Sizzle! Posts

What's up in the World of Blogs and Connections with Social Networking?

by Kas Kunz

This past week eMarketer.com published an interview excerpt with David Tokheim, the General Manager at Six Apart Media who are the creators of the blogging service TypePad, Movable Type, and Vox. One trend brought out is both blogging tools and social networks are making it easier to connect between the two. When you post on your blog such as TypePad you can publish through to your Facebook and Twitter — which means you don't have to use multiple systems to connect your various online activities. Other insights from the interview:

"Mr. Tokheim: We're seeing a lot more women blogging, a lot of mommy bloggers. They have a different dynamic than what we've seen from tech bloggers in that most of the moms have multiple blogs. They work with different networks like BlogHer, as well as Six Apart Media. And there's a very strong community around what they're doing.

eMarketer: What do you think is driving the spike in mommy bloggers?

Mr Tokheim: Two things: I think it's awareness, or word-of-mouth, and blogging platforms have become easier to use.

One of the reasons that technology bloggers were some of the first bloggers is that they were tech-savvy and able to write code, which you needed to do in the early days of blogging."

In the same week, Anita Campbell, the Executive Editor of Small Business Trends shared her insights on a recent 2009 Women and Social Media Study by BlogHer, iVillage, and Compass Partners released April 28, 2009.

3 Findings she highlighted from the study:

• Interesting Finding #1: Social Networks Like Facebook Get the Most Usage
• Interesting Finding #2: Blogs Wield the Widest Influence
• Interesting Finding #3: Women Look to Blogs for Business, Politics, Cars, and Technology

"Depending on the nature of your business, it might be worth it to focus on Facebook or MySpace — if, for instance, you are in the entertainment business. But for most things, such as if you are in B2B business or selling technology, blogs could give you more influence."

Read Anita Campbell's excellent post for more of her input on these findings.  

More from the Study:

• Women are twice as likely to use blogs than social networking sites as a source of information (64%), advice and recommendations (43%), and opinion-sharing (55%), while they are 50 percent more likely to turn to social networking sites as a means of keeping in touch with friends and family (75%)
• U.S. Female Internet Population 79 Million
• U.S. Female Active Social Media User Population 42 Million
• Age range in the study 18-77 years

For details of the methodology and to delve into the insights of the study Download the PDF Survey and read their press release.

Large, medium or small doesn't matter when it comes to the Internet, the services and connections it enables impact everyone's business. How do you see these market insights being integrated with your business goals and objectives?

Do you associate tech savvy, online, and social media with a young audience?

by Kas Kunz

Currently I exchange emails with family members and friends that range in age from junior high to almost 90. They’re all comfortable in sending attachments, downloading photos, sending videos, links to things they want to share, and doing other activities on the computer that's past being a novice. It's all driven by a desire to communicate, to stay in touch, because of distance — living a couple hours away to across the country from each other.

You can find Web sites and online communities geared towards specific age groups such as Grandparents.com to children's Web sites that are sites for young children's museums located in a number of major U.S. cities, and community sites geared towards parents. There are social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook that initially started out for the teenagers and college students. Now these social sites have a wide range of adult age groups using their service. What does this mean? At this point in the life of the Internet all age groups have a place to hang-out if they so choose.

It's a natural progression for age groups to shift and change with different services and how we view and use technology as we grow older. As new communities and services are introduced online and if it's one that catches on there are early adopters who try it out — then word gets around and its popularity grows until it becomes something the population at large starts to use. The more frequently they're used the more successful it's deemed. It ends up being used for personal and business or geared towards one or the other.

The driving factor regardless of age, personal or business is the desire to communicate, to make a connection. The reason the Internet was created — to make it easier to share information. What is unique right now is the age at which a person's experience with today's technology began and what's the benefit for them to use it.

The company Accenture for the past two years has been conducting research about the usage patterns of various types of consumer technology products and services among U.S. consumers. The goal was to determine if there had been any changes in usage between Baby Boomers (age 45 and older) and Generation Y (ages 18 to 24). Here are a few interesting trends their research uncovered:

• Baby Boomers are embracing consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than the younger generation;
• Generation Y's cravings for consumer technology applications are leveling off;
• Boomers increased their rate of reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67 percent year-over-year. That's nearly 80 times faster than Gen Y (1 percent);
• Boomers posted a 59 percent increase in use of social networking sites — more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent).

To find out more you can download the full PDF article here with their findings by Kumu Puri on Accenture's  2009 Consumer Electronics Usage Survey.

Technology and Internet services we use today has been with us long enough the 'age factor' is becoming less of 'the point' to think about. The point has become more of what, how, and where are the different age groups using it and why.

Share with us your thoughts on these findings.