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s.mueller

TNS research project reveals: major changes in online behavior

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WPP press release:

Global Digital Life research project reveals major changes in online behaviour
10 October, 2010

Website showcases data from largest ever online research project covering 46 countries and 90% of world’s online population

Launched on ‘digital day’, first survey reveals major differences in online attitudes and behaviour:

– Online is now the media of choice
– Mature markets being left behind online as emerging markets become more active
– Increase in mobile use as consumers seek greater access to social networking on the go

LONDON — The largest ever global research project into people’s online activities and behaviour – Digital Life – was launched today, ‚digital day‘ by TNS, the world’s biggest custom research company. Covering nearly 90 per cent of the world‟s online population through 50,000 interviews with consumers in 46 countries, the study reveals major changes in the world‟s online behaviour.

Core data from the study is being made publicly available via an interactive website – www.discoverdigitallife.com

“This study covers more than twice as many markets as any other research.” said TNS Chief Development Officer Matthew Froggatt. “It is the first truly global research into online activities, including all the key emerging markets of the BRICs and many of the „Next 11‟. We have also researched beyond basic behaviour to provide more detailed data into attitudes and emotional drivers of that behaviour.”

“We are confident that Digital Life will become the new benchmark for information on online consumer behaviour,” continued Froggatt. “Making a lot of this publicly available was an important first step for us and obviously we have a wealth of further information behind those basic statistics covering brands and companies which we will offer to clients.”

Among the key findings of the study are:

– Globally, people who have on-line access have digital sources as their number one media channel. 61% of online users use the internet daily against 54% for TV, 36% for Radio and 32% for Newspapers.

– Online consumers in rapid growth markets have overtaken mature markets in terms of engaging with digital activities. When looking at behaviour online, rapid growth markets such as Egypt (56%) and China (54%) have much higher levels of digital engagement than mature markets such as Japan (20%), Denmark (25%) or Finland (26%). This is despite mature markets usually having a more advanced internet infrastructure.

– Activities such as blogging and social networking are gaining momentum at huge speed in rapid growth markets. The research shows four out of five online users in China (88%) and over half of those in Brazil (51%) have written their own blog or forum entry, compared to only 32% in the US. The Internet has also become the default option for photo sharing among online users in rapid growth markets, particularly in Asia. The number of online consumers who have ever uploaded photos to social networks or photo sharing sites is 92% in Thailand, 88% in Malaysia and 87% in Vietnam, whilst developed markets are more conservative. Less than a third of online consumers in Japan (28%) and under half of those in Germany (48%) have uploaded photos to such sites.

– Growth in social networking has been fuelled by the transition from PC to mobile. Mobile users spend on average 3.1 hours per week on social networking sites compared to just 2.2 hours on email. The drive to mobile is driven by the increased need for instant gratification and the ability of social networks to offer multiple messaging formats, including the instant message or update function. When looking at how the digital landscape will change in the future, research shows that consumers expect their use of social networking on mobiles to increase more than use through PC. In the US, for example, a quarter (26%) of online consumers expect their use of social networking on a PC to increase in the next 12 months compared to over a third (36%) who will be looking to their mobile to increase usage. In Australia the figures are 26% and 44% respectively, and in Sweden they are 24% and 53%.

Goodbye email, hello social networking
One further finding of the study showed that online consumers are, on average, spending more time on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn than on email, despite the former only becoming mainstream in many markets over the last few years. In rapid growth markets such as Latin America, the Middle East and China, the average time spent, per week, on social networking is 5.2 hours compared to only 4 hours on email. Online consumers in mature markets remain more reliant on email, spending 5.1 hours checking their inboxes compared to just 3.8 hours on social networking. The heaviest users of social networking are in Malaysia (9 hours per week), Russia (8.1 hours per week) and Turkey (7.7 hours per week).

When it comes to who has more friends, online consumers in Malaysia top the list with an average of 233 friends in their social network, closely followed by Brazilians with 231. The least social are the Japanese with just 29 friends and Tanzanians have, on average, 38 in their circle of friends. Surprisingly, Chinese consumers only have an average of 68 friends in their networks despite being heavy users of social networking sites, indicating a culture that embraces fewer but closer friendships.

