Report: Social Web Usage Tipped in 2008
A new report by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research states that usage of social technologies increased markedly in 2008: three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each, up from 56% in 2007. According to the report, the largest growth came from ratings and reviews, "voting" on websites, and user-generated video. Blogging and tagging were also popular.
Forrester predicts that if growth of ratings and reviews continues at its current pace, then "reading peer recommendations will fast become a permanent stage in the purchase decision process."
You could argue we're already at that stage, as e-commerce sites like Amazon and Netflix rely substantially on those technologies - and there are no shortage of imitators on other retail sites, such as Barnes & Noble.
Likewise we're also seeing a lot of 'imitation is the best form of flattery' among voting and user-generated video sites, with digg and YouTube clones popping up seemingly every day, for every conceivable niche.
Forrester has come up with different categories of social media usage (see image below). It claims that Creators are still growing slowly (it's now 21%), but "Critics" have increased more (to 37%). Critics are defined as people who post online reviews and comments. Collectors are at 19%, Joiners 35% and unsurprisingly "Spectators" are the biggest group with 69% of US online adults 'consuming' social media.
The below graph shows the growth patterns over the past year of each category:
What's particularly noteworthy is that the statistics indicate that social web usage is going mainstream. As report author Josh Bernoff notes in a blog post, the growth in consumption of online content is mostly coming from older people: "social activity is way up among 35-to-44 year-olds, especially when it comes to joining social networks and reading and reacting to content. Even among 45-to-54 year-olds, 68% are now Spectators, 24% are Joiners, and only 28% are Inactives."
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And so the next chapter of Gladwell's "Tipping Point" - While I can't afford Forrester's hefty tag for a single PDF, I'd say offhand that these categories are not set in stone - that there is migration from one to the other, and as well, many have several functions.
Creators often criticize - such as @timoreilly, who just recently corrected what he called a "snarky" post at @chrisbrogan (guest post). Those two could possibly be combined. (It takes creative juices and talent to post even a comment, critical or not *ahem*.)
If you separate out the really active and really inactive, you have a bell curve - a perfect marketing opportunity, since three of these (collectors, joiners, and spectators) form the bulk. They mostly "consume" the social media product.
Their ladder does move upward, so does this mean we also have an action curve, where early adopters have become creators, while late adopters haven't jumped onto that bandwagon yet?
And is entertainment the driving force in social media's tipping?
Robert - don't worry about getting the entire report. The absolute gist is in this blog post. We bought it (sooo expensive) and found it was 12 pages, 2 introduction, 2 the graphs that are attached to this post, and in general - not much more insight.
Completely disappointing.
I fit into 5 out of 6 of the groups (creator, critic, collector, joiner, spectator).
Forgive me for being daft, but is the graph showing the percentage of each group that uses social technologies, or the percentage of growth in that group?
OK, everything's going up. How is this news? If social media usage was going down, ReadWriteWeb would probably be posting less, too.
One wears many hats and can occupy numerous places on the ladder (or the curve). I don't participate at all in social media devoted to nuclear physics, for example, but join, create, criticize, and collect in media related to other professional and personal interests (semantic web, politics, and various personal networks). The social technologies intersect with my life in varied arenas and with varying intensities.
The profile is missing an important category above creator. There is another category for leaders, people that are both part of a group as a member and influence a group. Leaders can activate the creation of content among a wider group of people.
Creating content on your own is one way to get the message out. Leading a group of 100 people to create content to get the message out is even more powerful.
Thanks for writing about our new research. A few notes for your readers and commenters:
1. The groups overlap, you can be in more than one group. This is not a segmentation.The graph can be read as "What % of online consumers have the characteristics of group X." The characteristics are: say they participate at least monthly in one of the activities listed.
2. For marketers, the size and demographic makeup of the growth IS news. It affects, for example, whether companies with 50-year-old customers should do social media marketing (they should, as of now). It's also news, at least to me, that the Creator group is growing a lot more slowly than the others.
3. If your readers want to see how this applies to customers in 11 different countries by age or gender, we have a neat little widget they can use to play around with it. It's here: http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html
4. For how we use this classification in business strategy, see our book Groundswell. And that's cheap: it's only $20 at Amazon.com.
I have to say that I disagree with the term "only" when you write that "only" 21% are now creators. That means one out of five online adults now have not only the interest but are now taking the time to learn and go through trial and error to make something...to publish, to produce.
Sometimes I think we forget that most out their haven't been part of the pioneer or early adopter class. 21% is quite amazing in my book. It's millions of people who take time out of their day to become creators.
While the Forrester "ladder" model is simple to grasp, it inaccurately reflects the complex reality of social media. The same individual may be a "creator" in one group while performing as a "spectator" in another. Plus, communities overlap so you need to be really careful about what you put in your numerator and denominator for calculating percentages.