A new study released on Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found some rather interesting tidbits of information about social network users.
According to the study, 19 percent of Web surfers use "Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others." According to the organization, its earlier findings in April 2009 found that just 11 percent of Internet users were using a status-update service.
But the reason why there has been such an uptick in status updates has much to do with the users themselves, Pew found. According to the organization, the growth is being driven by "social network Web site users, those who connect to the Internet via mobile devices, and younger Internet users--those under age 44."
The study found that 33 percent of those who are updating their status range in age between 18 and 29. Those aged between 30 and 49 make up 22 percent of the group. Just 13 percent of those who update their status are 50 years of age or older.
Pew determined that the Twitter user's median age is 31. MySpace's median age is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008. LinkedIn has also gotten younger by a year, featuring a median age of 39. But Facebook is one of the few social networks to buck the youth trend, upping its median age to 33, from 26 in May 2008.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter have taken off among individuals for personal use. But what about the use of social networking at small businesses?
A survey commissioned by Citibank and conducted by GfK Roper found that some small businesses see little reason to hop onto the social-network bandwagon.
Based on interviews in late August with 500 executives running businesses with fewer than 100 employees, the survey said that 76 percent of them found sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to be of little help in finding new business leads. Further, 86 percent of those questioned have not used social-networking sites to look for business advice or information. The results were released Thursday.
(Credit:
Citibank)
The small firms reported using tools other than social networking to promote and grow their businesses. Among companies with fewer than 20 employees, 42 percent say they've relied more on their own Web site to generate sales leads; for companies with 20 to 99 employees, 57 percent said the same thing.
Other tools used to build business included e-mail marketing, used by 28 percent of those surveyed, and online advertising, used by 25 percent of respondents.
"Our survey suggests that small-business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses," Maria Veltre, executive vice president of Citi's Small Business Segment, said in a statement. "While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."
A survey released in May by marketing firm MarketingProfs found that 66 percent of the 213 small-business executives questioned considered Twitter "somewhat important" or "extremely important" to their business. And 84 percent expect their use of Twitter to grow over the next six months.
Of those surveyed, 41 percent of respondents said Twitter delivers "great value" to their company, ranking it ahead of LinkedIn and Facebook.
"This data shows that Twitter users, typically early adopters, no longer think of Twitter as just a personal networking tool, but as something that can provide real value for their company or business," Ann Handley, chief content officer for MarketingProfs, said in a press release in May. "Much like Facebook, Twitter is now moving into the business mainstream."
Among the small businesses questioned for MarketingProfs' mid-April survey, 66 percent had fewer than 50 employees, 14 percent had 101 to 1,000 employees, 11 percent had more than 1,000, and 8 percent had 51 to 100.
Should you be one of those who believe that men are neanderthal, socially awkward hairy animals while women are socially aware, smoothly sensitive beings, then I have some statistics that might increase your estimation of your own superior judgment.
According to research by Brian Solis, sourcing his data from Google's Ad Planner, the majority of functioning beings on almost all social networking sites are women.
Published on Information Is Beautiful, the numbers might create an encouraging belief that if social networking is the future, then the future is female.
Solis's figures suggest that there is only one major social-networking site that is predominantly male: Digg. I know you'll recoil uncontrollably when I tell you that Digg appears to be 64 percent male.
(Credit:
Information Is Beautiful)
On the other hand, LinkedIn and YouTube seem to enjoy an equality of fraternity and sorority. While Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr and MySpace, to name but a few, are all, like the population of Brazil, queendoms.
Perhaps the most extraordinary numbers come from MySpace. Somehow, the rather messy nature of the site, the tradition of an excess of spam and porn, might suggest that this was a male-oriented (slightly sleazy males, some might imagine) haven.
These numbers, however, suggest that MySpace is 64 percent female. Which makes one ruminate as to why the home page currently has so much blue and so little fuchsia.
It will be tempting, indeed, for many to put these figures down to traditional psychological differences between the sexes: women like people and men like, well, peeing in public.
