Mobile Drives Daily Facebook Use

Earlier this week, I tapped into a recent research report—Data Snapshot: Communications and Media Benchmark— to write posts about Facebook usage by age, gender, and ethnicity. Well, my Facebook analysis continues…

There has been some concern raised about Facebook’s revenue projections because of the growth of mobile, which does not provide Facebook with the same revenue streams. Given the hubbub, I decided to look at the mobile usage of Facebook.

It turns out that a large percentage of daily Facebook users, who are mostly younger consumers, are reading Facebook on their phones.

The bottom line: Mobile drives daily Facebook usage

Facebook’s Popularity Crosses Over Ethnic Groups

My post-IPO look at Facebook continues. In yesterday’s post, I examined Facebook and Twitter usage across age groups which was part of the analysis in the Temkin Group report Data Snapshot: Communications and Media Benchmark.

Today, I examine the difference in daily Facebook usage by age across Caucasians, Hispanics, and Blacks. It turns out that that there’s very little difference across ethnic groups of the same age. The largest differences are with the heavy usage by 35- to 44-year-old Hispanics and the low usage of 55- to 64-year-old Blacks.

Just a note about survey bias. Since this survey was only deployed in English, it very likely under-represents Hispanics that are primarily Spanish-speaking and definitely under-represents Hispanics that don’t speak English at all.

The Bottom Line: Facebook is pervasive in all English speaking segments of U.S. consumers younger than 45.

Who’s Using Facebook and Twitter?

In a recent report we examined the media usage of US consumers, which included how often they use social media sites. Given Facebook’s IPO, I decided to post a bit of information about the users of the newly public company compared with Twitter. My analysis of 10,000 U.S. consumers showed that 77% have used Facebook and 29% have used Twitter. Digging a bit deeper into the actual usage patterns, it turns out that 45% use Facebook daily and 12% use Twitter daily.

We found that Facebook is significantly more pervasive than Twitter across every age group. Also, females tend to use Facebook more than males, but males tend to use Twitter more than females. The largest gender gap for Facebook is 45- to 54-year-olds while the larger gender gap for Twitter is with 25- to 34-year-olds.

The bottom line: Facebook is used regularly by most consumers younger than 45.

Data Snapshot: Social Media And Mobile Adoption

We just published a new Data Snapshot: Social Media and Mobile Adoption that provides details of how often U.S. consumers do a number of social media and mobile activities. Here’s the description of the research:

As part of Temkin Group’s Q4 2011 Consumer Benchmark Survey, we asked 5,000 U.S. consumers about their social media and mobile activities. This data snapshot looks at how many consumers perform activities such as update their status on Facebook, send a tweet, read an online product review, or invite someone to join their LinkedIn network. The data also shows how frequently they do these activities and the differences across seven age groups of consumers.

Download report for $195

The data snapshot if full of facts and figures. Here are a handful of factoids that I pulled together from the report:

The data snapshot has 13 data-rich graphics. Here’s a partial view from two of the figures:

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Social medial and mobile adoption differs widely across age.

20 Companies Most Susceptible To Negative Comments Via Facebook

In the recent Temkin Group Insight report, How Consumers Give Feedback, we analyzed what US consumers did after they had a very bad or a very good experience. One of the areas we examined was the use of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

As a part of the analysis, we examined the difference in social media use across 141 companies. Our analysis looked at how often people that had interacted with those companies had also used social media to talk about a very bad experience in the previous 60 days. We then compared that data to the overall US average.

This chart shows the 20 companies that interact with consumers who are most likely to post a very bad experience on Facebook.

As you can see, Days Inn, E*TRADE, and Apple are twice as susceptible to having a bad experience show up on Facebook.

The bottom line: These firms need to think a bit more about Facebook than the average company

 

New Report: How Consumers Give Feedback

We just published a new Temkin Group report, How Consumers Give Feedback.

The report analyzes survey responses from 6,000 US consumers who were asked what they did following recent experiences that were either very good or very bad.

Here’s the executive summary:

Companies often discuss “word of mouth,” but how often and in what ways do consumers discuss their experiences? We surveyed 6,000 US consumers to find out. It turns out that the most common communication about good and bad experiences occurs between friends via email, phone, or in person. While few consumers share their experiences directly with the companies that pleased or displeased them, far fewer shared those experiences via social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and 3rd party ratings sites. Our analysis also uncovered differences by age, income, ethnicity, and educational levels. We analyzed the customer bases of more than 140 companies and discovered that Days Inn, E*Trade, and Apple were the most susceptible to negative feedback via Facebook. Days Inn, Courtyard By Marriott, and Hyatt are the most susceptible via Twitter.

Download report for $195

Here’s one of the figures that shows the data at an aggregate level across the US:

Download report for $195

The report analyzes the differences by age, income, ethnicity, and educational levels of consumers. Here are some other tidbits of information from the report:

• Hispanic consumers used Facebook more than Caucasians and African Americans to talk about their experiences.
• African American consumers were the least likely to tell companies about a bad experience.
• The higher the educational level, the more likely consumers were to give feedback directly to companies.
• Higher income consumers were more likely to share their good and bad experiences via Twitter

The bottom line: Are you soliciting, listening to, and acting upon the right feedback?

Facebook’s Simple Redesign Is Worth Noting

Matt Vella wrote an interesting article in BusinessWeek about the redesign of Facebook (which includes a few quotes from me). Here’s an excerpt:

<Facebook> is readying an extensive overhaul of its core profile pages in an attempt to bring back the sleek aesthetic that helped fuel its early popularity… The moves come in reaction to Facebook’s becoming “more cluttered and harder for users to parse,” according to Katie Geminder, the site’s director of user experience and design… the redesign represents a major simplification.

My take: I really like Facebook’s move to simplicity. As I’ve mentioned in my work on disruptive customer experience strategies, offerings tend to get overly complex over time as companies add new features and capabilities. So there’s an opportunity to disrupt many industries with an ultra-simple alternative.

Facebook must keep involving its users in the redesign. The relationship between Facebook and its users is like a landlord and her tenants. While tenants recognize that the landlors owns the building, they don’t want her to redecorate their apartment at will; it’s their space.

The bottom line: My advice to Facebook: Keep it simple, keep it real.