The report, which is available for free until January 31, 2009 if you register at Netpop, provides an extremely rich amount of data.

Netpop, for example, found that the typical social networker is female (57% vs. 43%), between 18 and 29 years old, employed (55%) or a student (23%), and single (48%). The average social networker uses the Internet to connect with more than 18 people one-to-one in a given week, and with close to 110 one-to-many.

Interestingly, those broadband subscribers who don't contribute to social networks tend to be male (57%), married (57%), and older. They also connect with less than 3 people online per week.

Social networkers spend an average of about $101 online, while those who don't contribute to social networks only spend $80. On average, social networkers are also interested in a more diverse range of topics, with music, friends, movies, and games being the most prevalent interests.

Facebook vs. MySpace

Netpop also compared Facebook and MySpace users. Most of the results there aren't highly surprising, but they do provide hard evidence for some of the more anecdotal stories we have seen about the two services.

Facebook users, for example tend to skew towards the 18 to 29 year olds, while MySpace users span all age groups. Facebook also has more users with college degrees (74% vs. 56%) and these users are less likely to be married than MySpace users.

MySpace users, however, spend more time online  during the week (5.5 hours vs. 5.1 hours) and also remain more active during the weekend.

In terms of interests, MySpace users are more interested in NASCAR, astrology, and gardening, while Facebook's users are predictably more interested in school, science, and investing.

Advertising

Netpop concludes the report with a longer discussion of what this means for online advertisers. A lot of this advice is right along the lines we have already discussed in earlier posts: engage with users on social media sites, give consumers a voice, enable companies to listen and learn, and allow your 'fans' to influence others.

With over 40 million Americans now contributing to social networking sites in one form or another, this is clearly a lucrative market for advertisers, but also one that is very different from more traditional online and offline media sources.

When over 1,000 social media users were asked what companies' role in social media should be, their answers were somewhat surprising. For all the griping about intrusive internet ads, lame marketing campaigns, and lousy customer service, you would think that the last thing users would want is to have companies invading the platforms they use for communicating and socializing with their friends and colleagues. As it turns out, the opposite is true.

It seems that users are actually receptive to the idea of companies getting involved on social media platforms and interacting with them while there. Out of the 85% of users who want companies to have a presence in social media, 34% want companies to actively interact with them and 51% want companies to interact with them as needed or by request. 8% think companies should only be passively involved on social media and 7% think companies should not be involved at all.

This desire for business-to-consumer interaction goes beyond simply offering customer service via Twitter. Although 43% would like to see companies offering customer service through social media, 41% would like companies to solicit feedback and 37% would like companies to provide new ways to interact with the brand via social media. These numbers could not be more clear: these consumers are practically begging for businesses to get involved in social media.

Not So Shocking: Social Media Users Like To See Social Media Used

If these numbers seem a little skewed it's because the survey was only given to social media users. They're more likely to understand and appreciate how social media operates. Where traditional advertising and marketing campaigns broadcast messages one way (business to consumer), social media encourages conversations. And these open dialogues are exactly what today's social media users desire and participate in regularly. Give their active use of this medium for social communications, it's not a huge leap for them to say they want to use social media in new and different ways - such as for communicating with businesses.

Although it can be scary for businesses to take that initial plunge, once they get in and get involved, it will be worth their effort. The numbers from this study back that up, too: 56% of users say they feel better about companies when they can interact with them on social media and 57% say they feel better served.

We definitely agree with those numbers. Most people don't think to call customer service over minor complaints, feeling that it's just not worth the effort. But if you have a brand representative respond to one of your Twitter posts like this, the experience is so much better:

According to to a research from shopping comparison site PriceGrabber. Some 85% of Gen Y respondents said they participated in social networking, and 57% reported involvement with blogs. In order to market to Gen Y, web retailers are now starting to use social media to do so. According to an August 2008 survey by Internet Retailer, 39.3% of retail respondents use social networks for marketing purposes, 32% have a page on Facebook, 27% are on MySpace, and 26% are on YouTube.

Shouldn't Those Numbers Be Higher?

While it's encouraging to see web retailers reaching out to the youngest shoppers in this way, those number still seem sort of low. Do only 39.3% of retailers need to sell to Generation Y customers? We think that number should be higher.

