Wealthy Individuals Use Social Media More Than Most Americans

Wealthy Individuals Use Social Media More Than Most Americans

There is no denying the popularity of social media.  There are so many sites, it can be difficult to keep track them all. It is interesting to see who is actually using social media.  When sites like Twitter came out, many were using it more as a means of chatting about their day.  Times have changed and social media is now a very useful tool for businesses.  Sites like Twitter and Facebook now have a strong business presence. 

Wealthy individuals are recognizing the importance of using social media.  Recent polls have shown the wealthy to use social media more than the average Americans. See the results of a recent poll by SEIC.com listed below.  To read the full article, click here.

OAKS, PA., Oct. 19, 2010 – A new Quick Poll from SEI (NASDAQ: SEIC) today showed that 70 percent of high-net-worth individuals surveyed are users of Facebook and other social media sites. That’s considerably more than the number of daily social media users among the general populace. According to an August, 2010 report from the Pew Research Center, titled Older Adults and Social Media, 61 percent of Americans ages 18 and over have used a social networking site.

However, the Quick Poll results make it clear that wealthy individuals have a hard time squeezing in their social media time – just 17.4 percent of respondents said they use social media on a daily basis. While 38 percent of those surveyed by Pew had used a social networking site in the previous 24 hours.

SEI surveyed 46 wealthy individuals with more than $5 million in investible assets. Of those surveyed that use social media, 50 percent said they use Facebook. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they visit YouTube, while just under 35 percent use LinkedIn.

One in ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one in twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.

The use of Twitter and other services to share status updates has also grown among older users—most notably among those ages 50-64. While just 5% of users ages 50-64 had used Twitter or another status update service in 2009, 11% now say they use these tools. On a typical day, 6% of online adults ages 50-64 make Twitter a part of their routine, up from the 1% who did so in 2009.

By comparison, social networking sites have gained a much larger foothold in the lives of older Americans over time. One in five (20%) adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago. Likewise, 13% of online adults ages 65 and older log on to social networking sites, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.

Email and online news are still more appealing to older users, but social media sites attract many repeat visitors.

While email may be falling out of favor with today’s teenagers, older adults still rely on it heavily as an essential tool for their daily communications. Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day. Online news gathering also ranks highly in the daily media habits of older adults; 76% of internet users ages 50-64 get news online, and 42% do so on a typical day.¹ Among internet users ages 65 and older, 62% look for news online and 34% do so on a typical day.

Social media properties—including networking and status update sites—are newer additions to the daily digital diet of older adults. Yet, the “stickiness” of the sites is notable. To look at the data another way, among the pool of adults ages 50 and older who use social networking sites, 44% used them on the day prior to their being contacted for our survey.

The pool of Twitter and status update users ages 50 and older is too small to segment, but the behavior of this limited early adopter group does suggest a similar tendency towards regular use of the sites.

By comparison, less than half of online banking users ages 50 and older visited the sites on a typical day and less than one in five older users of online classified sites reported use of the sites “yesterday.”

Introverts and Extroverts: Which Type Prefers Social Networking?

I recently had a discussion in one of the courses I teach about whether introverts or extroverts were more likely to be on the social web.  Some students made a good argument for why there may be more introverts on social networking sites.  Introverts tend to like to take their time to think about what they want to say before they say it.  Therefore, the online environment is a good place for them to be able to type what they want to say at their own speed.  Other students made a good argument for why there may be more extroverts on social sites.  Extroverts like a lot of discussion and interaction with others and therefore it makes sense that they’d be out there conversing, even if it was in written form.

I did a little research and found an interesting study by Maggie Morrison and Sally McMillan from the University of Tennessee. A total of 351 persons participated in this study examining the behavior and characteristics of consumers in user generated content.  Their findings indicated that most respondents read or lurk more often than they post.  They also found that men were likely to score high on the posting factor and women were more likely to score high on use of social networking sites.

As far as the whether there were more introverts or extroverts, the authors found that participants who are more likely to lurk and post at social networking sites are also more likely to score high on the extraversion scale.

Check out a blog by abisignorelli.com where the author speculated that there were more introverts by clicking here.  The author put together a quick one question survey to gather some data.  Click here for that survey. At the time of this writing, the results from that survey indicated 57% were introverts and 43% were extroverts.

