Nick Cifuentes

While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled—from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010.

• Between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking use among internet users ages 50-64 grew by 88%–from 25% to 47%.
• During the same period, use among those ages 65 and older grew 100%–from 13% to 26%.
• By comparison, social networking use among users ages 18-29 grew by 13%—from 76% to 86%.

“Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users,” explains Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and author of the report. “Email is still the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, but many older users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications.”

• One in five (20%) online adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago.
• Among adults ages 65 and older, 13% log on to social networking sites on a typical day, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.

At the same time, the use of status update services like Twitter has also grown—particularly among those ages 50-64. One in ten internet users ages 50 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.

Read the entire report from Pew Research here

As ubiquitous a term Facebook has become, it’s hard to imagine it as a small company. But a recent infographic from JESS3 titled, “The Geosocial Universe” illustrates how large Facebook & other social network’s opportunity given a mobile market reaches nearly 5 billion people.

Will Facebook’s announcement of “Places” yesterday help boost these numbers quicker for the social giant?

A newly-released report from Nielsen said social networking is consuming twice as much of our online time as any other digital activity.

The statistics said sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 22.7% of time spent on the internet, with social games being the next most frequented activity at 10.2%.

And with all our time being eaten up by Facebook, you’d expect drop-off somewhere, and activities like email and instant messaging are taking the brunt of it. Email activity plunged from 11.5% to 8.3% from June 2009 to June 2010. Instant messaging also took a hit with a 15% decrease.

However, in a less obvious surprise, the mobile market is picking up for the drop-off in email usage as it rose from 37.4% to 41.6% - obviously coming from the rise in smart phones and mobile devices.

In a just-released Forrester research report, it said that most marketers should refrain from location-based services, citing that just a mere 4% of the US online adults have ever checked in on the “location game.” And only 1% update these services more than once a week.

The study revealed some interesting statistics, as it looked at a large number of location-based sites, including popular players such as Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and Loopt. And to add to the study, a whopping 84% of respondents said they had no idea or were not even familiar enough with such types of apps. This study comes at an interesting time, since 2010 was marked the year of location-based services, igniting fires under social media marketers - all trying to integrate location-based strategies into their marketing programs.

And to add to the bottleneck, the report said almost 80% of location-based service users are male, with close to 70% of them between the ages of 19 and 35, and 70% have college degrees or higher. Forrester also discovered that 38% were more likely to say friends and family ask their opinions before a purchase, in addition, this crowd was very open to mobile coupons and offers as well. This vertical is also more resourceful with research prior to a purchase where nearly 20% are more likely to consult their phones before buying to conduct more research and read customer reviews.

Location-Based Reality Stinks?

This certainly brings most marketers back to reality before jumping on the location game bandwagon.

Although this data cuts down a very small segment to target, it’s still very approachable when you consider products that live in the gaming, consumer electronics, and sportswear verticals. These are the verticals that lead the way with testing these applications, according to Forrester. However, the location space is full of brands that are already proving they are not just for the male audience. Big players such as Starbucks, Oil of Olay, Bravo, Gossip Girl, Campbell’s Soup, Louis Vuitton, Bon Appétit, Lucky Magazine, TLC, and PepsiCo are all currently experimenting with location-based services.

But as in any new technology, there is always the question of adoption rate, and to be honestly blunt, these networks are very much in their infant stages. Foursquare has just over 2 million users; Loopt has 4 million, and MyTown with 2.5 million - barely a drop in the bucket from a marketing standpoint.

And the next question is scale, when this will happen? As of now, the digital social network rulers such as Facebook, Google and Twitter are not fully involved in the location game. When their entrance takes place, this will help set the market more efficiently, creating a much higher adoption rate. And a drastic shift in competition for the current market.

Thoughts…

As Forrester always does well, and does often - it reports the facts. I don’t think marketers should completely avoid location-based service programs, nor is Forrester saying that. They are however saying that you should tread lightly and not expect any massive returns as you start to experiment in this sort of advertising.

However, the market always moves quickly, as we all have become aware of over the past several years in social media’s popularity. If digital adoption rates stick, I’d say we would be in a good place to give this just a bit more of time before more users begin amass on each of these networks.

Depending on your specialty, I’d say it’s reckless to not at least consider location-based services when considering new social media programs. Your brand’s demographic might not fall directly into what Forrester reports, however, you should consider the question of “When?” At exactly what point will the ‘branded’ location-based network space take off in popularity? When will they eventually act like your Facebook branded community does now?

I think the real question is: Do you want to get involved now, or several months or years from now when every brand on the planet is doing it?

These types of applications will grow; they will be built beyond a cliché, cornball badge to tell your friends on Facebook or Twitter about. Monetary, if not branded products will soon replace these and be offered in place of  a ‘real’ incentive for checking-in. We already have started to see this in mobile coupon deals that Starbucks offers.

These incentives will get better and will have a stronger support system as the adoption rate increases.

We’ve just started in this game kids…just give it time.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced that Twitter will begin a step toward individual website integration with a new platform called @anywhere. The announcement was made during Williams’ keynote speech this afternoon at SXSW.

The new integration will allow developers to plug-in to @anywhere to integrate “basic” Twitter functionality into their website without users needing to navigate away from the page - basically more value without the heavy lifting, as Twitter so kindly put it.  

So picture this, you arrive to the NewYorkTimes.com and right there on the page you will be able to follow reporters and other staff people whose Twitter name is associated with the New York Times. The Twitter blog also suggests that you will be able to tweet about a YouTube video without interrupting it.

There are more @anywhere features planned, as Twitter says the current items are “just the beginning.” This is one-step further for Twitter, who has been needing to integrate a “Facebook Connect” like move that Facebook debuted last year, and is currently dominating the field in when it comes to the idea of a social media operating system.

