How We Use Facebook and Twitter

Facebook users: have you had the sense that how you use Facebook today is a lot different than you did a year or two ago?  If so, the research bears out your suspicion.

First, a little history on just how quickly Facebook reached its 750+ million users, as compiled by eMarketer:

• 90.3% yr/yr growth from 2008 to 2009
• 38.6% in 2010
• 13.4% in 2011 (forecast)

UK research firm Global Web INdex completed a study of social media usage behavior globally, publishing this rather impressive visual map of its finding.

0823.Global-Map-of-Social-Networking-GlobalWebIndex-June-20112.pdf Download this file

The map chock full of useful information, yet extracting conclusions from it takes some getting used to.

It’s easier to examine the data in the following two tables.

Changes in How People Use Facebook

The first table shows how Facebook usage has changed since 2009.  On the growth side, more people are uploading video content and - at least globally - people are joining company-sponsored (branded) Facebook pages.

There’s plenty of things for which use is declining - when was the last time you sent a digital gift, or used Facebook for messaging?  Of particular note are these three items:

• Applications: my hunch is that so many of them end up spamming friends with useless information (do you really care to know what restaurant I just walked into) that users have grown wary.  Marketers seeking to promote applications may have a tough go of it.
• Groups: aside from branded groups (many of which are very well managed) most groups languish unattended as people realize that it takes time and effort to update them meaningfully and often.
• New contacts: just how many people do you know and want to follow - or, importantly, know and want to follow you?  It does not take more than 300 - 400 to be overwhelmed with content, and reach diminishing returns.

Microblogs are Meant for Content

Here’s a different slice of data for mircoblogs like Twitter.  This table shows frequency of various ways of uses a service like Twitter.

At 144 characters, Twitter clearly limits what one can say.  Twitter’s dominant use has become referral - connecting to other sites, photos, videos, blogs, news updates and such where there are no limitations on size or nature of content.

There’s plenty of back-and-forth commentary on Twitter, but it almost always follows someone posting a link to originating content for followers to see and, in turn, comment on themselves.

Understanding the difference in intention between community sites and microblogging sites saves frustration:

•  Facebook lets users post and share content directly
• Twitter is a gateway to content posted elsewhere