In the latter parts of the study, the company looked specifically at social network membership data for users of the AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services. Not surprisingly, the study found that Facebook was the most popular network across the board. What's more interesting is how well MySpace fared in some cases. On both the Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services, Facebook only had a small lead. Here, around 20% of all Hotmail and Yahoo webmail users were found to be on Facebook and MySpace. What does this reveal about the Hotmail and Yahoo user base? That they're a little more behind the times? Or that they've been around on the net longer and at one time had created (and possibly now abandoned) their MySpace pages? Unfortunately, the study can't provide us with these sorts of answers.

The study also showed that Twitter is far more popular among Gmail users than anyone else. In fact, on the other services, it's 4-5 times less popular than Facebook. We would like to think that's because Gmail users are just more web-savvy and cool, but it's possible that it's because they're just younger than everyone else.

Not surprisingly, LinkedIn is the least popular social network, but as Rapleaf points out, many LinkedIn users may have registered with their business email instead.

Participation Levels - Hotmail Users have Most Profiles, Gmail Users Better-Connected

When it comes to how the webmail users participate on social networks, Rapleaf found that the majority of the users have only one social media profile. But the service where the average number of profiles is the highest might surprise you - it's Hotmail. There the average is 2.5 profiles per user. Hotmail is followed by Yahoo, then AOL, and it's Gmail users who have the least number of social media profiles. That finding seems odd considering that Gmail users are younger and more likely to use Twitter in addition to Facebook. In fact, it almost seems like this data doesn't even fit with the rest of the study.

However, the discovery that Gmail users are better-connected than the other users makes more sense. On average, Gmail users have the most friends on social networks with 46.2 friends while Yahoo users have the least with 40.0.

Since again, Gmail users tend to be younger than the rest, it goes to reason that they would be in a demographic where their peers are more likely to have social membership profiles. Older webmail users, meanwhile, are still signing up for these sites. Although baby boomers and other middle-aged folks are joining sites like Facebook in droves these days, social networks are still dominated by the young.

Methodology

For the Rapleaf study, the company sampled 120,000 webmail accounts from users with @aol.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses. They then looked into the users' age, gender and social networking data by collecting information from public social media profiles. Obviously, in doing so, they've skewed their findings a bit, as the company notes in their original blog post. However, the sample size is large enough to form some conclusions about the members of these services, even if it relied on a particular subset of users.

Really?

If you're an iPhone owner yourself, you're probably going to be taken a bit aback by these findings. For example, the study claims that "cool gadgets" make a person three times more attractive to an iPhone owner than a college degree. Meanwhile "old" gadgets are a turnoff to one in three iPhone users. And yet, if that person spends a little too much time with said gadgets, one in four iPhone owners will break up with them. One in three will do it via email or text message.

Taken on their own, it's hard to say whether these stats are indicative of anything about iPhone owners specifically, or if they could apply to any group of smartphone-owning mobile users. That's why the report compares the iPhone and Blackberry owners on each topic. When studied this way, iPhone owners beat Blackberry owners in every category where "winning" is actually the equivalent of being a materialistic, flaky, fickle dolt...well, at least in our opinion.

To spin the findings even further in Blackberry's favor, one of the questions involved asking the mobile users how they "see" themselves. 40% of the iPhone owners claimed they were an "intellectual" while only 36% of Blackberry users said the same. Propped up against the other results, it's an almost laughable claim.

Don't Buy this Hype

Clearly, this survey wasn't meant to be an in-depth examination of the smartphone toting population - in fact, it's more likely just a publicity stunt to generate talk about Retrevo. Given the questions asked, there were bound to be some "rather interesting" findings, no matter how the respondents answered. And by keeping the sample size to a low number - only 445 individuals - there's no guarantee that these folks are representative of the population at large in any way. After all, who signs up for online surveys anyway? While the panel of participants was distributed across gender, age, income and location in the U.S., what's undisclosed is how the questions were asked - was this done scientifically or were they leading questions designed to generate these sorts of results?  We'd bet on the latter.

Still, you have to wonder if there isn't a tiny bit of truth hiding in these numbers somewhere. Could it be that those who buy Apple's smartphone are a little more wrapped up in mobile life than those whose smartphone purchase probably had more to do with accessing company email in a timely fashion? That may be possible, but that wouldn't exactly be an incredible reveal if so, now would it?

