FreshNetworks Blog

In December 2008, global consumers spent an average of just over three hours on social networks. In December 2009, they were spending over five and a half hours on average. An increase of 82%.

According to The Nielsen Company, social network sites have grown in importance globally in 2009. Alongside blogs, they are now the most popular category online when ranked by time spent on site. The survey (which looked at the US, U.K., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) shows not only that overall time on site has increased, but also that the global audience for social networking has increased.

Facebook leads the pack in terms of number of users. Of the 307 million social network users in the countries in the survey, 207 million (67%) were users of Facebook. But Twitter leads the pack in terms of growth. This is not surprising given the relatively small base that Twitter was growing from in 2009, but is still striking. In the US alone, the number of users of Twitter grew from 2.7 million to 18.1 million (579%) and time on site grew 368%.

When these figures are broken down by the countries included in the study, the US, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the largest number of social network user (142 million). They are followed by Japan (with 47 million users) and Brazil (with 31 million). The UK comes in fourth place with 29 million users of social networks. However, when you consider time on site, Australia leads the pack. There, the typical social network user spent an average of nearly seven hours on social networking sites in December 2009. The US and the UK come close behind with just over six hours.

Overall this data shows that social networking sites are becoming an ever increasingly important part of users’ web experiences. More users are using and joining such sites, and they are spending longer on them. Users now spend more time on social networking sites than on other categories of sites online. Social networking is now an established part of global consumers’ lifestyles.

A report out this week from AT&T explores the adoption of social networking  in the workplace and the  rise of Enterprise 2.0. Based on 2,500 interviews in five countries (Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany) the report looks at what use is made of which tools and how this helps (or otherwise in the workplace).

The headline findings are interesting on their own and suggest a growing acceptance and usefulness of social networks and social media in the enterprise. Almost two-thirds of those responding (65%) said that social networks had increased either their efficiency at work, or the efficiency of their colleagues. But perhaps a greater sign of the power that social networks can bring to the workplace is the 63% of respondents who said that using them had enabled them to do something that they hadn’t been able to do before.

This starts to show the real power of social media – it’s not just about letting people do old things in new ways, but about facilitating completely new ways of connecting, sharing, and indeed of working.

What is most interesting, however, is to explore this data a little bit deeper, and indeed to look at the data on a country-by-country basis. Taking only the adoption of social networks as part of “everyday life at work in Europe”, the figures reveal something surprising – Great Britain lags behind the other countries in the study:

1. Germany – 72% of respondents report adoption of social networks in the workplace
2. Netherlands – 67%
3. Belgium – 65%
4. France – 62%
5. Great Britain – 59%

This positioning is surprising, not least as adoption of social networks like Facebook is higher in Great Britain than elsewhere in Europe. That rate of adoption of Enterprise 2.0 may reflect more on British working styles and habits, or indeed on the mix of industries that predominate in that country. But whatever the reasoning it would be good to see higher adoption in the UK, if only because, as this survey shows, those organisations that adopt Enterprise 2.0 can be more efficient and can let you do things you have never done before. In the current economic climate, organisations could benefit from both of these.

Some more reading

• Facebook Conquers Europe With Triple-Digit Growth (mashable.com)
• Useful Differentiation – Enterprise Social Computing vs. Everyday Use of Social Networks (fastforwardblog.com)
• Active Facebook Users By Country (radar.oreilly.com)

Today’s Libération, in Paris, reports on the rise of “le Twitter” (or gazouillis as it could be in French) and in particular its use in politics. Citing a French researcher the article says that:

Politicians, already under pressures, like to think that with these new means of communication they will escape the yoke of journalism and instead establish a direct link with the public

Twitter is still in it’s infancy in France. It has only 6,000 users, as opposed to the two million French people on Facebook. But even though the take-up is small (although growing rapidly) it’s development is being accelarated by learning from how it is being used in the US.

