Marketers are having difficulty reaching US teen Internet users on social networking sites, despite the fact that eighty percent of teens are signing on to chat with friends or posting status updates.

About ten thousand teen members were surveyed by the social networking/dating/casual gaming site myYearbook and global public relations firm Ketchum in May of this year. The study looked at "influencers" - the top fifteen percent most active and engaged members - and how brands can influence them. Influencer practices include the following:

• 97 percent spend over two hours per day on a social networking site
• 95 percent update their status daily at least
• 91 percent have over 500 friends on these networks
• Only sixteen percent use location apps (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc)

The study shows that teens with more online friends socialize more when offline as well. Teen social media influencers are forty percent more likely to have attended a party the last weekend than average teens, and twenty percent more likely to have had a friend over in the last week.

As noted by Geoff Cook, myYearbook CEO, this disproves the idea that more time spent online makes for a less socially active teen. They also listen to music, play video games, read books, magazines and newspapers at above-average frequencies.

Due to these high levels of media consumption, influencers share and purchase more often. 87 percent share product information with their friends, compared with only half of teens in general. This practice is significant since peer recommendations are the most trusted source regarding possible purchases across age brackets.

Regarding content, the majority preferred brand interaction that is straightforward, but also appreciate when brands are "edgy, fun or shocking - as long as it is done well," and influencers are 41 percent more interested in celebrity news than average teens. Ketchum VP of creative and strategic planning Adrianna Giuliani remarks, “Brands hoping to keep up should find unique ways to participate in the things teenagers already care about versus competing with what’s already capturing their attention.”

Business information company OneSource released their "B2B SalesPulse Survey" last month that shows the sources that B2B sales professionals consider the most successful for lead generation. By far the most effective source was traditional outbound prospecting, still providing companies the most qualified leads. On a scale of 1-5 (least qualified to most qualified, respectively), outbound prospecting scored 3.7, far surpassing the second place source, the corporate Web site at 2.9 from these professionals. Inbound calls and e-mail campaigns rated 2.6, with events and trade shows just behind at 2.5. Social networking sites trailed along with direct mail at 2.1, and at 1.8, Webinars came in last.

While social networks did not score high in general terms, within the category some sites performed better than others. LinkedIn was considered most effective, receiving a 3.1 out of 5, far out performing blogs (2), Facebook (1.9) and Twitter (1.8). Professional favor of LinkedIn has encouraged usage - nearly one half of respondents use the site more than one year ago for prospecting and research. The other social media performed in the same order as with perceived effectiveness. Blogs experienced a 21.8 percent increase, Facebook was just behind at 20.8 percent, while Twitter had only 17.3 percent of an increase. Also in this category was YouTube, which underperformed them all with an 8.4 percent increase.

While those polled were using these modes of social marketing more than last year, the survey showed that most respondents do not use these sites for research at all. Prospecting and research use by these B2B sales professionals was more than half for all choices except for LinkedIn, which was unused under one third of the time. 51.9 percent of polled professionals do not use blogs, 63.1 percent do not use Facebook, 69.2 percent do not use Twitter, and 77.9 percent do not use YouTube.

Women’s presence on social networks is far greater than that of men, according to Pingdom’s demographic study of 19 social networking sites.

Eighty-seven percent of social networks have more female users than males. Those with the highest percentage of female users are Bebo, MySpace, Classmates, Xanga, Ning and Twitter.

Two-thirds of Bebo’s users are female, while MySpace and Classmates have close to that (64 percent each).

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Eight out of 10 smartphone consumers have problems accessing content, according to Xiam discovery research (PDF). The findings are based survey of over 400 UK and US smartphone users.

(Since comparing networks across countries is not apples to apples, I’ll focus strictly on the US users).

The major problem is that content is slow to load and/or is hard to find. Sixty-one percent of smartphone users reported this problem, while fifty-seven percent had phone/interface issues and 11 percent had payment issues.

Twenty-seven percent of the time, they couldn’t find what they’re looking for.

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In the last six months, the number of high school and college students using Facebook has declined 16.5 and 21.7 percent respectively, while the numbers of users over the age of 55 has shot up 513.7 percent, according to iStrategyLabs.

Are young people switching to new social networking sites? Has Twitter become a Facebook to Facebook’s MySpace? Is the study fundamentally flawed, or are the numbers simply skewed because the kids are on summer break?

There has been a lot of controversy about iStrategyLabs’ findings, but they’re interesting, nonetheless.

Incidentally, while this study was circulating through the Webs, we had a large group (50+) of French telecommunications students at L’Atelier today. To a one, they are all on Facebook.

None are on Twitter.

Social networking sites and job professionalism do not mix. This fact has been established by too many photo tag-happy individuals who cannot keep their privacy settings straight. Just assume that your prospective employers, university admission officers, and even your Craigslist ride-share will be entering your name into the Friend Finder search box on Facebook.

Setting new standards in the Questionable Privacy Priorities category is the City of Bozeman of the Big Sky State Montana. As Montana’s News Station reported yesterday, a viewer expressed concern of the city’s enthusiastic background check policy. This policy states that applicants must present social networking account log-in user names and password, in order to be considered eligible for application processing.

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Social network usage passed email in February, according to Nielsen. Social networking sites had a global reach of 68.4 percent that month, compared to email’s reach of 64.8 percent.

In a three-month period from December 2008 to February 2009, social networking sites grew 1.6 percent, while email reach actually declined 0.3 percent.

One of the key drivers to social media reach was mobile. Mobile social networking nearly tripled in 2008.

The report also gives hard figures on another trend which, like mobile, is based less on sociological whims than it is on the price of the technology needed to participate: the growing number of users of long-form video sites like Hulu.

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A new report to the US Attorney General reveals that the biggest threat to children on the Internet is . . . other kids. This finding flies in the face of media sagacity, which holds that children are Blakean angels.

“[T]he risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most cases not significantly different than those they face offline, and that as they get older, minors themselves contribute to some of the problems,” says the report.

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As a baseball fan, reality is incomplete until it is quantified. That’s why reading Nielsen’s report of Twitter’s 2008 growth is fascinating, despite the fact that everyday we read about who or what is now tweeting.

Between Septembers 2007 and 2008, Twitter’s audience grew from 533,000 to 2,359,000 users, a change of 343 percent.  It’s almost three times the growth of the other site that gets as much press: Facebook.  Surprisingly, as fast as Facebook is growing, it is only the 6th fastest site.

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Online retailers are following under-30s shoppers to social sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. “Generation Y online buyers” participate in Internet activities more than any younger generation, and this influences their online spending habits.

The Society for New Communications Research study entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” confirms the importance that this demographic holds for online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs.  These sources of information seem to be divorced from traditional marketing strategies, and therefore have more credibility.

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