Froggatt continued: “The Internet is a huge part of life in the 21st century but how it affects our lives varies depending upon where in the world you live. We‟ve seen that in mature markets where people have been online for years and where access is ubiquitous, the Internet has already become a commoditised item that consumers take for granted. However, in rapid growth markets that have seen recent, sustained investment in infrastructure, users are embracing these new channels in much more active ways. The digital world is transforming how they live, develop and interact and online consumers in these markets are leaving those in the developed world behind in terms of being active online and engaging in new forms of communications.”

Source: http://www.wpp.com/wpp/press/press/default.htm?guid=%7bad32a1ae-a75b-4af8-94b0-25fc021195ef%7d

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s.mueller

Social Media's role in events and catastrophes

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The recent catastrophe at the Loveparade in Duisburg, Germany once again showed how Social Media has changed the way we produce and share information and thus how news are made today. Information has been democratized. No longer are we dependent on the information provided by the government or the nearest newspaper. News arrive immediately and right from the place where it happens. Information helps us mak better decisions. It is not far-fetched if some argue that tomorrow’s wars are no longer won by the better equipped army but by the better informed army.

To provide a better impression of the point I am trying to make here, I have simplified the events and grouped them into three stages: before the event, during the event and after it. In this order, I will discuss the role Social Media has or could have played.

PRE-PHASE:
Running Social Media analysis tools could have provided a good impression of how many people were expected to show up in Duisburg. As we all never „walk alone“, we ususally try to attend events with our dearest friends or at least with people who share the same interests as we do. Thus many of the guests used social communities and platforms to organize. They talked about the upcoming event on Twitter and in blogs and forums in order to inform themselves about the event. They searched for recommendations of experienced love parade goers to find out about how to best get there, where to spend the night, etc. Aside from all the hype and anticipation, there were also critical voices who no only spoke out their concerns but also wrote them down: in forums, blogs, social communites or on Twitter. Obviously they were not heard or not considered important (maybe the recent trend of crowdsourcing has not arrived in this segment)
Both aspects can be traced afterwards as „the internet does not forget things…“

EVENT PHASE:
Major events attract thousands of people. The closer you come to the center of action, groups merge with bigger groups, join the stream of people and become masses of people. And usually there is only one way: forward. One easily looses orientation and even has trouble staying together as a group.

Sounds as chaotic as an anthill at a quick glance. But ants do not collide. While the ants usually have total control of the situation, humans easily get lost. In fact many experts who deal with behavior analysis or traffic analysis ofte draw parallels to animal kingdom. Very often animals seem to have become experts when it comes to organize large numbers.
Humans also manage to get along. Take a big railway station or an airport for example. Thousands of people each with different destinations manage to get along without permanently crashing into one another. I experience this a lot. And it works perfectly fine. Individual distance is one of the phenomenon helping us to find our way. But there are limitations. As soon as the crowd is very heterogenous this automatic sense for passing by does no longer work. We see this on the autobahn (highway) or during rush hour in public transportation when everyday commuters meet people on a holiday trip, or when young dynamic people mix with elderly more slow people. Their different habits and speeds collide. The same goes for large audience who often due to small causes panic.
Is there a solution? Well yes, communication is one way. But as soon as a certain number of people is reached this won’t work anymore, there are simply too many people. Here cell phones and text messages but also microblogging services such as Twitter but also facebook for your phone could be of great help to communicate and to get rational objective information about what is going on. While in the Woodstock era you had no chance of sharing information with people in the distance, today many of us become real-time reporters, sharing their impressions by text, image or even video. These news are often very accurate and foremost, they are fast as hell. People report things as they happen.

And things happened in Duisburg. People attending the love parade not only broadcasted the fun and joy but also the fear and panic when all of a sudden there were simply too many people for a narrow tunnel.
This reminded me of Crowdsourcing, another buzz word in marketing these days and a technique often used to solve complex problems. While there are some who praise crowdsourcing to be the source of all solutions, others deem it to be inefficient and an illusion. Or in other words: the crowd is stupid so better rely on few experts. Now with the Duisburg loveparade case, one could argue that yes, the masses were stupid or behaved in an irrational and fatal way. Having put the decision into the hands of one single smart leader could have avoided the panic. Maybe. But how do you want to communicate in a group of several hundred thousand people and why should they listen and to whom? Impossible.
Also, crowdsourcing is a strategy that can be applied only to a certain fixed situation. It requires that you are free to choose between alternatives and also have the time to do so. In the case of the loveparade the crowd had no moderator or leader who organized them and could have filtered every single persons best strategy. Thre was no structure behind like when you ask 20 people to guess the exact weigth of any given person. But even when there is no framework, crowdsourcing techniques may work for a limited number of people. But without a framework, even Social Media cannot provide the necessary transparency to bring some order into the masses. In sum, there were simply too many people, they were in a state of lacking information or a lacking transparent information and their actions where impulsive, subjective and rather reactions. There was no control and thus panic.

