Facebook and Twitter on a Tear
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 09:07AM Reading studies about trends in digital marketing is not how I prefer to spend leisure time. But they can be a nice counter balance to the time spent trying to convince organizations that social media are not going away (unlike mainstream media).
A comScore Inc. recap of digital marketing in 2009 in the U.S. released yesterday tells us, among other revealing findings (Would you have guessed that the largest growth rate in e-commerce in 2009 was in the purchase of books and magazines?), that people in the U.S. continue to flood to Facebook and Twitter, and to a lesser extent MySpace.
According to the study:
"Facebook grew substantially across nearly every performance metric in 2009. Unique visitors, page views, and total time spent all increased by a factor of two or more. Frequency metrics such as average minutes per usage day (up 6 percent) and average usage days per visitors (up 37 percent) also saw gains. As more people use Facebook more frequently, the site has grown to account for three times as much total time spent online as it did last year."
Others with an analytic predisposition can deep dive into the charts and graphs in comScore's study. Suffice to to say from my perspective this even more important than the huge numbers tossed around which compare Facebook's 350 million or so users to the populations of various countries.
The numbers are telling us that people are coming to Facebook more often, spending more time there, and exploring the Facebook landscape more broadly.
As for Twitter, someone commented on a recent Tweet of mine which asked whether I should try to be funnier in my posts that I shouldn't because it is a "business medium." The comment may have been justified a year ago given the demographic composition of users, but the change in the age of Twitter users (which now total 20 million in the U.S.) may bring that assumption in question:
"The initial success of Twitter was largely driven by users in the 25-54 year old age segment, which made up 65 percent of all visitors to the site in December 2008, with 18-24 year olds accounting for just 9 percent of visitors . . . Despite Twitter's initially older skew, as it gained widespread popularity with the help of celebrity Tweeters and mainstream media coverage, younger users flooded to the site in large numbers, with those under the age 18 (up 6.2 percentage points) and 18-24 year olds (up 7.9 percentage points) representing the fastest growing demographic segments."
There may be troubling questions about the options for monetizing these platforms so they can be sustained and about the ability best ways to harness online networks for marketing purposes, but there is clearly every reason to keep at it. These platforms are in increasing part of how the world plays out its relationships, idea and information excahgne, civic engagement and, yes, product and service research.
Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter 
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Reader Comments (2)
Good post Boyd. I think your final comments are the most significant - social media is transforming (albeit slowly) the nature of communication between organizations and citizens (politicians and voters; business and consumers; NGOs and donors, volunteers, etc.). Built into newer media technologies is the potential for more fluid, dialogical and interactive modes of communicating, not to mention unanticipated opportunities for building relationships - some of these relationship you want and others you may not want.
Based on my own work with people in business, the nonprofit sector and in academia, this shift away from a broadcast to a dialogical paradigm may be more than just a little unsettling. Many organizations want and expect to treat Twitter, Facebook, etc. as tools for communicating in the same old way. Communication is seen in this light to be instrumental and purposive: it is intended to secure a particular outcome (e.g. sell more stuff, change a policy, get more donations). Social media can be used in this way, and it often is; but that is a limited and problematic way of conceptualizing its utility and value. These are relationship technologies that old forms of organizational writing and communication (annual reports, flyers, ads, websites, PSAs, etc.) could never realize. The problem is that relationship building is not a one-way street. It is full of twists and turns and you have to be open to going with the flow, even if you are trying to steer the ship. That's why so many organizations (including our federal government) show a total lack of understanding about how the social media landscape is changing the ways in which we communicate and what the implications may be.
As for your respondent to your aforementioned tweet, there are many in business who do not share the view that Twitter is a "business medium". You probably came across the recent article in Brandweek showing an apparent dissatisfaction on the part of business with Twitter (not with social media more broadly, however). Here's the link in case you missed it:
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3i2a2383a07ad64ff8a8e8473f0cd169a1?pn=1
My own view is that if you're a serious guy all the time, post serious stuff. Social media is about the amplification of authenticity after all, right? If on the other hand you're comfortable being cheeky or sometimes silly in public, then let us in on that side of your personality. If it's how you prefer to act in private, then leave it that way.
Great observations Josh . . . and, yes, I could tell without the tweet which Josh you are. You will admit (and I say it with all due respect) an academic tone to your writing.
In particular, I gree fully with your point that " this shift away from a broadcast to a dialogical paradigm may be more than just a little unsettling." We are at at a different stage now where many of our clients have pulled back the curtain a little to see that something is there, but they aren't confident enough for the 'full Monty'.
Re: disappointment with Twitter, I hadn't seen the piece so thanks. But I will approach it with the skepticism which is implied in your comment about the extent to which companies want social media to be "instrumental and purposive" rather than relationship and dialog-oriented.