UK communications and media regulator OFCOM has come out with another mammoth piece of research, this time the international communications market report, covering the UK, US, Australia, France, Italy and Germany.

Some (mainly about Britain being a national of online shopaholics ) of it has already been covered in the mainstream press, so I’ve tried to dig out ten findings that didn’t get so much of an airing.   These include ones that look at how social media has replaced traditional media as a news source

1 – Ofcom’s research confirms Forrester’s earlier claims that social media is reaching saturation point.  78% of American, 75% of Australian and 70% of UK Internet users have set up social media profiles.

2 – Not surprisingly, Facebook is the social site most are familiar with.   In the US, 89% of social media users are on Facebook, with Twitter a distant 2nd on 24%.    In the UK, the figures are 83% and 22%.   Surprisingly in the UK Friends Reunited (remember them?)  still gets a strong showing

3 – As you would expect, younger social media users visit those sites more frequently than older users.    In the UK, 68%, in the US 69% and in Australia 61% of 18-24 year old social media users go online 2+ times a day.   This compares to 26% of 45-64 year olds in the UK, 28% in the US and 29% in Australia who access social media.

4 – Does social media use reduce traditional media use?   For a minority it does.   In the UK 14% and in the US 10% claim to now watch less TV because of online social use.  However, 18% of British social media users and 21% of Australian social media users say they read print newspapers less.

Those stats can be read in a number of different ways.  There is no doubt that print circulations are in terminal decline, the UK nationals losing the equivalent of Glasgow in sales over the past year.

At the same time, there is evidence that integrating social media into TV programming and promotions has a small boost for overall ratings.

5 – In the various markets surveyed by Ofcom, between 1/5 and 1/3 of social media users don’t change their privacy settings.   In the UK, the % that leave them be is 30%, in Australia it is 28% and in the US 26%

6 – Ofcom’s research again proves that social media is more female than male dominated.      In the UK 49% of female and 32% of male social media users regularly update their profiles.   In the US, the figures are 51% and 37% and in Australia 42% and 31%

7 – Male and female behaviour is also different on social channels.   Across all markets, women are more likely to use social media “to see what other people are saying and doing.”    In the UK, 63% of women and 51% of men use social media in this way, while in the US the figures are 71% women and 57% men.

8 – Just as social media may have caused some users to leave traditional media, more and more now use it as a primary news source.

In the UK, 51% of 18-24 year olds and 37% of 25-34 year olds use social channels for breaking news.    Again, women are different than men.   While 43% of British women on social media find out about breaking news on these sites, for UK men the % is 37%.

9 – OFCOM’s research debunks the myth that social media use cuts you off from the real world.     A third of British (34%) and Australian (32%) 18-24 year olds now engage more in their community.   In Italy and Germany, over 4/10 younger social media users are more active.

10 – Most social media users distrustful of what they see:   Finally a finding that is slightly at odds with an earlier OFCOM stat about trust in social media, more users are distrustful as opposed to trustful about what they see on social sites.

However, there is not surprisingly a lot of variation by age here, with the under 45s being twice as likely to trust what they see on social channels compared to the over 55s.

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This latest piece of research involved 50,000 interviews across the 46 countries accounting for 90% of the world’s Internet population.

The study is enormously comprehensive, so to take three findings:

1 – First of all as reported in various media outlets such as the BBC today, the countries where people have the highest no of social media friends are Malaysia (233), Brazil (231) and Norway (217).   The numbers for the UK, US and Australia are 164, 178 and 143 respectively.    Japan however ranks bottom, with the average Japanese social networker having 29 friends.

2 – The two countries where people have the highest number of friends are both emerging economies and TNS says that though Internet penetration is lower outside the West, consumers that are online there are more likely to be active social media participants.    So for example, Egypt (56%) and China (54%) have much higher levels of digital engagement than mature markets such as Japan (20%), Denmark (25%) or Finland (26%)

3 – TNS says that globally once you are online, you are likely to use the Internet as a daily media of choice.  61% of online users use the internet daily against 54% for TV, 36% for Radio and 32% for Newspapers

The best bit of the study?  The interactive site – Discover Digital Life (sadly in flash so forget viewing it on your iPad) – where you can mouse over key country stats and also take screengrabs of two countries side by side.   Here for example we have the US and Australia.

Thanks TNS, that’s pretty much enough info to fill presentations for the rest of the year!

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What’s the average age at which a child starts acquiring an online footprint?  In North America, Australia and Europe you’ll be “born” online at an average of six months old and by two 80%+ of children will have a presence on the Web.

That’s according to Internet Security company AVG, which carried out research among mothers in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the ‘EU5′ (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain).

Not only that, 23% of children will have had their scans uploaded online – meaning in a sense that their online life will pre-date their real one.   And that online footprint will be built on and will follow them around for the rest of their lives.

