Lou Heldman on media, technology and society - From World Headquarters at Wichita State University

July 22, 2009

Newspaper financial results are slowly improving

by Peter Kafka, excerpted from
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090722/is-the-newspaper-ad-slump-ending-no-but-its-looking-less-lousy

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Be very careful about reading too much into this. But for what it’s worth, several newspaper publishers are now announcing that things are looking…“up” is the wrong word. Let’s try “less bad.”

Last week, Gannett (GCI) said national ads had only dropped 12 percent in June <http://www.reuters.com/article/paiddealsAtoms/idUS229301230620090717> , compared to a 24 percent slide the previous year. Yesterday, McClatchy (MNI) said that while ad revenue was down 30 percent in the last quarter <http://seekingalpha.com/article/150247-the-mcclatchy-company-q2-2009-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo&page=-1> , this figure was at least stable compared to the previous quarter, and that things were picking up, just a bit, this summer. And today Media General (MEG) said its declines had also become a bit less severe <http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN2229353720090722?rpc=44&sp=true> .

Tomorrow we hear from the New York Times (NYT), and if we use the the very low bar set by its peers, there’s a decent chance the publisher will have a not-terrible story to tell.

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July 21, 2009

We are all digital marketers now

Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research, co-author of Groundswell, has a column in Advertising Age saying advertising is changed forever. Here's an excerpt:

In this recession, marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased, they decreased less than other budgets. Six out of ten marketers we surveyed agreed with the statement "we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing." Only 7% said "we have no plans to increase our marketing budget."

Unlike the last recession, digital marketing is no longer experimental. Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, TV, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years.

In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase. The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets won't grow much. This is huge. It means we are all digital marketers now, since digital is at the center of many campaigns anyway.

It means media is in trouble, or at least in the middle of a transformation. For example, online video ads, which will be about $870 million this year, will grow to over $3 billion in 2014. What will this do to networks plans to put more of their shows online in places like Hulu.

How will it accelerate some newspapers plans to become more and more centered around online? And it means that social "media," which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn't even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

Pundits have been declaring the end of mass media and advertising for years now. From my 14 years of experience analyzing this stuff, I've learned that things die very slowly, but there are real trends you can see. If you're in advertising, you'd better learn to speak digital, because that's the way the world is going.

<div class="posterous_quote_citation">via adage.com</div>

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July 18, 2009

Someone has to pay for journalism

By James Poniewozik via time.com

Will ___ save journalism? Lately it seems easier to find ruminations on that subject than to find journalism itself. With advertising down and the Internet making information seem free and easy, anxious journos (for whom "save journalism" equals "save my job") have suggested numerous white knights for their profession, including Amazon's Kindle, philanthropists, micropayments, the government and the new iPhone. (Is there an app for that?)

Or coffee! Maybe coffee will save journalism! In June, MSNBC signed a deal to make Starbucks the official caffeinated beverage of its talk show Morning Joe. In 2008 a chain of TV affiliates cut a deal to place McDonald's iced coffee on anchor desks.

Those who can't sell coffee can try to sell Kaffeeklatsches. The Washington Post was embarrassed this month by a leak of its plans to charge up to $25,000 for lobbyists and executives to sponsor "salons" with public officials and the reporters who cover the fields they work in, like health care. "Spirited? Yes," a flyer said of the promised talks. "Confrontational? No." Journalism? Someday it just might be.

Some of these experiments may seem ethically dubious or just icky, but they're also examples of a simple truth: whether you read it online or watch it on TV, there's no such thing as free news. Someone, somewhere, is paying for it, be it in money or in time. And journalists are under pressure to become more creative in paying that bill.

Once, said payment came from the audience or from advertisers. Now the Internet offers all-you-can-eat info, yet advertisers are unwilling to pay anywhere near the same rates for online ads as they do for print or TV ads, and the Web has all but supplanted newspaper classifieds.

The New York Times is reportedly readying plans to start charging for online access, while a group of newspaper execs has been looking into the legality of banding together to do the same. News outlets are selling software, merchandise, club memberships — anything that people are more willing to pay for than, well, news.

