SOCIAL NETWORKING IN THE UNITED STATES A breakdown of the U.S. digital consumer audience. Source: The Digital Consumer, a Nielsen Report
46% MALE 54% FEMALE 13% Age 2 _17 27% Age 18_34 29% Age 35_49
In the last 10 years, 81 billion minutes have been spent on social media platforms.
22% Age 50_64 9% Age 65+
12% Hispanic 75% White 10% Black, African-American 3% Asian, or Pacific Islander
The term social media is often attributed to former AOL executive Ted Leonsis. In a 1997 interview, Mr. Leonsis discussed AOL’s goal to offer users “social media, places where they can be entertained, communicate, and participate in a social environment.” At its core, social media is electronic, user-generated content (such as blogs, videos, photographs, experiences, and opinions) across many online platforms. It is participatory in nature, encouraging contribution and feedback from a digital community of individuals with shared interests. From photography to ancient philosophy, medicine to politics, architecture to sports, climate change to school reform, social media encapsulates nearly every possible subject with some form of online conversation, be it blog, forum, tweet, or status update. On a personal level, social media and today’s widespread dissemination of iPhones, Androids, BlackBerries, and 26 |
other smart phones make one’s geographic location and social setting a non-issue for keeping in touch, creating a global village, where a mother in Connecticut may converse as easily with an Iranian doctor as she may her town treasurer. Social media has created a fundamental shift in how we communicate, how we interact, and how we conduct business. In the business sector, social media has knocked down the scaffolds upon which corporations have long built their public relations and marketing campaigns. The era of highly controlled one-way messaging from business to consumer is over. Increasingly, consumers are using social media to exchange product experiences and to rate and evaluate products, thus influencing new and returning buyers. Companies are scrambling to find ways to leverage these online conversations about their products to their businesses’ advantage. Social media forces compa-
Social media has created a fundamental shift in how we communicate, how we interact, and how we conduct business. ... It is participatory in nature, encouraging contribution and feedback from a digital community of individuals with shared interests.
nies to engage in dialogue with their stakeholders and consumers. We’ve moved from a “show me what I’m looking for” approach to consumerism to “show me what you’ve got” in an online world with multiple networks of user-generated product information that allow people to select the content they want to receive. The change marks a shift in power from businesses to buyers. In 2009 social media surpassed email as the top online activity, and the user demographics today in the United States may be surprising. According to a recent Nielsen report, The Digital Consumer, adults now surpass teens on social networking sites. So what does it all mean? Americans are spending immense amounts of time on social media platforms, connecting, collaborating, creating, and reacting.