Friday, January 5, 2007
I came across a Harris Interactive poll entitled Friendship in the Age of Social Networking Websites that contained an interesting statistics regarding "Friendship in the age of social networking" . Myspace,facebook, Friendster and other Social Networking sites has completely redefined the concept of Friendship in today world.Today Online social networking sites provides teens to talk to virtual strangers and strike up friendship online and express themselves through Pictures, Blogs,Videos and even broadcast themselves live through a webcam. More than twice as many as 13-17 age group say that they prefer to spend their times with friends than parents(56% vs 22% )For teens friendship is being developed beyond the walls of the classroom and home and is increasingly shaped in Online hangouts like Myspace,tagworld ,Facebook,Bebo,Stickam and other SN sites .
The poll found that teens have an average of 52 friends on the IM buddy list, 38 friends entered in their cell phone - but they have 75 friends in SNS. The poll also found a 75% of teens use SNS. This is a useful point of comparison for Researchers and Companies interested in the nature of friendship on Social Networking sites.One rather interesting aspect was around 36% of the age group 13-18 has friends whom they never met in person and only talked to them online ,while 87% had friends whom they talked to both in person and online .
The poll found that teens have an average of 52 friends on the IM buddy list, 38 friends entered in their cell phone list, but they have 75 friends in SNS. The poll also found a 75% of teens use SNS
This survey onlso strengthens my belief that consumer good companies and Greeting card companies have to move with the times .Products and Advertisements have to target teens keeping in mind where they spend the bulk of their time Online .Social networking sites are fertile ground for tagetting this segment .Social networking sites provides teens to form groups and Niches regarding what they like and what they dont , Marketers are sitting on a great opportunity to target these teens through highly interactive marketing process .Companies must learn to embedd social networking into their sites around their central core . One great example to how some brands are integrating social networking to their sites is 123greetings.com. They have added codes of many social networking sites whcih lets users embedd the card pages directly by copying and pasting directly to their profiles or as photo comments . You can check them out at 123Greetings Birthday ECards Section.
You can also check out Fred Stutzman blog on Online Friendship here
Download the entire survey here
Labels: Friendship Articles