It's possible, though, that nothing will save the journalism business — at least as we know it and pay for it today. That doesn't mean journalism will go away. Reporting won't go away, though foreign bureaus might. Information won't go away. Opinion certainly won't.

But somebody will have to pay — even, or especially, for the free stuff. Some journalism could become a kind of volunteer work, performed by eyewitnesses, passionate amateurs or professionals in other fields who use journalism as a loss leader to sell their books or build their brands. (That's the model of the legion of unpaid writers at the Huffington Post.)

Even if you filter your own news from Twitter, you're paying in time and effort. Those seeking to pay the bills through full-time journalism could find different paymasters. The Associated Press recently started taking investigative reports from four nonprofit journalism groups. And if newspapers can't afford investigations, advocacy groups and think tanks — which already hire research pros — could do their own: a kind of piecemeal return to the old partisan press.

Meanwhile, the advertisers who are loath to pay for banner ads at websites have shown interest in, as they say, more "integrated" forms of product-plugging. Some news sites sell companies "sponsored content" mentioning their products, while independent blogs collect payoffs for posts — positive ones only, please — about merchandise. (Where did I learn about that? From the New York Times, which had to report the story without sponsorship from Healthy Choice.)

The media of the future may be a combination of all this, plus old-school outlets that survive. They could produce good journalism. (After all, traditional news outlets aren't without potential conflict either; I review HBO series even though HBO's owner owns TIME.) But they may include funding models far different from the old church-and-state separation of content-making and money-raising.

Journalists would be foolish, though, to think we can guilt people into buying our work in part to preserve our uniquely holy calling. (Try arguing that to a laid-off factory worker.) As with any other service, people will buy it or they won't. Yes, news audiences will have to recognize that "free" information may mean more sponsorships and piper payers calling the tune. But journalists will have to accept that some members of our audience are, in fact, willing to make that trade-off, just as they live with product placement in movies.

We may not like it, but there it is. Producing something that someone is willing to pay for — while not selling out — may make our work possible. Whereas moralizing, plus a buck or so, will buy you a cup of robust, piping hot Dunkin' Donuts coffee. That one was free, fellas.

Lou says: It's not like in the Marx Brothers movie where Groucho orders everyone to wear their underwear on the outside and speak Swedish.
Journalism is evolving at different speeds in different locales on different platforms. The model of funding newspapers and television news through advertising is far from dead.
The evolution in funding sources is likely to continue for a decade or more. Unless you already speak Swedish and look good in your underwear, don't jump too quickly to abandon the old order.

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July 17, 2009

The fourth, and most important, communications revolution

via youtube.com

Lou says: According to Clay Shirky, "We're living through the largest increase in expressive capability in human history." In this fascinating talk by the author of "Here Comes Everybody," he uses the U.S. and Nigerian elections and a Chinese earthquake as examples of "many to many" conversations.

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July 16, 2009

Connecting Ben Franklin and social media

With most of the brilliant faculty gone for the summer, Wichita State's head of media relations had to fall back on interviewing me for his regular podcast. Here's a transcript:

PODCAST: Social media leads communication revolution
Posted Jul 16 2:26 PM
By Joe Kleinsasser

This WSU Newsline Podcast is available at http://www.wichita.edu/newslinepodcast. See the transcript below:

You're listening to the podcast edition of the Wichita State University audio newsline. Learn more about WSU — the home of Thinkers, Doers, Movers and Shockers — on the Web at wichita.edu.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media are having a dramatic impact on the way people get information. Online newspaper readership is growing, but revenues are declining. Lou Heldman, a communications strategist at Wichita State University and former publisher of The Wichita Eagle and Kansas.com, puts these dramatic changes in context.

Heldman: "We're seeing the most dramatic shift in journalism since the invention of the printing press. I think Benjamin Franklin would be fascinated to see what's happened since he used to publish his paper in Philadelphia."

It's hardly insignificant that, in the past two years alone, such newspapers as Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examiner, Cincinnati Post and Albuquerque Tribune have closed. Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Detroit Free Press and Christian Science Monitor are among the former print dailies that have adapted hybrid online/print or online-only models.

Heldman: "We're in the very earliest stage of the digital revolution. Think of this as 1777. We don't know what kind of country we're going to have. We only know it's going to be different than what we had before."