However, Social Media did have a positive effect: it enabled people to use their cell phones and communicate to the braod public that something was going wrong here. In real time.

POST EVENT PHASE:

Merriness soon turned into madness. But even with all the sad events having happened, Social Media again plays a helpful role. It enabled people to contact their friends, discuss their impressions and thus provide first-hand information to the public. Forums and blogs as well as social networks enabled people to get into contact. Again, the fact that the internet has a pretty good memory turns out very helpful for the police and other institutions investigating the case. It is as if the whole area had been plastered with video cameras and paparazzi. User-generated content now becomes highly relevant material for the case. And there is plenty. „love parade 2010“ returns 7460 video results on youtube.com
Hopefully this will contribute to find out who is to be hold responsible for the panic.

As for the extreme speed at which Social Media travels, it raises the question if analyzing Social Media is not a mandatory element for major events. Just as major corporations and consumer brands should always keep track of what is being said about them. Maybe then, previous warning messages posted by people familiar with the Duisburg area or those who have participated in previous loveparades would have been heard and taken into consideration. As smart as the sum of minds may be, in a state of panic humans often behave irrational and counterproductive. Looking into animal kingdom may be of help to better organize masses. During an event the possibilities to control a group are limited. It is best to provide in advance options to escalate the event. And one should always take into account the worst case. As said before, masses are irrational…

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s.mueller

Why do we share what we do and where?

It may seem common to many of us, while to others it is totally nuts: sharing with the world where you are at the moment and what you are doing there. Questions such as „why the hell do you share this info?“ or „who should care about this?“ can be annoying. In many cases these harsh reactions are rooted in a lack of knowledge about social media. Still, there is some fundamental truth to it: what motivates people to do so? And what do we expect from sharing our whereabouts and actions?

Before digging for the answer one should be aware that this phenomenon has escaped the sphere of early innovators and tech addicts. Foursquare is currently seeing some 100,000 new user per week and Twitter is taking over Japan while I write this.

A recent article classified the motivation behind the use of location-based services as follows:

-serendipity and connection
-for the win (of status)
-as a personal history

STATUS
One reason we share our whereabout can easily be compared to why we purchase certain brands. By buying a product, we want to project its image and the values associated with the product to ourselves. If you want to be perceived as sporty, drive a BMW 3-series, if you want to portray the rough country guy who works hard, a pickup truck might be the perfect choice (aside from the fact that you might need a 4×4 for taking it off-road and to pull heavy trailers).
Locations do work in a similar way. You can either be a fan of Ed Hardy (are there still some out there??) by wearing the clothes or alternatively show to the world that you are currently shopping in an Ed Hardy store. Or let it be a Hollister store, a foot locker, the Madison Square Garden or Starbucks. You aim to enrich your personality with the values of a brand or you use the brands or locations to show others how hip you are, how mobile (and thus affluent) you are or how good a taste you have (speaking of art exhibitions, restaurants, designer fashion,…)

In a negative way, you could speak of bragging. Although you need no spoken words… In fact you let the location or the brand speak. Who can complain against that?

COMMUNICATION
The first point mentioned clearly sees serviceas such as Foursquare or Gowalla as a means of communication. Although in fact you do not communicate directly but simply provide to whoever cares the information of where you are at the moment or have been. It is quite weird to think about how communication has changed over centuries. At some point it was common to send written letters around the world. Then came telegraph and telephone. Then we started sending emails and text messages. Then we twittered and somehow managed to press it all into 140 characters. And with Foursquare you basically communicate one single thing: where you are right now.

PERSONAL HISTORY
I somehow disagree on that one. Has anybody ever pulled a Foursquare report telling him where he has been over the time of say the last 4 months? I must say, I do not use Foursquare yet, so I cannot tell. If this does make sense, prove me wrong.

We can argue a lot about whether or not applications such as Foursquare do make sense. But i would say, the answer is already there. If people do use it, get used to it and miss once they cannot use it, then such an application has proven it all. As long as we still have joy in creating more and more information – so be it. Critics already today argue that at some point in time, we will lose control and will no longer be able to process all the data we produce….

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