US Army turns to Pinterest to reach a female audience
While Pinterest is more popular with men in the UK, in the United States, Pinterest is most popular with women.
That, you might think, would make it a pretty unlikely target for the US Army's social media team, but that's not the case. In fact, Pinterest is of great interest to the US Army precisely because of its demographic makeup.
Is Google+ facing a demographic fail?
If the future of the internet is social, as some believe, the long-term fate of the world's largest search engine could rest on how well its social network, Google+ does.
While it has a long way to go before it catches up to Facebook in popularity and adoption, with over 100m users, it would appear that Google is off to a decent start.
Tablets are from Mars, e-readers are from Venus
Whether you're male or female, there's an almost equal chance that you own a smartphone. But what about tablets and e-readers? Do men and women share different preferences when it comes to the latest and greatest mobile devices?
According to Nielsen's latest survey of mobile device owners, the answer is increasingly 'yes.' In Q2 2011, it found that 61% of e-readers were owned by women, up from 46% in the third quarter of 2010. Tablets? Almost the opposite: 57% of them are owned by men.
Android's problem: stingy users?
The success of Android in the mobile market may be one of Google's biggest accomplishments outside of search, and it may be crucial to the company's long-term success generally.
But when it comes to ecosystems, Android still lags well behind Apple, which has built the mother of all ecosystems around iOS.
The question for Google: why is that?
Demographics aren't dead
Are demographics dead? Will marketers eventually buy most if not all media inventory, including television inventory, on performance-based models instead?
Executives from agency Initiative think so.
Changing communications for changing times
Arguably the most importance facet of the growth of social media and increasing personalisation of the web has been the resultant growth of the online audience.
Thanks to the increasing sophistication of both technology and user interfaces, it is significantly changing the nature of how audiences react online, not just in the younger generation, but also older users.
Coming soon: real-time Facebook ads?
Facebook has built the internet's largest ever social network, and on the back of that, a multi-billion dollar business.
Not surprisingly, a big part of that business is advertising. Much like Google before it, Facebook serves as a gateway to millions upon millions of consumers. On volume alone, Facebook makes a mint.
Facebook and Bebo UK users compared
As a bit of a statistical nerd, I like to keep an eye on the latest statistics on social network usage. Anybody who reads the Tamar blog will know that I regularly report on how Facebook in particular is growing, but until recently I had very little to compare it against.
Finding accurate and up-to-date information on MySpace is nye-on impossible (unless I'm missing a trick?) and Bebo proved fairly hard to find as well. We've all heard that Bebo is supposed to be the social network of choice for kids, and Facebook proves much more popular for the older generation, but do the numbers back this up?
New studies: Twitter is the Twilight Zone of social networks
What is Twitter? Quite simply, it's pretty much anything you want it to be.
But who is using it? How are they using it? The results of two new studies might surprise you.
Social media isn't just for the kids anymore
When we think of the most avid users of social media and social networking, the image that comes to mind is probably that of a tech-savvy 20-something.
It's well-known that Gen Y has led the adoption of many of today's most popular social media services but is it really correct to assume that Gen Y is still leading the social media pack?
