Promodem Media Inc.

Contravening prevailing wisdom, the results of a new survey from Knowledge Networks shows that social media does not, in fact, drive purchases. Fewer than 5% of consumers age 18-34 “regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions” on various product categories.

Or, rather, a new survey from Knowledge Networks shows that very, very few people think that social media influences their purchase decisions. And this is a story we’ve heard before—a year ago, Pew Internet Life conducted a similar survey and concluded the same thing, even though their stats really only indicated that the Internet doesn’t influence people who don’t use it. And once again, at first glance, these numbers aren’t very encouraging:

* 16% of the social-media users surveyed said they’re more inclined to buy brands that advertise on social sites
* 4% of consumers age 18-34 “regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions” in the “travel or travel services” and “banks or financial services” categories
* 3% for “clothes or shoes,” “eating out or restaurants” and “personal care products”
* 2% for “cell/mobile phones and services,” “cars or trucks” and “groceries or food”
* 1% for “prescription or OTC drugs”
* 24% sometimes turn to social media for guidance on “travel or travel services” purchases
* 23% sometimes turn to social media for “clothes or shoes” guidance

It’s important to note that Knowledge Networks reserved the “social media” title for purebred-social heavyweights

Bebo.com, Blackplanet.com, Cafemom.com, Classmates.com, ClubPenguin.com, Del.icio.us, Digg.com, Facebook.com, Flickr.com, Flixster.com, Friendster.com, Hi5.com, Imeem.com, Last.fm, Live.com, LinkedIn.com, Livejournal.com, Myspace.com, Myyearbook.com, Ning.com, Picasa.com, Plaxo.com, Reddit.com, Reunion.com, Tagged.com, Twitter.com, YouTube.com

Knowledge Networks says that the survey listed the above sites specifically but also asked respondents to consider “social media features on other websites that are not primarily social media sites.” But really, after reading that list, would you think about wasn’t including consumer reviews on Amazon (they don’t mention books or music as product categories, either or asking for product/purchase advice on your own blog as “social media”?

This is a survey, not an empirical experiment. This only shows us what people think they think, not necessarily what they’re actually thinking, reading, doing (and influenced by). . . .

What do you think? Does social media really not influence purchase decisions—or do people just not think it does when asked on a survey?

Now here’s something interesting that I stumbled upon.

The mobile phone appears to be displacing the PC among US women in terms of usage - especially in the 12-24 age group. According to research from SRG, found that young women spend twice as much time with their cell phones as women over age 40.

The “Women and Digital Life” study, revealed that more than 80% of US women now use a wireless device and 17% use using a smartphone, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or models from HTC, Samsung, LG or similar, reports MarketingCharts. Among those in the 12-24 and 25-39 age groups, smartphone ownership is now 23%. In contrast 11% of women ages 40+ own a smartphone.

When asked about the top benefits of owning a smartphone, the top answers among women are convenience, the ability to send texts and email, access to social media, SRG said.

Mobile Phone: Most Important to Young Women

When asked what technology had the most impact their life in the past two years, women overall picked the internet, followed by the PC/computer, and cell/wireless in a distant third spot. Among young women, however, wireless devices took the #1 spot:

Young Women Use Mobile Phone More, PC Less

Among women with access to internet and a mobile phone, teens and young women under 25 spend an average of 2.8 hours per day with their cell phone compared with women age 40+, who spend only 1.2 hours In contrast, young women spend 2.9 hours per day with their PCs, significantly less than the 40+ average of 3.5 hours.Younger women also are much more likely to use the full functionality of their wireless devices than older women. For example, 12-24 year-olds are twice as likely to have sent a text message in the past month compared with women ages 40+ (85% vs. 43%), the study found.

More than half (53%) of women under age 25 used the calendar on their wireless device to book an appointment or review their schedule vs. 22% of women 40+.

Similarly, young women are very likely to multitask while using their cell phone. Seven in 10 young women watch TV with a wireless device as they text, browse or play games. Half (49%) of young women say do this frequently, in contrast with just 24% of women ages 40+.

Mobile SocNet Apps Grow

The study also found that more mobile usage and smartphone ownership is enabling women to bypass the PC to upload their pictures to social media sites:

* Nearly three-fourths (74%) of 12-24 year-olds say they have taken a photo with their cell phone in the past month.
* Young women are twice as likely have used the internet browser on their cell phone in the past month.
* 22% of 12-24 year-olds used their mobile device to access Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in the past month, making them four times as likely as older women to have accessed social media such as a Facebook profile or MySpace page on their mobile phone.

We’ve been following and promoting the increased usage of mobile web searches and mobile video for most of 2009. It’s a growing trend that we feel our clients should take notice of and with no offence to those in the text messaging camp, we happen to feel that mobile web access has surplanted text as a viable promotional tool. We just weren’t sure exactly when there would be enough critical mass for this to take hold.

