You’ll find an extended report on social networking in this week’s Economist. You may have seen it on the newsstand—it shows Steve Jobs, in Biblical raiment with nimbus, bearing the fabled tablet.
Clever. And glorious. Or blasphemous, depending on your point of view.
If you’re well-versed in social media, you won’t find the report mind-blowing, though it is characteristically well-reasoned. If you’re newer to social media, I’d recommend it.
I thought I’d share in this blog post what were for me some of the more interesting nuggets. Here it goes:
1. Since February 2009, people have been spending more time on social-networking sites than on email (Australians are the heaviest users)
2. 10% of Twitterers account for 90% of all Tweets ; for most social networking sites, the 10% who are heaviest users account for 30% of posts
3. “Facebook’s audience is bigger than any TV network that has ever existed on the face of the earth,” per Randall Rothenberg, head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau
4. Consumers’ level of “complete trust” in friends’ recommendations is 35%+, well higher than the next closest (brand websites at 15% or so); TV clocks in shy of 10% saying they have “complete trust”
5. 44% of those following brands on Twitter do so to stay plugged into exclusive deals
7. Social networking is part of the “consumerisation” of IT—meaning, individuals have access to devices and applications that are often better than what their employers provide; this will continue to put enterprises in the spot of playing catch-up
8. Knowledge workers spend between 6 and 10 hours a week hunting for information (Implication: social search will provide a significant opportunity for knowledge worker efficiency gain)
9. 45% of hiring executives looked at job candidates’ social network pages as part of their hiring research; 1/3 found information that swayed them against hiring a candidate
10. 600 million people will use their phones to tap into social networks by 2013 (vs. 140 million people in 2009)
If I missed a nugget you found thought provoking, do post a comment below.
MLC Members: be sure to register for upcoming roundtable meetings on social media in London on February 9th, or in Chicago or Melbourne on February 23rd. These sessions are for the MLC seniormost sponsor and/or for the person overseeing social media.
You may also want to join us in Dallas on March 4th for a workshop on Building Your Social Media Strategy. This is a great train-the-trainer session for up to three people from your organization to work through a set of live exercises. You’ll come away knowing how to take the MLC’s Social Media Strategy Builder tool back to your organization.
on 2 February 10
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An informative list -thanks for sharing. My two faves (one professional, one personal): 44% of those following brands on Twitter do so to stay plugged into exclusive deals “An astonishing amount of time is being wasted on investigating the amount of time being wasted on social networks.”