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About 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. According to the Pew Internet (@pewinternet) project, people in the 18-24 year-old range are sending and receiving 110 texts per day on average (3200 texts per month). The typical user in that age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (1500 per month). (Chart of the Day (@ChartOfTheDay) illustrates the data above.) The overall average for texting per day among all cell phone users is 42, says Pew. That number is flat on a year over year basis.

Read the report in full.

How does this information influence your marketing strategy?

Chart of the Day (@ChartOfTheDay) reports that Facebook hosts 140 billion photos, and will add 70 billion this year, according to 1000memories (@1000memories).

Putting this in context, 1000memories made the above visualization which shows how big Facebook’s library of photos are in comparison to other photo sharing sites, as well as the Library of Congress.

Incredibly, Facebook is hosting 4% of all photos ever taken, according to 1000memories. It estimates 3.5 trillion photos have been taken through history.

Computing is rapidly evolving into a real “ecology,” where chips will be embedded in everything from your coffee mug to your sweater. The above video produced by Mickey McManus’ (@mickeymcmanus) design consultancy, MAYA, illustrates this idea.

Also see Discover Magazine’s (@DiscoverMag) article, “The Internet May Soon Include All of the Things Around You.”

B. Bonin Bough (@boughb), Global Head of Digital for PepsiCo, writes in Forbes (@Forbes) about his discussion at the Milken Global Conference (@MilkenInstitute) with Nicholas Carr, renowned author who’s investigating how technology is impacting the way we think. Bough asks the question, “How often do we outsource traditional ways of thinking to smart devices, choosing to sacrifice learning and let the technology think for us?” And he suggests we’re losing something in the process.

Read this in full.

In the BigThink.com (@bigthink) interview below, Carr describes the technologies that have reshaped the way our brains work.

Talk with us at Somersault (@smrsault) to discern how your publishing and marketing strategies need to be positioned for the future's blue ocean opportunities. Be sure to bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

IDATE Research (@JeanDSeval) has just published its “World Internet Usages & Markets” report.

“Globally, the number of users of fixed Internet will continue to grow at a steady pace, reaching 2.3 billion in 2015”, comments Sophie Lubrano, Project Leader and IDATE’s Director of Studies. “Users of mobile Internet services will progress even more rapidly, however, and should reach 2.6 billion in 2015. This growth is fuelled by emerging markets, particularly China.”

Read this in full.

Let Somersault help you develop mobile marketing and publishing strategy for your brand.

According to new report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., the world e-readers market is forecast to reach 53,870,000 units by the year 2017. The global economic recession, which put several industries under pressure and in a state of turmoil, has failed to rattle the market for e-readers making it an exceptional product.

The report states that the “growing popularity of these handy devices is pushing the book, magazine, and newspaper publishing industries to redefine their existence in this digital age and in the aftermaths of economic turmoil. Although sales of ebooks presently account for only a small portion of the overall book publishing market, with the passage of time, this segment is forecast to emerge a mainstream market.”

Read this in full.

Sam S. Rainer III writes in Leadership Journal (@Leadership_Jnl) that Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, “are America’s most educated generation, most diverse generation, and surprisingly, America’s largest generation. And they are beginning to get married, enter the workforce, and lead the world.”

This generation is hopeful. In fact, 96% of them agree with the statement, “I believe I can do something great.” But the majority says individual prominence is secondary to helping the community and accomplishing things for the greater good.

Yet this hopeful generation lacks a solid spiritual foundation on which to base their hopes. As few as one in four attend church weekly. Nearly two-thirds never attend religious services. Church leaders face unique challenges in reaching them.

Older generations tended to place a higher priority on church activity and attendance. The younger generation, however, demands to know the purpose behind each activity. For Millennials, just attending church does not equal faithfulness. The only way they'll attend is if they see the church as being a meaningful part of their lives.

Read this in full.

The latest Nielsen (@NielsenWire) report (pdf) shows that social media’s popularity continues to grow, connecting people with just about everything they watch and buy.

·         60% percent of people who use three or more digital means of research for product purchases learn about a specific brand or retailer from a social networking site.

