Social Media: Who, Where, Why?

Now that I’ve turned my attention to social media, behold, there are actual data available! This link (http://www.steverubel.com/study-43-of-online-americans-addicted-to-soci ) goes to a blog entry by Steve Rubel regarding just how often people access their social networks. He uses the term “addicted” perhaps too cavalierly, but the Experian data he presents are pretty darn interesting.

In brief, use of social networking has tripled in three years, and nearly half of internet users in fact use social networking sites multiple times each day. Further, the proportion of internet users who accessed Facebook within the last month is again nearly half. Finally there is a breakdown of the reasons why people use social media, who they communicate with, and where they are concentrated geographically.

Rubel also suggests that Twitter is not so much a social medium as it is a “continuous public communications channel”, citing the fact that it “does not require mutual friending”. I will be interested to see if that criterion shows up in other definitions of “social media”.

DD.