Posts

The Digital Divide in the U.S. – 60 million Americans don’t use the Internet

The digital divide in the U.S.: Nearly 20 per hundred of U.S. mature individuals don’t use the Internet. That entails that approximately 60 million persons, numerous of them aged, poor and minorities, have no access to technology most people increasingly consider mission-critical to modern life.

The New York Times’ had an intriguing story on that occurrence, which lays out some of the programs policymakers have endeavoured to use to get persons online. But who are these 60 million persons not online and are they offline by alternative or circumstance?

Internet adoption has more or less flatlined in latest years, as asserted by facts and numbers from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. As of the center’s last survey in May, somewhere between 81 and 85 per hundred of U.S. mature individuals were online. The number with household Internet access is notably lower — about 72 out of 100, as showed by the Census Bureau.

Read more

/0 Comments

Study Reveals: More Marketers Move Toward Engagement on Social Media

, ,
Percent of FortuneGlobal 100 Companies With Social Media Accounts

Brands are moving from simply being present on social networks to taking a more active role on the sites

Companies and marketers are more comfortable on social networks and have started to engage more authentically and build communities with other users on the sites.

Burson-Marsteller, one of the leading PR companies, looked at the FortuneGlobal 100’s activities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, corporate blogs and other local microblogs and social networks around the globe for its “Global Social Media Check-Up 2011”. 25% of these companies worldwide are using all four major social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs – an increase of 25% from 2010 – and 84% are on at least one platform.

Most companies are on Twitter, which saw a major growth compared to 2010, as 77% of companies around the world have Twitter accounts, up from 65% last year. Twitter might be emerging as the predominant social media platform used by corporations, although corporate Facebook pages have more “likes” than Twitter accounts have “followers.” Read more

/2 Comments

Study Reveals: Venues and Relationships Affect How Social Media Users Perceive Advice

,

One thing that makes social media marketing powerful is consumers’ trust in “people like them”—their friends, family and other online peers.

(c) Facebook

(c) Facebook

Marketers want to tap into that trust through the power of earned media or by engaging in a conversation with consumers, but where social conversations take place has an effect on their perceived trustworthiness as well as who is taking part in them.

A study of frequent social media users by market research firm Invoke Solutions found that the most trusted information was posted by people respondents knew. But blog posts were more likely to be trusted “completely” than posts on Facebook, and trust dropped off sharply when it came to Twitter, even among friends.

Read more

/1 Comment