Message From Michael 
March 30, 2009
IT’S NOT YOUR SON’S FACEBOOK ANY MORE
BORN BUT NOT BRED IN THE
UP, UP AND AWAY WITH VIDEO
WHITHER GOEST MYSPACE
THE CHIEF TWEETING OFFICER
THE LIFE SPAN OF A TWEET
THE BIGGEST LOSER GETS LOST
BEAM MY NEWS UP, SCOTTY
FLATULENT PHONES
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IT’S NOT YOUR SON’S FACEBOOK ANY MORE: Nope, it turns out that Facebook is turning into your father’s Buick, with the majority of Facebook users over the age of 25. The 18-25 group still make up the single largest block with more than a third of the users (35%), and the 13-17 teenage crowd still accounts for one in every ten users (11%). But time marches on, with the over-35 crowd on Facebook more than doubling in just the last two months, according to Facebook tracking site, insidefacebook.com. There were 6.8 Million new Facebook users added in the 26-34 age group which now comprises a quarter (24%) of all users and an astonishing 7 Million new users added in the 35-44 age group which now comprises one in every six Facebook users (17%). By comparison, the 18 to 25 age group added less than half each of those age groups (2.3 Million) while the teen group added barely a Million. And for all my fuddy-duddy friends who have befriended me on Facebook, you’ll be happy to know that your peers are joining in force as well, with 2.3 Million new users (bringing the percentage up to 5% of the total) in the 55 to 65 demo and 3.6 Million new users (now up to 8%) in the 45 to 54 demographic. Again, a reminder, those are the numbers added JUST in the last two months.
BORN BUT NOT BRED IN THE U.S.A.: As surprised as I was to find out (as reported in a previous MfM) that significantly more than half of the Twitterers (60%) come from outside the U.S., I was even more surprised that the latest statistics show that nearly three quarters of Facebook’s users (70%) come from outside the
UP, UP AND AWAY WITH VIDEO: Online video watching has jumped “massively,” year to year, according to comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, who says it is up 60%. In addition, he told an OMMA conference, the time spent viewing has jumped, if not massively, at least significantly, with viewers watching an average five hours a month albeit at only 3.5 minutes per video (although that also is up.) Also joining the Superman leap up and away is Hulu which, according to the latest comScore figures, moved up to fourth place in the top ten rankings of video properties, with a 42% increase month to month. Of course, Google with its YouTube site leads the pack with more than 5.3 Billion video views during February of the more than 13.1 Billion total videos viewed during February. After that it drops dramatically, with Fox Interactive Media second (463Million views and 53.8 Million viewers), Yahoo third (353 Million views and 41.8 Million viewers), Hulu fourth (333 Million and 34.7 Million) and Microsoft’s various sites coming in fifth (259 Million). In all, three quarters (75.5%) of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video at some point.
WHITHER GOEST MYSPACE: As a side note to all this, the question comes up – what happened to MySpace? As a personal observation (or, as a research friend of mine used to say, my focus group of one) I can’t remember the last time I received an invite or a piece of forwarded material from MySpace people. It’s still there, of course. The comScore report says it had 41.2 Million viewers who watched 384 Million videos. An article in The Telegraph newspaper notes that MySpace now has less than half (124 Million unique viewers) on average than Facebook (276 Million uniques). Even more critically, that represents an actual two percent decline in viewers. Apparently MySpace remains “marginally ahead” of Facebook in the U.S., according to the report, but TechCrunch co-editor Michael Arrington notes that less than a year ago, the two were the same size.
THE BIGGEST LOSER GETS LOST: Data compiled by TiVo of time-shifted viewing shows that NBC’s The Biggest Loser is more likely (45%) to be viewed live while ABC’s Lost is more likely (27%) to be viewed a week or more after it airs than most other shows. So, what does that tell you? Or the fact that Fox’s American Idol gets its highest ratings (8.4) for viewing that is live, plus one day. So, what does that tell you? The analysis shows that the percentage of people watching a day later more than doubles the percentage of people watching live. For example, ABC’s The Bachelor is watched by 40% of its audience either live or within an hour, but when you add in another day of time-delayed viewing, that number jumps to three-quarters (75%) of all its viewers.
BEAM MY NEWS UP, SCOTTY: According to comScore, the number of people accessing news daily on their mobile has more than doubled in a year to year comparison. Based on a three month average, comparing January of this year to January of last year, comScore says the numbers jumped from 10.8 Million to 22.3 Million people who access news daily while the number of mobile users who access news in general (meaning at least occasionally during a month) jumped by three quarters, from 36.8 Million to 63.2 Million.
FLATULENT PHONES: As noted in a previous MfM, the iPhone has an incredible 25,000 applications available with an even more incredible 500 Million downloads. Some estimates put it much higher, according to websites apptism.com and appcraver.com, both of which are solely devoted to finding and reviewing iphone applications. The fact that that there are two websites devoted just to tracking the iPhone apps says something. Anyway, we started down this track after reading that one of the top ten paid applications, a top “breakout hit,” is an application called iFart which, for 99 cents, enables your phone to emit a variety of noises simulating flatulence. As a New York Times article noted, flatulence humor has been a staple since William Shakespeare wrote about it in The Comedy of Errors. On a considerably more serious note, one of the top apps on iPhone (which, for the record, I don’t own) is Sully’s Flight which simulates the landing of the Airways jet by pilot Chesley Sullenberger into the
As a side note, and just to add a factoid note to all this, research firm AdMob Mobile Metrics says the iPhone alone accounts for half of ALL mobile web traffic from Smart Phones in the U.S. Less than half a year ago (August, 2008), the iPhone accounted for only 10% of all such traffic.
THE CHIEF TWEETING OFFICER: It’s hard to believe that Twitter founder Evan Williams was once so broke that he stayed up all night at one point checking his couch cushions for change to buy coffee. His first business attempt ended with a lot of mad employees and Williams owing the I.R.S. a lot of money. That tidbit along with several others is buried in a New York Times Sunday Business section profile of Williams who likens the founding of Twitter to a “well-orchestrated accident.” Twitter was a side project to his original business, ODEO, which finds video and audio on the web, just like Blogger was a side project to another of his earlier businesses, Pyra Lab. Of course Blogger was sold to Google for un-told amounts and, as we noted in our previous MfM about Twitter, many are speculating that Twitter will be sold to Google. In Williams’s self-effacing article, he says he’s “always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism.”
As a side note, Odeo has a link on its page to Tweet Week, a compilation of twitterings. Whoop-de-do, right? Except here’s what’s odd. The latest edition is more than two months old. And as a foot note to the side note, several MfM readers have noted that it seems there are a number of ‘negative’ articles have been written about Twitter lately. True? Not true?
THE LIFESPAN OF A TWEET: Five minutes. That’s it. A test run by website fuelinteractive.com shows that companies that companies that tweet an announcement with a link about a funny video or article got virtually all of their response in the first five minutes of the tweet. After that…nothing. As the website authors note, a tweet may lAst ‘forever’ in search.twitter.com, but in reality if they (your semi-faithful followers) don’t catch it at the start, it’s gone. Their advice, as a result, is that if you want to have impact, you have to tweet regularly and tweet often because “you market to a parade, not a standing army.” Yeah, I know, it took me a while to figure out what that meant, too.
WELCOME NEW MEMBERS: We continue to add new subscribers every week to Message from Michael, and I appreciate each and every one of you. But I have to say that my best new subscription request came from Patti Wilson of pattiwilson.com who referred to it as “outrageously great.” Gotta love that. You also have to love any one who uses the Wizard of Oz in her blog.
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