We do a decent amount of social media coverage here at Ars, but not everything that happens with Facebook, Twitter, and the like is worth its own story. Sometimes, though, we happen across things that make us say "huh, that's interesting." It turns out there are a lot of things we thought we knew about social media users, but not all of them are true. Here are a few tidbits we gathered that may surprise some of you.
The majority of Twitter users are still just voyeurs. According to a recent report from Barracuda Labs (PDF), nearly three-quarters of Twitter users have tweeted 10 or fewer times during the lifetime of their accounts, and a third of all Twitter users have never tweeted even once. This doesn't mean those people have all abandoned their accounts though. 80 percent of all Twitter users follow more active tweeters no matter how active they are themselves (we're looking at you, Nate Anderson). In fact, nearly half follow more people than they have followers.
These numbers are actually getting better over time, though. Barracuda's report says that 37.1 percent of all users had no tweets in June of 2009—that number is now down to 34 percent. Overall, users are tweeting more, even though most still prefer to lurk in the shadows.
Mobile social networking is for the ladies. Social networking in general is exploding in popularity in part because people can do it while on-the-go. Twitter, Facebook, Google's various apps, Foursquare, and more all have mobile applications for the popular smartphone platforms and people are eating it up. However, according to Nielsen, women seem to use their phones to participate in social media more than men.
Fifty-five percent of women use social networks while mobile, compared to 45 percent of men. Sure, it's not a huge difference, but it's enough to make us wonder what's holding back the guys. Additionally, Nielsen noted that most people think of social networking as a kid thing, but the 35-54 age group was the most likely to post updates from their phones, at 36 percent. (The next largest group was 25-34, at 34 percent.) We're going to guess that the reason these two groups came out in front is because they're the most likely to have secure jobs that allow them to buy cool stuff like smartphones.
More more more! Surprise! More Internet users are participating in social media as time goes on. According to an NPD Group report from November, 37 percent of its respondents reported having visited a social networking site over the last six months, an increase of 11 percent year-over-year. Similarly, 63 percent reported having text messaged, an increase of 7 percent YOY.
On top of that, Nielsen saw 5.2 percent growth in people watching video online as of January 2010. This included sites like YouTube, Hulu, MTV, and others known for their video hawking capabilities, but also included traditional social media sites that are expanding into video, such as Facebook and Windows Live/Bing. Disney Online was the fastest growing month-over-month, followed by Facebook.
Facebook users are fans of traditional media. This seems unintuitive for your average social media user, but according to recent data from Hitwise, Facebook users in particular tend to favor broadcast and the websites of print media (like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times) over 'Net-only sites.
The most popular site visited immediately after Facebook was apparently the Weather Channel (hey, I get it, we all like to know the weather), followed by CNN. The New York Times theorizes that it could be the water cooler effect at work—users discuss news they find online on Facebook and end up clicking through from friends' pages to read more, and traditional media has an advantage in being well-known and well-trusted.
Social media isn't replacing real life just yet. It's a common complaint from Luddites and older adults that kids these days are living their lives online with no real-life social interaction. They may be talking to people less than their parents were at the same age, but a report this month from the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (PDF) shows that social media users of all ages are still spurred to check things out online as a direct result of face-to-face communication.
"Despite the influence of social media among those who use it, the value of face-to-face communication remains high," reads the report. "Even though email and cell phones have changed the way people communicate, a large majority of respondents in all age groups contend that face-to-face communication is more likely to trigger an online search than any social network."
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