Clearly, journalism and communication in general have been affected by social media, as Heldman explains.

Heldman: "Social media is being integrated into every aspect of human communication. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn are entering into the mainstream of discussion in America.

"With social networking we've gone from freedom of the press for those who own one to freedom of the press for everyone. We're seeing that played out right now in the streets of Iran."

If you're having trouble keeping up in this information age, you're not alone.

Heldman: "We've entered the age of continuous partial attention, because it's so hard to keep up with every bit of information coming at us. We strive all day long just to run in place."

When it comes to breaking news, some say that social media, such as Twitter, leads the pack these days. But how reliable is the information being shared? Heldman admits that it will be a challenge knowing whom to trust.

Heldman: "In a world with millions of sources of information, the hardest thing will be to decide whom to trust. The journalism of verification has given people a certain comfort level that information was checked out by professionals. Now it's every person for themselves."

U.S. newspapers are losing circulation faster than ever, compounding the pain of an industry reeling from even larger drops in the advertising revenue that pays most of the bills. It's the most severe downturn since newspaper circulation began to crumble in the early 1990s. The success of newspapers on the Internet only serves to highlight the accelerating collapse of the industry. And the big increases in Web traffic simply are not translating into increased online revenues.

Heldman: "The challenge for newspapers is to find a business model. People still want the information that newspapers provide, but now they're getting it for free on the Web. So, who's going to pay for it?"

And for all of the changes we've experienced in recent years, Heldman says there's more to come.

Heldman: "The communications revolution is going mobile. The most important tool will be the smart phone you carry in your pocket, both for receiving and sending information to the world."

For all of the challenges facing newspapers, it's also unclear how social media can turn a profit so it can continue to flourish. Robert Brown, president of RDB Consulting Firm Inc., said, "Social media is a good example of the symbiosis of technology and culture. It's as if the long heralded information revolution has finally reached the streets, and now everyone is a citizen in this revolution."

Then Brown said, "As a journalist, I believe that there is never too much information or communication. I think that, in the long-term, the rise of social media will have a positive effect on our world and its citizens. At any rate, it's going to be interesting."

Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Joe Kleinsasser for Wichita State University.

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July 15, 2009

The controversy over TechCrunch publishing Twitter's stolen documents

From TechCrunch, http://bit.ly/VCwgZ

Our Reaction To Your Reactions To the Twitter Confidential Documents Post
288 Comments
by Michael Arrington on July 15, 2009

Wow, that’s quite a reaction to our post earlier this evening saying that we will publish some of the confidential Twitter documents we’ve been forwarded. Nearly 200 comments in a little over an hour, mostly saying we shouldn’t publish. Hundreds of Tweets, and it has become a trending topic. There’s even a poll asking people if we should post the documents or not.

Let’s put aside the highly sensitive documents that we aren’t going to publish, but which will likely end up on the Internet anyway. We’re not going to post that information whether we have the legal right to or not. No discussion is needed.

But we are going to publish some of the other information that is relevant to Twitter’s business, particularly product notes and financial projections. Many users say this is “stolen” information and therefore shouldn’t be published. We disagree.

We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also “stolen,” usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company, and the company is very much opposed to its publication. In the past we’ve received comments that this is unethical. And it certainly was unethical, or at least illegal or tortious, for the person who gave us the information and violated confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreements. But on our end, it’s simply news.

If you disagree with that, ok. But then you also have to disagree with the entire history of the news industry. “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising,” is something Lord Northcliffe, a newspaper magnate, supposedly said. I agree wholeheartedly.

That doesn’t mean we are entitled to do anything we like in order to get to that information. But if it lands in our inbox, we consider it fair game. And if we have reason to believe it will be widely published regardless of what we do, the decision isn’t a hard one. We throw out the information that is sensitive or could hurt an individual, and publish what we think is newsworthy.

In the end, this is no different than, as an example, this 2006 post where we posted confidential Yahoo documents showing their valuation of Facebook in a proposed acquisition.

Nor is it any different than the WSJ publishing this internal Yahoo memo, which was also “stolen” in 2006.

And I believe it is significantly less of an ethical issue than Gawker’s posting of Sarah Palin’s private emails.

