Sadly, the researchers did not ask those who didn't download apps why they weren't interested in them. Kristen Purcell, the associate director for research at the Pew Internet Project, speculates that "it is clear that this is the early stage of adoption when many cell owners do not know what their phone can do. The apps market seems somewhat ahead of a majority of adult cell phone users."

App Amnesia: People Don't Know How Many Apps They Have

Among those adults who have used apps, half have actually paid for for them and they typically have around 10 on their phones, though there is clearly a group of very heavy apps users out there as well. Interestingly, most cell phone users - and especially those over 50 - don't actually know how many apps they have.

Only about 60% of all app users actually organize their apps so that their favorites are easily accessible. While Apple's new folders in the iOS 4 are a nifty feature for heavy users - there is clearly also a large market of users who only use a small number of apps and see no need to actually organize them in tidy little folders.

Most Popular Apps

Games are the most popular apps among adults (60%), closely followed by news and weather (52%), navigation (51%) and social networking apps 47%).

For more details, you can find the full report here.

The number of adults who use text messaging has gone up steadily over the last few years. While 65% of adults in the U.S. were sending and receiving text messages in 2009, this number is now up to 72%.

A lot of Texting is About Location Sharing

When adults use text messaging, they mostly do so to say hello and chat (34%) and to report where they are and where someone else is (24%). Given how important location is for a lot of these usage patterns, we would think that there has to be a big market for location services (like EchoEcho) that make private location sharing between cell phones easy.

More Statistics about Adult Cell Phone Usage

• 82% of adults in the U.S. own a cell phone (83% of all men, 81% of all women)
• women make slightly fewer calls with their cell phones than men
• 65% of adults say they have ever slept with their cell phone on or right next to their bed (and 90% of younger adults - who probably also use their phones as alarm clocks - say they have done so)
• 42% feel irritated when a call or text interrupts them
• 57% of adults with cell phones say that they have received unwanted or spam text messages (what exactly constitutes an "unwanted" text message isn't clear in Pew's question, however)

Logo used courtesy of Flickr user Dan Zen.

"Search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one's identity online," said Mary Madden, lead author of Pew's report. "Many users are learning and refining their approach as they go - changing privacy settings on profiles, customizing who can see certain updates and deleting unwanted information about them that appears online."

As the report concludes, adults aged 18-29 are far more worried about preserving the integrity of their reputations online, and are, in fact, less trusting of the networks that host their data. In the study, 28% of young adults said they can "never" trust these networks with their data - twice as many as those aged 50-64 who echoed this sentiment.

The disparity between privacy concerns of younger and older generations of social network users could have a bit to do with the complexity that some networks place on their privacy controls. Facebook announced efforts today to make privacy control much easier to understand, which could increase control changes from older and less active users.

Many of these figures in the Pew study have increased compared to an earlier study conducted in 2006. What is contributing to the growing concern for privacy among the younger generations? Recent dust-ups over privacy on Facebook could be one factor, but Pew says the increased amount of personal data being stored on social networks has triggered our natural human curiosity.

In 2006, just 20% of online adults had created a profile on a social network. Since then this number more than doubled, as 46% now have a presence on networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. With that added data comes a growing willingness to Google our friends and dig up information. In 2006, just 26% of online adults looked up information about friends, and 36% looked up information on people from their past. Today, these figures have risen to 38% and 46%.

Additionally, we are more self-aware online today. In 2006, just 46% of people looked themselves up on search engines. According to the Pew study, this number has climbed to 57% in the last four years. Our urge to Google ourselves and our friends has increased our concern with maintaining our online privacy and reputation. Combine that with some highly publicized privacy concerns from popular social networks and it's no surprise people are more concerned with their privacy online.

Photo by Flickr user TheTruthAbout.

The number of Boomers responding to content posted online, as opposed to just passively consuming it, is also going up. For example, the proportion of older Boomers responding to content doubled from 15% in 2007 to 34% in 2008. According to Forrester, this is now a percentage that's high enough to target this group with a social application.

