The state of social media and what it means to you

• Mon, January 16 2012
• Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0

I’m a big fan of the work done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  Last week they released the mobile study I covered here.  Last month, Mary Madden at Pew shared some fascinating data on social media.  She agreed to my posting her deck here for your benefit.

Here are some highlights:

*The cat photo, of course
*The fact that American Internet use has leveled off at 74%
*Mobile is at an inflection point
*The most valued aspect of social media is the ability to connect to those close to us
*Facebook reigns

To me the biggest surprise was how high school buddies represent such a huge proportion of Facebook friends!

So what does all this mean to us?  Remember:

*Social media is worth using as an engagement or relationship building tool—that’s why people are there using it - but not as a self-promotion tool, ever.
*While it’s early days, you need to start thinking about mobile (I’m at work writing a white paper on it, which will come out next month, so stay tuned).