It’s not our fault that Google has a ridiculously easy way to get access to accounts via their password recovery question. It’s not our fault that Twitter stored all of these documents and sensitive information in the cloud and had easy-to-guess passwords and recovery questions. We’ve been sitting in the office for eight hours now debating what the right thing to do is in this situation. We’ve spoken with our lawyers. We’ve spoken with Twitter. And we’ve heard what our readers have to say. All of that factors in to our decision on what to post or not to post.

We are always in the delicate position of balancing what’s right for the community with publishing insider news that helped build this site into what it is today. We don’t sit around and republish press releases, we break big stories.

I feel bad for Twitter and I wish this had never happened. But it did happen and the documents are out there and they are going to be published somewhere on the Internet. Hopefully the embarrassing and sensitive stuff about individual employees will never see the light of day. And hopefully this situation will encourage Google and Google users to consider more robust data security policies in the future.

Update: Here is Twitter’s response, from Biz Stone:

Twitter, Even More Open Than We Wanted
About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked. From the personal account, we believe the hacker was able to gain information which allowed access to this employee's Google Apps account which contained Docs, Calendars, and other Google Apps Twitter relies on for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and more within the company. Since then, we have performed a security audit and reminded everyone of the importance of personal security guidelines.

This attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps which we continue to use. This is more about Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can become targets. In fact, around the same time, Evan's wife's personal email was hacked and from there, the hacker was able to gain access to some of Evan's personal accounts such as Amazon and PayPal but not email. This isn't about any flaw in web apps, it speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords.

Stolen Documents, Not Compromised Accounts

It's important to note that the stolen documents which were downloaded and offered to various blogs and publications are not Twitter user accounts nor were any user accounts compromised (except for a screenshot of one person's account and we contacted that person and recommended changing their password). This was not a hack on the Twitter service, it was a personal attack followed by the theft of private company documents.

We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We're not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will.

The 'Underwear Drawer' Analogy

We have a culture of sharing and communication within Twitter and these stolen documents represent a fraction of what we produce on a regular basis. Obviously, these docs are not polished or ready for prime time and they're certainly not revealing some big, secret plan for taking over the world. As Peter Kafka put it, this is "akin to having your underwear drawer rifled: Embarrassing, but no one’s really going to be surprised about what’s in there." That is an apt analogy.

Nevertheless, as they were never meant for public communication, publishing these documents publicly could jeopardize relationships with Twitter's ongoing and potential partners. We're doing our best to reach out to these folks and talk over any questions and concerns. However, our goal remains focusing on the most important business at hand—creating value for users and building the best possible Twitter service.

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July 15, 2009

How the world has changed for PR blogs

Thanks to Posterous blogger Steve Rubel, of Edelman, for introducing me to the amazing blog, http://www.bastienbeauchamp.com/

Bastien, whose first language is French, describes his blog as "long Posts of Genuine Content in Broken English on Interactive Marketing."

Exploring his blog is like being introduced to a restaurant where everything you sample is delicious, and like nothing you've had before.

His post from a few days ago how PR's outlook on blogs and interactive has changed since 37 "passionated" bloggers had a virtual convention five years ago. The table below is his summary.

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July 15, 2009

What The Future Will Look Like For Journalists

Jim Spanfeller is president and CEO of Forbes.com. This is excerpted from a July 14, 2009 post on paidcontent.org

It is a tough time to be a professional journalist. Newspapers are downsizing or disappearing completely, magazines are failing every day and the ones surviving are getting thinner. Online, the rage is all about aggregation and consumer-generated content. But I firmly believe that in the future we will need more professional journalists than we have today and they will be as valued—or perhaps even more highly valued—than they were 10 years ago.

Will these professionals work for the same institutions that they work for now? More likely no then yes. Certainly some of our current journalistic enterprises will survive and thrive but only the ones that make the transition to a “now economy” that demands “entwined content,” or stories told in prose, video and data all at the same time. The majority of the current kings of content don’t understand these changes or perhaps they do but feel helpless to respond to them. Today consumers wants to know what is happening right now (not 20 hours ago), and they want personal insight into the events. And by personal I do not mean from the point of the view of the writer (although clearly that is part of the puzzle) but rather personal to them. What do these events mean to me? How will they affect my world?