The research study was commissioned by Gomez, Inc., a company that helps organizations optimize the performance of their web and mobile applications. Obviously, that means you have to take these findings with a grain of salt as the company clearly has a vested interest in making the mobile web sound worse off than actually is.

That being said, in reading through the findings, you'll probably find yourself agreeing with much of what's being said. For example, the study found that the majority of mobile phone users said they expected sites to load as quickly, nearly as quickly, or even faster on their mobile phones as compared to their PC. While intellectually, most of us know that's not going to be the case - broadband connections at home or work are generally much faster than accessing the web via a mobile handset - there's still a feeling of wanting the phone to perform the way we've become accustomed to...that is to say, FAST. Waiting for a non-mobilized site to load up in the phone's browser reminds us too much of the painful days of dial-up connections. It feels like we've regressed to an earlier time...like there's something wrong with the site.

When encountering these slow loading sites, half of consumers reported that they were only willing to wait 6-10 seconds or less for the site to load. Longer than that, and they'll give up, move on, and probably won't ever return. Sixty-one percent said it's unlikely that they would ever visit that site again from their mobile device while another forty percent said they would seek out a competitor's site that provided a similar service.

While slow speeds were the number one complaint, with 73% reporting having issues in the past year, other complaints pointed to a lack of well-designed and stable mobile-ready sites. 51% percent complained of sites that crashed, froze, or received an error and another 48% reported the formatting of the site made it difficult to read. Clearly, there is overlap in these numbers as the survey respondents reported multiple complaints. Overall, though, 60% of mobile users reported having one or more issues accessing a site from their mobile phones.

No Mobile Web Presence is Bad for Business

For businesses who maintain a web presence, the survey's findings highlight the potential consequences of ignoring the mobile web. There are more people surfing mobile sites than ever before - 56.9 million as of July, according to Nielsen. Companies who haven't given consideration to their mobile websites aren't just losing customers for that initial attempted transaction that goes bad - they're possibly losing those customers for good seeing as how many of those frustrated users claim they won't ever return to the site in question.   

Although the survey sample size was relatively small (just 1001 total respondents) and the company behind this wants to sell web optimization services, the findings seem to be believable. Anyone who's spent a good amount of time on the mobile web can assure you that it truly is in its infancy. So many sites are slow, aren't optimized for viewing from mobile handsets, and it is frustrating when you encounter them. Hopefully, businesses will begin to realize that if they want to compete with the next generation of web surfers, a "web presence" alone isn't enough. Today, you need a "mobile web presence" too.

According to Pew's research, Generation X is most likely to shop, bank, and look for health information online, but boomers are just as likely as Gen Y to make travel reservations online. Even the older Silent Generation is competitive when it comes to email, although that could point to the fact that email is an activity that is trending older.

Who Uses Email?

It's true: email is for old people - at least it is now. Today, 74% of internet users age 64 and older send and receive email, making it the most popular activity in this group. Meanwhile, email usage among teens is dropping. In 2004, 89% of teens said they used email. Now that number is 73%.

Social Networking Dominated by the Young

Teens and Generation Y (18-32*) are the most likely to use the internet for entertainment and for communicating with friends and family through social networks. They're also more likely than others to play online games, watch videos, send instant messages, hang out in virtual worlds, and download music. In other words, they're the most likely to use the net for fun.

The favorite online activity for teens, however, is not social networking - it's game playing. 78% of 12-17 year-olds play games online, but only 50% of Gen Y does.

Older Generations Research, Shop, and Bank

It's not really surprising to discover that the older generations use the internet less for socializing and entertainment and more for research, email, and shopping. Generation X (ages 33-44) remains the leader when it comes to online shopping with 80% using the internet to buy products online, compared with 71% of internet users ages 18-32.

What is surprising is that users age 73 and up use the internet just as frequently for doing health searches as does Gen Y. In fact, researching health information is only the third most popular online activity for seniors, after email and general online search.

However, when it comes to online banking, it's Gen X that dominates. 67% of this age group does their banking online. Gen Y will most likely do more banking online as they grow older. You can see the activity trending up in their group from 38% in 2005 to 57% in 2008. As Gen Y ages, this number will continue to increase, as does the percentage using the net for booking travel. In 2005, 50% of Gen Y booked travel online and today 65% do.

More Info:

Pew Internet also released several charts and diagrams that accompany this report. You can find them online at Slideshare.