Blog.thick.com tended to agree that more introverts were on the web. In that article, the author states that the internet has helped the introvert come out of their shell.  To see the article, click here.

Twitterwatchdog.com also agrees that there are more introverts socializing on the Internet, stating that Twitter is a safe haven for shy people and introverts.  Check out their blog by clicking here.

Mashable.com noted in one of their articles that Guy Kawasaki, the 15th most influential Twitter user and one of the most recognizable names in social media, is a self-professed introvert.  Click here to go to the Mashable site to answer their survey to answer whether you are an introvert or an extrovert.

So what do you think?  Are there more introverts or extroverts out there social networking?  The University of Tennessee study showed more extroverts and the informal surveys showed more introverts.   In our book, The Young Adult’s Guide to Understanding Personalities, Toni Rothpletz and I write about the differences between introverts and extroverts.  We are both extroverts and find the differences between the two groups fascinating.  If you are interested in learning more about Myers-Briggs’ and their definition of the difference between introverts and extroverts, click here.

In our book we list several examples of each type of Myers-Briggs personality type.

Here is a list of some famous extroverts that we write about in our book:

• Tom Hanks
• David Spade
• Oprah
• President Obama
• Johnny Depp
• Michael Jordan
• Matthew McConaughey
• Ben Affleck
• Robin Williams
• Robert Downing Jr.
• Sandra Bullock

Here is a list of some famous introverts:

• Tiger Woods
• Albert Einstein
• Sir Isaac Newton
• Meryl Streep
• Julia Roberts
• John F. Kennedy, Jr.
• William Shakespeare
• Michael Jackson
• Marilyn Monroe

If you are interested in seeing more . . .you can check out the lists of celebrity examples in our book which will be published soon.  I will keep you updated.

Facebook Tweaks Allow Friends to Sort Those They Really ‘Like’

There is no denying that Facebook news grabs attention.  With the recent movie release, Facebook has been mentioned in many news articles.  Other than movie news, though, there have been some new changes that Facebook has incorporated.  Do you have a lot of friends and find it difficult to keep track of it all?  Facebook has made their site more user-friendly, allowing for sorting of friends.  You can now find information you really care about on your Facebook site.  Check out the recent article by Geoffrey Fowler from the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. unveiled three features Wednesday that it hopes will make using the social-networking site more friendly.

The new features are designed to give users more control over how they share personal information on the site with other people and third-party applications. In the past, some users and privacy advocates have complained that Facebook made it difficult to tailor communication for different types of people, such as co-workers or close friends, as people do in the real world.

The biggest change for users will be the new groups feature, which allows people to identify small circles of friends on the site, and share specific information and communicate with just those people. Users can decide whether the groups are public or private, and choose which information they want to share with each group.

At an event at Facebook’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said that giving people more control over how they communicate with different kinds of friends is the “big problem” that social networks face, and required a “social solution” rather than a technical one. “A lot of people talk about this as a privacy problem,” Mr. Zuckerberg said of the desire to share information with subsets of friends. “But more than that, it is an annoying problem.”

The other two new features Facebook unveiled address data control issues that had been raised by privacy advocates. One is a dashboard feature that allows users to keep track of information-sharing settings from third-party apps, such as plug-ins to other websites. The dashboard also displays exactly what personal information those apps are pulling from the social network. Previously, users could only adjust individual privacy settings for apps.

Chris Conley, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said the move was a step in the right direction, but the dashboard also needed to show what information users’ friends’ apps might be accessing about them, such as birthdays or interests. A Facebook spokeswoman said the friends’ apps issue was on the company’s radar.

The third new feature allows people to export the information they have entered into Facebook into one compressed zip file.

Facebook to make announcement, blogs swirl with rumors of new phone, redesign, Skype parnership

The blogosphere is in a tizzy over Facebook’s much-anticipated announcement, as techies ask the burning question: What exactly will the social networking site unveil?

And the rumors are flying as Facebook holds an invitation-only press event on Wednesday.

Top 50 US Cities for Social Networking

Netprospex had an interesting article ranking the top 50 cities for social networking. For the entire article, click here.

If you want  to see the entire report, click here.