Social networking myths and facts
Online social networking. It's huge. More than 132 million people visited Facebook
in June of this year and 117.5 million landed on MySpace1. And that's merely
two of the English-language social networking sites, albeit the most popular
ones. With Asia now the world's most connected continent and other emerging
markets coming online fast, the mind can barely wrap around just how many
people out there are connected with others in myriad languages courtesy of
cyberspace. Marketers are constantly urged to get their brands on these sites... and fast.
It seems everyone is social networking. Or are they?
Synovate spoke with over 13,000 respondents in 17 markets around the world
to find out who's connected and who's not, as well as attitudes and online
behaviours. Some of what we found surprised us... like just how many people
are losing interest in social media. And how many people do not even know what
it is!
Let's start at the very beginning... (it's a very good place to start)
When you're in the world of marketing — reading about it, planning campaigns, researching people — it's sometimes
easy to overlook the basics. So we started our study by simply asking
'do you know what online social networking is?'.
>
Read more
Who's in the in-crowd?
If you don't know what social networking is, chances are you're not a member of
a site! Synovate looked into who were members of sites, or not, and which sites
they belonged to. Perhaps the biggest out-take here is the debunking of myth
number two.
Social networking is definitely not US-centric.
>
Read more
Sites of choice
The survey then asked social networkers to name the sites they belong to.
Some markets seemed to favour multiple memberships and some seemed to stick
to one or two major ones. The markets where social networking aficionados
favour signed up for many sites are UAE, India, Indonesia, and Bulgaria.
>
Read more
Privacy and predators
But the survey was not all about debunking myths. It also confirmed
facts. Like, privacy concerns and fear of strangers remain barriers
to complete online comfort for a great many of our respondents.
>
Read more
Poking around social media attitudes
In a series of attitudinal statements we asked whether people
agreed or disagreed with statements about communication,
language and friendship. The findings well and truly explode
the myth that online social networking is all-consuming.
>
Read more
Is social media a marketing dream?
Assuming you have determined that many of your target
market are, indeed, social networkers and you know where
they can be found, is it worth getting your brand online?
Synovate's global head of media research, Steve Garton,
says an emphatic 'yes', but do it quietly...
>
Read more
About the Synovate social networking survey
Conducted in June 2008, this social networking survey
covered more than 13,000 respondents in 17 markets around the
world – Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India,
Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia,
Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
and the United States of America (US).
1According to tracker comScore
