Here are some web and internet trends. Understanding them can help you predict what direction your web work should take.
1. Half of adults in the USA today use one of these three social media: text messaging, blogs, or social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace). In the 18-34 year-old demographic, the numbers of social media users are even higher: 85% of rely on one of the three platforms to stay in touch with others. Adults who never sent a text message fell to 41% from 49% last year. |source|
2. 1 out of 10 U.S. adults now publish blogs (up from 5% last year) |source|
3. 1 out of 5 18-34-year olds publish blogs (up from 10% last year) |source|
4. 22% of U.S. adults use IM (up from 9% last year) |source|
5. 21% of 18-34-year olds use IM (up from 14% last year) |source|
6. On an average visit to your site or blog, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less. On average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page. |source|
7. Gen Y’ers are changing the Internet. They are the first true digital natives. They grew up with the Internet. They care less about traditional television – in fact a good number watch “tv” on the Internet. They tend to me more socially motivated than Boomers and GenXers and less wound up in work. In fact, they think employers need to be more sensitive about, and accommodating to one’s personal life. They care about the world, politics, and like to have control when it comes to their charitable activities. They are on FaceBook and MySpace, use Twitter, and they think they are a force to be reckoned with. You won’t reach them in conventional ways. Instead you will have to not only communicate with them, but engage them as well, on the web, through social networking, through the use of mobile technology, and by using Web 2.0 and 3.0. By the way if you don’t know what Twitter is, check it out. I don’t really get it (I am old as dirt), but Gen Yers do. So I will have to try harder. |source|
8. Social News is the way of the future. “Social news sites such as Digg, Propeller, Reddit, StumbleUpon, where the community decides what content is worthy and what content isn’t, are powerful enough to drive tens of thousands of visitors to some lucky content producers, and thus have become an incredibly valuable marketing platform. One good day on any of these sites can get you more than 60,000 visitors in less than 24 hours” Look out newspapers. And look out television news. <source>
9. Heard of Lifestreaming? People that use the Internet have an array of Internet experiences, transactions, and they create all sorts of information along their way. They write blogs, listen to music, watch videos, play games, post to bulletin boards, write emails, chat with friends, write little reviews of the books they like on Amazon or elsewhere, and so on and so on. So, what is this Lifestreaming thing that is taking blogging to new levels? Lifestreaming is taking all that information from different sources, and sticking it in one place so that people who find it interesting can see what I’m up to. It’s less stalking, and more “this person has similar tastes to me so I’m interested in what they’re interested in.” |read 35 ways to stream your life|
10. YouTube. Yeh you have heard about it, but think about it. In August 2006 YouTube hosted just over 6 million videos and had half a million user accounts. In April 2008, there were 83 million videos on YouTube and 3.75 million user channels (channels, not users!) It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000, and that around ten hours of video are uploaded every minute. YouTube is free. You can upload videos and easily imbed them in your website or blog. People are reading less and watching more. Does your marketing strategy include video and YouTube?
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
