, August 11, 2008

Social Networking Takes Over The World!

We all kind of had a hunch about this, didn't we? Now we have the studies to prove it.

Study Shows Social Media Use on the Rise

Whoa baby! Social Media appears to have moved beyond the Early Adopters and infiltrated the collective. It isn't just the kids anymore. After all, how many readers out there are over 26 and have a Facebook account?

For marketing, social media is a whole new venue. And the rules are way different than the old "interruptive" model. Brand yourself and get yourself out there. Make your social content something that makes the reader/viewer want to click back to your brand. Engage and think globally about it.

Don't forget the vicarious consumption inherent in the Expectation Economy discussed in Trendwatching. Opinions are out there. Your users are reading those opinions and makind decisions based on them. Know them. Grab them and use them to market your library and improve services.

Stephen Abram sums it up:
Half of U.S. adults use social media
from Stephen's Lighthouse by stephen
According to study, half of U.S. adults use social media.
Wow! That is, they do according to the latest findings from Universal McCann's "Media in Mind" study. In this particular study "social media" includes text messaging, blogging and social networking. These three technologies combined are used by 50% of U.S. adults for communication purposes.

1 out of 10 U.S. adults now publish blogs (up from 5% last year)
1 out of 5 18-34-year olds publish blogs (up from 10% last year)
22% of U.S. adults use IM (up from 9% last year)
21% 18-34-year olds use IM (up from 14% last year)
57% have joined a Social Network, now the primary mode of creating and sharing content
23% of social network users have installed an application
Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration
73% have read a blog
34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog

Read the complete presentation/report (80 page PDF) here.

Interesting. Right or wrong, it's still obviously growing in interesting ways.

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