What do people do online?  Here’s the comScore data

I’m at the Artez Interactive conference in Toronto to speak today - but I’m also here to listen to some juicy data from comScore on social networking - aka social conversation.  (comScore is to the Internet as Neilsen is to TV.)  Brent Low-Bernie who leads comScore Media Metrix in Canada shared the following data from across the border. 

Canada has the highest per capita penetration of the Internet and highest level of online engagement in the world, so it’s interesting to look at Canadian behavior online.

-Nearly all Canadians are touched by social media (96%)
-Email and instant messaging is flat but social networks, blogs and multimedia are growing
-Social networking is the number two destination online after portals like MSN/Yahoo!/etc. (20% vs. 33% of visitors)
-It’s not just young people: 99% of people 55+ with HHI over $60K use social media - it’s the area of fastest growth
-Facebook dominates in Canada just as it does in the US;
-If Facebook would be a country, it would be the third-largest country in the world after China and India
-Facebook is a leading driver of traffic to traditional media online, like the CBC
-In 2007, Facebook traffic/month was 31 visits/visitor and now it is 42/visitor
-Twitter is growing rapidly - 5% vs. Facebook’s 9% in a year; Linkedin is up 95%
-Of people who go to social media sites, 78% go to photo sharing sites and 60% go to web publishing sites

He also shared some US Mobile data:

-The mobile market has moved from 44% female mobile use in 2005 to 52%
-People 35-54 are a third of mobile users
-Top social networks on mobile: Facebook, followed by MySpace and Twitter
-The average Facebook user is spending nearly 300 minutes on the social network on mobile - almost the same amount of time they spend on a computer on Facebook
-He predicts mobile will surpass desktop screens very soon

He offered some additional parting predictions:

-He predicts Google TV will succeed
-iPads will change how people consume the web
-Social media search is the next frontier
-Facebook “like” could be the future of social retail (imagine asking your FB friends: do these jeans make my butt look big?)
-Twitter is a rapidly growing and dominant form of video link sharing

The conclusion:

It’s all about content.  Social media will be everywhere, on devices, in traditional media, within business strategies.  What will win is the quality content.

My take?  The last point is critical.  These tools only work well when they are used to share amazing content.  Nonprofits take heed:  the tools are cool but if you use them to transmit tired message, they won’t do you much good.

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