Facebook is key to a lot of marketing efforts. Tom Webster of Edison Research shared some brand-new data from the company's Internet and Multimedia surveys (conducted via mobile as well as landline phone, in collaboration with Arbitron). The percentage of Americans 12 and above who have Internet access rose from 84% in 2010 to 88% this year, and of those who have access at home, 86% have broadband and 65% have a wireless network.
Not surprisingly, smartphone penetration has tripled over the past two years, to 31%. Among frequent social networkers, almost two-thirds would give up their television over their smartphone if they had to choose.
Perhaps more surprisingly, those 35-54 showed the largest growth in use of social networking.
Overall, 51% of Americans have a Facebook profile, far more than Myspace (17%), LinkedIn (9%), and Twitter (8%), but it's worth noting that more than half of Facebook users have some concerns about privacy. Still, 24% list Facebook as the social networking service that most influences buying decisions. No other service even hit 1%.
Any stereotypes that might imagine frequent social networkers as stay-at-home screen addicts don't hold water. Such people are more likely than other Americans to be found at a restaurant, movie theater, sports event, concert, etc.
Finally, Webster stressed that there's a lot of bad "data" out there, such as survey "conclusions" that rely on "meaningless" numbers. Raw mentions on Twitter, for example, are useless in themselves; dissemination does not equal reach or exposure, since there's no way to measure how many people saw those tweets.
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