Tag Archives: MySpace

Who Uses Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace – Social Media Update: 4th Q 2010 and 1st Q 2011

12 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in Business, Communication, Internet, Public Relations, Social Interactive Media (SIM), Social Media Relations

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by Paul Kiser
USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype:kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

The last two quarters have seen some interesting trends in the big four Social Media services. The most obvious is the leveling off of growth of Facebook and Twitter, but of greatest interest is the clarification of who is using the Social Media tools.

Despite the plateau reached during the last two quarters, Facebook gained 100 million unique visitors per month over the same time last year and now stands at 590 million unique visitors per month. Twitter is the runner-up at 97 million unique visitors. To put Facebook’s Internet presence in perspective, the combined daily circulation of the Wall Street Journal, USAToday, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post equals only 36% of the average daily unique visitors (19 million) of Facebook.

LinkedIn remains stagnant with no growth over the last five quarters and MySpace can claim the most significant trend as it continues its death spiral. It dropped from 80 million unique monthly visitors a year ago to 34 million at the end of the 1st quarter of 2011. This has all happened in a year where the owners of MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, made desperation efforts to re-invent the service, along with massive layoffs to cut costs, in hopes of selling it. So far, their attempts to prop up MySpace and sell it have failed.

FACEBOOK – Don’t Hate Them Because They’re Beautiful

The Disneyland of Social Media

Facebook has remained at an estimated unique visitor count of 590 million for in the last two quarters. This has caused some Social Media naysayers to proclaim that Social Media is dead. It’s amusing and sad at the same time. It’s like a used car salesman saying that new car sales are dead because they’ve leveled off for two quarters.

Facebook is and will continue to be the way that individuals communicate, inform, and influence others for the foreseeable future. A more reasonable growth during 2011 should be anticipated with Facebook ending the year around 610 to 625 million.

The return of female users on Facebook continues. I say ‘return’ because female users were at 60% at the end of the 1st quarter of 2010 and dipped in the middle of the year. The percentage of women users stood at 57% the end of the 3rd quarter 2010, 59% at the end of the 4th quarter, and is now at 61%.

There has been no significant change in the age groups using Facebook during the last three quarters. This would indicate that Facebook users are becoming more stable and identifiable in terms of demographics. Seventy-two percent of users are between 25 and 54, and dividing those into ten-year spans (25-34, 35-44, and 45-55) results in near equal distribution among the three age groups.

CONCLUSION: Facebook is used primarily by adults of both sexes, but significantly female, in the prime of their active professional careers for social interaction.

TWITTER – The Scoop on Real-Time Events and Discussion

The David to Traditional News Media's Goliath

Media ‘Experts’ continue to try to figure out how to ‘monetize’ Twitter and come away with programs that annoy people and are rejected by Tweeters. When they offer dismal ROI (return on investment) figures to their client they shrug their shoulders and declare Twitter is a fad and useless. Then a major world event happens and Twitter becomes the most important information tool on the planet.

Twitter is an acid test on whether a person ‘gets’ Social Media or not, because it is one of the most powerful Social Media tools on the web, but it is not a space for advertising or marketing. This makes Twitter one of the most envied and hated Social Media tools by traditional marketing and media people, but one of the most loved by those who are believers.

Twitter has been hanging just under 100 million unique users per month since the 2nd quarter of 2010, but did dip down to 89 million at the end of 2010. Since then Twitter has jumped back up to finish the 1st quarter of 2011 at 97 million. The jump in the 1st quarter of this year is likely due to the world political events in north Africa and the earthquake and tsunami in Nippon.

Women use Twitter more than men, but like Facebook, there was a dip in the middle of 2010, when female users dropped from 60% at the end of the 1st quarter. By the end of the 4th quarter female users were at 55% and that has grown to 57% at the end of 2011’s 1st quarter.