Now, with the arrival of the iPhone 3GS, it appears that we might finally be at the inflection point.

Just this week, we’ve already seen a number of apps rush to take advantage of the device’s video capabilities, with Kyte updating its app to support video recording, editing, and upload, and Posterous creating a way to instantly distribute your mobile video across multiple social sites.

And today, YouTube is reporting a huge boost in mobile uploads thanks to Apple’s latest mobile phone. According to the company’s blog, mobile uploads have increased 400% a day since iPhone 3GS arrived last Friday.

While more than a million iPhone 3GS devices have already been sold, the groundwork for such a boom has been some time in the making. Companies like Kyte, Qik, Mogulus, Flixwagon, and others have been offering video streaming across a variety of handsets, and have been steadily growing over the past year.

All of these services – and now YouTube – are benefitting by their integration with sites like Twitter and Facebook, where users can instantly broadcast notifications that they’re either streaming live or have uploaded a new video. In essence, video is serving as an outstanding compliment to a 140 character limited world, providing fans and followers with more of a glimpse into a user’s actual life and personality.

So how can mobile video expand its reach even further? It comes down to handsets supporting video recording. While iPhone 3GS will give millions of people video recording capabilities, other mass market handsets will need to follow suit, and do so at an affordable price point, with the memory and storage capacity to adequately support it.

After all, mobile photo uploading is only so pervasive because so many phones – including ones that come free with activation – come with at least basic cameras. Hence, the reason that just about anyone can use TwitPic.

But like most everything in consumer electronics, it’s likely that the cost of video recording features will also come down to the point that they will become standard in most handsets. And when they do, there are lots of web services waiting to capitalize on it.

A quick look at the growth of social media site stats in May brought some surprising results. While YouTube is attracting an ever increasing audience, and Facebook is still growing fast, Twitter’s growth has suddenly stopped, at least according to the numbers from Compete.

Twitter’s growth could not go on forever. However, seeing Twitter’s growth flatline with only a 1.47% increase (up to 19,728,619 monthly visitors) is surprising, especially since Twitter-mania has all but stopped. Monthly visits to Twitter, however, have increased by a healthy 6.99%, up to 134,536,240. Of course, Compete’s numbers are not guaranteed to be fully accurate, but they are confirmed by the numbers from Quantcast, for example. It will be interesting to see how Twitter performs in the following months.

Twitter does, however, have some nice numbers to show; according to Nielsen Online, total minutes spent on Twitter rose by a staggering 3712% from April 08 to April 09. In the same period, total minutes spent on Facebook increased 699% year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009.

YouTube is also doing well. Although Compete shows a minor decline in YouTube’s unique visitors, comScore’s analysis shows that YouTube contributed heavily to the huge increase in video viewing in the US. Online video US

U.S. Internet users viewed 16.8 billion online videos during April, a 16 percent increase over March; on YouTube alone, 6.8 billion videos were viewed, which is a 15 percent increase compared to March. Looking at audience, comScore estimates that Google’s video properties have had 107.9 million video viewers during April.

Finally, Facebook has continued its tremendous growth; according to Compete, it grew from 104 million to 113 million monthly uniques; an 8.54% increase. Visits grew from 1.63 billion to 1.74 billion, solidifying Facebook’s position as the number 3 site on the Internet. Once the biggest social network around, MySpace, has recovered some growth, with a lukewarm 0.46% increase in overall visits and a 2.39% increase in unique visitors (the number of total minutes spent on the site fell dramatically by a 31% year-over-year). One of the reasons for Facebook’s continuous growth is its international success; there’s still a lot of room for growth internationally, and we can expect Facebook to continue growing even when it saturates the US market.

Came across this today. Mobile internet access increased 36% in the US last year, and the number of Americans (ages 13+) with mobile internet access is 18 million, according to Netpop. Globally, that number is 54 million.

Despite the growing use of the mobile web, Netpop found that slow connections and extra fees are still the primary barriers to both increased use (among current users) and adoption (among non-users).

Mobile advertising is believed to be effective in part because it reaches consumers on-the-go, shopping or engaging in other activities outside of their homes. A Universal McCann research study on smartphone usage patterns found that more than a third of high-use smartphone users respond to mobile advertisements. The study found that smartphone users are clicking on ads (53%), requesting more information or a coupon (35%).

Local mobile advertising will be the next hot trend, particularly in terms of local mobile search. Local searches made up 27.8% of all searches in 2008, but are expected to hit 35.1% in 2013.

Simple changes can make a huge environmental impact. The Autogreen Challenge gives you the tools to make those changes.

Challenge yourself to be a more eco-friendly driver between June 1 and August 7, 2009 and you could win one of a choice of three Toyota Hybrid vehicles (2010 Toyota Prius, 2010 Toyota Camry, 2009 Toyota Highlander).

