Within the last few weeks, there’s been some interesting study findings released that show how children, teens and young adults use media. In January, the Kaiser Family Foundation released findings about the daily media use of children and teenagers from ages 8 to 18 in its report Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released the findings of its study Social Media and Young Adults.
Kaiser Family Foundation’s research found that although young people spend an average of almost 8 hours per day using entertainment media, they are actually stuffing nearly 11 hours worth of media use into those 8 hours by “media multitasking,” or using more than one medium at a time. Other interesting tidbits:
Social networking activities contribute to the increased media use.
Top online activities include social networking, playing games, and video sites (e.g. YouTube).
Nearly 75% of all 7th to 12th graders have a profile on a social networking site.
Girls spend more time than boys using social networking sites, listening to music, and reading.
Boys spend more time than girls playing console video games, computer games, and going to video websites.
Mobile media is driving increased consumption.
Although the Kaiser Family Foundation’s findings apply to young adults up to the age of 18, we can learn additional insights from the Pew Research Center’s results, which detailed findings about individuals under and over 30. Some key highlights include:
Teens and young adults are blogging less but using social networking more.
Teens ages 12 to 17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though Twitter is more popular with high school girls.
So, FourSq on my Blackberry is a little clunky, but I think I’m ready to battle it out with @JKositz and @SharonHowell for mayorship of BMSF! Bring it on, ladies!
Space geeks just upped their social-media cool factor:
Astronauts in the Space Station can now send tweets (check out @nasa_astronauts) directly via the Internet, according to PopSci. Previously, tweets had to be sent via e-mail to ground control for posting.
What about security issues? Well, that’s where remote management and security play a role; you’ll need to chat with us off-line if you want the techie details (we have direct clients involved. : )
And, btw, since v-day is coming up, why not launch a satellite for your sweetheart? It’ll only set you back ~$8k [via PopSci].
Marketing Profs (gurus on all things marketing) just came out with a study, “The State of Social Media Marketing.” The study, of course, took a look at which social media machine reigns supreme. The key contenders: Facebook and Twitter.
The study hinted that Facebook may be a the queen bee marketing tool (over Twitter), simply because it’s stickier. Twitter faces out and Facebook faces in, targeting users who may spend more time seeing and reacting to companies’ marketing ploys. My personal experience tells me the same thing. Though my social media-crazed personality keeps me attuned to both platforms, Facebook sucks me in like a black hole…and I love every second of it.
In light of yesterday’s observance of the birth of MLK, wanted to share an interesting blog post in Vanity Fair that explores Twitter and the potential use cases by MLK and the civil rights movement.
“Instead of imagining Hypothetical King in 2010, I’m imagining a world in which today’s tools exist in King’s day. Specifically, I want to know what Dr. King would make of Twitter…”
Some interesting points (The more interesting points are raised at the bottom, if you want to skim):
“His popular legacy remains one of speeches, but he attended and organized meetings and direct-action campaigns… I imagine he would be frustrated by the passivity and false sense of action that Twitter can promote.
“More destructive than the mindlessness of some tweets, King would have problems with the way misinformation or incomplete information moves rapidly through the service and with how the movement’s message would be oversimplified or completely misinterpreted.”
Probably very true. Worth the read, if you have some time. Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend.
In her article, Ochman cites the following critical points for successful social media strategies (check out the article for details and explanations):
Everyone must work together.
Top management must be on board.
Don’t expect overnight success.
New to social media campaigns? Ochman also provides recommendations on where to start, whether it’s for your client or your own company:
Turn the company newsletter into an internal blog and give all employees the ability to contribute.
Establish a social media policy for employee participation in social media on company time and beyond.
Let employees vote on the best ideas suggested by other employees.
Resolve to respond to customer service issues within three hours, via social media.
Ochman’s article is a worthwhile read, and we welcome her to the Burson-Marsteller family!
Looking for a way to irritate the heck out of visitors to your website? Make them decipher one of these garbled, cryptic CAPTCHAs during the registration process:
I pulled the image above from the registration page for an online ice hockey forum. (I’m in the market for some new gear and needed advice from other players.) After a few minutes of squinting, some cursing and several failed attempts at typing in the correct series of letters, numbers and hieroglyphics, I gave up and moved on to a competing forum, where I got the information I was looking for.
What a lost opportunity.
I understand the value of these CAPTCHAs, a hilariously nerdy acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” In other words, they screen out spammers. But there’s no reason to subject your users to such torture.
Check out the version of CAPTCHA used by sites like Craigslist:
See? Nice and legible.
The best part? This newer version, dubbed reCAPTCHA, is more than just a spam bot screener: it’s part of a global effort to help digitize books, newspapers and old radio shows. Each time someone completes a reCAPTCHA on a site like Craigslist, they’ve actually helped digitize a small piece of scanned text from an old book or other piece of content that computers can’t always recognize.
I had a very strange, embarrassing dream. It was the kind that gave me an awful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. In my dream I kept waving at my friends, but no one would wave back.
That’s what my first few waves on the new Google tool felt like. Now that I’ve had a day or two to check it out, I’ve discovered I was waving at people who weren’t actively online. Oops.
Well, experimenting with Google Wave has been fun…and challenging!
I’m really looking forward to learning more about the tool. As @ginatrapani mentioned in her Web 2.0 Expo talk about Google Wave, it isn’t going to happen in one afternoon.
Anyone have any great tips/tricks?
Here’s a tip that I learned from one of the Google Wave tutorial vids:
You don’t have to move your cursor and click “done” after typing a message; you can simply hit Shift+Enter.
The below TEDTalk video of Pattie Maes demonstrating new SixthSense technology still amazes me. There’s not much I can add that the video doesn’t capture. It will be very interesting to see how our future is shaped by technology and devices that are capable of pulling digital information directly from the physical world we live in.
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