Age demographics for Twitter also haven’t changed significantly during the last three quarters. Twitter users skew towards the young professional age group with 54% of the users falling in the 25-44 age group. At the end of the 1st quarter of 2011, only 18% of the users fell in the 45-54 age range compared to 26% of Facebook users.

CONCLUSION: Twitter is used by primarily young professionals of both sexes, but significantly female, to discuss current, real-time issues including world events and business-related topics.

LINKEDIN – Social Media for Head Hunters and Salespeople

It's all about Marketing

Many people don’t realize that LinkedIn (launched in May 2003) predates Twitter (July 2006) Facebook (February 2004,) and MySpace (August 2003). Despite its seniority in the Social Media world, it has failed to catch fire with a larger audience. It is sometimes thought to be a Social Media tool for business, but this is almost always proposed by someone who is an employment recruiter or a sales and/or marketing person.

Because LinkedIn specializes in giving a person a format to publish their resumé it is the ideal network for those seeking employment as well as those who make a profit off of people seeking employment. The irony is that at a time of record unemployment, the unique users per month have stayed flat, alternating between 41 million and 38 million for the past five quarters, ending at 41 million this past quarter.

The reason LinkedIn lacks a higher level of interaction may be due to users who have an agenda (selling themselves or their services,) which is annoying to most Social Media users. It is an inherent flaw in the premise of LinkedIn that will always keep it from broader acceptance and usage by Social Media users who like interacting, but loath selling and advertising.

LinkedIn also creates barriers to forming connections by asking “How do you know ____ ?”, and in some situations will require a user to prove that they know the person by providing their email address. While you can work around these barriers fairly easily, it inhibits people from making new connections with someone who may have similar interests.

Regarding the male to female user ratio, male users have been at 55% for the past two quarters, which is up from the 50-50 split in the 1st quarter of 2010. The users also tend to be older professionals with the 35-54 age group making up 61% of the users at the end of the 2010, and 62% at the end of the 1st quarter of this year. Those percentages were up from 56% one year ago, indicating that LinkedIn users are skewing towards the older professional.

CONCLUSION: LinkedIn is used primarily by older professionals of both sexes, but significantly male, to market themselves and their services.

MySpace – 2011 R.I.P

A Social Media Radioactive Fallout Zone

It is time to accept that MySpace is no longer relevant as a Social Media tool. It seems to have been abandoned by all but, 1) independent bands who use it to advertise themselves, 2) law enforcement agencies who pose as 13 year-old girls using images of tweens in bathing suits to lure in child predators, 3) real teenagers saying that they are 19 or older to bypass the security restrictions on minors, or 4) females who are seeking to attract men and women to their adult site. That is oversimplifying it, but it is difficult, if not impossible to find anything about MySpace that would make it competitive with other Social Media tools like Facebook or Twitter.

In addition to the largely objectionable user base, the site is slow and requires a log in with each visit, rather than accept the cookie identification from the returning users’ computer like most other Social Media services.

News Corp seems to have made a major error in purchasing MySpace at a time when it needed massive updating and redesigning for a more sophisticated user. Instead they tried to dress it up last year as a music-based Social Media service and sell it off without investing the money needed to save it. It is now so dysfunctional that the best thing that could happen is to shut it down, build a new and better program from scratch, and launch a new service that competes with LinkedIn or finds a new niche.

It is rather pointless to discuss the age or sex demographics of MySpace because while the statistics for the last two quarters may indicate that the users are 68% female, false profiles seem to be so rampant on the service that nothing can be believed.

CONCLUSION: MySpace is used primarily for nefarious, hormonal, and/or deceptive reasons for purposes that tend to exploit or expose unsuspecting users.

Dear Business Person: It is 2010. Please update your brain.

