One of the key points from the (UK) Ofcom Communications Market Report was, unsurprisingly, the extent to which the media habits of 18-24 year olds differed from other age groups.   However, the stats also showed that 55-64 year olds were becoming much more willing to embrace new media, with the new generational divide occurring at 65 or so.   That’s now backed up by a Pew Report from the US about older adults and social media.

In summary Pew Research says that almost half (47%) of 50-64 year olds use social networks use social networks, while a quarter (26%) of the over 65s do so – this compares to 86% of the under 30s.    In other words the social media age barrier has steadily been moving from people in their 30s two years ago, to people in their 40s in 2008/9, to Web users in their 50s now.

When it comes to daily social network use, 20% of 50-64 year olds do so, along with 13% of the over 65%.

Pew says that older Internet surfers are still more comfortable with what you might call traditional past times such as emailing or reading the news.   And 20% of 50-64 year olds who use social media every day is still very much a minority.  But – it’s worth noting that a year ago, that figure was only 10%, so the number of habitual 50 something social media users has doubled in the twelve months.

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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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While there are questions about the ability of Facebook to grow in future, Comscore has found that Twitter use has more than doubled over the past year.   Comscore’s stats (via Marketing Charts) also confirm the on-going trend of Twitter becoming less of an a US dominated, or even anglophone network.

While Twitter growth in North America was a respectable 22% from June 2009 to June 2010, in Europe it was 106%, in Asia Pacific 243% and Latin America 305%.  Overall, North American unique visitors counted for 27% of the 92.8 million unique visitors.

Though we’re not exactly comparing like with like, it is still useful to look at the Sysomos research from January, which showed the US accounting for 50% of Twitter’s user base.

Surprisingly, the countries with the highest % of Twitter penetration as a proportion of each country’s Internet population are Indonesia (20.8%), Brazil (20.5%) and Venezuela (19%).    Comscore says that Venezuela’s Twitter enthusiasm can directly be traced to Hugo Chavez setting up an account.  By comparison, Twitter penetration in the US was 11.9%, while in the UK  it was 10.9%
Mobiles drive Twitter use
Comscore says that Twitter’s growth in the US, UK, France, Spain and Italy is driven by Smartphone users.

This chimes in with an article posted up on GigaOm on Friday, showing that at weekends in particular, Twitter use from mobiles jumps – showing that people are still using the network when away from their desks and integrating into their online lives.

In his article Om Malilk talks about a study done by New York based SocialFlow, which looked at one (client) Twitter account with 500k followers.  On Saturdays, the % of clicks from mobile devices hits a peak at 41%.

Of course, 93 million global unique users, does not mean the same as 93 million regular users.  There is still the research from RJ Metrics showing that 83% of Twitter accounts are dormant every month, and that a base of committed users (often active in other social media / media channels) make up for the majority of activity.

Though the growth rates are certainly impressive, there’s as yet no new evidence that Twitter’s churn rates have significantly improved, with the service hitting real mainstream web adoption.

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Hubspot has a useful graphic that makes sense when you think about it, but is still useful when someone comes to you asking for a Facebook page with 10,000 fans by next month.   The most popular Facebook pages according to Hubspot, involve movies, TV shows, popular books, bands and so on.

And at the bottom of the scale we have Govt pages, musicians (I guess unknown ones?), local businesses and Govt public services.

In fact, Inside Facebook says that entertainment sites are now driving a larger proportion of traffic to the social network, helped along by Facebook’s ‘like’ button that it unveiled the other month (and that I’ve finally got around to installing myself).

Inside Facebook quotes Compete stats that show that the whole boycott Facebook campaign over privacy issues was something of a non-starter, and probably a discussion point only among the minority of us that read the social media and tech press – in the US at least, Facebook gained 2.1 million new visitors in May.

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Canadian research firm Sysomos has come out with some interesting, if not that surprising, research about Twitter A-listers and their followers.

