• More than 4 in 5 American who are active online visited Social Media websites within the last month
• About a quarter of all time spent online is using Social Networks & Blog sites, more than twice as much as the next nearest category of websites.
• Facebook is by far the most popular social networking website globally, and in the U.S. Tumblr is among the fastest growing
• Growth in social media users comes from people of all ages and increasingly among those aged 55+, making social media more representative of the online population overall

As a member of Nielsen’s global communications team (full disclosure), I helped research and write this report, working together with our thoughts leaders/experts and designers to create compelling data visualizations that help convey Nielsen’s insights into consumer behavior.  The response to the report has been overwhelmingly positive, with coverage by key news media and thousands of links shared across social networks. Of course all ideas/opinions expressed on this site and in social media are my own (and are not necessarily shared by my employer), so hopefully you find the analysis and insight in this report as helpful as I do.

Visit the Nielsen’s website to read the Social Media Report and download a copy of your own.

Coincidentally 2009 marks the first 10 years I’ve been using this network of computers we call the Internet, in many ways I could have never anticipated using. Yet somehow New Media Strategies knew where things were heading years in advance.

This summer I had the unique privilege to gain hands on experience at NMS as an intern/online analyst, learning first-hand what online brand promotion and protection mean today (and some ideas about the future). Working with corporate clients from both Fortune 500 companies and Non-profits alike, I learned how Word of Mouth marketing carries influence; I was called a “Social Media Power-User”. Working with NMS was different than any other internship I had heard of, especially since I was given all the same responsibilities they expected of their entry-level employees.

Most importantly I contributed valuable research and report writing along with my team members, using online communication as a sort of public focus-group style audit to measure opinion and perception, and on at least one occasion to avert a crisis. These experiences were my primary responsibility at NMS, and helped me understand how to identify (and sometimes create) discussion in many valuable and unexpected venues; in many cases the majority of conversation took place outside of Facebook, and most of it cannot be found using a simple Google search.

Working at New Media Strategies I also met great people, who I’m looking forward to recognizing for their work, as I will describe in upcoming case studies of our work with clients. In the meantime I would like to thank NMS for the unique opportunity they gave me, and to congratulate them on their first 10 years on the Internet.

Says Matthew, “ I’m probably one of those people who panic when their smartphones sits battery, because without a mobile GPS, I can and the city lost.”  Morning of Matthew begins with checking e-mail.  Light lunch – and Mr. Hurst had to stop in anticipation of the bus.  Make sure that the site of public transport District of Columbia has no information about the delay of its route, he can afford to read the latest press.

Earlier this year I wrote about promoting my favorite non-profit cause, People To People, who also posted an interview with me. In addition to discussing my work with them in fundraising, we discussed the impact my years traveling as a student ambassador has had on me intellectually and personally. You can read the whole transcript on their Facebook fan page, where you can learn more about their work to create peace through understanding.

Thanks again to my esteemed colleague Gabe Bullard for the personal recommendation on his blog, which features his expert insight into media and culture that serve as a source of inspiration for this blogger.   I’m also looking forward to sharing interviews from my alma mater (Webster University) and the video we shot for People To People, which I’ll be happy to share here once they are both published.

@aCarvin and Katheryn Montgomery

“Are Media Making Us Dumber?” The question may sound like an oxymoron in an age where information is instantly accessible, but ubiquity of human knowledge does not always equal individual understanding. So how are media changing the way we learn and communicate important ideas?

I went to an American Forum last night to hear different perspectives on the issue and try to get a few answers.  Although consensus was difficult to reach in this panel discussion between academics and communications professionals, I think everyone agreed that people read a website differently than a book or newspaper article.

Without recapping the entire discussion (which is available online), one of the key themes of the night dealt with the ability to discern between the information which is valuable or junk. Unlike the process of reading a book, in which writers build support of its ideas gradually to create understanding, the internet does less to teach you to learn using reasoned arguments. At the very least, Google does nothing to discern between a scholarly paper and an anonymous ignorant individual – that is our responsibility.

Susan Jacoby advanced the idea that the internet is not an agnostic communications tool, but one McLuhan could successful identify like television as a tool designed to distract at every opportunity. And yet Andy Carvin was quick to distinguish distraction from an internet “designed for exploration and discovery,” appealing to our miserly nature as individuals to learn more about an idea.

