TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Survey: Social Networks Gain at Expense of Specific-focus Sites

Stan Gibson | Date: 08-03-09 | Comments

Active Internet users worldwide are doing more online from fewer sites � a trend that could prove ominous for sites focusing on a single function.

Could it be a sign of maturity? Active Internet users worldwide are doing more online from fewer sites � a trend that could prove ominous for sites focusing on a single function, such as sharing photos. That was the salient finding in a study of 22,729 active Internet users worldwide conducted by research firm Universal McCann (UM), a media agency based in New York. Active Internet use was defined as using the Internet at least every other day.

Rather than visit one site to upload photos, another to stay in touch with friends and yet another to read blogs, active Internet users are tending to do all these on a single social networking destination such as Facebook and MySpace. The survey that unearthed this trend, called Wave 4, is the fourth in a series of annual studies by UM on the habits of Internet users.

�Social networking is cannibalizing a lot of things,� said Autumn Martin, digital communications director at UM.

Not surprisingly the survey found worldwide increases in Internet usage, in active Internet usage, and in social network usage. The tally of active Internet users now stands at 625 million. Of these, two-thirds have managed their online profile on a social network site and 71.1 percent have visited a friend�s social network page. Of active social network users, 96 percent have visited a friend�s page. The figures are an average across 38 different countries.

In other findings, 33 percent of social network users said they have uploaded video to their profile, compared with 16.9 percent in the Wave 3 report that came out in 2008; 33 percent said they have uploaded videos compared with 16.9 percent in Wave 3. The increase in photo uploading was notable: 76 percent of social network users have uploaded photos, up from 45 percent in Wave 3.

The report also found that mobile Internet access is on the rise: 17 percent of active internet users access the internet from a mobile device.

Perhaps surprisingly, the number of users viewing video online declined slightly, from 83.7 percent in Wave 3 to 82.8 percent in Wave 4. Blog reading is also nearly flat. 71 percent of active users said they read a blog regularly, up from 70 percent in Wave 3.

A report focusing on the motivation of Internet users will be published later. That report will say that in the U.S., money is the prime motivator, in Asia-Pacific, sharing and learning are the forces molding usage and in Europe, users were prompted by self-promotion and fun, according to Hayley Stafford-Smith, research executive at UM.

The survey did not take a census of which users are using which social networking sites, because the sites vary from country to country. And although the use of microblogging sites such as Twitter was strong in the United States, it was even stronger in Asia-Pacific.