News for news sake will continue to be commoditized, but news that is specific to the end user and filled with real-time education will be hard to come by and highly valued. This will require smart, diligent reporters who do most of their work before the event happens. In other words, they know the topic inside and out, they know who the movers and shakers around that topic are, and, more importantly, they can get those movers and shakers to respond quickly at almost anytime of day.

Stories will still develop over time and across many specific installments of reporting. But the idea of a “scoop” having great value is gone. In an internet-enabled world, a scoop lasts for only a very fleeting period of time. The real value is the insight about that scoop. And because the web is multimedia, video will be extremely important too. We want to see the event; we want to feel like we are there with the reporter. So a reporter will also have to be good with a camera.

It will also be important to present raw data well. “Give me your thoughts,” say the readers, but let me see the data as well. Give me a chance to disagree with your theories and commentary. For this to happen, the institution supporting and paying the journalist will have to collect or buy the appropriate data and present it in a way that is both easy to understand and work with.

The world has changed, yes, but at the end of the day, people are still, well, people. They still have a need to know what is going on around them and how it may affect them. We have the tools to meet these needs, but unfortunately most of the legacy distributors of news have not been able to use them. Either they are too overwhelmed by the destruction of their current models or they are too leveraged with debt—or, in some cases, both— to see the opportunities within all the change.

This is not to say that consumer-generated content will go away. There will be blogs, or blog-like entities forever. And, clearly, the blogs will be read, but for the most part, not by many people. They more often than not will be highly targeted and not highly trusted. The exceptions will quickly be gobbled up by professional organizations and displayed as commentary, or morph into professional organizations of their own. This site is a great example of that. It launched as a blog but now holds very little in common with what most people would define as a blog. For the most part, the folks who create the content on this site (myself being a very obvious exception) are professional journalists. They make their living doing this and they will keep making their living doing it because readers like you and me find value in it. Because we trust it.

This last thought holds great hope for the legacy journalistic endeavors out there. Trust is a rare and highly valuable thing in media. But trust in and of itself will not win the day. Sites that don’t use the assets of the new form factor (as discussed above) will not be up to the competition, and online, the competition is more fierce than in any medium that has come before, because it is so easy for end-users to click away.

Which, of course, brings us back to why journalists will be the key factor in the success of any content site that deals with news. It is also the reason that barriers to entry online have now gotten as high as anything offline—and therein lies the silver lining for the legacy companies. Perhaps when the web was an infant, a site would be given leeway to find its legs, its voice and gain traction with readers. Now that the web is in its adolescence, there is little room for “finding one’s way.” You get just one shot with readers to show them what you can do, and you better do well enough with it to get them to come back another time.

via paidcontent.org

Lou says: I like this clear-eyed and essentially optimistic view of the future of journalism. I'd underscore several of his points:
-- There will be a continuing need and market for professional reporting skills.
-- Trust will remain an essential factor in success.
-- Consumers will want access to raw data, as well as analysis.

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July 13, 2009

TV Station Revenues Continue To Slide; BIA sees lowest level since 1995

BIA Now Expects 17% Decline from 2008

Online Revenue Potentials Will Help Industry; Call for Elimination of Media Cross-Ownership and Local Rules To Help Media Companies Continue to Serve Public

CHANTILLY, VA. July 1, 2009 – With television station revenues continuing to slide downward, primarily due to the economy, BIA Advisory Services has revised its earlier projected revenue estimates for 2009 to $16.6 billion, a 17.3 percent decline from 2008 and a return to a level not seen since 1995.

BIA continues to emphasize that local TV stations will see a return to profitability the quicker they see themselves as local information and entertainment companies rather than simply television transmitters. As explored during BIA's "Winning Media Strategies" conference in May, broadcasters have extraordinary opportunities to parlay their local content with the public through multiple digital platforms. They also have the ability to use their local sales staff to cross-promote events and programs for advertisers that need to reach the community.

