Social Networking is Fastest-Growing App

Social networking is far and away the fastest-growing application people of most ages are adopting.

Video and audio also are noteworthy.

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Facebook is Social Network Market Leader in 115 Countries

Facebook is the leading social network in 115 out of 132 countries.

IBM Looks at The Social Workplace

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As you would expect, younger workers have different expectations about social networking in the workplace.

Social Will Grow 10 to 25x In The Next Five Years

Kleiner Perkins venture capitalists think social applications could grow 10 times to 25 times over the next five years.

Bing Gordon: Social Will Grow 10 to 25x In The Next Five Years

Why Social Now Matters

Why the rush to get into social networking, social media and social ecosystems?

Gowilla says it has "not yet" been approached by Google about a potential acquisition, though there is some speculation that could be in the offing as Google ramps up its efforts in the social media and social networking areas.

Why Google Isn't Good at Social Apps Yet

The kind of application that Google knows how to make well are the kind that serve a utilitarian function. Google's search engine excels at allowing users to search for something, consume, and move onto the next thing.

Google so far does not excel at applications that are by their nature designed for "hanging around."

Can Google Figure Out How to Appeal to Lobsters As Well As Pandas?

Social Media Dominates Asia Pacific Internet Usage | Nielsen Wire

Social media usage has seen unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific in the past year and is now one of the most critical trends in the online sector, according to Nielsen.

A new survey found that three of the seven biggest global online brands are social media sites: Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Close to three quarters of the world’s Internet population (74 percent) have now visited a social networking or blogging site, and Internet users are spending an average of almost six hours per month on social media sites.

Korea is one of the most social media engaged countries in the world, with the country’s leading social media site, Naver, attracting 95 percent of the Korean Internet population every month.

Japanese Internet users are the most avid bloggers globally, posting more than one million blogs per month, significantly more than any other country in the region.

Social Media Dominates Asia Pacific Internet Usage | Nielsen Wire

The Web is Getting More Social, Google Says

No surprise then that Google, one way or the other, will "get more social" in response.

Is Email Going Away?

Lots of people, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, think email is fading away as a communiation activity. "Only 11 percent of teens email each day," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says. "Email is probably going away."

Part of that behavior pattern can be explained by the fact that teens are not in the work world in the same way as older users are, and email remains highly important in the work world.

This is good news for Facebook and online advertising in general, she argues.
People are more comfortable seeing ads directed at them in their Facebook "News Feed" than they are in their email inboxes, she argues.

While ads in an inbox are called "spam," Facebook users will even sometimes click "Like" on a brand's Facebook page and volunteer to receive messages directly from advertisers.

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Users Now Spend 22% of Their Online Time With Social Media

Three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites, according to Nielsen.

This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes. For the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, after the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24 percent over last year.

;The average visitor spends 66 percent more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.

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Social Networks More Popular than Search Engines in UK

Social networks were visited more often than search engines by users in the United Kingdom, says hitwise.

About 55 percent of social network and forum traffic goes to Facebook, hitwise says. YouTube got 16 percent of traffic. Twitter leapt over Bebo and MySpace in May to land a distant third, with only two percent of UK social traffic.

Social networks more popular than search engines in UK, says Hitwise | VentureBeat

Who is More Careful About Personal Information:Younger or Older People?

Though it is not intuitive, younger users might be more careful and active about curating their online information than older users are, a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests.

Internet users between the ages of 18 to 29 are more likely than older adults to say they take steps to limit the amount of personal information available about them online. About 44 percent of young adult Internet users say this, compared with 33 percent of Internet users between the ages of 30 to 49, 25 percent of those 50 to 64 and 20 percent of those ages 65 and older.

Also, 71 percent of social networking users ages 18 to 29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online. By comparison, just 55 percent of users ages 50 to 64 have done so.

Compared with older users, young adults are not only the most attentive to customizing their privacy settings and limiting what they share on their profiles, but they are also generally less trusting of the sites that host their content.

When asked how much of the time they think they can trust social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, 28 percent of social networking site users ages 18 to 29 say “never.” By comparison, 19 percent of users ages 30 to 49 and 14 percent of those ages 50 to 64 say they never trust the sites.

See all the findings

58% of All U.S. Web Users Visit Social Networking Sites

As popular as social networking has proven to be--eMarketer now says 58 percent of U.S. Internet users visit a social networking site at least once a month--there have been questions about Facebook's business model. The answer typically has been that "a model will be found," as improbably as was the case for Google before it.