That research can be summed up like this:  Celebs might have hundreds of thousands or even 1+ million followers, but that’s very often made up of people who specifically joined Twitter to follow said celeb and have done nothing since.  Hence they are not engaged on Twitter and may in fact be part of the 83% who according to RJ Metrics don’t log into their accounts every month.

That also ties into the recent research that 50% of under 35s re influenced by friends. on social media, but only 17% by celebs

By contrast, people who follow the so-called social media “gurus” are engaged and influential in their own right.   And in the middle, we have people who follow media Twitter accounts.   They are Twitter consumers.  And while they don’t live and breath it, neither have they just checked in to see Ashton Kutcher and checked out again.

The following three tables pretty much say it all:

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Perhaps not the most surprising result when you think about it: Comscore has found that on Facebook the visitors who spent the most time on the site also spent the most money online, with the top 20% of users shelling out $67 in Q1.

A few more results from the study (via emarketer): Unlike on Facebook, the most prolific users of Twitter are not the biggest spenders, perhaps a consequence of Twitter’s power users seeing the network as more of an information and news exchange.   However at the same time, Twitter users did spend more online overall than Facebook users.

Also, users of Facebook and Twitter spent more on the Web than Internet consumers in general.   People who spent no time on Facebook spent $27 online in Q1, $40 less than those heavy users Comscore talked about.

So in summary, yet another study that shows that people spending time talking about your brand on social media translates into extra £, $ or € when they start spending.

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A statistic from a Harris Poll in the US (via Marketing Charts) – 50% of the under 35s who use social media say they are influenced ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ by reviews on social media.

This compares to 45% of under 35s who are influenced by mainstream newspaper and magazine reviews and only 17% that are influenced by celebrity endorsements (41% are influenced by blogs).   Good news for marketers everywhere – get rid of the expensive celebrity endorsements and focus on social engagement campaigns?

Even among American consumers aged 55+, over a third (37%) pay attention to what people on Facebook or Twitter are saying, a surprisingly high number.

As an aside I took a look at Internet penetration as a whole among older age groups.   Here, in the UK, according to Ofcom, 60% of 55-64 year olds have household Internet access, but only 33% of people aged 65+.

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If you started work in the early/mid 90s like myself, you’ll remember a time when going home meant just that – someone had to physically ring you on your home phone to get you to do something and the chances of you having a laptop with you were fairly slim.

Not anymore, as anyone who owns a smartphone / laptop combination will know.   And data published in emarketer (from a TNS / InterCall study) show that in the US 3/10 workers felt the need to be connected to work 24/7 – in particular men in their 30s.

A prime culprit according to the study is in fact social media and ‘always on technologies’ in smartphones.

An earlier IDC study in the states found that 57% of US workers now use social media for business purposes at least once a week.   Meanwhile 34% actually chose a consumer network such as Facebook or Twitter over a business one, due to familiarity and low cost.   The main thing that they do?  Something familiar to everyone on Twitter, asking questions and acquiring knowledge from a wider peer group.

At the same time there are doubts about how productive this is.  While 52.3% of workers surveyed by the American Society for Training and Development did say they learned more in less time, only 37% actually thought they got more work done.

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Late last year there were stats coming out of the US implying that Twitter’s growth was stalling.   Not so says analyst firm Sysomos, which has come out with a report showing what’s gone on for the first quarter of 2010.

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%.

The million dollar question we (and other agencies like us) are often asked, is ‘how can you evaluate social media’ or more directly – ‘will it impact the bottom line.’

At Rabbit we’re shortly publishing our favourite 20 – free that anyone can use – social media sentiment monitoring tools, but a report published in emarketer is also useful.

According to a US study, more than half of Facebook fans (of a brand) are likely to make a purchase, while 67% of Twitter followers reported the same.

6/10 Facebook fans also said they’d be more likely to recommend the brand to friends, among Twitter users that increased to 8/10.

And the main reason people followed brands on Facebook?   To receive discounts and promotions, so though not the most creative tactic in the book, straight forward Facebook competitions and give-aways can work.

This is one of the items in this week’s Rabbit Feed newsletter – more info here!

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