Most importantly however, Twitter is making this simple; where a person behind the organization can drop @anywhere with a few lines of JavaScript instantly on their website without using any difficult API language that is mostly learned before implementing. During the announcement today, Twitter said that @anywhere will be available to just initial partners at first, those include Amazon.com, YouTube, Yahoo!, bing, Msnbc.com, AdvertisingAge.com, Digg, eBay and a few more!

All future announcements on the @anywhere platform will be made from the @anywhere Twitter account.

Stay tuned for more information as it breaks!

I know where you are, I know where you could be, I know pretty much everything about you.

And I’m not even your friend – at least (REAL) friend. It’s no surprise that social networking allows me to know this about you. I can see what you just ate, because you tweeted it, what you just got for Christmas, because you put it on Facebook. And now I can even see where you are all the time, because you went ahead and checked-in on Foursquare, or you Google Buzz-ed a random thought, and oh yea, you forgot to shut off that geo-location feature that is set to be on automatically when you activate your Google Buzz account…doh!

Sure, these publicly announced check-ins, random personal thoughts, and location-sharing networks might get you a cool new pseudo badge and allow you to become the Mayor of your workplace or the supermarket next door, maybe even the Target down the street – but one key thought that revolves around all of this – I know what you are doing, I know where you are, I know pretty much everything about you.

Social Networks & Privacy?

Privacy seems to be the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone notices is a big problem, large enough to be spoken about daily, but we more or less undermine it and sweep it under the rug and think it will clean itself up later somehow – aka….someone else will deal with it… or even worse – maybe nobody cares?

In the past, we’ve gone through the trials and tribulations of privacy wars on Facebook, and after that battle, their new policy now allows for more individual control and openness at the same time. That battle has slowed, and has now turned into the discussions around the new dangers of location-sharing networks such as Foursquare, Google Buzz, Loopt, even Yelp’s new check-in feature, maybe even clever Twitter or Facebook searches will yield some good results as to where you might be. As each of us get caught up in the novelty and bonuses associated with our behavior – what dangerous doors are we opening by taking part in this?

This leads into a larger discussion around the privacy associated with social networks, but to be honest, if we are taking part in this phenomenon daily – do we care about privacy? Sure there are certain Facebook pictures you want to keep targeted to just a select group of friends, and on Twitter you want to grant permission to a select group of people to see your tweets; privacy exists – but what is privacy if we are taking part in social reality anyways?

The 24/7 personal openness we display as social media users ties to our inherent behavior to play to our strengths. Social media has changed the way we live on and offline and has us living in much more “open” environments, compared to our parents and other Generation X’ers who lived in “closed” worlds and had “separate” behaviors. Social reality now combines all of that for us!

All of this sharing allows people to play to their virtues, even more in a social media world. People find their triumphs in social media accomplishing and well deserved from a societal standpoint, as well as a boost in their own individual behavior (aka EGO). If I tweeted from the top of mountain and said “About to hang-glide from 4,000 feet in Peru, what a life!”, compared to “Watching ‘Charles in Charge’ reruns on Mondayz…”; clearly it’s cooler I am doing the first rather than latter, but social media, despite its privacy concerns, allows us to live that behavior and feel accomplished for letting the world know what WE are doing. Does it matter that it related to hang-gliding or watching mundane television – no… I am letting the world know because I feel that I need to, to maybe feel that accomplishment in society.

I am not going to break this down from a psychological level, but I am sure there is some reality to this opinion in how people perceive themselves and why they take part – not caring about the privacy concerns we always feel so bullied with. In a recent study from the Future of Privacy Forum, 42% of Internet users are concerned that websites are collecting too much information about them, but then again with Facebook recently overtaking Yahoo! for the #2 top spot on the entire Internet - I don’t know if that reflects privacy as much of a concern anymore?

The ageless metal-rap rockers, Rage Against the Machine, are making noise again, and this time it’s by pure accident. The political-driven rock group hasn’t released an album since retiring back in 2000, however, they surfaced last week on the UK’s biggest radio station, BBC Radio One, to talk about how they suddenly emerged on the UK pop music charts for the much fought over “Christmas Number One” title for 2009.

The UK “Christmas Number One” title has normally been held by the UK series, X Factor, winner - a version of American Idol produced in the UK. For four straight years, the “Christmas Number One” winner has been held by the X Factor winner, and this year it was Joe Mcelderry, who was expected to win the title for singing the Miley Cyrus song “The Climb.”

However, a Facebook inspired campaign that was launched by UK resident Jon Morter as an entertaining (joke) protest against the mainstream pop that in most ways does dominate music charts across the globe these days. Morter’s Facebook group “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1″ quickly grew to 800,000 fans, and was overspread with users who pledged to buy the track to help push the band to the top of the charts. The Facebook Group currently has more than 970,000 members as of Dec. 20.

The mainstream news picked up the story after the first two weeks of December when the Facebook group, which launched in the beginning of December began to grow quickly, and while going offline many times during the beginning days of December, prompted some to make several claims of foul play - however it didn’t slow the Rage Against the Machine victory.

And once Joe McElderry’s track was released in a hard copy on CD, unlike Rage Against the Machine, the X Factor winner from the UK began to close the gap on the suddenly popular American rock band and their 1992 produced single “Killing in the Name Of.”

On December 20, BBC Radio One announced the final winner, and thanks to a surge of downloads via blog posts, Facebook comments, and Twitter tweets - the infectious campaign influenced social media channels and led to a Rage Against the Machine victory.

**The charts above include only a limited set of data, due to a number of other keywords that could have been used in Twitter, Facebook Updates and Blogs; keywords like “Rage”; which were too broad to analyze more specifically at the time of this posting. The above posts do however represent the trending to their exact details.