A study of 15,727 people by BIGresearch has found that, after face-to-face communication, email is the most popular method used by U.S. adults to talk about products.

While 67 percent of Americans use face-to-face discussions, a significant 52.8 percent use email, followed by telephone (50.2 percent), mobile phone (29.6 percent), instant messaging (13.8 percent), text messaging (10.8 percent), online communities (8.8 percent), blogging (4.1 percent) and other (2.2 percent).

The popularity of the various channels differs between age groups, with channels such as the mobile telephone, instant messaging and online communities much more popular among those aged 18-24 compared with those in other age groups. Email, however, remains the second most popular discussion medium for all age groups except for those aged 65 and over.

While 56.4 percent of those 65 and over use the telephone to discuss products, slightly less (53.4 percent) use email!

For Internet marketers, this is a strong indication that the best way to harness viral marketing is to do so by encouraging or facilitating word-of-mouth by email.

Source: eMarketer, “E-Mail Effective with Boomers,” eMarketer, December 11, 2008

If you thought you used the Internet a lot… what about your kids?

eMarketer estimates that 82 percent of United States teenagers aged 12 to 17 and 43.5 percent of children aged 3 to 11 will use the Internet on a monthly basis in 2009. Meanwhile, Nielsen Online says that about 19 percent of active Internet users in July 2008—or 32.4 million people—were under age 18.

Meanwhile, teenagers are proving to be heavy mobile users too. Research by MultiMedia Intelligence found that there were 16 million mobile teens in the U.S. in 2007. That’s about two-thirds of all teenagers in the country. Further, Pew Internet & American Life Project and the College Board’s National Commission on Writing found that a greater percentage of U.S. teens have a mobile phone than own a PC.

Of course, it may be a moot point, given the gradual convergence of media technology.

Source: eMarketer, “Kids and Teens Are Always On”, eMarketer, November 17, 2008

An ABI Research study reveals that more people are accessing social networks via mobile (cell) phones and devices.

Based on an online survey of 500 users conducted in the second quarter of 2008, ABI Research found that 46 percent of those who used social networks also accessed them via mobile phone.

Of those sites visited, the most popular two by far were MySpace (70 percent) and Facebook (67 percent). All other sites came in below 15 percent.

Source: Enid Burns, “Mobile Web Visitors Flock to Social Sites”, The ClickZ Network, October 7, 2008

Twitter has created a ’spam’ user account for its users to direct spam complaints.

To report spam from someone, you simply follow ‘@spam’ and send it a direct message with the username of your spammer. You can also send such messages from your mobile phone or use a public tweet.

Source: Mark Hendrickson, “Fight Spam With A Direct Message To Twitter”, TechCrunch, October 6, 2008

A mobile phone made by HTC and powered by Google’s Android software is expected to launch in the United States by Christmas, possibly as early as October.

T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer the high-end phone, which will match many of the capabilities of Apple’s iPhone, including providing Internet access and performing computer-like functions.

Just as the success of Apple’s iPhone has largely been due to enabling users to download any number of applications to their phones and individualizing their phone’s functions, phones using Google’s software will also offer similar functionality.

Google is making the Android operating system software available free to a group of companies, including cellphone carriers and manufacturers, who have agreed to provide devices which will enable users to choose which applications run on them.

Source: Laura M. Holson and Miguel Helft, “T-Mobile to Offer First Phone With Google Software”, The New York Times, August 14, 2008

As reported by the Daily Mail, the iPhone nano will be released in the United Kingdom by O2, the mobile phone group owned by Spain’s Telefonica. It will be priced at up to £150 for pay-as-you-go customers.

Source: Simon Fluendy, “Apple to launch the iPhone ‘nano’ in time for Christmas”, Daily Mail Online, August 3, 2008