tag = "Users"

Further to my colleague Paul Verna’s post today about the smartphone factor in Twitter usage, I wanted to mention one of the key findings of my recently released “Mobile Social Networks: Marketing by Location Shows Potential” report (full version of the report available here for Total Access subscribers only):

From a usage perspective, mobile users are starting to access social networks with an even greater frequency than PC users, offering a glimpse into a possible future for other online content and media.

The report points to smartphones as the force behind this emerging usage pattern, noting that the contrast in levels of social networking activity between smartphone and non-smartphone users can be dramatic. Just to give a sense, according to comScore, smartphone users in the US indexed five times higher than non-smartphone users in terms of accessing social networking sites or blogs, while in the EU-5, smartphone owners indexed at approximately triple the rate of non-smartphone users for social networking activity.

The hype around the convergence of social networking and mobile services is set to crank up a notch. Nokia just announced that it will launch a Facebook widget that will enable users of its N97 and N97 mini models to publish their location and status updates direct from their home screen, while also seeing updates from friends. This makes a lot of sense and is a good illustration of the potential of widgets to make mobile multimedia services more compelling and simple to use.

Social networking has the potential to make the mobile Internet as widely used as SMS, but only if it is affordable. Nokia’s so-called “lifecasting” service will initially only be available on two relatively expensive smart phones. Nokia estimates the N97 mini, the cheaper of the two, will sell at retail for 450 euros before taxes and subsidies, when it begins shipping in October. Teenagers and twentysomethings, the most active users of social networks, might balk at that price tag, plus the cost of a flat-rate data plan. Many will be on prepaid tariffs today.

Eighteen percent of young adults ages 18 to 34 say that social media access was the most decisive factor in their handset purchase, according to a new Harris Interactive study commissioned by Sprint Nextel. The study reports that 25 percent of young adults owning handsets with mobile social networking capabilities access their social media profiles constantly/often, compared to just 1 percent of consumers ages 55 and older. A quarter of users between the ages of 35 and 44 also check their social media profiles frequently, some every day.

This "21st Century Moms Report" states that the number of mothers using social networks has risen from 11 percent to 63 percent since 2006. And there's good news for brands who are using the same networks. According to the BabyCenter press release, "Forty-four percent [of moms on the social web] use social media for word-of-mouth recommendations on brands and products, and 73 percent feel they find trustworthy information about products and services."

As far as hardware is concerned, almost all moms - 91 percent - say they never leave home without a mobile device. More than half say they have replaced traditional photo albums with online photo-sharing services. And moms are also the primary console gamers in the household after the birth of a first or second child.

When we first came up with the idea for Weebiz , a network of companies and not people, we were surprised that no one had thought of it before. All of those many networks that are available had taken their own path in finding their niche. How come no one had thought about this incredibly vast segment: businesses? Sure, directories are plenty, but those aren’t really networks

Social Networking sites are not only meant for youth. Now, senior citizens are also have the chance to build their network, share photos and make new friends.. A new social networking site – Verdurez.com has entered in the market targeting senior citizens aged 55 and above. The aim of the website is to add colours in the lonely life of senior citizens.

Looking deeper, entertainment content is just as popular as utilitarian content. However, entertainment content, such as mobile games, music, and social networking activities, is accessed for longer periods of time overall than utilitarian content (such as news, weather and sports scores). Behaviors fall out expectedly along demographic lines -- 80 percent of mobile social networking is among 12-34 year olds, while news consumption is dominated (79%) by 18-54 year olds.

Looking at all the mobile phone offers out there for unlimited Facebook or non-stop Bebo, you’d think that was all customers cared about these days. However, a study commissioned by OpenCloud found that only 5.5 per cent of users thought social networking apps are “extremely important”.

In comparison, the price of traditional services such as calls and texts were more likely to be an issue – with more than 80 per cent viewing them as the most important factors when looking to purchase a new phone.

“Cost is key for customer purchasing decisions; the three most important for consumers is handset price, call price and text price,” the research said.

According to The Nielsen Company's "Global Faces and Networked Places," revealing the new global footprint of social networking including both social networks and blogs, "Member Communities" have become the fourth most popular online category, ahead of personal email, and growing twice as fast as search, portals, PC software and email. Active reach in "member communities" now exceeds e-mail participation by 67 percent to 65 percent.

You might have noticed the blog has been quiet for about 2 weeks now, and although i would like to cite "lack of inspiration", twitter and procrastination probably answers it better. However, i just read an article ran on MobiAd on BuzzCity's founder KF Lai on his experience with MyGamma, a rapidly growing mobile social network.

MyGamma serves ads in over 100 countries and is rapidly showing a proven revenue model on the much lauded promise of social networks and location based targeting. In My Lai's words " mygamma is targeting “un-wired” consumers. In other words, people who do not have regular access to a PC and so their only means to connect to internet is through mobile." .. Wow.

Gen Y, the demographic group generally considered to be those born somewhere between 1977 and 2000, is a group that marketers pay a lot of attention to.

They're the multi-platform generation, consuming media on a variety of devices (including mobile phones). They're also said to be fickle and hard to keep engaged. But above all else, they're elusive.

Since they're less likely than their older siblings and parents to be consuming media through traditional channels, marketers have increasingly followed them into the channels of their choice.

Online, this means social networks.

But according to a study conducted by the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN), going where Gen Y is and actually marketing to Gen Y effectively are two very different things.