Netpop’s recent research about social networkers revealed some interesting differences between Facebook and MySpace users. And the difference may NOT be what you think…

Think MySpace is for kids and Facebook for college students and grads? Not exactly.

NetPop’s research shows that while Facebook users tend to be aged 18 to 29 years old, MySpace users span all age groups. And while Facebook users do tend to have college degrees (74 percent who do versus 56 percent who don’t) they are also less likely to be married than MySpace users.

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As reported by ReadWriteWeb, a new study by Netpop Research shows that 76 percent of all U.S. broadband users actively contribute to social media sites in some way, with 29 percent contributing on a regular basis.

Interestingly, the typical social networker is a single, female twenty-something who is either employed or a student. This is based on findings that: 57 percent of social network users are female (43 percent are male); the largest contingent of users (35 percent) are 18 to 29 years old, employed (55 percent) or students (23 percent), and single (48 percent).

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While more and more people are using social networking sites, eMarketer has revised downward its projections for U.S. social network ad spending. The research firm now expects advertisers to spend $1.2 billion on social networks in 2008, down from its previous projection of $1.4 billion.

Similarly, eMarketer expects spending to be $1.3 billion in 2009, down from its previously forecast of $1.8 billion. eMarketer attributes the lower numbers to the recession and slower-than-expected revenue growth at MySpace.

eMarketer has also revised downward its forecasts for MySpace and Facebook. Previously, eMarketer expected MySpace to earn $755 million and Facebook to earn $265 million in U.S. ad spending this year. Now, eMarketer expects MySpace to earn $585 million and Facebook $210 million.

Source: eMarketer, “U.S. Social Network Ad Spending Growth Lowered,” eMarketer, December 10, 2008

NetPop Research has found that activity on social networking sites has grown 93 percent in the two years between 2006 and 2008.

According to its report, ‘Social Networkers U.S., Who they are and what they mean for next-generation online advertising,’ people are spending more time on social media… and less time on shopping and entertainment.

In 2008, Internet users spent 10 percent of their time shopping (down from 12 percent in 2006) and 19 percent on leisure and entertainment e.g. playing online games and downloading music.

Netpop Research based its findings on an online survey of 4,384 broadband users age 13 and older.

Source: NetPop Research, “93 Percent Growth in Social Networkers Reveals Need for New Approaches to Online Advertising,” NetPop Research

Think you can use social networking sites such as Flickr to boost your search engine rankings? Think again. Not only has Flickr implemented no-follow tags to prevent ‘misuse’ of its service, but it has gone so far as to remove an account one search engine optimization (SEO) contractor created for his client, FramesDirect.

As reported by The ClickZ Network, Flickr emailed SEO contractor Richard Burckhardt, to say that his account was taken down because it violated Flickr’s terms of service. Flickr’s guidelines say that the service is for personal use only and that anyone found selling products or services through the photostream will have their account terminated.

According to Burckhardt the account was removed with no discussion, no warning, and no chance to rectify the problem or even to retrieve the photos.

Of course, that doesn’t quite explain why other accounts - which are also arguably for commercial purposes - remain on Flickr…

The lesson here is that social networks have cottoned-on to Internet marketers using their sites for search engine optimization (SEO) and promotional purposes. Some of them don’t like it and, like Flickr, are doing something about it. It may not seem ‘fair’ but they own the sites and can therefore make the rules.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the account Richard Burckhardt created was relatively innocuous. But this is an example of what happens when others i.e. ‘rogue marketers’ don’t simply take advantage of marketing opportunities but abuse them to the point where others can’t use them at all.

Source: Kate Kaye, “Flickr Ban Raises Question of What’s Commerce, What’s Not”, The ClickZ Network, December 8, 2008

Heard of Power.com? Well, you’re probably going to hear a lot more about it in the weeks and months to come. Essentially, Power.com is a platform that allows you to communicate across all your favorite social networking sites from ONE place.

Power.com works like this. You register with your preferred social networks. Then you use your Power.com home page to view all the content from those various social sites - friends, chats, emails, images, etc. You can then use Power to send and receive messages, change your profile, and update your friends or followers list… and do so across all your social networks.

Power.com currently works with Facebook, Hi5, MSN, MySpace and Orkut, and is scheduled to work with LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Skype within the next few months.

Given its, um, power, you can probably see why Power already has 5 million registered users.

Of course, it helps to have, among other things, a link to Power on every message that is sent via the Power.com platform!