CAA’s Autogreen program is designed to provide resources and choices to help drivers become more eco-friendly drivers. With close to one vehicle for every two people, Canada has one of the highest ratios of car ownership in the world. Making eco-driving choices in your daily life can have a significant impact on the environment.

This year, the goal for Autogreen is to plant 20,000 trees, which is equal to approximately 260,000 pounds of carbon offset. Members can contribute to this goal by participating in Autogreen and CAA will plant a tree on your behalf*.

The contest is open to all residents of Ontario and you can enter at YoWinner.

How many of you feel that we’ve been misled as to the benefits of social networking sites. How many of you are finding that these tools do not live up to the hype.

Some myths about the magic that is social networking.

Social media sites are free. This is the most popular mantra spoken by those whose sole purpose is to promote something via social networking (usually themselves). The real cost, however, is time. If you can’t make something happen on a consistent basis then you look like you are slacking. Less activity implies less to say which implies less to pay attention to which translate into less interest. Not a good path for anyone to take. How do you get past it? With time. Many businesses are finding that they need full time people to keep this up to speed all the time. People are not free. Time is not free. Social media then is not free.

Social media means new customers. Twitter has millions of users, but apparently only four of them actually understand what it does and spend much time updating their tweets. Are these the people who will buy the products your company manufacturers?

You have to be on all the major social media sites. Because time is so valuable it is best to pick one venue that is the place where your business will benefit the most then work it hard. Don’t try to be all things to all people on all social media sites. In other words, if your market isn’t on Twitter then, you shouldn’t be either.

Social networking sites are for marketing. Since most people hate to be ‘sold’ on social networking venues then it seems almost contradictory to be really marketing on them.  Most efforts to ‘sell’ or even heavily promote on Twitter and Facebook come off as desperate. Best use is actually customer service. Social media is a place to connect and learn about and from customers.

Social networking is the future. MySpace traffic is in decline. GeoCities has closed down and the Twitter retention rate numbers as evidence that the media is more enamored with this than the real world is.

So should a business or a brand use social media sites for business? Maybe. Then again, maybe other customer service approaches make more sense. Remember newsletters, phone calls and support, seminars, partnering, and the like? Just because the media have determined that social networking is “in” doesn’t mean your customers are there.

Is it better to consider where people of value actually go when deciding how to use the concept of social networking?

A recent report published by Brightkite-GfK Technology found that cell phone users are quickly adopting a much broader set of mobile services:

* 14% now use one or more location-based services (peaking at 38% of iPhone users).
* 10% use a mobile social network (33% of iPhone users).
* The fastest growing application for iPhone users is games, which experiences a 21% growth quarter over quarter. Brightkite stated that 50% of iPhone owners are now playing games on their phone.

As consumers are adopting a much broader set of mobile applications and services this is exposing them to new ad formats.

Related research from Greystripe found that rich media Flash ads for the iPhone are being well received and that 80% of Greystripe users would consider downloading more ad-supported mobile games and apps.

About the report: The Brightkite-GfK Technology MAR is produced quarterly and is distributed free to marketers. The Q109 report is based on a representative sample of 1,000 American adults interviewed by telephone.

Starbucks already has a strong presence in social media. The company’s Twitter account has more than 180,000 followers and its Facebook Page has nearly 1.5 million fans.

Now, the company is looking to increase this momentum by taking its social media marketing offline. The New York Times reports that the coffee chain will include challenges in its offline marketing that involve social media. For example, the first person to post a photo of one of the company’s new marketing posters will win a prize.

NYT also notes that the company plans a YouTube contest for employees, where they get to design the ads. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz shows off some of the current ads – that Twitter photo bloggers should be on the lookout for starting today – in the YouTube video below:

While the campaign itself is smart given Starbucks’ existing reach on social media sites, it also shows the company is fully aware of how customers interact with the brand online. The Times reports that the idea came from the tradition of “people racing to post the first photos of Starbucks shops decorated in red for the holidays … and on Flickr, people vie to post photos that include multiple Starbucks stores in the same shot.”

What hasn’t been revealed yet is what exactly the prizes will be for the contest component of the campaign. Presumably, Starbucks will reward more than just one customer for participating with free goodies, but no official details have been posted yet to the company’s blog, Facebook Page, or Twitter.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Taiwanese man became a sitting target for a snake, which bit his penis as sat on the toilet at his rural home, local media reported on Monday.

“As soon as he sat down, he suddenly felt a knife-like pain and reacted instinctively by standing up,” the China Times said. “When he looked down, he saw the big snake.”

The 51-year-old man, from Nantou County, was under medical care with minor injuries, a director at Puli Christian Hospital said.

“As soon as he has passed the risk of infection, he can go,” the director, who declined to be named, said. “A snake’s mouth isn’t always clean.”

Local television images showed the black and yellow reptile, reportedly a species of rat snake, being uncoiled and plucked slowly from the toilet bowl.

Snakes regularly enter rural homes in Taiwan and other sub-tropical regions of Asia.