DIGIWEDO: Social Media PR nut » Social Networks

Social search alive and well in the UK

Digiwedo — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:05:24 +0000

Reports on WebUser today show that traffic to social networking sites outstripped that for search engines for the first time ever. According to the WebUser article, Facebook accounted for 55 per cent of all UK-based social networking traffic while Google led from the search side. So does this mean that the muted social search is actually gaining traction?

It’s often been argued (and I agree) that social networks are increasingly used as a source for news – both news on what their network is up to and more general news. However, I don’t think that people naturally gravitate to social networks with the intention on searching for news or information – I think they just find it there. And there’s a reason for that – they’re tapping into to a highly relevant pool of their friends and contacts that are naturally sharing information that’s interesting to them.

So, what am I getting at? Social networks are becoming one-stop information sharing points. While people don’t specifically head to Facebook to search for something, they might find that they are naturally being served with information that slowly but surely makes that search list smaller and smaller, probably without the individual actually being aware of it.

New Ofcom research shows kids don’t care about age restrictions

Digiwedo — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:51:49 +0000

Nothing new there I suppose, but the actual figures are quite interesting. For instance, a quarter of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home say they have a profile on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, all of which have an age restriction of 13. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that 83 per cent of these children have their profile set so that it can only be seen by friends, and 4 per cent have a profile that can’t be seen – is this the generation that’s going to show the rest of us how it’s done?

Another very encouraging figure is that nine in ten parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93 per cent) also say that they check what their child is doing on these types of sites. It wasn’t that long ago that most parents were fairly clueless in this space. In terms of usage, Blogs or sites like Wikipedia where people can add or change information are visited by one in five (18 per cent) of 8-11s and half of 12-15s (48 per cent) who use the internet at home.

For more info, you can see the press release here and download the report here

It’s a woman’s world

Digiwedo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:05:17 +0000

This did the rounds earlier in the week, but I wanted to add my thoughts to the debate as well. New figures out from Social Media God, Brain Solis show that women are dominating the social web, with the exception of Linkedin, YouTube, deviantART, Delicious and Digg.

From my own experience, I’d say that this is spot on. Take Facebook for example, from my experience not only do there tend to be more women engaging with brands through sponsored pages, they are also the most active fans on the page and contribute much more to the conversation.

What could this mean for brands? I think it represents an opportunity to further diversify the way they talk to their audiences, providing the opportunity for near 360 degree engagement, but more importantly a continuous and collaborative conversation. The result – a carefully crafted brand built by people that care the most.