Even so, it’s selling proposition is so compelling that the company’s vision of 30 million registered users by the end of 2009 is probably realistic.

The company also has some serious backing - it has received $8 million in Series A funding from investors including venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and tech visionary and entrepreneur Esther Dyson.

Based in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Power.com is a privately held company with 70 employees. It’s opening new offices in San Francisco, California and Hyderabad, India.

Source: Lidija Davis, “Social Inter-Networking with Power,” ReadWriteWeb, November 30, 2008

Research conducted by JupiterResearch for BuzzLogic indicates that blog readers tend to respond to ads on blogs, with 40 percent of people reading blogs taking action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog, and 50 percent of frequent blog readers taking action.

Of the action taken, 17 percent read product reviews online; 16 percent sought out more information on a product or service; and 16 percent visited a manufacturer or retailer Web site.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, 25 percent of the blog readers (people who read at least one blog per month) said they trusted ads on a blog, compared with 19 percent who trusted ads on social networking sites.

The survey also found that consumers are influenced by blogs at the moment of purchase decision. According to BuzzLogic and JupiterResearch, blogs play a greater role than social networks because bloggers establish themselves as an authority on a topic, particularly in niche areas, and create a relationship with the consumer.

Source: Enid Burns, “Study: Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites”, The ClickZ Network, October 28, 2008

Synovate surveyed 13,000 consumers in 17 countries and, as reported by eMarketer, found that 58 percent of adults in these countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States) were NOT familiar with social networking.

42 percent of adults did know about social networking and 26 percent belonged to social networking sites.

More interesting to me was another finding: of the 26 percent of adults who belonged to one or more social networks, 36 percent said they were “losing interest” in social networks. Indeed, 55 percent of Japanese users were losing interest, followed by users in Slovakia (48 percent), Canada (47 percent), Poland (45 percent) and the U.S. (45 percent).

eMarketer predicts that 44.3 percent of U.S. Internet users will belong to social networks by the end of 2008. But I wonder if, despite exploding growth in other countries, 2009 may be the year that U.S. social network membership peaks… after which growth plateaus and total social network membership stabilizes.

I suggest this because (a) social network membership growth has softened in the U.S. - the number of users has grown by just 9 percent between June 2007 and June 2008, and (b) the nature of social networking seems to be such that it will ultimately only appeal to certain kinds of Internet users.

Many people who “try” social networking may find that spending hours on one or more social networks - creating profiles, joining groups, making friends, exchanging messages, sharing images, movies, music, etc - just doesn’t fit into their lifestyle.

Having said that, I think there’s still plenty of growth potential among niche social networks. And you can pretty much include discussion boards in that category too, since many of them have either morphed - or are morphing into - fully fledged social networks. (What is a discussion board or forum but the original version of a social network?)

Source: eMarketer, “Social Networks Are Not Yet Universal”, eMarketer, September 3, 2008, Anna Johnson, “Facebook Is World’s Biggest and Fastest Growing Social Network”, August 14, 2008

The Pew Internet Project has released a report revealing that the most popular daily online activities among U.S. Internet users are using search engines and email.

According to Pew’s recent study of U.S. Internet users, 49 percent use search engines and 60 percent use email, each and every day. Another 30 percent check the weather, 29 percent research a hobby, 28 percent surf the Internet for fun, and 13 percent visit social networking sites, on a daily basis.

Source: Jason Kincaid, “Search Challenges Email As Most Popular Daily Online Activity”, August 6, 2008, Tech Crunch

A study commissioned by Cloudmark has found that 83 percent of social networking website users have received unwanted (or spammy) “friend” invitations, messages or postings on their social or professional network account in the past 12 months.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of those surveyed said they would be at least somewhat likely to switch to another social network if they continued receiving a significant number of such unwanted messages.

Meanwhile, the vast majority (80 percent) of social network users were at least somewhat concerned about spam, phishing and virus attacks on their social or professional network account.

None of this should come as a surprise and is a warning to Internet marketers seeking to use social networks like MySpace, Facebook and the like as mass marketing communication tools. They’re not. Facebook, for one, plans to crack down on attempts to spam users. Meanwhile, social network users are well aware – and obviously tired – of attempts to spam them.

They’re certainly unlikely to respond kindly to such spam, let alone actually convert into customers.

Sources: “Nationwide Survey Shows the Prevalence of Spam on Social Networking Sites, Threatening Growth and Membership Retention”, Cloudmark, June 9, 2008, Kikabink News, “Facebook Too Zealous In Combating Spammy Applications?”, June 26, 2008