* In this study, the Generations are defined as follows:

• Gen Y (millennials) - Born 1977-1990, Ages 18-32
• Gen X - Born 1965-1976, Ages 33-44
• Younger Boomers - Born 1955-1964, Ages 44-54
• Older Boomers - Born 1946-1954, Ages 55-63
• Silent Generation - Born 1937-1945, Ages 64-72
• G.I. Generation - Born -1936, Age 73+

The Boulder, Colorado company did an interesting survey of the widget-o-sphere, if you will, and found that 45% of the search widgets it found were its own. 47% were from Google. We (more or less) believe these numbers and think we've got some idea why Lijit is as popular as it is.

Lijit defines a widget for the purpose of its survey as: any regularly-occurring functionality on a blog powered by an external service, voluntarily installed by the blog owner, and powered by Flash or Javascript. A simpler definition is that a widget is a little bit of code people drop into their website that makes things happen, either dynamic content or functionality.

Lijit looked at 184,431 blogs and found at least one "widget" on 79.5% of them (146,636 total). 10.39% of those blogs had a widget put on it for search. (We've got search widgets on our site, for example, from our sponsors Quintura and Eurekster.) The company counted more than 1,200,000 widgets in total.

Whose search widgets are most popular? Google's by just a little bit, Lijit says. 47% of the search widgets they found were made by Google services like Google Co-op. Lijit had 45% of the widgets on surveyed pages.

Other popular blog search widgets, trailing far behind, included Sphere, Blogbar.org, IceRocket, Eurekster and Quintura.

Are These Numbers Believable?

We believe these numbers - roughly. We asked competitor Eurekster if they believed that Lijit was nearly as popular as Google site search and they said they were apt to believe it as well. Searches around various social media environments show that people talk about installing Lijit widgets quite often, too.

The company adds the following caveat: "Our crawl is 'centered' on blogs with our Lijit widget. Our crawler then expands outwards by following blogrolls. This will give a bias to the overall results." It sure will! We're not ready to take these numbers to the bank but after swallowing a big grain of salt, we can accept the general conclusion: Lijit search widgets are very popular, popular enough to rival Google search widgets.

Why is Lijit So Popular?

The Lijit user experience is quite good. We've discussed the company's excellent method of getting users to fill out their profiles before. Those profiles enable a blog's visitors to search not just that single blog, but also the author's social bookmarks and other online content. The searches are done without taking readers off-site, results appear in a light-box popup. The results pages are very intuitive, designed to look like the Google Custom Search engine that powers Lijit. Site owners receive a weekly email with interesting analytics about what kinds of searches are bringing readers to their sites.

All of that ads up to a great value proposition. Thus we're not surprised that Lijit is as popular as it is.

Check out this post on the Lijit blog for more details from the company's widget survey, including numbers on which video widgets are most popular, what types of widgets in general are popular, etc. It's interesting data.

The survey, which focuses on U.S. users, shows that the iPhone user base consists mainly of young early adopters about 75% of whom are previous Apple customers.

This coincides with other Apple-related findings just released regarding today's younger generation: a Morgan Stanley survey reveals that 40% of college students say their next computer purchase will be a Mac.

Many of the iPhone users are young. Half are under thirty. Fifteen percent are students.

When asked to rate their level of technology expertise, most described themselves as technically sophisticated, a reminder that, for now, many of the iPhones are still in the hands of early adopters, a typically technically-savvy group.

iPhone Usage

The iPhone survey shows that half of the iPhone users replaced conventional mobile phones (most often the Razr) while 40% replaced other smartphones (like Blackberrys and Windows Mobile devices).

For the iPhone owners, email is the number one function utilized on the phone, with 70% of users checking their inboxes at least once per day. Web browsing runs a close second, with 60% of users surfing at least once per day. A majority of users, 75%, says that they do a lot more mobile browsing than they did with their previous phone, and with half of them coming from conventional cell phones, that's not a big shock.

What is interesting is that for a quarter of the iPhone owners, the iPhone is displacing the notebook computer. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed responded that they are now often carrying an iPhone instead of their notebook computer. So it's almost as if the iPhone and Macbook Air are competing for the same customer.

Despite the iPhone's ability to get more people surfing the web, 40% responded that the iPhone has trouble displaying some of the web sites they want to visit. This is most likely due to iPhone lack's of Flash (our coverage). And with Windows Mobile's licensing of Flash Lite, Apple's going to feel some pressure to resolve the issues preventing Flash from coming to the iPhone.