So why aren't more brands involved in social media yet? Is the problem that they're still learning how to use these tools or is it that they don't have room in their budgets for non-traditional marketing and advertising campaigns? Perhaps it's a little of both. But another big issue to take into account is fear. Companies have relied on one-way communication methods for years as the method of reaching their customers. Social media, however, demands a two-way conversation. That means giving up some control, yes, but it also means there's an opportunity for increased loyalty when done correctly. When someone feels like their voice is being heard, there's the potential for having a customer for life.

Another reason it's important for brands to listen to their customers is because there are now more ways than ever for customers to share their experiences with others online. A 2008 study conducted by the Society for New Communications Research for Nuance Communications found nearly three-quarters choose retailers and products based on others' customer care experiences shared online. In addition to word-of-mouth and other trusted sources like Consumer Reports, respondents found information about others' customer care experiences online in the following ways:

Who's Doing What

It's interesting to see micro-blogging sites on that chart above - you wouldn't have seen that even a year or two ago. Twitter, of course, is the main micro-blogging site of interest these days, at least here in the U.S. We looked at companies using Twitter for customer service not too long ago, and since then even more companies have come on board.

However, if you're really interested in following companies that use social media for marketing, the best resource we've found so far is this extensive list collated by Peter Kim which, as of October 4th, includes 237 companies actively using social media for marketing purposes. At some point, though, we hope that making a list of involved companies will become impossible to do because they are just too many of them. Apparently, we're not there yet.

Data in this article courtesy of eMarketer

Image credit dollar sign, by pfala]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_and_shopping.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_and_shopping.php Trends Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:14:44 -0800 Sarah Perez

How An Unknown Artist's Work Became a Social Media Brand Thanks To the Power of Community

Twitter users are very familiar with the iconic image of the Fail Whale. This social object has been latched onto by Twitter fans not just as a representation of Twitter's downtime, but also as a representation of the community's love for the service and their hope for its triumph over their many struggles. Despite Twitter's troubles, most of its users stayed true, watching and waiting as the team began the long process of recoding the application in order for it to scale up. As Twitter succumbed to the strain of running their under-provisioned service, the Fail Whale "over capacity" image would appear. And this image began to take on a life of its own. This is the story of the Fail Whale.

You probably thought that Twitter was using designs they paid for, right? Well, apparently that was not the case. The designer behind the Fail Whale, Yiying Lu, had posted the image to the stock photo web site, iStockPhoto. (She has now removed the original link). Although the image of the Fail Whale was widely known, the designer herself was not. Tom Limongello decided to change that.

Tom had once made himself a Fail Whale t-shirt from a screenshot which he wore at a Mashable party. Of course, the shirt was a huge hit. But Tom couldn't really post the shirts for sale because he didn't have rights to the design. Yet, here was an entire community of Fail Whale fans - many of which who had gathered at failwhale.com - who wanted a shirt of their own.

But then Tom met the designer Yiying Lu when her iStockPhoto link was tweeted to the @FailWhale Twitter user from Twitterer @emmastory. The Fail Whale project (@FailWhale, failwhale.com) is a community effort created by Sean O'Steen, (@seanostee) whose mission was to create a brand from the Fail Whale phenomenon. Sean is responsible for the Fail Whale web site and the Twitter profile, but the name "Fail Whale" itself was coined by Nick Quaranto.

Setting Up The Fail Whale Store

Despite the popularity of the Fail Whale, creator Yiying Lu wasn't really profiting from her iconic work. Twitter.com did not link to her and she didn't have an online store for Twitter fans. So Tom took it upon himself to give her a call. He told Yiying, who lives in Australia, but is originally from Shanghai, about the project, the community's desire for merchandise, and the Fail Whale's potential, and asked her to create a Zazzle store so everyone could enjoy her work.

And thus the Fail Whale online store was born. On zazzle.com/failwhale, fans can now customize their own shirt with their own handle and slogan. Now, not only could Fail Whale fans buy the shirt, they were also helping to support the artist, too.

FailWhale Zazzle Shop

Spreading the News: Fail Whale Has Arrived!

The next question the Fail Whale community wanted to address was getting the word out about the Zazzle shop. Tom had originally wanted to send shirts to the team at Twitter as gesture of community support, and he now also realized that the gesture could also be a way to promote the artist herself and her new shop.

So, the Fail Whale fan club rallied together to round up the $361.17 needed to purchase 20 shirts and have them shipped to Twitter's offices. Also included with the shirts was a note from Tom and the gang which offered a message of support to the Twitter team and also a request to tweet a thank you to Yiying which included the link to the Zazzle store.