Other research highlights:

• In the US 92% of children under two have an online presence, compared to 73% in the EU5.   In Japan however it’s only 43%
• Though the average digital birth of children happens at around six months, a third (33%) of children have information and photos online within weeks of being born. In the UK, 37% of newborns have an online life from birth, whereas in Australia and New Zealand the figure is 41%.
• A quarter (23%) of children have had their pre-birth scans uploaded to the Internet. This figure is higher in the US, where 34% have had antenatal scans posted online, while in Canada the figure is even higher at 37%
• Seven percent of babies and toddlers have an email address created for them by their parents and five percent have a social network profile

Why does all this matter?

Well, privacy concerns aside (a five minute scan through Open Facebook and you can find plenty of baby and pregnancy information), parents are creating what’s called been called a ‘digital dossier’ for another human being.

As AVG’s research showed, many kids today will be ‘present’ online right from the moment of their birth and it’s worth thinking about what kind of information you want to make available about your child online.

And on the note of creating digital dossiers, this short film produced by the (Harvard) Berkman Center for Internet & Society following the online path of a (fictional) child called Andy is worth looking at:

(See also the blog post by AVG CEO JR Smith on the subject)

Not only that but the % of active “creators” in the US, EU and Australia have gone down at the same time as overall (and so passive) social media numbers have gone up.

Ben’s conclusion is as follows:

“The implication is that as social media goes mainstream (Facebook is now the No. 3 website among U.S. adults age 45-54), more users are spending more time watching and less submitting.

“This may be good news for advertisers who seek to use social channels as a push medium for their message, and not-so-good news for those who believe everyone wants to actively engage in a two-way conversation with their brand.”

It also highlights the need to have a system in place to identify those creators and conversationalists, who everyone else is watching (and is influenced by).

The rise and rise of the mommy blogger

A lot of those participants and conversationalists are in fact mothers.   On The Wall Blog Gordon MacMillan has a piece out about the ‘rise and rise of the mommy blogger.’

In particular, Gordon makes the point that ‘mommy bloggers’ are sometimes just mothers that blog, it’s not the case that they will always blog about parenting matters.

According to this chart from emarketer, one in eight (12.1%) US mothers on the Internet will be blogging this year.   Similarly, a study from TNS at the end of 2008 found that UK mothers spend 47% of their free time online.

It’s worth re-emphasising exactly why mothers are so active on social media and this ties into a conversation I had the other day – how can you find the time to blog?

The flippant answer – don’t have a social life (I was talking to two 20 somethings who do).  The more serious answer – online social tools are actually pretty well suited for parents.

It works well if you have bursts of free time in 30 min segments here and there (like new mothers).    It also works for people who are sometimes awake at odd hours (again parents), and finally as a way of keeping in touch with an extended social circle when circumstances (so small children) might not allow you to.

The above post is one of the items on this week’s Rabbit Feed.  Every week at Rabbit we put together a weekly online digest, you can sign up to receive by email.

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The results made me think of a series of posts penned by Adam Ferrier of Naked Australia, all about how emotional advertising that seeks to make a connection with the audience is often over-rated, and really – though it might not be pretty or win awards – more of an emphasis should be on some sort of A to B action.

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On one hand, an OECD report (via a post by Erina Lin in sfnblog) again confirms that in the UK and US the newspaper market is in a steady period of decline.   And on the other hand, an article in AdAge, shows that digital revenues almost certainly aren’t making up the losses.

The OECD shows that between 2007-2009 not a single member country saw an increase in the newspaper market.  Note, that the OECD’s definition of the newspaper market is: “Online and offline circulation and advertising revenues of traditional newspaper publishers” – in other words everything that traditional papers do to make money.

The US (-30% decline) and the UK (-21%) very much led the way, though among English speaking countries, Australia bucked the trend, ‘only’ seeing a 3% fall in the same period.

Here is another chart from the same report showing that while seniors are still most likely to read a paper, the % who regularly read a newspaper in the US has been going down among all age groups.

50% of UK newspaper revenues down to sales
Though the US and UK lead the world in their shrinking newspaper industries, they are affected in different ways.

With 50% of revenue coming from circulations, UK newspapers are more at risk from changing demographics, with younger consumers in particular not being in the habit of buying a morning paper.   With 87% of revenue coming from advertising, US publishers have by comparison been hit harder by the general economic downturn.

US Newspapers now only have 30% of the digital advertising pie
However, circulations and ad revenues are clearly linked, and here is the bad news.

From the AdAge article, ‘Mounting Web Woes Pummel Newspapers’, US Newspapers are not succeeding in getting a decent share of the whole digital advertising pie.   Even as digital advertising as a whole increases in value, US papers’ share of the total has gone down to around 30%.

In fact, writing on Australian Marketing website Mumbrella over a year ago, journalism professor Stephen Quinn pointed out that while classified advertising used to represent 40% of newspaper profits back in 2000, thanks to the likes of Gumtree and Craigslist, that total had gone down to 23%.