Joining social networks is also becoming a widely popular among the younger Boomers. Today, almost one in four younger Boomers are active in social networks, up from 15% in 2007.

The one thing that Boomers are less likely to do in the online world is actually create content - outside of updating their online profiles and leaving blog comments, that is. Boomers are still not involved heavily in writing blog articles or creating videos and posting them online. In 2008, 16% younger Boomers were involved in content creation (up from 12% in 2007) and 15% of older Boomers were (up from 8%). Although both groups saw an increase, it's still the least popular activity.

What This Means

For companies wanting to reach out to the Baby Boomers online, this data shows that spending at least a portion of your budget on social applications for the group isn't entirely a waste of time and money. The group isn't as active online as younger generations are, but their participation levels are now moderate and increasing.

The best bets for getting Boomers interested in your content is to create blogs or videos that relate to the life or work-style of Boomers, Forrester suggests. And if you're looking for feedback and contributions from the Boomers themselves - like comments or criticisms - make that process dead simple. Don't introduce overly complex sign up forms or processes. Instead, encourage low-effort contributions such as star ratings.

Marketers can also look into reaching Boomers through social networks now - specifically those favored by this generation like Classmates Online, Eons, BOOMj.com, TeeBeeDee, and even the AARP's online community. There is some participation in these social spaces now, but even more growth is expected over the next 12-month period.

A majority of teens, percentage wise, join social networks, but it's the adults that still make up the bulk of these web sites. That's because adults make up a larger proportion of the U.S. population than teens, reports Pew Internet & American Life Project. So the 65% of online teens actually represents fewer users than the 35% of adults who participate online. Of course, out of that 35%, the adults that tend to join social networks still skews younger: 75% of those 18-24 use these networks, but only 7% of the adults 65+ do.

It's Not About Professional Networking After All

You may think that many adults have joined the online trend mainly to network professionally with others in their field. However, that turns out not to be true. Instead adults, like teens, are there to socialize with their friends and people they already know. Nearly nine in ten social network users (89%) say they use the networks to stay in touch with friends, and 57% say they use it to make plans with friends. Under half (49%) use the sites to make new friends.

Surprisingly, those on social networks for professional purposes are not as common as you may have thought. Only 6% of adults use LinkedIn, the online social network dedicated to professional networking, but 72% use other social networks (50% use MySpace, 22% use Facebook) for both professional and personal networking purposes. The most interesting finding is that less than a third of social network users are using them for professional purposes, regardless of which site they use.

More Tidbits: Demographics

Some other findings confirm what we've heard before about social networks: MySpace users are more likely to be women, Hispanic, black, and have a high school education or some college experience. The median age is 27. Facebook users are more likely to be male and have a college degree. The median age there is 26. LinkedIn, however, tends to be comprised of more older, white men with a college degree and median age of 40. The prevalence of men on these networks could be explained by the fact that men are more likely than women to have two or more online profiles (54% vs. 47%).

What It All Means

It appears that the trend of using social networking sites for professional purposes is not quite as common as we may have thought. Although there are portions of the population both young and old that do so, it isn't the main reason people join social networks. It's more common for people to go online to use the networks as they were originally intended - to socialize. That's not a bad thing, we suppose, but it will be interesting to see what this means for sites like LinkedIn, whose main purpose is to cater to the professional crowd.

We've already seen LinkedIn attempt to expand their network in new ways not too long ago. Just this past year, we've watched as LinkedIn added LinkedIn applications, an effort to make their network more interesting and dynamic. They also added helpful features for business-minded folks like the events section, which debuted last November. But it was only a month ago that the company brought in a new CEO, or rather, an old one - the company founder Reid Hoffman. Perhaps that means LinkedIn is planning to shake up their site and make it more relevant and popular among online users than it is today. ]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_adults_than_ever_on_socia.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_adults_than_ever_on_socia.php Trends Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:15:13 -0800 Sarah Perez