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Despite Justin Timberlake's star power on Myspace, only 7% of surveyed teens use the network, according to the Pew report. And all 7% said they used other social media accounts more frequently than MySpace

Pew found that daily usage has not changed on social platforms in any significant way. "The frequency of teen social media usage may have reached a plateau," the report said.

a couple of important things about the app audience: first that it has reached critical mass, and second that it is still highly fragmented relative to more traditional forms of media

During February, for example, Flurry saw 224 million monthly actives using mobile apps in the U.S. That same month, comScore reported 221 million desktop and laptop users of the top 50 U.S. digital properties.

though the app audience is fragmented, it’s roughly equal to the (non-mobile) online audience in the U.S. today.

Twitter — despite the different services that it has launched to increase engagement like Twitter Music other discovery services; and despite the increased attention around its IPO — has only grown by two percentage points to 18%. Hot on its heels is Instagram at 17%. Google+ does not make it into the top-five mix — not because of its lack of popularity; but because Pew says it did not include it in its survey questions.

when it comes to frequency of use, the rankings change. Facebook continues to remain at the top in the daily rankings, with 63% of people accessing it on a daily basis. Instagram — last in the general rankings — is not far off and in second place, with a 57% daily use. Similarly, its weekly and “less often” rates are also close, respectively at 22%/20% and 14%/22%. (

Twitter may overall be seeing less usage in general than Pinterest but those who are on it appear more engaged: some 46% of Twitter users are on it daily for their quick fix of quips made and received. Pinterest, in contrast, has a fairly low rate of daily usage, with 23% of its users visiting on a daily basis. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter also are generating a significant amount of mulitple-times-per-day use, with 40% at Facebook, 35% at Instagram and 29% at Twitter, Pew says. LinkedIn, meanwhile, has a lot of work to do, with only 13% of its users going there daily.

Pew notes that for now it looks like Facebook is partly winning because of how it has managed to appeal to a wide range of users — a pretty impressive turn for widening its reach, considering that it started out as a network restricted only to university networks. The demographic data for other networks stands in contrast to this: Pinterest “holds particular appeal to female users”, with women four times more likely as men to be Pinterest users; LinkedIn is “especially” popular among college graduates and internet users in higher income households. Twitter and Instagram resonate with urbanites and younger adults, and non-whites. (Facebook has over 70% usage among whites, Hispanics and black users, Pew notes.) All of them, excepting LinkedIn, has its highest proportion of users in the 18-29 age bracket; LinkedIn is more popular with the 30-49 group. Among those who say they use only one social networking site, Facebook is a clear winner with 84% selecting it as their sole site, with the others lagging behind by a very far stretch: 8% solely use LinkedIn, 4% solely use Pinterest, and Instagram and Twitter each picked up only 2%

Many consider these to be vanity metrics: measures which are easy to understand but on their own explain little about the actionable effect.  They are easily manipulated, and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter. More actionable metrics are argued to be active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers, and ultimately revenues and profits

Talking about Twitter specifically, Adi Avnit de-emphasizes the importance of followers due to the fact some users follow back others simply because of etiquette. His ‘million follower fallacy’ entails that this etiquette is leveraged by some users to elevate their follower count. The theory is not without evidence. Cha et al. (2010) measured user influence in Twitter and found that retweets and mentions showed great overlap, while followers gained… not so much. However, Kwak et al. (2010) in contrast found followers and page rank to be similar, while ranking by retweets differed.

investigated to what extent consumers engaged on brand tweets based on 4 dimensions:  amplification (retweets), reach (followers), conversations (mentions) and attitude (sentiment).

Popular measures are the 3F’s (friends, fans & followers).

following a great amount of people primarily affects a brand’s follower count. It doesn’t correlate with the other, more actionable, metrics. In fact, those brands perform worse on the other measures. Ergo, brands that over-focus on increasing their follower count, perform worse based on the other metrics

All interactions, whether it be likes, shares or wallposts, increase the EdgeRank which in turn exposes more fans to your content.

As the number of fans grew, so did the number of engaged fans (the interactions per mille stayed about the same). These two elements act as a positive spiral constantly growing the other.

I pose that the amount of fans, followers or friends is a relevant metric, considering it as the potential interaction userbase. Taking in consideration that your goal is to increase the number of engaged users.