Advertising and e-commerce have been the most-frequent answers to the question of how any widely-used "free to use" application can support itself over time. And despite some "privacy" stumbles of late, Facebook continues to explore ways to position itself as an advertising venue, despite some obstacles, related in part to fragmented use of the service (there is no single "home page" everybody goes to, which would create a huge venue for display ads) and the suitability of the content environment (YouTube has the same basic problem).

Still, the rule in media is that whenever a sufficient number of "eyeballs" can be aggregated, advertising becomes viable.

eMarketer estimates that 57.5 percent of Internet users, or 127 million people, will use a social network at least once a month in 2010. That's eyeballs.

Two-Thirds of Web Users to Visit Soc Nets in 2014 - eMarketer

Social Networking Eclipsing Email?

Many observers have noted that one of the big changes in technology adoption over the past half decade is the preponderance of "consumer" technology compared to "enterprise" technology tools. Not only are consumer tools reshaping enterprise applications but most of the innovation now occurs on the consumer side as well.

Internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley says that social network use is bigger than email in terms of both aggregate numbers of users and time spent, and is still growing rapidly.

Meeker attributes social networking’s success to the fact that it’s a “unified communications plus multimedia creation tool in your pocket.” The intriguing notion there is that tools not originally envisioned as part of the unified comnmunications feature set are now in some cases supplanting those features.

In fact, consumer tools in this case seem to be displacing at some of the utility enterprise unified communications services and applications were envisioned as supplying.

Social networking passed email in terms of time spent in 2007, hitting about 100 billion minutes a month globally and now is twice that.

Social networking passed email in terms of raw user numbers in July of 2009, with more than 800 million users. Given the rate at which Facebook has been growing, that number is probably now closer to a billion users, she says.

In many ways, social networking is to unified communications as consumer VoIP was to enterprise IP telephony: all the attention was the latter, not the former, but most of the growth has occurred in the former, not the latter.

The Creative Age is Different, Way Different

General Motors isn't Facebook. Heck, it isn't even Cisco or Microsoft. But neither are any of those companies like Facebook. I don't mean "like Facebook" in financial, social or cultural terms. Facebook is unlike other companies in the way that it creates a product. Most companies create products using some combination of internal resources ("employees") and business partners ("suppliers").

Most companies can tell you who "works for the company" and who does not. What is different about Facebook, and Wikipedia, Google and YouTube is that the "product" is produced by all sorts of people, both inside a "company," inside its "partner suppliers," and from "outside the company." What makes Facebook's product different is that "users" must participate to create a better and more useful product.

That might be true for any sizable organization, to some extent. Consumers help shape products when they decide to buy some more than others, and some not at all. Consumers help products evolve when they start to use products in new and unexpected ways.

But Facebook and others with a "social" product cannot develop with passive or secondary input. They require active creation of content, links and networks by participants. Not every product can be produced in this way. But it is a so-far distinctive attribute of products produced in a "post-information age" era.

Some might call the upcoming era the "creative" era, to differentiate it from the information age. Collaboration is a key cultural attribute of firms that create social products. Facebook depends on users, developers to create its product, which is an experience.

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9 Million Google Buzz Posts in 2 Days

Though it is far too early to say anything definitive about the potential success of Google Buzz, it probably is worth noting that Buzz users created nine million posts and comments in two days, buildiing on the strength of Gmail’s existing installed base.

I don't kow whether you consider that traction, or sampling. It does illustate the value of a huge installed base, huge name recognition and a cloud-based service, though. The day Google decided to go "live," it got noticed and used by enough people to create a substantial number of entries.

Also, one thing about "perpetual beta," which Google tends to rely on when launching new products, is that it does actually work. One of the "gotchas" Google Buzz rather quickly uncovered was a potential privacy issue. Under some circumstances, it might be possible for Buzz users to discover "follower" email addresses.

Google coders jumped on the problem and apparently have it fixed. And Google already is talking about launching an independent Buzz site that is not linked to Gmail accounts, to further address the issue. That's a fairly interesting illustration of how powerful social mechanisms are, though. Within three days, a potential privacy issues was uncovered and fixed, and enough users seem to indicate they want a version not linked to Gmail that Google already is considering that option.

No Way To Tell, Yet, Whether "Buzz" Has Any

Given that Google's "Buzz" application, which, depending on who one talks to is either a "Twitter killer" or a "Facebook killer," has only been live for several days, we probably should give our chattering a rest. Nobody can say whether connecting Buzz to Gmail will result in a viable and large social networking community being created, much less how it might affect Twitter, Facebook or other communities.