The French researcher quoted in the article no doubt has Barack Obama and his more than 50,000 followers in his mind. But what is interesting is to compare how he is using Twitter and how it is being used by French politicians.

Obama has a large following and is using Twitter as a means of pushing out messages and feeds. Contrast this with Benoît Hamon, a French Member of the European Parliament. He is using Twitter to give updates on what he is doing, such as

I don’t understand why riot police has cordoned off the European Parliament for Sarkozy’s arrival. The strikers have always been peaceful until now.

This contrast is interesting and shows, again, how the same social media site can be used by different people for different things. Obama is using it to issue notices and updates, Hamon to give his followers a real insight into his life and observations.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is that even though Twitter is in its infancy in France it is being used in a very mature way by its politicians. This shows that being a first mover can often mean a slower adoption curve. The US took to Twitter a lot quicker but the growth of corporate, political and organisational use of the medium to engage the public has developed quite slowly. France can start higher up this curve. It can start much sooner to use social media to have a direct link with the public.

Some more reading

• Can Barack Obama Fix Twitter?
• Twitter, la nouvelle arme des politiques
• McCain Lags Behind Obama in Online Fundraising, Social Networking Popularity

Earlier this week, whilst the Czech Republic were playing Turkey in Euro 2008, an advert aired in prime time on UK television that cost just £6.50 to make.

The ad was the winner of a competition that Doritos had been running, getting customers to create their own adverts: You make it, we play it. The winning ad, Tribe, was conceived, designed, filmed and edited by two Doritos fans. It cost less than £10 to make (although the slot in which is aired probably cost about £45,000 to buy) – just two packs of Doritos,  two pots of salsa and some blu-tack.

Watch the ad below; it’s really rather good.

What interests me about this ad is the way Doritos successfully combined a campaign to engage customers with a real reward for their loyalty. They experimented with online engagement – getting people to visit a site and upload their own videos, and with a new form of advertising – showing a completely amateur-made ad. I love it when people try new things, the press they create is often huge and the potential of finding a real innovation is palpable.

In advertising at the moment, as in customer engagement there is a lot of innovation going on. As we’ve seen with Honda in the UK (see post here) and eBay in France (see post here) there are some great things being experimented with. In all of these instances what brands are doing is trying to turn adverts into events. Build up to the event by created activity online, and then provide a way for people to continue to engage with the brand and the advert after it has aired.

In the Doritos case, there is something else at play. Everybody who has submitted, viewed or commented upon a video during the competition feels invovled in the final outcome. They have built mass engagement, rather than just a mass of viewers. The ad, being part of this ongoing engagement process, will have a greater, lasting effect than a traditional advert would. They started to move the advert from just a push marketing message to customer engagement.

I love going abroad. You get to spend time learning about new things and also to get a different perspective or new examples for things you already know. This happened to me this week in Paris.

There is lots of talk about Dell’s Ideastorm and MyStarbucksIdea as examples of using communities as customer service vehicles. They are, infact, all based on a SalesForce platform and are all essentially front ends of CRM systems. In France, however, I came across an example that has much more elements of an online community.

SNCF, the French Railways, launched their site, Opinions et débats, initally for a six-week period. They were running a project where executives in the firm would answer questions from the public. The exercise was so successful that it is still running.

The Dell and Starbucks sites are simple. You can suggest an idea, comment on other ideas or vote for ideas. SNCF adds another layer which takes their site from a simple transactional process to a more community feel. The homepage of their site includes a list of employees (including their first name and a picture) and when you pose your question you need to decide if it should be posed, for example, to Clément (a station manager) or to Domonique who runs the TGV high-speed train network.

This is a simple difference, but it makes the site fundamentally different. Rather than posing a question into the ether, you choose an employee and get them to answer it for you. Traditional customer service will take a question into a general department who will then choose who should answer it. With SNCF you choose, and others can add to, expand or criticse and responses.

A great site and one I know I’ll be using as an example of a customer service community in the future.