Reach, amplification, conversations and sentiment appear to measure the same kind of digital influence. Brands that over-focus on increasing their follower count, perform worse based on the other metrics. Increase your user base – as your fans grow, so will the number of engaged fans

Nine out of ten smartphone searches results in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.) 24% recommended a brand or product to others as a result of a smartphone search

Local Information Seekers: Looking for local information is done by virtually all smartphone users and consumers are ready to act on the information they find. 95% of smartphone users have looked for local information 88% of these users take action within a day, indicating these are immediate information needs 77% have contacted a business, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business

Purchase-driven Shoppers: Smartphones have become an indispensable shopping tool and are used across channels and throughout the research and decision-making process. 79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, finding more product info to locating a retailer 74% of smartphone shoppers make a purchase, whether online, in-store, or on their phones 70% use their smartphones while in the store, reflecting varied purchase paths that often begin online or on their phones and brings consumers to the store

Reaching Mobile Consumers: Cross-media exposure influences smartphone user behavior and a majority notice mobile ads which leads to taking action on it.71% search on their phones because of an ad exposure, whether from traditional media (68%) to online ads (18%) to mobile ads (27%) 82% notice mobile ads, especially mobile display ads and a third notice mobile search ads Half of those who see a mobile ad take action, with 35% visiting a website and 49% making a purchase

Make sure you can be found via mobile search as consumers regularly use their phones to find and act on information. Incorporate location based products and services and make it easy for mobile customers to reach you because local information seeking is common among smartphone users.  Develop a comprehensive cross-channel strategy as mobile shoppers use their phones in-store, online and via mobile website and apps to research and make purchase decisions.  Last, implement an integrated marketing strategy with mobile advertising that takes advantage of the knowledge that people are using their smartphones while consuming other media and are influenced by it.

Overall, the main theme here is diversity. Users are accessing more social networks across more platforms than ever before, leading to a wider variety of social interactions happening daily. Perhaps the most telling piece of GWI’s data is that users, by and large, like to be social multitaskers — we are transitioning from commitment to just one platform to a diet of many different kinds of social media depending on our mood.

Previous, self-reported studies had suggested that extroverts spent more time on Facebook and tended to post more personal posts - think of the dreaded “this is what I had for breakfast” status update. But Moore and McElroy turned that notion on its head. In fact, people who scored high in the agreeableness of the personality test tended to be the ones most likely to offer status updates about themselves.

Based on previous studies, the researchers also predicted that conscientious people would likely spend less time and have fewer friends on Facebook. The reasoning was that people with those personality characteristics believe Facebook will not drive efficiency or production. The study, however, upended that notion, showing that scoring highly for conscientiousness in personality tests was not a reliable predictor of Facebook activity.

Mobile usage is certainly fuelling this messaging-centric shift.

if Rando’s rise proves anything it proves that humans communicate in more subtle ways than you might imagine, and need less social reinforcement than you might think. And when you think in those terms, it’s not such a huge leap to imagine the shifting sands of communication eroding the foundations of huge walled social strongholds after all. Lots of little apps, all taking away a portion of people’s attention, could eventually add up to a collective social exodus from the old networks. At least of key youth demographics.

possibly in keeping with smartphone use actually not being as popular as PCs — Foursquare and other check-in services are not so hot, with only 12.2 percent using these.

McAfee describes teen usage on social networks as “stalking” rather than sharing: half of teens responding said they mostly observed others rather than posted updates about themselves. Only six percent said they shared “almost everything.” Nevertheless, they are huge social network users: 60 percent check their accounts daily, and 41 percent said they check accounts “constantly.”

The study found that 79 percent of teens said they hid their online behavior from their parents: partly to keep private what they’re actually doing online, and partly because they’re online for a lot longer than parents think. Popular activities include accessing violent content (43%); sexual topics/porn (36%; 32%); and watching pirated movies (30.7%). A whole 15% are hacking other people’s accounts. Meanwhile, teens spend about five hours a day online; while parents only think their kids spend an average of three hours a day online. McAfee found that just over 10 percent spend more than 10 hours per day online.

Teens hiding what they do from parents has gone up massively since 2010, when only 45 percent said they hid their behavior, and is a disconnect when compared to what parents think: half of parents responding to the study said they knew what their teen kids did online.