However, one might also conclude that women simply resort to more virtual contact because their real world physical everyday life leaves them rather more dissatisfied than it does men.
Lately there seems to have been much evidence that women are increasingly miserable.
Celebrated and, one might have imagined, happy women such as Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post (The Sad Shocking Truth of How Women Are Feeling) and Maureen Dowd of The New York Times (Blue is the New Black) have lamented the lot of Lot's Wife, Mother, Sister and Daughter.
Might misery be driving women to MySpace?
Social networking is on the rise, both on and off the job, leaving companies uncertain how to monitor their use by employees, reports new survey.
More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.
Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee's actions off the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures that could embarrass the company.
Some organizations, such as the U.S. Marines, have already banned their recruits from using Facebook and Twitter. But the survey found that many businesses aren't sure what to do to restrict or monitor such usage.
Of the companies questioned in the survey, 34 percent said they have a general employee policy that addresses all online activity, including the use of social networking, both on and off the job. Only 10 percent said they have a policy specifically geared toward social networks.
More than half of the individuals said their company has no active system to monitor employees using social-networking sites. Around 32 percent said their company acts only when an issue is discovered.
Of all those surveyed, 24 percent said an employee in their company had been disciplined for inappropriate behavior on a social network, while 37 percent did not know. The percentage was higher in the nonprofit sector, noted the survey, with 33 percent reporting an employee incident versus only 13 percent in the for-profit sector.
"Business clearly hasn't caught up with what its employees are doing online," said Roy Snell, CEO of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. "The risks are twofold. First there remains the business risk of employees doing things online that may reflect badly on the company. The second is that, as business develops policies and procedures in this area, there are going to be a lot of people finding that what they have long done is no longer acceptable at work. During the adjustment period there is likely to be a great deal of friction created."
To conduct the survey in late August, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance compiled responses from 798 people in both profit and nonprofit organizations, as well as government agencies.
(Credit:
ComScore, via TechCrunch)
With the economy reeling and layoffs piling up, business-networking site LinkedIn has been not-so-surprisingly hopping.
Market researcher ComScore reported that LinkedIn's unique visitors rose to 7.7 million, a 22 percent increase over December, TechCrunch reported Saturday. And not only are more people visiting LinkedIn, but they're hanging around longer as well. Total minutes spent on the site last month more than doubled from December to 96.8 million, according to TechCrunch.
More people are helping out friends looking for jobs as well. Recommendations were up 65 percent last month over December, TechCrunch said.
LinkedIn demonstrates how the new search platform works.
(Credit: LinkedIn)Updated at 7:15 p.m. PST to correct number of LinkedIn members.
Nearly a month after unveiling a new developer platform, business social-networking site LinkedIn took the wraps off a new search platform Monday night.
In a summary of the new key features, Esteban Kozak, senior product manager at LinkedIn, said the new platform is "redefining the way professionals go about finding talent, business partners, customers, or a former colleague."
The site, which has about 31 million members, examined more than a billion search queries executed by members to create new productivity tools, Kozak says.
With the new platform, members will be able to refine their searches for other members using more than a dozen data fields, including "name," "company," and "school." The new platform also increases the amount of search space presented by eliminating the need to switch tabs.
The new "In Common" feature helps locate shared connections and groups you share with selected members. Members can also save searches and receive e-mail reminders when a search finds someone that meets the specified criteria. The search tool also adds a spell checker for names.
LinkedIn's new developer platform, which officially went live on October 28, includes an array of internal- and partner-created applications such as a "reading list" app from Amazon, a trip-tracking app from TripIt, file sharing from Box.net, and presentation apps from SlideShare and Google Presentation.
Sandwiched between the platform releases was the announcement earlier this month that the company would cut 10 percent of its workforce, or about 36 jobs, as part of a restructuring to focus on its revenue-producing businesses.
