by Collin LeGault Rountree
8. January 2010 11:13
Pew Internet & American Life Project reported on Internet status update trending (see results here). They have shown a significant increase in Internet users updating status on some social networking site. In April of this year it was at 11%. Five months later results showed 19% of Inernet users updating status on a social networking site. That’s nearly 1/5 of the Internet population updating their status somewhere.
“Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users”
In this study, 54% of Internet users have some type of wireless access to the Internet (via cell phone, wifi, etc.). Of those, 25% use Twitter or some other service up from 14% in December of 2008.
“Owning and using a wireless Internet device make an Internet user significantly more likely to tweet.”
When asking wireless Internet users why they value their mobile connections, 50% say to stay in touch with other people. (I read this as status updates.)
Adding to these statistics, we should take a look at the Economy Internet Trends from Morgan Stanley on October 20, 2009 (see report here).
Pay attention to the following slides:
- Slide 2: Mobile – Incremental Driver of Internet User /Usage Growth.
- Slide 28: Mobile Internet – Is and Will be Bigger Than Most Think
- Slide 29: Next Generation Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Driving Unprecedented Change in Communications + Commerce.
- Slide 33: Mobile Internet Outpaces Desktop Internet Adoption
These trends go on and on throughout the report. If you have the time, I definitely suggest you read the whole thing.
In a previous blog entry I mentioned that the phone manufacturers needed to get on board. I think that if this trending data accurate, they need to get busy quicker than ever. Mobile devices are getting faster, smaller, and cheaper all the time. We are getting used to our data being out in the cloud. Will the big boys keep up?