Susan Jacoby

Even as civic engagement has become empowered through the internet, legitimate concerns about the internet becoming the primary or only source of information pose a challenge to those who want to introduce new ideas. Jacoby was wise to point out that the prevalent opinion was to treat Screen-time (ie Televison, Computer) as the reward for one’s work (ie reading and learning), as Professor Katheryn Montgomery described in her own household by watching the nightly news with her daughter.  Susan Jacoby’s argument that Books are necessary, not just for their information but to teach us the reward of taking on difficult challenges, was met by a seemingly hostile audience of students embracing-technology.  And while my own experiences may be more the exception than the rule, I see each medium as complementary if not mutually exclusive sources of communication; I still read books and investigative journalism as much as I read a blog.

One of the best discussions of the night came not from the panel but from AU Grad Student Joshua Berg, who introduced the idea that the internet enchances our ability to build knowledge through the use of hyperlinks.  He suggested that because a website allows you to link related articles where it would not be possible to gain these insights before it will create not just the ultimate fact-checking resource for journalists but the ability to deepen our understanding of ideas.
Indeed the panel added that Wikipedia is becoming more academically reliable as it builds more reliable peer-review processes (including citations), and that the future of annotated journalism is happening right now.  So that even while many worry about the loss of newspapers, Josh Hatch was quick to point out that,

“There is nothing about writing something down in a newspaper that makes that information any better than putting it on a website.  It’s just delivery mechanisms.”

Hopefully while the media for communicating ideas may be changing, perhaps the same values that apply to good journalism and academic knowledge will apply in these new media.

The American Forum is available online as an MP3 file. Also worthwhile: Nicholas Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in the July/August 2008 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

I knew it would help to build a website with my resume, but I didn’t realize how much.  Ever since publicly launching this site less than a month ago, I have been humbled by all the positive feedback from colleagues, classmates, prospective employers, and on social networks.

A few have even asked me to help build their own websites, although I haven’t decided how much to charge.  The truth is that almost anyone is able to build a website like this one. I had never learned how to buy a domain name, web hosting, or to set up the website until I tried it for myself.

I am a firm believer that blogs are capable websites for almost any purpose, so I devised my resume website as a WordPress blog (this part is free).  By hosting my own blog (not necessarily free) I needed to set up WordPress in their famous 5-minute installation.  This open-source software gives me the ability to customize by adding features and designs to my blog.  And since this is a blog, it doesn’t take any advanced knowledge of codes or programming to build it; making this website is as simple as writing with a word processor.

While I would be happy to make a few bucks helping my friends build nice looking websites, but I think they might learn some valuable skills by trying it for themselves.  At least a few of my friends have been doing just that on their own websites.   And until this site makes the first page of Google search results for my name, it’s going to take a lot more to make my own name stick out from all the other Matthew Hurst’s of the world.

Building this website has been an ongoing process, helping me to consider how it could be improved by incorporating feedback.  There is almost always a better way to do this work, so I really appreciate all the feedback so far, but I have trouble taking credit; after all it’s just another WordPress blog.

Although you can’t tell if they’re reading an important email or just texting their friends, there is an increasing chance they are reading a website.  In a Pew study of mobile phone use before 2008, at least 19% of Americans had already used a cellphone or PDA to access a website, and since then use of cellphones like the iPhone that can access web represent an increasing portion of any website’s visitors.   Because these devices use a smaller screen, and mobile websites might be loaded for different purposes, communicating on a mobile website is different.

Some differences seem more obvious than others: like most writing for websites, a mobile website should be succinct, with catchy hooks that make you want to click through and read the rest of the story.  Most mobile web browsers will only display around 50 to 75 words of legible text on screen at a time, so you’ll need to make the point quickly.  The screen itself promotes sites that are easy to navigate with narrow vertical scrolling, as opposed to the wide horizontal columns used on monitors for navigating most desktop web browsing.  And because people are using the web on the go, they are visiting sites for different reasons; one trend is location-based information services that take advantage of GPS and Google Maps (which should be the subject of another post on this blog of its own).

This website is specially configured for reading on mobile browsers, including the iPhone and Blackberry handhelds; simply visit the site on your mobile device and it should look a little different.  By utilizing a plugin to WordPress, you will be able to use most of the features in this site on your mobile device, including the latest blog posts, sending an me an email, leaving a comment, or just searching the site.  I would like to welcome any feedback you might have about my own mobile website, so that I can make adjustments for these rapidly changing communications tools.