Twitter use among UK seniors is a relatively rare activity

The relative complexity of setting up a Twitter account, added to the fact that few of their peers use the service, can be a turn-off for seniors when compared with Facebook’s relative simplicity and popularity.

And look at Facebook’s desktop ads as a whole, including both Sponsored Stories and the traditional sidebars ads. They’re getting just 0.083% CTR at a $0.88 CPC earning Facebook an eCPM of only $0.74, so mobile Sponsored Stories have 13.7X the CTR and earn Facebook 11.2x as much as its combined desktop ad offering.

Meanwhile, a quick look at a campaign in the tens of thousands of dollars by AdParlor showed that mobile ads have a CTR of 0.821% while traditional Facebook ad campaigns that mostly show up in the web sidebar with some presence in the web and mobile news feed had a CTR of regular ads have a CTR of just 0.032%. That’s a 25x better CTR on mobile. The campaign at gaining new fans for a Facebook page, and while the click-to-fan conversion rate on mobile was slightly worse – 55% on mobile versus 72% across placements – the improved in CTR makes up for it many times over.

Another Ads API giant Spruce Media told MediaPost that its tests with Facebook mobile sponsored stories have seen click-through rates from .8% to 1.7%, the same range as TBG Digital and AdParlor.

This all doesn’t seem like users are just clicking the relatively new, three month old ad units out of curiosity. It looks like users are actually perceiving them as content, and are clicking through to learn more about the Pages and apps their friends interact with.

Attaining such a high click-through rate for mobile Sponsored Stories is game-changing for Facebook, because there’s simply not as much room for it or any service to advertise on mobile. There’s no space for an ads sidebar and if far too many ads are injected into the content feed, users could get angry and stop browsing. But the impressively high CTR and eCPM mean Facebook doesn’t have to show too many Sponsored Stories to make a ton of money off of them.

Other social sites like Google+ and Twitter don’t have the scale, social graph, or on-site activity to serve Sponsored Stories that are as effective as Facebook’s. While Twitter and G+’s interest graph can power accurate ad targeting, only Facebook know who your closest friends are thanks to photo tags, wall posts, messages, and more. Its massive time-on-site also produces lots of interactions with brands and local businesses that can be turned into Sponsored Stories ads.

Facebook is just getting started. Sources say it’s working on a hyper-local mobile ad targeting product that could serve extremely relevant local business ads to users within a few hundred feet of a brick and mortar store. Thanks to the new Facebook Exchange real-time bidding system, Facebook could drive up CPC or CPM prices by getting advertisers to compete to reach specific mobile users, including ones who’ve been retargeted after visiting sites that indicate purchase intent.

High mobile Sponsored Story CTRs indicate at least some users don’t hate the ads, and wouldn’t rebel if they see more.

The key to creating hyper-timely emails is planning and being nimble, says Christopher Stemborowski, associate communication strategist for marketing agency Oxford Communications. “Seeming timely can be the result of preparing multiple emails or just one email and waiting for the right time to send it.”

Build multiple versions ahead of key events: In the same way that shirts are made ahead of the Super Bowl declaring each team the champion, you can design two versions of an email to respond quickly to the outcome of major events.Plan an email for an event that has an unspecified date: Snowstorms will happen each winter. Will you have an email ready to go out the moment it happens? With a little planning, you can.Track trending online memes: In 2011, we have seen a #winning Charlie Sheen and a really excited Rebecca Black ready to have fun, fun, fun. Smart brands can tap into these memes in email blasts. You can keep track of these popular memes by viewing the trending topics section on Twitter.

Blasting irrelevant content to your email subscribers is one of the biggest email marketing mistakes you can commit.“For example, if a salon sends an email to men that highlights services solely for women, it shouldn’t be a shock when the men unsubscribe,” Stemborowski says. “To avoid this, the salon needs to know who in its database are males and who are females and then avoid sending irrelevant messages.”

“Self-selection means subscribers willingly receive emails that are in the categories they asked to get,” Stemborowski said, adding that it’s vital to keep the screening short so users don’t abandon the process.

More than ever, people are reading emails on their mobile devices. Mobile email usage increased 36% in 2010, according to comScore.

The first line of your email should never read, “If you are having trouble reading this email click here,” he adds. “Remember, the first line of the email is what shows up as the preview on smartphones. For this reason, the first line is premium real estate and, with this in mind, you should put your most important message first for a well-crafted call to action.”