A recent study shows that social networking is one of the most important activities, online and offline, among US social network users. The study was conducted for Beresford Research’s “Use of Online Social Networks” white paper.
The June 2009 study, which had 421 respondents, provides interesting insight into the online behavior of social networkers, including their favorite activities on their social networks, and the amount of trust they place in their social networks, and is worth taking note of for those interested in online social network marketing.
The survey was undertaken to address what the report called a “surprising lack of detailed public research on how people in the US over 18 years old are using online social networks.”
The respondents ranked e-mail as the number one online activity, while online social networking was second, followed by online chat/IM, web browsing, online forums, and several more web activities.
One of the more interesting points to come out of the study, though, was that when asked to compare online social networking with several other online activities, the respondents only ranked ‘going out with friends’ as more important. Runners up to online social networking were real life activities like playing sports and reading.
The favoured social networking activity was ‘posting photos’ (81 percent took part). Coming in second was ‘responding to posts of others’ (72 percent took part), followed by ‘updating activites/ posting thoughts’ (68 percent took part), and ‘posting links to other websites’ (50 percent took part).
The report also showed that social network users place a great amount of trust in their social networks. The majority of respondents (50 percent) said they considered information shared on their social networks important to decision-making. Those between the ages of 18 to 24 were the most likely to place such strong trust in their social networks, at 65 percent.
Other interesting points from the survey include:
• Facebook users have an average of 138 friends
• MySpace users have an average of 174 friends
• The typical user belongs to two social networking sites
• Online social networkers spend an average of 22 hours a week on online social networking sites
• Facebook users spent the most time with their social networking sites
• LinkedIn users averaged only 2-3 hours per week of social networking activity
• Over one third of respondents have clicked on paid advertising on the social networking sites
• One quarter of respondents have placed a link to a company, service or product on their profile pages
The results of this report suggest a much higher reliance on online social networking than previous studies have suggested.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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