What are social media to broadcasters? (2) The numbers

Social media are hot. A bit too hot one might say, referring to the 1 bilion dollar Twitter is said to be worth. Where does that leave television and radio? Can they profit somehow on the emerging media or are the social media a whole different ball game?

An analysis.

Most online guru's refer to old media as 'dead' and impress the media ceo's with fuzzy buzzwords like content aggregation, syndication, and using emerging integrated technologies. Well great, I gather you will say. But HOW exactely is seldom explained by all the social media guru's.

So what is the exact impact of social media for publishers, broadcasters and radio?
The next weeks I will present a complete survey of all crucial aspects of using social media effectively, and what I think is the best strategy to apply.

These are the 10 chapters:

1. background and current situation
2. the numbers
3. why are social media so powerful? memology
4. how not to deal with social media
5. pull marketing; true attention for brands
6. organising social media
7. why is'nt twitter a broadcast medium
8. authenticity, trust and reach
9. the concept of trust
10.free ideas

Now in Part 2: The Numbers

Some figures

First, let's start with a short survey of what are the most visited networks.
Facebook definitely leads the pack here...



But -maybe more interesting anyway in a social media fatige-, what can we say about the growth?

Growth Facebook

Facebook grew a 276% in 2009 in the group of 35-54 year old users. In 2008 however, that number was particularly lower: 172.9% in that period. Facebook is not only growing rapidly, it's getting older aswell. This growth rate is doubling roughly every two months now.

(source Istrategylabs)

Top Insights:

1. Facebook’s US user base grew from 42 million to 103 million in 2009. That’s a 144.9% growth!
2. The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base.
3. The 55+ audience grew a whopping 922.7% in 2009.
4. Atlanta had the highest growth rate in 2009 at 267.6%
5. The 35-54 year old demo is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate.
6. The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate
7. The 25-34 year population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months
8. There are more females (55.7%) than males (42.2%) on Facebook.
9. The largest demographic concentration remains the college crowd of 18-24 year olds (40.8%)

My take? Parents and professionals are rapidly adopting Facebook.

Growth Twitter

3 months ago there were roughly 5 million twitter users. There are now 23 million+.
That nearly 400% growth in 3 months!

Twitter had expanded rapidly in 2009, mainly thanks to it’s near ubiquity in broadcast media through the likes of CNN, Fox news and Oprah have brought a tide of celebrity voices to the platform. This in turn has brought new users in the millions. However, a new kind of user is joining.

Here’s how Twitter’s demographics have shifted in the last 6 months of 2009.



Growth Twitter slowing down since July 2009

1. Twitter is becoming more heavily Female (54% today vs. 53% 3 months ago)
2. Twitter is getting younger (2% are 12-17 vs. 1% 3 months ago)
3. Twitter users are more likely to have children
4. Twitter users are less likely to have a gone to graduate school

Growth online video consumption

Broadcasters obviously are very interested in analysing the online comsumption of video. Good news for them. The online video viewing has reached a record high last year. With the biggest online audience per nation I stick with the figures for the US.
More than 170 million US internet users watched online video during November 2009 and a record high of nearly 31 billion videos were viewed during the month, according to the most recent data from the comScore Video Metrix service.

Top Video Properties

As it has in previous months, Google Sites continued to rank as the top US video property, accounting for 39% of all videos viewed online, comScore said. Google Sites delivered 12.2 billion videos viewed with YouTube.com accounting for nearly 99% of all videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked at #2 with 924 million videos viewed (3.0%) followed by Viacom Digital with 500 million (1.6%) and Microsoft Sites with 480 million (1.5%). Google is the absolute Gof of online video.



ComScore also reported that more than 170 million viewers watched an average of 182 videos per viewer during November 2009. Google Sites attracted 129 million unique viewers during the month (94.7 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo Sites with more than 55 million viewers (8.5 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 50 million viewers (8.9 videos per viewer).

The average Hulu viewer watched 21.1 videos during the month, totaling 2.1 hours of videos per viewer. This represented another all-time high for the property, according to comScore.



Top Video Ad Networks

In November, Tremor Media ranked as the #1 video ad network with a potential reach of 85 million viewers, or 49.8% of the total viewing audience. Advertising.com Video Network ranked #2 with a potential reach of 80 million viewers (47.1%penetration) followed by YuMe Video Network with 73 million viewers (43.0%).



Other findings from November 2009:

* The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 20.0% penetration of online video viewers, BBE with 17.5%, and BrightRoll Video Network with 16.6%.
* 84.8% of the total US internet audience viewed online video.
* The average online video viewer watched 12.2 hours of video.
* 128.1 million viewers watched more than 12 billion videos on YouTube.com (94.3 videos per viewer).
* 38.6 million viewers watched 333.4 million videos on MySpace.com (8.6 videos per viewer).
* The duration of the average online video was 4.0 minutes.

Decline of Social Networks?

However, in the last 3 months of 2009 there was a visible decline of new members of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. The major social networks show signs of slowdown in growth, according to the website Compete.com, a specialist in measuring web traffic.

The number of unique visitors of Twitter has declined with 2,43% in november compared to October. It's the a third decline in a row on a monthly basis. The total number of visitors to Twitter have declined a 7,24% in the last month only.

Same goes for MySpace, a decline of 2,64% in November compared to a month earlier. In one yeat the number of unique visitors to the site has declined with 13,88% in the US Verenigde Staten.

Facebook, by far the most popular social networking site, is still going strong, though the number of unique visitors is declining with a minor 0,47% between October and November. The new number of registrations has grown a 3,51% in the same period.

On a yearly basis the number of returning visitors on Facebook and Twitter in the United States is still growing: +546% for Twitter and +159% for Facebook.

Next week episode 3: Why are social networks so powerful?

I'll go into the attention value and distribution power of the networks. And I'll explain how to use networks for marketing purposes respecting the nature of social networking.

Special attention for the ways broadcasters can participate strategically...