Women Do More Social Networking

More Women Visit Social Networks, Spend More Time “How Women Are Shaping the Internet” indicates 75.8% of all women online visited a social networking site in May 2010, compared to 69.7% of men. Globally, women demonstrate higher levels of engagement with social networking sites than men. Although women account for 47.9% of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they consume 57% of pages and account for nearly 57% of total minutes spent on these sites.

Latin America, North America Display Strongest Social Networking Reach Among Women Across each global region researched by comScore, social networking reached a higher percentage of women online than men. Social networking’s reach among women is highest in Latin America where it reached 94.1 percent of females online (and the highest reach among males online, 91.9%), and in North America where it reached 91% of females (and the second-highest reach among males, 87.5%).

Gays, Lesbians Active SocNet Users In addition to gender gap, there also appears to be a gap between homosexuals and heterosexuals in social networking, at least in the US, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

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In a survey of shoppers in four states, nearly four in 10 told cross-channel commerce solutions provider CrossView they preferred to receive promotional messages from retailers by email. It was the most popular communications channel, with direct mail drawing about a quarter of respondents and text messaging coming in third with 18%. Just 9% of shoppers were interested in promotional messages on social media.

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Gays and lesbians are heavier users of social networks than the population at large, according to a new national survey from Harris Interactive, which also found they are more likely to read blogs than their heterosexual counterparts. These findings aren’t particularly surprising, basically confirming earlier studies showing that — like young adults and ethnic minorities — gays and lesbians tend to index higher in social network use. But in the case of gays and lesbians there is an interesting issue of correlation versus causation (at least, I find it interesting). According to the June survey of 2,412 U.S adults — including 271 identifying as gay or lesbian — 73% of the gay and lesbian respondents reported having a Facebook profile, compared to 65% of heterosexuals. Meanwhile 32% of gays and lesbians said they were members of MySpace, versus 22% of the heterosexual respondents (the proportion of both groups is declining). In the professional arena, 22% of gays and lesbians said they are members of LinkedIn, versus 16% of heterosexuals. 29% of gays and lesbians are on Twitter, versus 15% of heterosexuals. Read more at www.mediapost.com

According to a February–March 2010 survey from office services firm Regus, smaller companies see the most success, with nearly half of small businesses around the world having acquired a customer through social networks. Large companies were less successful, but more than a quarter had seen social success through customer acquisition. This was despite large companies being more likely to devote budgets to social marketing.

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CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft’s Head Of Sales Blames Facebook For Low Online Ad Prices

Social networks, with their massive inventory of page views, have much lower ad rates on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis than the Internet at large. ComScore reports that Facebook and MySpace only get a $0.56 CPM on average, while the Internet at large gets $2.43.

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More than one-third — 39% — of women 18-34 are now self-proclaimed Facebook addicts, Lightspeed found after surveying a nationally representative sample of 1,605 U.S. adults who use social media.

Indeed, 57% now report talking to people online more than face-to-face, while 34% say checking Facebook is the first thing they do in the morning — even before brushing their teeth or using the bathroom. Read more at www.mediapost.com

The Nielsen Company reported in June that, on average, the global consumer spends about 1 in every 4.5 minutes online on blogs or social networking sites. According to a report by market researcher Morpace, among US Facebook users time on Facebook rises to 1 in 3 minutes spent online.

Unsurprisingly, despite Facebook’s growing appeal to older users, 18- to 34-year-olds spend the most time on the site per week, at 8.5 hours out of 22.4 spent online. Weekly Facebook time drops to 4.6 hours among users ages 55 and older, representing a lower proportion of that group’s average of 21.5 hours per week on the internet.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, Morpace found Facebook usage heaviest by Asians. Not only did that group spend the most hours per week on the site, but they also devoted the greatest percentage of their weekly internet time to Facebook (39.6%, compared with 35.1% among blacks, the second-highest group). Hispanics spent the fewest hours on Facebook, and even compared with their low average time online came in last.

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Twitter is supporting 800 million queries a day, or 33 percent more than it said it was handling back in April, according to co-founder Biz Stone

That means the company, which is trying to brand itself as an “information network” rather than a social network, is handling 24 billion queries a month. The last time the company reported daily search volumes was back in April at its inaugural developer conference, Chirp, when it said it was supporting 600 million queries a day.

It’s hard to compare Twitter’s monthly query volume to that of Microsoft’s Bing or Yahoo, since worldwide figures for their traffic are fairly old. Comscore reported that Bing was supporting 4.1 billion monthly queries worldwide while Yahoo was handling 9.4 billion in December.

Daily volumes also vary widely. The company, at times, was handling up to 750 million queries per day back in April, its then director of search Doug Cook told SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan.

Growing search volume should help underpin the company’s advertising strategy, which depends on sponsored tweets appearing atop its results. Read more at social.venturebeat.com

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Broken down by race and ethnicity, Morpace found Facebook usage heaviest by Asians. Not only did that group spend the most hours per week on the site, but they also devoted the greatest percentage of their weekly internet time to Facebook (39.6%, compared with 35.1% among blacks, the second-highest group). Hispanics spent the fewest hours on Facebook, and even compared with their low average time online came in last.

See more at www.emarketer.com

Social Sharing Adds 30% to Email CTRs

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Email marketing messages with a social sharing option generate 30% higher click through rates than emails without these features. So says a new survey by Get Response - as well as anecdotal evidence that the rules governing email and social media communication are increasingly becoming blurred.

The study, “Email Marketing and Social Media Integration Report” also found that messages with three or more sharing options generated 55% higher CTRs and emails with a Twitter sharing option returned over 40% higher CTRs than messages without any social media links. Read more at www.marketingvox.com

Internet Seen as Positive for Social Relations

While they acknowledge that use of the internet as a tool for communications can yield both positive and negative effects, a significant majority of technology experts and stakeholders say it improves social relations and will continue to do so through 2020, according to the recent “Future of the Internet” study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center.

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