AT&T For the Win

Despite the all the unlocking tools and hacks, 82% of those surveyed report their phone is not unlocked. This is good news for AT&T, who is raking in the profits - nearly $2 billion in increased revenues.

From the survey, here's how the $2 billion was calculated:

Some of that revenue gets shared with Apple - rumored to be at $18 per phone - but not all. And now that the switchers are AT&T customers, there's the potential to up-sell them from basic plans to ones that generate even higher revenue, like those pricier ones listed in the chart below:

For the iPhone users, switching to the iPhone meant phone bills that increased by an average of 24%. They don't seem to mind, though, since the typical iPhone use is richer than the average - in fact, iPhone users reported household incomes are about 40% higher than the U.S. median. However, this finding is consistent with early adopters for technology products.

So, What Does It All Mean?

Now, the challenge for Apple is to get their product beyond the youthful technophiles and into the hands of mainstream users in order to maintain sustained growth. While the early adopters are a great group for launching a product, without mainstream use, the early success won't last.

Apple's recently announced support for Microsoft Exchange is a step in the right direction in order to get business users on board, a move that may push more mainstream adoption.

But even so, the high price stymies some potential purchasers (cough cough), and the phone's relative success is currently US-only - its sales in Europe have not been as promising nor does it make use of Europe's 3G networks.

However, the iPhone has already had a lasting impact on the mobile industry: its very creation put pressure on other mobile companies to deliver more PC-like phones with better browsers which will push forward greater adoption of mobile web.

Zogby International and 463 Communications released the results last night of an interesting and well executed poll about the attitudes US adults have about the internet. Nearly 10,000 respondents were included and I presume the companies did not seek out the craziest 10,000 people in America (only 20% were from the West Coast, for example) - so these are probably pretty valid results.

To summarize: an alarming percentage of respondents are open to brain implants that allow them to access the internet with their minds and that allow their children's locations to be tracked, they think government censorship of online video content is acceptable, the internet makes them feel closer to God and less close their significant others - but their own identities on the internet are not very important to them. This is frightening stuff.

* 24% of respondents said the Internet could serve as a replacement for a significant other, including 31% of single people, 31% of self described political "progressives" and 18% of those who consider themselves "very conservative."

* More than 1 in 4 respondents have a profile on a social networking site, including 78% of those ages 18-24, 32% of Democrats and 22% of Republicans. Only 14% of respondents said the internet is an important part of what they consider to be their identity. That's the aggregate number, I'd like to see what percentage of 18-24 say it's an important part of their identity. These numbers may or may not be important for those of us watching digital identity controversies involving data and identity portability and control.

* Brain Implants. Thank you Zogby for asking about brain implants. "How likely would you be to implant a device into your brain that enabled you to use your mind to access the internet if it could be done safely?" 11% of respondents said they were very or somewhat likely to do so. Only 4% said they were not sure! 3 out of 4 said they were not at all likely, but that's not very reassuring.

* Kid tracking chip implants. 18% said they would feel better being able to track their child's where about more than they would feel uneasy putting a device in their child for that purpose. Children do become adults and just imagine if that tracking device could also be used to access the internet! Oh the future, how exciting it is.

* Tracking implants are probably most appropriate for people who generally trust authority figures to watch out for their best interests. If you ever took serious issue with the authorities you'd probably regret having a tracking implant in your arm. How do respondents feel about government control in regard to all this stuff?

More than half of respondents believe that internet content, like video, should be controlled in some way by the government. Only 36% said the blocking of internet video would be unconstitutional. Since uncensored internet video so far has brought our society to the brink of absolute ruin, I can understand those beliefs.

* God. When you're putting a web-enabled tracking microchip implant in your child's brain and calling for government control of online content - how does all of this make you feel about God? So far, 10% of respondents said the internet has made them feel closer to God, including 20% of Born Again Christians. Wait until you get that brain implant that lets you access the internet with your mind - you'll feel like God. Until you fall on the wrong side of that government regulation you were so excited about and are easily tracked by the same chip in your head. Then you'll feel like you're in hell.

You will be, we all will be - thanks in no small part to the beliefs captured in this survey. Mine is just another voice, from someone who spends too much time in the hive mind already, urging you to say no to the implant (and go hug your significant other).