"We are very optimistic about the online revenue potentials for television broadcasters, particularly as they step-up their mobile and Internet offerings," said Michael Boland, mobile local media analyst for BIA's The Kelsey Group. "We project the industry will see Internet revenues of $556 million in 2009, moving up to $1.1 billion by 2013. This represents 19.7 percent compounded annual growth rate for online television broadcasting advertising alone."

Ultimately, the future strength of the broadcast industry as a whole may lie in the hands of the new leadership of the Federal Communications Commission, which should revisit the cross-ownership and local ownership rules.

"With local media companies dying on the vine and the television industry, in particular, hamstrung in many large and small markets, it seems like a good time to explore the steps to save local media outlets, including the elimination of media cross-ownership and local ownership rules," said Tom Buono, CEO of BIA. "The role local media outlets play in their markets is critical, and local content origination is important to all residents of a community. As this media ecosystem has changed and the advertising marketplace contracted, immediate government intervention to allow media companies to survive and prosper is clearly in the public's best interest."

BIA posts a monthly update of television station values and transactions on its web site at http://www.bia.com/resources_trends.asp.

A comprehensive profile of all 210 television markets (plus Puerto Rico) and television market projections through 2013 are available in the first-quarter edition of Investing In Television® Market Report published by BIA Advisory Services and the 2009 Investing In Television® Ownership Report. Both publications are part of the Investing In financial guide series that includes market trend analysis, demographic and economic overviews, competitive overviews, technical data, ownership data, pending and completed transactions, and Arbitron ratings. Information on these publications is available on the BIA website at http://www.bia.com/publications_reference_tv.asp.

For more information, call 800.331.5086 or email info@bia.com. # # ##

Contact:

MacKenzie Lovings
BIA Financial Network
(703) 802.2991 | mlovings@bia.com

Elizabeth Villaroman

evillaroman@bia.com

For further market or station data.

via bia.com

Lou says: The decline in local TV and radio revenue, though just as serious in many cases, has received far less attention than the problems of local newspapers. There are several reasons for this:
* There are multiple broadcast outlets in mid-sized and large cities, so the problems of one aren't nearly as apparent as the problems of the single newspaper in the market.
* Newspapers tend to cover more news and cover it more deeply than broadcast outlets, so it's noticeable when they pull back from coverage.
* Newspapers cover beats such as fine arts that commercial TV and radio rarely touch. Community arts institutions depend on newspapers to create awareness; when newspapers pull back, arts supporters are vigorous in their criticism.
* Newspapers tend to cover their own problems; broadcast outlets rarely mention their own problems.

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July 9, 2009

A good overview of social network users, including specifics on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn

via adage.com

Survey Reveals Consumers' Likely Interests, Buying Habits, Media Consumption

Excerpted from Ad Age, July 08, 2009

A new study by Anderson Analytics is helping identify users' likely interests, buying habits, media consumption and more for marketers. The survey studied the demographics and psychographics of both social networkers and non-users.

110 million Americans, or 60% of the online population, used social networks at least once in the past month. Anderson conducted the study online in June with 5,000 demographically representative respondents, and then went in-depth with 1,250 of them.

The study found the average social networker goes to social sites five days a week and checks in about four times a day for a total of an hour each day. A super-connected 9% stay logged in all day and are "constantly checking out what's new."

Social-network users overall

Social networkers get a bad rap for using social media to pump up their egos but, in general, they're not super-aggressive about building networks. Almost half (45%) said they will link only to family and friends, and another 18% will link only to people they've met in person. That means almost two-thirds associate only with people they know offline. Only 10% of those surveyed said they would connect with anyone who's willing to connect with them.

And another myth blown: Most users are not wasting company time. Only 15% said they go on social networks at work.

Their top three interests are music, movies and hanging out with friends, and they use social media most to stay in touch with friends, family and classmates. Not surprisingly, they do more online than non-users of social media, from watching videos to reading blogs to making purchases. They are four times more vocal than non-users when it comes to commenting on discussion boards, posting blog entries and uploading videos.

Anderson's research breaks down general social-media users into four categories: business users, fun seekers, social-media mavens and late followers. Of those, social-media mavens are the key group, not only because of their high incomes and decision-making power at companies but also because their large social-media footprints can make them brand allies and evangelists, Managing Partner Tom Anderson said. Fun seekers are also an important group because they are the up-and-coming mavens as they transition from students to employees.

