New global social media statistics - but use with caution
Monday, April 28th, 2008
Robin Hamman pointed me to some interesting research into global adoption of online “Social Media” by a PR firm, Universal McCann. On the good side, the research is longitudinal (this is the third wave of research, which started in 2006). It also covers Internet users in 29 countries - more breadth than most studies. But it also clearly needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The methodology is not clear but it looks like people were recruited to fill out online surveys of their usage (how were they found? To what extent were they self-selected?). They also chose a rather special target group - people who use the internet every day or every other day and are between 16 and 54 years old - a group they call the “active Internet universe”.
Having selected this unusually “net savvy” group they then find, unsurprisingly, a higher rate of adoption of social media/web 2.0 applications than the phone and face to face interview-based surveys I am familiar with. For example, 25.3% of the McCann UK sample had (at some point) started their own weblog - this compares to the Oxford Internet Institute’s 2007 figure of 9% of Internet users having maintained their own weblog in the last year. And while it is interesting to know that 70.3% of the Chinese “active Internet universe” had started a blog at some point you have to bear in mind (as they themselves point out) that “emerging Internet markets tend to have a demographical profile that fits the early adopter” (on slide 22 you see that in China only 6.4% of all 16-54 year olds fit their “active Internet universe” profile).
Given the limitations of the data outlined, it is hard to justify the kind of sweeping statements that are then made about the significance of social media eg “Over time, all users increase the regularity of usage. Eventually everybody will be an active user, as they have been with television.” (slide 7) or “The blogosphere is now so large it is an accurate barometer of consumer opinion” (slide 33). But if you avoid the hype you may be able to find some info-nuggets…