Twitter's Evan Williams did end up tweeting about the shirts shortly after their arrival. Though he wasn't sure how to react (tweeted: "mixed feelings"), he did include the link to the online store. Tom equates this tweet to a media buy...at a $25.06 CPM. Of course when you take into account the re-tweets and the other subsequent Twitter messages linking to the online store, the effective CPM goes down quite a bit.

Ev's Tweet

Fail Whale Fan Club

The Fail Whale fan club at failwhale.com now actively promotes the Zazzle store as well as the additional shop that Yiying Lu opened up for t-shirts and accessories at failwhaleshop.com. The Zazzle shop has made around $4200.00 from the 12,000+ visits they've received since June 25th. The fan club also runs a Facebook group that currently has 3154 fans.

But the number of sales made is only one aspect to this story - what's more compelling is the torrent of social media cooperation that Ev's tweet set off. Since then, Tom, Sean, and Yiying have continued to manage the Fail Whale community across the numerous social sites, making new friends, starring their favorite fan photos, and interacting with those who post to the Facebook fan page wall. Sean even extended the Fail Whale concept to TUAW recently which showed the Apple iPhone similarly being carried by Yiying Lu's birds during the low point of iPhone 3g activation issues last Friday night.

Fail iPhone

The Birth of a Social Media Object

It's also notable that this social media effort has gone the opposite route as what has been seen with another iconic brand: Hello Kitty. The fans of that brand have literally stolen the image to make fan art, claiming that Hello Kitty is now part of our pop culture. Normally, the internet encourages this type of piracy, but in the case of the Fail Whale, by promoting the artist, the designer's identity and official link have floated to the top.

The Fail Whale story is one that shows the value of open content. By making the art available, Yiying is now going to profit in more ways than if she had simply made the art available for purchase. She will be earning profits from merchandise at both shops and from the sale of her prints and she will certainly win some future design work from this as well. Of course, her successes come from more than just the work itself, but also from the power of the community who embraced it. The marriage of the two breathed life into the art and created a modern-day social object which emanates the hope of the community and the love they have for the brand.

You can see more of Yiyang's work on her personal site, yiyinglu.com.

"So, we had an idea. We had been sponsoring Kiva.org for the past few months as an organization we really admire and believe in - they're the online micro-lending site that helps entrepreneurs in the developing world. And, we wanted to figure out a way to funnel the dollars we were sending to Google ads over to Kiva loans," wrote Jama's Director of Customer Outreach & Marketing, John Simpson in a blog post today.

The idea is the same as the original "You try. We give." program. Jama is hoping that press coverage of their unusual marketing plan (such as this), as well as word of mouth, will send as much traffic -- perhaps higher quality traffic -- as Google AdWords. And because Kiva loans are theoretically repaid (currently 97.97% of the time), any traffic Jama receives via this experiment is bound to end up being a lot cheaper, and perhaps even free.

"In the pursuit of growing our own business, we decided we'd much rather help a small store owner in Uganda feed her village than support the Google billionaires' hobby of flying to space," said Eric Winquist, CEO and founder of Jama Software in an emailed press release. Simpson told us he's excited to see if innovative social marketing tactics can out perform traditional search marketing.

"This program just gives people an added incentive to try our product versus the traditional enterprise tools from IBM and Telelogic, or to pass it along to a colleague or friend," Simpson told ReadWriteWeb in an email. "We're going up against 'the institutional big blue' so we differentiate ourselves by being a company with personality and more of a personal touch - we could never outspend them. The Kiva programs serves as a positive first impression and it illustrates our commitment as a company to giving back, whether big or small."

According to Simpson, eventually Jama might supplement their social public relations strategy with more traditional ad buys from Google or elsewhere. Once loans start being repaid, Jama could theoretically put last month's ad budget toward traditional advertising while this month's ad budget is being used to fund a microloan in the developing world.

Kiva co-founder and chief marketing officer Jessica Jackley Flannery was overjoyed by Jama's decision to choose Kiva over AdWords. "We're thrilled when a company like Jama Software develops an innovative program that supports both our global mission at Kiva and their own goals. It's such a simple concept, but that's the beauty of it," she said. We tend to agree, and we wish Jama the best in their efforts, and luck to anyone who receives loans via Kiva.