Data-fest: Great new stats and insights on social media, Twitter, mobile

Mashable and George Weiner have some excellent new data to share about social media usage and mobile giving.  These three articles are MUST READS:

1. Mashable: Our Social Media Obsession by the Numbers (based on a Retrevo study)

2. Mashable: The Current State of Twitter by Muhammad Saleem

3. George Weiner in the Huffington Post: Mobile Giving and Why People Are Bad at Poker

Here are the highlights, in case you don’t have time to read all of these articles.

Article 1: People who are into social media are REALLY into it - especially iPhone people.

Article 2: Twitter just hit 10 billion Tweets, which is amazing, but there are still a lot of dabblers on Twitter who give up after a month.  And a lot of useless Tweets. 

Article 3: Nonprofits are whipped into a frenzy about the state of mobile, thanks to the millions raised by the Red Cross for Haiti.  As George Weiner puts it: “Everyone thinks getting a mobile text-2-donate short code will win them a huge pot of money (or medium pot). There are currently a little more than 400 approved charities through the Mobile Giving Foundation and—in the three weeks following Haiti—there were more than 800 requests from non-profits about mobile giving.”

George offers a reality check from the Mobile Giving Foundation:

20% of our not-for-profits earn 80% of the revenue generated from text-2-give programs.  This data follows a standard power law distribution; it is clear simply having a mobile-giving program will not ensure success.

So what to do?  Get his tips here.

You may also want to look at a Convio/Edge/SeaChange study on Haiti-related mobile giving that found the following.  The friends to friends angle is especially interesting. 

The study, Early Signals on Mobile Philanthropy found among respondents:

•77% knew that they could donate via texting to support Haiti relief work
•17% of Gen Y & 14% of Gen X donated to Haiti via texting
•3% of both Boomer and Mature donated via texting
•36% of all respondents would consider texting a donation after a crisis
•31% would text a donation if a friend was raising money for a charity

 

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