Non-users of social networks

Non-users of social media spend as much time as social-media fans on the web. But they say they don't use social media for three basic reasons: They don't have the time; they don't think it's secure or they think it's stupid.

About 22% of time-starved people said they'll be using social media within three months, and another 27% said they probably will within a year -- when they get the time that is; they're more interested than all others in pursuits such as exercise, entertaining, music and movies.

The concerned non-users are an older demographic (one-third are retired) who don't use social networks because they're worried about their privacy. However, they do recognize value in social media and may join as they become more comfortable with it.

Non-users in general don't shop online as much as social networkers, but they are much more likely to visit online retailers Amazon and eBay. They also named IAC's IWon and HGTV as favored web destinations.

Facebookers

There are 77 million Facebook users, according to the study, and Facebook users were almost completely average in their level of interest in most areas when compared with users of Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. Out of 45 categories, only national news, sports, exercise, travel, and home and garden skewed even slightly higher than average, and then by only one or two percentage points.

"Facebook is average because it has the most users. When stat testing, anything near the average is less likely to be significant," Mr. Anderson said. "They are also capturing a wider range of users for various reasons, from high-school and college fun, leisure user to business and parents and grandparents."

They are more likely to be married (40%), white (80%) and retired (6%) than users of the other social networks. They have the second-highest average income, at $61,000, and an average of 121 connections.

Facebook users skew a bit older and are more likely to be late adopters of social media. But they are also extremely loyal to the site -- 75% claim Facebook is their favorite site, and another 59% say they have increased their use of the site in the past six months.

Twitterers

This is the super-user group. Twitterers are more interested than the others in many subjects but skew particularly high in all news categories, restaurants, sports, politics, personal finance and religion. They also especially like pop culture, with music, movies, TV and reading, ranking higher than average. And their buying habits mirror that. They're more likely to buy books, movies, shoes and cosmetics online than the other groups.

Twitterers are also entrepreneurial. They are more likely than others to use the service to promote their blogs or businesses. How do they keep going? Coffee, apparently. Some 31% buy coffee online, far above the average 21% of other social networkers.

They're more likely to be employed part-time (16% vs. 11% average), have an average income of $58,000, and average 28 followers and 32 other Twitterers they're following. They're not particularly attached to the site, though -- 43% said they could live without Twitter.

MySpacers

They are the young, the fun and the fleeing. While MySpace users skew younger, they also said they'd used the site much less in the past six months.

The 67 million who are still there are into having a good time. They're more likely to have joined MySpace for fun and more likely to be interested in entertaining friends, humor and comedy, and video games. They're less into exercise than any other social group but seek out parenting information more than any other.

The content MySpace users put up is most often about specific hobbies, or pictures of family and friends. Their average income is the lowest, at $44,000, and they have an average of 131 connections. They're more likely to be black (9%) or Hispanic (7%) than users of the other social sites. They are also more likely to be single (60%) and students (23%).

LinkedIn users

It's probably no surprise these guys are all about business. We say guys because LinkedIn has the only user group with more males than females (57% to 43%). They have the highest average income, at $89,000, and are more likely to have joined the site for business or work, citing keeping in touch with business networks, job searching, business development and recruiting as top reasons.

Their interests reflect that as well. They like all kinds of news, employment information, sports and politics. They are also more likely to be into the gym, spas, yoga, golf and tennis.

Excluding video-game systems, they own more electronic gadgets than the other social networkers, including digital cameras, high-definition TVs, DVRs and Blu-ray players.

How do they unwind? Here were two surprises among the things they're more interested in than the others: gambling and soap operas. Some 12% seek gambling information online (vs. an average of 7%), while 10% go online for soap opera content (vs. an average of 5%).

Lou says: This is the best study I've seen comparing users of major networks. If I had to place a bet, it would be that Facebook will continue to adopt elements of Twitter and MySpace and those two will fade. A competitor to Facebook will rise, allowing users to do more to shape the look and feel of their pages. LinkedIn will continue to serve a business-oriented niche, because people will want to preserve their LI contacts.

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Posted by Lou Heldman

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