The Digital Age Vs. The Industrial Age

The industrial age heralded mass-manufacturing and the use of machinery to do so. The printing press revolutionized our thought processes and communications. With the rise of the industrial age the telephone and it’s widespread use, became possible.

At the opening of the industrial age, children were employed to fix machines. Many died. The work week was seven days, pay was horrid. A new social concept came into being – unions. The church also chimed in saying Sunday was a religious day of observance. The 5 day work week came into being, along with the concept of shift work. Huge social change occurred. As the telephone came into being, new social rules around its use evolved over time.

Enter the Digital Age, the advent of the fax machine, the Internet with email…snail mail use plummeted. It was easier and cheaper to use email. The cost of the transaction was put down to almost zero.

We are in a transition phase from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age. Watching this happen and with our ongoing analysis for clients across healthcare, manufacturing, shipping and more, we’ve noted some curious events happening. Here’s some of what we think will change;

Work Hours: The 8 hour white collar day will change, not so much the length of the work day, but the when. Shifts that enable connecting with other time zones (it’s already happening, has been for a while.) It will just become more common.

Work Location: Well, the concept of home office and remote office working is far from new. But it may become more realistic in the future.

Work Social Rules: Workplaces will first deny all access to social technologies. Then they’ll learn how to use those social technologies to their advantage (some already have) but limits will be put on “personal” social tools.

Etiquette: We predict a renaissance in social etiquette. Just as it’s not cool to wear your mobile on your hip, it will be uncool to check your mobile device at dinner functions and cocktail parties while talking to people.

Social rules are changing. A new age of transparency is upon us, but we are in the early stages of change. We’re just beginning to understand these social technologies and barely understanding their implications on our social behaviours. Paul Carr has some good insights.

Youth & Social Media in Atlantica

As we’re constantly monitoring Social Media use in the Atlantica region, here we release some high-level findings from this years ongoing research.

We define “youth” as 20 and under in this market. This research comes from a sample population of 1,500 within the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and PEI and the U.S. states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine  and Connecticut.

Social Network: Started out the year as MySpace (as expected) but has seen an increased use of Facebook (by 42% over 2008).

Social Places & Games: Club Penguin was most popular in the 7-12 age range while second was Miniclip and Yahooligans by Yahoo! was a close third for games services. For the 12-16 range we found Our World to be most popular. Picnik proved most popular for photo’s due to the services offered for photo manipulation. YouTube topped for videos, followed by Vimeo as a distant second.

Social Communications: MSN seemed to be the choice for “chatting” with second being eBuddy and GTalk a distant third followed by AIM and ICQ, Mebo was second to eBuddy for connecting multiple services . Controls and some of the features enabled on MSN were the deciding factor for usage. Apple’s iChat barely registered use in the under 20 bracket.

We noted that the under 20 age range for Social Media tools enjoy services that provide creative outlets. Picnik as an example enables a wide range of free editing capabilities before a premium service kicks in. A habit of youth seems to be editing photo’s in a service like Picnik and then sharing them on Facebook or via messenging services.

We found that 53% of females are more active than males, although we were surprised to see such an equal usage whereas in the 20+ range we find women are 65% more active than men in Social Media, specifically Social Networking services.

There was almost no difference in services used between Canada and the U.S. A finding we found encouraging in the sense of cross-border relations as these youth grow up.

The in-depth report has been made available to select clients and is available for $750.

Age Groups and Social Media Usage Patterns: October 2009

Some of our findings in our latest analysis of Social Media use in New England, Atlantic Canada and Southern England. Our focus was on the 30+ demographics.

Research has shown women spend more time on Facebook than men. Our research into social media use in Atlantic Canada, New England and Southern England has backed this up. We’ve also noticed that different age groups perceive the technologies differently and use them for different purposes. Here’s some of what we’ve found that we can share:

Age 30-40: They’re driving much of what’s happening with social technologies, not the under 30 range. But are more conservative than the under 30 crowd. They’ll use social technologies for work and play, but more so than the 40-55 demographic. This group is also more open to leveraging newer services. PC age range in this group was about 2 years old. This group also adopts newer browsers with the majority using IE7 and FireFox.

Age 40-55: A very engaged segment and they will use social technologies for both work and purely social connection with friends. This age group is still fascinated with connecting to high-school and university contacts their parents couldn’t have enjoyed. The 40-50 crowd were also early adopters of the Web and so their usage behaviours correlate with earlier technologies. This range will use 3 or more social technologies and are 82% more likely to look at a new social media service. PC age in this group was an average of 2.5 years old.

Age 55 – 65: Are primarily motivated by their teen to early 20′s children who are often geographically separated by school or early career work. This age group prefers social technologies that enable picture sharing and family connections. Their secondary reason is personal hobbies, sharing with those of a similar mind. This group is not inclined to investigate new services. They’re more likely to stick with what they started with. They remain somewhat skeptical of technology and shy. This group will use 1-3 social technologies and are somewhat more likely to adopt new software and browsers with 42% using IE6 or 7 and the rest FireFox or Safari. PC age in this group was an average of 3 years old.

Age 65+: While still the smallest segment, this is changing. They’re preference is family connectivity over 90% of the time in the 1,500 people we surveyed. We found that this group tends to only engage in 1-2 social applications such as Facebook and a photo sharing site. They are extremely conservative in adopting new social technologies and consume most digital media through 2-3 sites. We also found this group very reluctant to change software apps they’ve grown comfortable with. In this demographic we found the highest continued use of IE6 (at 76%) and older PC’s (average age of PC being 5 yrs old.)

What we did find interesting was the commonalities across three different countries in each age group. There are some cultural differences, but I’m afraid we had to reserve those for paying clients. As could also be expected, privacy concerns escalated with age.

Methodology: We surveyed 3500 respondents via an online survey and email with a 75% completion rate. This was done over a period of 30 days. We surveyed people in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland then Surrey, Berkshire, Kent and Hampshire in England.

Social Media is Grayer Than You Might Think

Social Media too, has many gray areas. Just not the gray you might think. We’re talking about gray hair here. In the research we’ve done for clients, we’ve found an increasing amount of social media usage by the 50+ demographic, and we expect this to increase.

With txt messaging being so common today, even the 35+ demographic has begun to broadly engage with txt messaging. Our research in Atlantic Canada and New England states has shown us that the average age of a Facebook participant (remember, we hate the term “user”) is 47 years old. We see that increasing as well.

So what does this mean? Why does business need to care? Because it means more of a wealthier market it increasingly engaging with social media. Added to this is then the challenge of how one engages with social media and the tools used. We’ve found that the older the demographic, the differences in the tools and how those tools are used, become quite significant.

Some traits of the 40+ demographic using social media are behaviours such as less personal information revealed, a tendency to write longer and read longer blog posts. More “intelligent” or deeper and longer discussions on topics of interest in Twitter or on blog posts. Older demographics tend to stay more loyal to platforms (i.e. Facebook, Netlog or Twitter) and only move to new platforms/services that have become a mainstay in the social mediasphere.

Understanding the age group you are targeting will significantly influence the communications strategy you engage in, the advertising you conduct and the services/tools that you can leverage. Sounds much like the real world doesn’t it? The difference is that in the real world, your communications and marketing are “broadcast” format, whereas in social media it becomes more of a conversation. And the 45+ demographic is very eloquent and persuasive in their discussions.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Principal)