17 Friday Sep 2010

Posted by in Branding, Business, Communication, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Employee Retention, Government Regulation, History, Information Technology, Internet, Lessons of Life, Management Practices, Membership Recruitment, Membership Retention, Passionate People, Print Media, Public Relations, Re-Imagine!, Relationships, Rotary, Rotary@105, Social Interactive Media (SIM), Social Media Relations, The Tipping Point, Traditional Media, Website

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by Paul Kiser
USA PDT  [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype:kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Recently I listened to a presentation on how to network to increase referrals of potential customers. The speaker made her living by teaching people how to do this, so there is no doubt she knew her subject. Personally, I agree that face-to-face networking skills are critical if you are going to be in business, especially if you have direct customer contact.

However, she quoted statistics from a 2002 study done by the Chamber of Commerce on referral effectiveness based on the method of contact. 2002. That is where she lost me.

How far back is 2002? In 2002, the Department of Justice announced it was going to investigate Enron, the UN Security Council froze the assets of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, the Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah, The US Secretary of Energy declared Yucca Mountain, Nevada to be a suitable nuclear waste depository, the Space Shuttle Columbia completed a mission to update the Hubble Space Telescope…it’s last before it would be destroyed on re-entry from it’s next mission in 2003, the United States led coalition invaded Afghanistan, A Beautiful Mind won Best Picture, United Airlines and WorldCom filed for bankruptcy, Congress approved a resolution to go to war with Iraq, and President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security.

Columbia Space Shuttle Breakup in 2003

To some, it may seem like 2002 was yesterday, but when discussing a topic on how business referrals are made in 2010, quoting data from a single, eight year-old study makes me question the relevancy of any of the information provided. Note that the Internet was only eleven years old in 2002. The first Social Media site, Friendster was started in 2002. It wasn’t until 2003, that the more known sites of LinkedIn (May) and MySpace (August) were introduced. Facebook didn’t come on-line until February 2004, YouTube began a year later, and Twitter didn’t start until July 15, 2006.

The world of communication and business have changed dramatically in the past 36 months, let alone the changes over the past eight years. To discuss ‘networking’ from a perspective of the world in 2002 is to be in Denial* of the world of 2010. While ‘more experienced’ business people scoff at “these young people” and their Social Media, the reality is that referrals are being replaced by customer recommendations read off of blogs and other Internet sources. ‘Experienced’ business people can be angry, condescending, and ignorant all they want about the impact of Social Media on business…but it won’t change what has happened. Many people blame government regulation for business failures, but more businesses fail because of outdated business minds and practices than anything other cause and we are neck-deep in 2002 business thinking.

(*See Rotary@105: Grieving Change)

Face-to-face networking is important, but compare the number of face-to-face interactions/connections that a person can make in a day with the number of interactions/connections that can be made through blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in an hour, and it becomes apparent that dismissing the power of Social Media makes a business person appear uninformed and outdated…sort of like a man who wears shorts, sandals…and black socks. That analogy may not make sense to some people, but then again, those people probably aren’t reading this blog…or any others.

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2Q 2010 Social Media Tools: Facebook/Twitter sail on, LinkedIn/MySpace don’t

20 Tuesday Jul 2010

Posted by in Communication, Consulting, Customer Relations, Customer Service, Information Technology, Internet, Management Practices, Passionate People, Public Relations, Re-Imagine!, Relationships, Rotary, SEO, Social Interactive Media (SIM), Social Media Relations, The Tipping Point

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by Paul Kiser
USA PDT  [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype:kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Facebook Dragging Anchor?
Facebook hit 500 million users recently (Google Ad Planner puts them at 550 million as of June) and Twitter is hovering near 100 million. When you consider that Facebook doubled the number of users in about a year it seems like the growth of the giant will not stop, but something interesting has happened in the past three months. The growth in visitors (measured via cookies) has slowed; however, Facebook has gained 60 million users in the second quarter, so no one can reach a conclusion, yet.