·         Social networks and blogs took 22.5% of Internet usage time in May 2011, beating online games' 9.8%, email's 7.6%, portals' 4.5%, video and films' 4.4% and search's 4%.

·         US Web users spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook during the month, beating out Yahoo's 17.2 billion minutes, Google's 12.5 billion minutes, YouTube's 9.5 billion minutes, eBay's 4.5 billion minutes, and Apple's 4.3 billion minutes.

·         Facebook received 140 million unique visitors in May, with 62% of page views on the site attributable to females; 50 million individuals accessed Blogger; 23.6 million went to Twitter.

·         Blogging provider Wordpress attracted 22.4 million people, trailed by MySpace with 19.3 million, LinkedIn with 17.8 million, and Tumblr, another blog hosting platform, with 11.9 million.

·         53% of "active" social networkers currently follow a brand.

·         Year over year growth of people accessing social networks via mobile rose 62%: 46.5 million people visiting Facebook, 11.5 million for Twitter, 6 million LinkedIn, and 4 million MySpace.

·         In all, 97% of members access social networks on a computer, 37% employ mobile phones, 3% deploy a games console or iPad, and 2% leverage Web-enabled TV sets and ereaders.

·         About 30% of consumers value being able to use social networks on their phone.

·         A further 21% liked scanning barcodes with a handset, 20% cited making payments, 16% prioritized "check-in" services such as Foursquare and 13% enjoyed giving feedback to companies.

·         67% of smartphone owners had downloaded gaming apps, 65% selected equivalent weather-related tools, 60% utilized applications from social networks, and 55% used navigation and search facilities.

·         17.8 million women watch video on social networks, versus 13.6 million men.

Read the report in full (pdf).

Also see our previous blogpost, “Report: Half of Americans Are Now Social Networkers.”

Radio-Info.com (@radio_info) says, “Teens today are the most digitally connected generation we have ever seen.” A study just released by Nielsen (@NielsenWire) on teen media usage offers the following insight.

Teens:

·         Are the Heaviest Mobile Video Viewers

·         Are More Receptive to Mobile Advertising than their Elders

·         Out-Text All Other Age Groups

·         Talk Less on the Phone: Besides

·         Grew Up in the Age of Social Media—and It Shows

·         Watch Less TV than the General Population:

·         Spend Less Time on their Computers

Radio-Info says, “Based on this research and other key findings from recent studies on teen consumers, here are four considerations for marketers aspiring to reach teens today:

1. Speak in bullet points.

2. Don’t be “just another ad.”

3. Stand Out

4. Think Multi-Platform

Read this in full.

Damon Poeter (@dpoeter) writes in PCMag.com (@PCMag) that the percentage of adult Internet users using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is now 65%, up from 61% a year ago, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center (@pewinternet & @pewresearch).

Accounting for the percentage of adults who don't use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers say.

The number of Americans using such sites has exploded since 2005, when Pew found that just 8% of Internet users, or about 5% of all adult Americans, said they did. The percentage of Internet users saying they use social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, when 29% of respondents said they were using them, according to the Pew survey.

Pew reports that women aged 18 to 29 are the most voracious users of social networking sites, with 89% of Internet users in that group participating in such sites and 69% of them reporting that they do so daily. Accounting for all age groups, 69% of adult women using the Internet say they’re social networkers as compared with 60% of men.

Read the story in full.

Read the research report.

Also see HubSpot’s (@HubSpot) article, “46 Million Americans Check Social Media Sites Multiple Times Per Day,” based on the 2011 Social Habit report, released by Edison Research and Arbitron.

What implications does this research hold for your publishing and marketing strategy? Let Somersault help you think it through.

According to research by Cone (@ConeLLC), 89% of US adults see the Web as a trustworthy source of information to verify offline recommendations of goods and services and 85% go online after being recommended a product to aid the decision-making process; 85% also say their purchase intent rises when they discover complimentary feedback.

“Consumers want reassurance before opening their purse strings, and personal recommendations alone are just not enough to guarantee a purchase," says Mike Hollywood, Cone's director, new media.

Read the Warc report in full.

Read the Cone summary.

Read the Cone report (pdf).