While I have no evidence to argue against this other than the myriad personal anecdotes from teens in the comments of the media coverage (I tweet therefore we tweet!) and the content in the stream of the popular trending  “Teens Don’t Tweet” topic on Twitter, I do have a question about the stats Nielsen provided.

As Nielsen puts it, “…only 16 percent of Twitter.com website users were under the age of 25. Bear in mind persons under 25 make up nearly one quarter of the active US Internet universe, which means that Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent.”

Fine, but check out the age breakdown in the graph.  You’ve got 55+ (avg US life expectancy is about 75, so we’ll go with that), 25-54, and 2-25.  That gives us ranges of 21 years, 29 years, and 23 years, respectively.

However, you have to be 13 to join Twitter, so that cuts the youngest demographic in half, making those ranges 21 years, 29 years, and 13 years.

This seems heavily skewed in favor of the older demographics and of course a demo segment would under index when half the audience are literally not legally allowed to use the service, right?  But I welcome more savvy statistics people to show me the light.

Regardless, it wasn’t the teens under indexing bit that caught me off guard the most.  No, what gets me is that 20% of the Twitter audience is 55+.  Tweetup at The Villages, tonight!

Since 2003, interests of the average online user have shifted significantly. Categories that consisted of portal-oriented browsing sites…used to be the top categories for user engagement. However, today the active Internet user tends to prefer sites that contain more specialized content. This change in preferences is seen in the fact that video and social networking sites have moved to the forefront, becoming the two fastest growing categories in 2009.

This trend isn’t a surprise to most, but it is cause for some concern for subscription-free online news publishers who have relied heavily on portals to drive the majority of their page views for the past decade.  A story on the homepage of Yahoo! essentially meant a publisher hit their traffic quota for the day.  But as the general online population fragments as the release suggests, these ‘portal hits,’ which had the potential to drive hundreds of thousands of page views to a news publisher, are becoming less reliable as traffic drivers.

It’s unlikely any future online destination will develop the traffic-driving muscle of MSN or Yahoo! (even the front page of Digg won’t get you there) now that internet users have been empowered with the tools and resources to filter content and discover the information they seek on their own terms.  However, as CPMs plummet and traffic metrics begin to gravitate from quantity to “quality” (engagement, depth, etc.), what becomes more important now is for publishers to take a step back, rethink the kind of traffic they seek to garner, and adapt to the changing social media landscape.   A few large scale news organizations are currently experimenting with different approaches to leveraging social networks to drive consistent, incremental traffic.  A few examples:

1.    The Chicago Tribune created “Colonel Tribune,” a sort of brand mascot, in 2008 to serve as the social media mouthpiece of the news organization.  The colonel regularly updates Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, listening and sharing stories he finds interesting.  The Social Media Strategist behind the Colonel, Daniel Honigman, believes “The Colonel acts as a touch point for the Tribune and serves as our voice on the web…Who is kind of a goofy man about town but is an actual person. He would even answer questions that you might have.”  (via mashable)

2.    The Des Moines Register encourages their staff to tweet and interact with readers, and features their streams on the site to allowing readers to discover them more easily.  Engaging with staff offers a unique access point for readers, puts a human touch on the information served, and can often assist writers with stories via crowdsourcing.  (I chose The Des Moines Register as I am from Iowa, and Iowa rules.)

3.    The NY Times has gone a simpler route providing headline feeds only on both Twitter and Facebook, free of added personal voice or opinion.  The idea is that because Twitter and FB pages are opt-in, a user who signs up to receive updates is assumed to be more valuable than say, a user from Digg, and likely to produce repeat visits and spend more time on your pages.   This is likely the most old media style approach to social network marketing, but an approach nonetheless.

4.    BusinessWeek’s BusinessExchange is perhaps one of the best examples of a publisher bringing social networking to their turf.  Other initiatives include the NY Times’ Times People, CNN’s iReport, and WSJ’s The Journal Community.   These communities encourage readers to connect and share with the goal in mind to increase engagement and build loyalty, as well as facilitate the integration of existing social networks like Facebook through Facebook Connect or an application, as Times People has done, adding multiple access points across a reader’s social sphere.

These are just a few notable examples of how news publishers are trying their hand at social network marketing, and I would love to see more examples in the comments (or hit me up on Twitter @patrickcourtney).  The relative success of these initiatives is largely unknown, although the Chicago Tribune has claimed a 10% uptick in page views as a direct result of their social media strategies.  Whatever is the case, the fact is social networks continue to grow at a blistering pace, and the opportunity to capture and engage your audience is growing with it.

1. Category – Best Viral Promotion, Games & Gaming Category (Silver W3): Ubisoft’s ‘1191AD: Brotherhood of Assassins’ Campaign for Assassin’s Creed
2. Category – Best Site, Social Networking Category (Silver W3): Hey! Nielsen for The Nielsen Company
3. Category – Best Site, Branding Category (Silver W3): Hey! Nielsen for the Nielsen Company
   
4. Category – Best Site, Entertainment Category (Silver W3): Hey! Nielsen for the Nielsen Company
   

The 2008 W3 Awards received over 3,000 entries from around the globe this year, we’re honored to be on their list of excellent work.

For the past 9 months we have been working with The Nielsen Company to develop an innovative social media platform that allows consumers to become a collective voice of change and, in turn, influence the decision makers in the entertainment industry, while also helping Nielsen reinvent the ways it conducts audience measurement in our DVR time-shifted, ipod using, web2.0 world. Today we’re happy to announce the “public beta” launch of Hey! Nielsen.

Part “opinion engine”, part social network, and part buzz tracker, it’s been a true labor of love for our team (including many late nights and weekends), and has given us the opportunity to work with a group of extremely talented folks acrosss all of Nielsen’s divisions (including Nielsen Media Research, Nielsen Entertainment, AC Nielsen, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Nielsen NetRatings, Billboard, Nielsen Trend, and Nielsen Wireless & Interactive).

We’ll definitely be posting a more in-depth case study in the near future, but why not check it out for yourself? In the meantime, we’re going to go catch up on some sleep but you can check out some of the latest buzz here:

- Hey! Nielsen: Influence the Ratings through Social Networking (via Mashable)
- Nielsen Rates Social Network Site a Must See (via CNBC)
- Hey! Nielsen screencast demo (via Demogirl)
- Hey! Nielsen Beta (via Being Peter Kim)
- Exlcusive Look: Hey! Nielsen Private Beta (via Muhammad Saleem)
- Reviewing Hey! Nielsen (via Pulse 2.0)