Yes, everyone was going to quit Facebook on May 31, 2010, and that didn’t happen, but there may be a new temperamental wind blowing in the world of Social Media. It’s possible that Facebook’s bad press over privacy issues has had an impact on new users and/or it’s possible that Facebook has reached a point of saturation. Regardless, Facebook has hit a speed bump, which leads everyone to wonder if it is a temporary blip, or has the bubble burst?

Facebook Visitors 2Q 2010 (not users)

Twitter Whale of a Fail
Twitter has also seen a slight decrease in visitors over the last two months; however, Twitter gained 16 million users in the second quarter and it should easily exceed the 100 million user mark in the third quarter. Twitter may be experiencing fallout from the backlash at Facebook, but it is more likely that Twitters persistent ‘Fail Whale’ capacity issues are preventing the service from scoring big gains with new users. For several weeks in June, Twitter users experienced constant interruptions in service that were a major annoyance causing many to exacerbate the problem by Tweeting their complaints. The issues were similar to the days when AOL dial-up service lacked the capacity to handle the volume of users…and remind us of the risk an organization takes in failing to anticipate rapid growth.

Twitter Visitors 2Q 2010

From a position of potential demand by business-oriented users, Twitter is in the best position to grow into the Facebook of the business world, but it has to overcome the confusion by older users of the usefulness of the service; however, there is a ‘Tipping Point’ that once achieved could push Twitter into mega growth and a potential of becoming larger than Facebook in total users.

Twitter up-time seems to be getting better in the past two weeks, but continued reliability problems could have a significant impact on user happiness and that opens the door for another service to step up and prove that they offer more than twitchy connections.

LinkedIn Visitors 2Q 2010

LinkedIn Becalmed
The surprise in the 2nd Quarter was the loss of users for LinkedIn. Dropping from 41 million down to 38 million for the business networking website may indicate that it is in a market that is too narrow. LinkedIn encourages long discussions of business issues, and the formation of related groups, but the downside is that few care to read 257 posts of people’s opinions where the knowledgeable people are mixed in with the clueless. LinkedIn also discourages connecting to another user unless you already have a relationship with them, which means you’re talking to the same people you already know. Twitter’s advantage is a more rapid discussion that spins off to other blogs rather than an on-line list of opinions. Twitter also connects people in a way that allows the user to edit their followers, rather than depending on an existing relationship. This could be the signal of a trend and LinkedIn may come out on the short end of Darwin’s evolution theory.

MySpace Visitors 2Q 2010

MySpace: The Titanic of Social Media
MySpace is proof that failure is an option in the world of Social Media. Of course, they are a failure with 66 million followers at the end of the 2nd Quarter, but they had 80 million users at the end of the 1st Quarter. At this pace they will under 10 million users by next summer. MySpace is the Wicked Witch of the West and she is sitting under Niagara Falls …. ‘I’m meltinggggg.’

It is possible that by the end of the 3rd Quarter the field of Social Media tools could be clearly down to Facebook and Twitter. MySpace would need a massive public relations campaign and cool new tricks to stop its decline. It is the BP of the Social Media and it doesn’t have the finances to pull up before it noses into the corn field. LinkedIn is sitting on a house of cards. Being a ‘Business Networking’ service is not enough to keep it viable. If it drops under 30 million users by the end of 3rd Quarter I predict that it will be a race between LinkedIn and MySpace to be the first to dissolve in 2011. MySpace’s loss will be Facebook’s gain and LinkedIn’s loss will be Twitter’s gain. I still believe Twitter has more potential than Facebook, but they will have to overcome the misconceptions by older users of its purpose and value.

We wait for the 3rd Quarter…what will people do?

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Who Uses Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, & LinkedIn?

01 Thursday Apr 2010

Posted by in Information Technology, Management Practices, Public Relations, Rotary, Social Interactive Media (SIM)

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Paul Kiser - CEO of Enterprise Technologies, inc.

by Paul Kiser [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype:kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

People are surprised to learn that the fastest growing group on Facebook is women over 55; however, that demographic is still a small group compared to the younger age groups.  Only 16% of Facebook users (women and men combined) are over 55, so while women over 55 may be the fasted growing group, it fails to tell the whole story.