Business-focused social-networking site LinkedIn announced Wednesday that it is cutting 10 percent of its workforce, or about 36 jobs, as part of a restructuring to focus on its revenue-producing businesses.
Company representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The layoffs follow LinkedIn's announcement last month that it had raised an additional $22.7 million in funding from Goldman Sachs, SAP, McGraw-Hill, and longtime investor Bessemer Venture Partners. That round followed a $53 million series D funding round in June that gave LinkedIn a valuation of $1 billion. The latest round of funding brings the total funds raised to just more than $100 million.
The job cuts also come on the heels of the unveiling last week of LinkedIn's new developer platform, as well as third-party apps that aid in trip tracking, file sharing, and presentations.
The site, which claims about 30 million members, is small in comparison with social-networking sites Facebook and MySpace. But the average LinkedIn member is 41 years old and earns about $110,000 a year.
Its white-collar focus--billionaire Bill Gates is proud of his profile--means that LinkedIn can attract premium advertisers and charge quite a bit for ads--reportedly $75 per thousand impressions.
LinkedIn has raised an additional $22.7 million in funding, giving the business-networking site a little cushion in difficult economic times.
The strategic investment, announced Wednesday, comes from Goldman Sachs, SAP, McGraw-Hill, and longtime investor Bessemer Venture Partners. The money arrives on the heels of a $53 million Series D funding round in June that gave LinkedIn a valuation of $1 billion. The latest funding round brings the total funds raised to just more than $100 million.
LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye announced the funding in a blog posting on his company's site:
I'd like to reiterate our commitment to creating the right partnerships to help us build a great service for over 30 million professionals on LinkedIn today--a number that's growing by leaps and bounds each month. This funding strengthens LinkedIn further, and will help us to continue creating additional services for professionals to connect and collaborate more effectively, around the world.
So how can LinkedIn raise fresh cash as many tech companies are scrambling to horde it? While the site is small in comparison with social-networking sites Facebook and MySpace, the average LinkedIn member is 41 years old and earns about $110,000 a year.
Its white-collar focus--billionaire Bill Gates is proud of his profile--means that LinkedIn can attract premium advertisers and charge quite a bit for ads--reportedly $75 per thousand impressions.
However, the economic state is certainly on Nye's mind. The networking site has reportedly slowed its hiring rate after growing from 60 employees to 370 employees in the past 18 months.
After several months of beta testing its new design, Facebook on Wednesday began rolling out its new site to all of its 100 million users.
Under the new design, the social-networking giant initiated changes designed to simplify the site's look and feel, provide greater user control over profiles, and dish up recent and relevant information, according to the company's blog posting.
To date, approximately 40 million, or 40 percent, of Facebook users have tried the beta version of the new site, which debuted in July. Of that group, 75 percent remained with the new version, according to the company.
As for the roughly 25 percent of Facebook users who did not continue with the beta version of the site, they'll need to go along with the new redesign as it's fully rolled out over the next few weeks--whether they like it or not.
Facebook notes it's aiming for such benefits as:
• A cleaner and simpler profile, while providing users more control over changes they may wish to implement.
• An emphasis on using feeds to deliver the most recent and relevant information.
The company advises users to try several techniques to make the transition easier, such as using filter feeds for the most recent and relevant information as well as using a navigation bar at the top of each page to bop from the profile section to the index and applications pages.
Business news channel CNBC and professional networking site LinkedIn have formed a strategic alliance.
Under the deal announced late Wednesday, the CNBC will provide articles, blogs, financial data, and video across the LinkedIn network. The news channel also will integrate LinkedIn functionality into CNBC.com. That functionality will allow LinkedIn's members to share comments about the news within their network of friends and business contacts. In addition, the two companies will jointly create content, including community-generated content such as surveys, from LinkedIn members for broadcast.
The changes on the sites are set to launch in the fourth quarter.
"For quite a while, CNBC has been asked when will it enter professional networking," Mark Hoffman, CNBC president, said in a statement. "This question has been clearly answered today...."
