A common answer to ‘why Twitter, it’s not a mass market tool?’, is ‘because the people who do use it matter.’ The influence over numbers argument.

That’s backed up by an ExactTarget study, reproduced in emarketer. US Twitter users in April 2010 were far more likely than general Internet users to post to forums (75% vs 25%), blog (72% vs 14%), comment on blogs (70% vs 23%) and post ratings / reviews (61% vs 20%).

In other words, the 14 million odd people who regularly go on Twitter (as opposed to the 95 million that have signed up), are already active in social media, know how to make things happen and to create noise – good or bad – online, and take conversations elsewhere, be that to blogs, forums, other social networks, or even the mainstream media.

As Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget puts it, “What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter. While the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook or email, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivaled—it’s become the gathering place for content creators whose influence spills over into every other corner of the internet.”

ExactTarget also asked Twitter users why they followed brands. The biggest reason was for informational purposes, with updates on future brands (38%) and keeping informed about the company (32%) being the main reasons.

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On the back of their extensive Twitter reports, my favourite Canadian analytics firm, Symosos, has published a study of blog demographics. Highlights as follows:

Perhaps not surprisingly most bloggers are in their 20s and 30s, only 7%+ are aged 50 or more

The highest % of bloggers (29.2%) are in the US, the second most populated country in the blogosphere is the UK with 6.75% of the total

What does surprise me is the gender split.

Sysomos says that 49.1% of bloggers are women….yet this contradicts both received wisdom and the state of the blogosphere report by Technorati last Autumn, which showed that 2/3 of bloggers are male.

How did Sysomos come up with such a different result?  Is it that Syomos products only analyse blogs where there is a clear and declared biography, while Technorati’s research is more of a conventional survey (i.e one carried out and answered by humans).

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‘Where do stories come from?’ asks an article on Media Post.   While previous research showed that online media only accounts for 4% of what you might call ‘new news’, journalists definitely do use it to supplement and build on stories and find out additional information.

A study by George Washington University and Cision found that 89% of journalists turn to blogs for research, 65% to social media sites like Facebook, 52% to Twitter.   And Wikipedia?  Over 6/10 (61%) consult it.

Overall 55% of journalists thought that social media was either somewhat or very important.   However, at the same time 84% said it was ‘slightly less’ or ‘much less’ reliable than traditional media.

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A number of graphs, which are worth noting from an excellent techcrunch article by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan – Context is King: How videos are found and consumed online.

First of all, most are discovered within two weeks of them being posted up.    If your video hasn’t gathered viral momentum in the first ten days or so of it going online, it probably won’t.

55% of video views are via “discovery”, people stumble on the video, mostly via blogs.   Get that online PR campaign going!

Then, after two minutes, over 3/4 of your audience will have zoned out and clicked somewhere else.   So keep those virals short.

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This is according to the UK’s media recruitment agencies as reported by industry publication PR Week.

Recruiter Major Players looked through 4500 CVs received in the past two years (4500?  Guess times really were tough!), only 6% mentioned social media, 9% mentioned twitter and 2% mentioned blogging.   13% said ‘Facebook’ though a lot of this was as an interest or hobby.

By comparison, 33% of recruitment searches are for positions that require digital skills and another 28% require at least a general understanding.

In the article, the CEO of Cake turns the situation on its head a little bit implying that there are plenty of people, especially the under 25s, who use social media but that there’s a “dearth of strategy and planning people.”   In other words, sure you ‘use’ social media, but can you marry that up with a basis in communications strategy and skills.

Image – Justin Cormack

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That’s according to the Pew Internet & American Life project, which looked at generational differences online.    Apparently, Internet surfers aged 33-72 are ‘significantly’ more likely to check out religious and official Govt info online.

On a more serious note, the study does show that, despite the increased uptake of social networks by older online consumers, they by and large still have a more focused attitude to the Internet.   They go there for a specific task, to find out information, check finances, read the news and so on.

More specifically us generation-Xers (33-44) are still the Kings of online shopping with 80% buying stuff online compared to 71% of generation Y (18-32) and only 38% of teens.

By comparison, as you’d expect digital natives (aged under 30) are more likely to use personal blogs, send instant messages and check out online videos and games.   In other words, the generational divide is a functional versus social one.

Another study, from iStrategy labs, looks specifically at Facebook.   The 35-54 year old one is the fastest growing demographic, while the number of 25-34 year olds doubles every six months.

Image – Tom Coates

Graham Holliday who blogs from Rwanda has published this excellent presentation about he disseminates information using free tools and a patchy, expensive Internet connection.

As they say necessity is the mother of invention and Graham has found some simple, but effective ways of getting the word out.   Definitely worth a read through and something the more broadband rich among us can learn from.

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Research firm Sysosmos (the people who recently published stats on Twitter ‘power users’) has come out with a study on online video.

However, rather than recycling the old line about how much online video is growing, Syomos looked at the extent to which bloggers use online video.   That’s obviously important for the simple reason that if your viral is going to go anywhere, bloggers will have a great deal to do with it.

Not surprisingly, You Tube leads in terms of bloggers embedding videos into their blogs, with 84% using it.   However, Vimeo is ahead of Daily Motion and Metacafe in second place with 8% of embeds.   Vimeo (which we ourselves use) positions itself as a higher quality (in both senses of the word) video sharing channel and certainly among online influencers it does better than it does among the mass of consumers.

The best days to embed videos?  Tuesdays and Wednesdays.   This ties back to the fact that a lot of bloggers (present company included) will do more during the working week, and also attract more blog traffic, and much less during weekends.   And again, not surprisingly, lunchtimes are peak online video times for blogs.

The US obviously leads in terms of bloggers using online video (32%), though Brazil (6.6%) beats the UK (4,4%) into second place.   Purely anecdotally, I know that a lot of our campaigns have – randomly – been picked up by Brazilian sites without any rhyme or reason why that should be the case.

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