The Mobile Impact of Social Media

Increasingly, we’re seeing mobile play a key part in our research for clients. In fact, we saw a 30% increase in mobile driven engagement of Social Media tools in the first quarter of 2010 than compared to 2009.

In the microblog segment alone, we saw over 40% of the posts (over 50,000 measured in total) made in 80% of our research projects coming from mobile devices (Twitter and Identi.ca and a few others.) Similar results were found in looking at blogs and services like Posterous. We do not measure SMS/txt messaging.

People are increasingly pushing content via mobile devices. If Apple does in fact add increased video capability and with video becoming a key component of mobile smart phones in 2010 and onward, this only further drives the proof that mobile needs to be seriously addressed by business looking to engage in Social Media.

And if you’re thinking it’s just kids, it’s not. We found that over 35% of the mobile posts were made by the 30% demographic. Generation X and Boomers alike are increasingly using mobile phones. And we found that overall, they are more likely (62%) use a mobile device to post to social networking services such as Facebook.

Mobile will increasingly impact citizen journalism, instant commenting on restaurant service and similar service-experiences. Are you ready to address that capability?

(Author: G. Crouch)