There's no question social networking has gone mainstream, and equally no question that "Google" is not one of the names that comes to mind when "social networking" is talked about. I don't know whether Buzz can change that.

In business, incumbency is a powerful thing. There's a reason iTunes owns the music space. You can point to ease of use, elegance or any number of other attributes that have lead to iPod dominance in the music player business, creation of a better way to buy and use music.

One can point to similar advantages for Google in search, Amazon in e-commerce or eBay in auctions. Once such leadership has been established, it is tough to dislodge.

So far, Buzz appears only to be "follower" on the technology front. It has some features of Twitter and some of Facebook, with the potential upside of being able to attract the Gmail audience. I don't know whether it is reasonable to expect people to abandon Facebook or Twitter for Buzz.

Facebook has surpassed 400 million active members. I'd say that is far past the point where switching behavior is "costless." As we like to say, Facebook has something of a moat around it. The ability to easily add third party apps or play games are examples.

Twitter arguably could be a different matter, as that app has gained less mindshare, or users, overall. Perhaps a "fast follower" approach could work there. Still, Buzz likely has most chance of succeeding if its users can uncover some new class of value that neither Facebook nor Twitter yet has done.

Right now, that might be hard to discern. But it's only been several days. We might be looking at years before any pattern emerges. Right now, Buzz does not have the feel of an innovation that creates an entirely-new category of experience. That could change. How it might change is the bigger question.

I'm using the app, but only casually. For me, that's not unusual, though. I use all my social networks quite casually.

Social Networking is King on Android and iPhone

A new analysis by Flurry of smartphone application use confirms what earlier data had been suggesting: social networking is the smartphone "killer app."

The February 2010 data shows social networking sessions on either the Apple iPhone or Android devices approach or hit 20 sessions a month.

That compares with seven to 10 news app sessions, about five gaming sessions and three to seven entertainment sessions.

The other notable trend here is that Android users appear to use smartphone applications at a higher rate than iPhone users do. One might have thought that most of the early adopters already had opted for iPhone, and one clear characteristic of iPhone users is that they make use of the mobile Web and Internet at much-higher rates than other smartphone users.

Until the Android, that is. Android users appear to behave as iPhone users do, only more so. One might have hypothesized that Android users might be more mainstream, and tend to use entertainment apps more than iPhone users. The Flurry data does not necessarily confirm that thesis.

Aside from the fact of being heavier users, Android and iPhone usage patterns, across applications, appear to be identical. To the extent that Android devices, perhaps especially the Verizon Droid, have been seen as competing directly with the iPhone, the data suggests that early adoption fits the appellation.

Are Emerging Market Consumers Different?

A new study by Accenture suggests that, in a globalized world, consumer demand for a wide range of technology products is remarkably similar, at least among those emerging market buyers with disposable income.

In fact, consumers in emerging markets are twice as likely as those in developed markets to purchase and use consumer technology in the next year and are more willing to pay a premium for “environmentally friendly” consumer electronics products, says Accenture.

The Accenture survey of 16,000 consumers in four “mature” countries (the United States, Germany, France and Japan) and four “emerging” countries (China, India, Malaysia, and Singapore) suggests current and future spending and usage patterns for 19 different consumer technologies, including smartphones, high-definition TVs and computers, is remarkably similar in developed and emerging markets, with one exception: developing market consumers are more likely to buy smartphones, PCs and other devices over the next year.

Compared with consumers in mature countries, consumers in emerging countries are more than two and a half times as likely to buy a smartphone during the next year (52 percent  compared to 20 percent).

Emerging market consumers also are more than twice as likely to have bought a smartphone in the past year (67 percent compared to 32 percent).

Twice as many emerging market consumers are likely to have bought a computer in the past year (40 percent vs. 20 percent). They also are more than twice as likely to have at least occasionally played video games on handheld devices (58 percent compared to 28 percent).

Do they use social networking? Yes, at about a 69 percent rate, compared to 38 percent in the developed markets.

Emerging market consumers also are significantly more likely to pay a premium for consumer products marketed as being environmentally friendly (84 percent compared to  50 percent).

“One of the reasons for this emerging-country growth is the rapid expansion of the middle class with its substantial disposable income,” says Jean-Laurent Poitou, managing director of Accenture’s Electronics & High Tech industry group.

“Furthermore, our research shows that the increased demand for smart connected wireless devices such as smartphones is being driven by social-networking applications.

“Emerging-country consumers use mobile devices more than they do computers to access Internet-enabled applications and services, and consumers in mature countries are also headed in that direction.”