14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook and Twitter are no longer a novelty to any Internet user, whether they are an active member or not, as social networking has increased at a crazy pace during the past years and it still shows no sign of slowing down. In this context, the recent report published by Forrester Research on the behavior of US Internet users is quite justified, especially since it points out the fact that about a third of all social platforms members currently post status updates at least once every week.
Another interesting aspect is that the popularity of social services appeals to 59 percent of web users, whereas about 70 percent of them are accustomed to reading news, blogs and feeds or enjoying multimedia tidbits on these platforms. Going deeper with the analysis, the researchers showed that more than 50 percent of the most active users are women, and 70 percent of them are aged 30 or above.
In order to be able to interpret the study's results appropriately, analyst Josh Bernoff noticed that two years ago, the online behavior was quite similar to the present one when it came to posting on blogs, making comments, voting on dedicated news sites (such as Digg or Reddit), in other words consuming Internet content. The greatest difference appeared in the increase of the “conversational interactions.” This is due to the fact that Facebook and Twitter have attracted more and more users who are regularly updating their status message and start online conversations with their contacts.
Another method of classifying the US Internet users is by creators and joiners. The first group includes the ones who create personal contents (including publishing blogs or uploading original multimedia files) and account for 24 percent of the persons surveyed. The joiners, 59 percent of the total number, are those already members of a social service and they maintain their profile updated by posting frequent new content.
When comparing these results with the data obtained several years ago, the analysts revealed that the number of creators has kept at a stable level, while the joiners’ numbers increased considerably. The explanation is rather logical, taking into consideration that it is much easier to set up and maintain an account on a social networking site than to build a blog or a podcast.
Despite the great popularity social platforms see among US Internet users, about 17 percent of the study's respondents stated that they do not engage in any of the activities described above, therefore are inactive from this point of view.