Yesterday I used Google Ad Services to look at the current statistics for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn.  It is important to understand that the Social Media arena is a constantly changing, but there are trends that have developed and are shaping our understanding of who is using the media.  When considering this information please remember this does not tell us who is NOT using the Social Media tools.  Anecdotally we can surmise that the older a person is, the more likely that they are limited or non-users of Social Media, but I have no facts to support that conclusion.

Facebook Visitors 1Q 2010

In terms of users, Facebook still reigns supreme in the world of social media.  Worldwide there are 490 million users. Twitter and MySpace each currently have 80 million and LinkedIn has 41 million.  There is no doubt that many people belong to and/or use more than one Social Media platform; however, to my knowledge there are no statistics that can precisely measure duplicate users.

MySpace Visitors 1Q 2010

MySpace was a pioneer of the Social Media and it established the standard for most of the other web-based membership groups; however, it has undergone a series of scandals of misuse by some members and it has a reputation of being used primarily by young (underage users) which have driven people away.  MySpace is the only one of the four researched Social Media platforms that is losing users.  In the past year MySpace has dropped from slightly over 20 million visitors per day to about 13 million. Not the direction that they would like to go.

Another Discussion  about Facebook & Twitter

Women tend to use the Social Media more with LinkedIn having a tie of Male and Female users.  On Facebook and Twitter women account for 60% of the users, and on MySpace they account for 66% of the users.  The fact that women tend to use the Social Media more than men may tell us a lot about gender differences in behavior and attitudes towards the use of Social Media.

MySpace Age Groupings

Age differences among the four Social Media platforms have specific patterns that indicate some of the most interesting demographics.  In general terms, MySpace dominates the under 17 crowd with 34% of all users in that age group.  It would seem that a rite of adulthood is to end your MySpace account, which may be why 18-24 year olds have distanced themselves from the service.

Facebook Age Groupings

Twitter Age Groupings

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have an older following than MySpace with Twitter users peaking in the 35 to 44-year-old range and 46% of the Facebook users in the 35 to 54-year-old range.  While the difference is not dramatic, Facebook users are slightly older than Twitter users, but both have over 70% of their users in the 25 to 64-year-old range.

LinkedIn Age Groupings

LinkedIn is unique in the distribution of the age groups with an almost perfect ‘Bell Curve’.  Considered to be the Social Media platform for business, it reflects a majority (56%) of 35 to 54 year olds as members, with another (33%) evenly spread on either side of the majority group.  The next age groups on either side of that are also evenly divided at 4% each.

Social Media Stats 1st Q 2010

Social Media is still in a transformational phase. With each passing month the users are redefining the significance of the new communication forms. With new applications and new uses for the multiple platforms being invented on a daily basis, the people who traditionally have been resources of Public Relations and Marketing are racing to understand what is relevant and what is not. In addition to business concerns like Public Relations and Marketing, experts in fields like Social Psychology, Human Communication, and even Information Technology are scrambling to grasp what all this means.

What we know about Social Media is that it is not going away, nor is it a fad. We also know that Social Media is becoming a force in informing and influencing people with speed that has never been experienced before.  It is macro-communication that occurs with micro-interactions. Much as the collective neurons in the human brain can influence our mood, the collective individuals in social networks are influencing the attitudes and awareness of a mass of people who often act or react based upon the knowledge gained through their Social Media group.

Those that engage in the tools of Social Media and learn the appropriate use of the tools will have a marketing advantage over those who shun it out of ignorance. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are even changing the way people manage and can be managed in an organization as they bypass all controls used by the Chain of Command leaving authority figures irrelevant unless they take part in the dialogue with those that have been empowered with a new voice.

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What Social Media tool do you use?

(polls)