More tellingly, Professor Quinn said that when looking at the New York Times, its online advertising revenues would only pay for a fifth of its news gathering budget.

Before we start writing off newspapers completely though, there are another set of figures from the OECD report worth looking at.  While the OECD countries saw their newspaper markets decline, when you look at emerging markets such as South Africa, India, China and Brazil, a completely different picture emerges.

While circulations in OECD countries went down year by year from 2003-2008 in the so-called BIICS (Brazil, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa) they steadily went up.    To take India as just one example, the % that regularly reads a newspaper went up from 17% in 2003 to 37% in 2008.

As a result, worldwide – certainly outside of the minority of countries where Internet penetration is 50% – the newspaper industry is actually a growth industry.

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Sysomos estimates that March will see 1,477 million tweets being made, compared to 928 million in December 2009.   Number of tweets per day also passed 50 million+ in February.

A lot of that growth however comes from outside the US.   Sysomos has previously posted research showing that the social network as a whole was becoming steadily less US-focused and anglophone.  Back in January, US users were just above half of the total – 50.88% – compared to 62% in June 2009.

Given that non US growth over the quarter has consistently been higher than US growth (see chart below), it’s a safe bet that the US share of users is now below the 50% mark.

Finally the Sysomos research confirms what study after study has shown – a core of committed users accounts for most activity, and the rate of churn is very high – over 80%.

In March, Twitter users who had been with the network for 9+ month accounted for 41.6% of activity, while so-called newbies who had joined in the first three months only accounted for 22%.

Bearing in mind that the whole death of print trend is arguably more advanced in the US than in the UK or Australia, it’s worth a look.   Key points:

• The young are least likely to be regular news consumers.  35% of 18-29 year olds follow the news all or most of the time.   For people aged 65+ that rises to 70%

• However, it’s impossible to blank out the news completely and 99% of Americans do admit to getting news, at least casually in some shape or form.   Local (78%) and national (73%) TV leads, followed by the Internet (61%).   By contrast, 50% read a local paper, 54% listen to the radio, while 17% read a ‘national’ newspaper (the latter stat would be different in say the UK, due to the stronger position of national newspapers)

• News is also consumed across several channels simultaneously, 46% of Americans use between four of the six news platforms

The report also looks at Internet news consumption in more detail.    Less than four in ten (38%) Americans rely solely on news from offline sources, the majority (59%) rely on both on and offline sources, while 2% only get their news online.   It’s worth remembering however that ‘offline’ includes TV and radio as well as print.

Tying into some of the stats mentioned above, the research found that online news consumers were by and large both better educated and younger than the average.    So, the median age of all news consumers was 58, but for people who get their news online it was 40.

Finally, and this is a stat we mentioned in the recent ‘Rabbit Feed’ (our weekly newsletter over at Rabbit), news is now much more of a social phenomenon.   Three quarters (75%) of adults that get their news online say they get it forwarded to them through email or social media.

And it works in a virtuous circle.   News gets forwarded online via social media from people who at the same time deepen their engagement with the news.  97% of American social network users read the news online, and 51% of that 97% get news forwarded onto them via friends on places like Facebook on a typical day.

Strengthening the role of Twitter as a network that has influence and importance beyond its 10-15 million worldwide active user base, it’s also worth noting that the study found that 99% of Twitter users are online news consumers.

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By comparison, Americans spent on average six hours a month on social networks in October, almost 3x as much as in October 2007.

Secondly, a chart that again confirms the dominance of Facebook as being for social media what Google is for search. The other day I mentioned a Reuters article questioning whether Facebook was achieving technological ‘lock-in’, becoming a default that’s difficult to shift.

As well as Google, Reuters actually compared Facebook with the introduction of the QWERTY keyboard – introduced in the 1870s as the default for keyboards, and not the best or most logical solution out there but simply the one that stuck.

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US users now account for 50.88% of the total, down from 62.1%.   The UK’s share has remained more or less constant on 7.2%, but it’s been overtaken by Brazil, which has the second highest Twitter population at 8.79% as a whole.

Bear in mind that Brazil’s Internet penetration is around 35-40% with 32 million users, while the UK’s is 76% with 37 million users.   As a result, when looking at it in these terms, Brazil scores even higher (anyone know why Twitter is, relatively speaking, so popular there?).

When it comes to the total number of tweets, as opposed to users, a slightly different picture emerges.   This gives an indication as to where the most active twitter population is.   Here, the US is still comfortably in front with 56.59% of messages, the UK is second with 8.09% and Brazil is 3rd with 6.73%.

What does all this mean for marketers?   Several months ago when advising a European client I called Twitter an overwhelmingly English speaking network that (in Europe) does much better in the UK than elsewhere.    That holds true today, though it’s certainly less true than it was then.

Six months ago the US + UK + Canada + Australia accounted for 78.5% of the total Twitter population – almost eight in ten.   Today that figure is 64.82% – less than two thirds.

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