A study released earlier this year by Anderson Analytics looked into the demographics and psychographics of social networking users on Facebook , MySpace , Twitter , and LinkedIn with a goal of providing marketers with information about users' interests and buying habits as related to their network of choice. The end result is a detailed look at the profiles and habits of social networking users on the web today. Some of the study's findings echo things we've already heard. For example, Facebook users tend to be old, white, and rich. MySpace users are young...and fleeing. Other info is new: Twitterers are more likely to have a part-time job, LinkedIn users like to exercise and own more gadgets. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! The Anderson study sampled over 11,000 GreenfieldOnline panelists (an online survey community) over an 11 month period to understand social networking services' (SNS) reach and overlap among the U.S. Online Population. In May, the company surveyed an additional 5,000 panelists of which over 1,250 participated in an in-depth attitude and usage survey. They then grouped the participants into two categories: those who use social networks and those who don't. To be considered a social network user, the participant had to use one of the sites in question in the past 30 days. Of course, not everyone is devoted to one social network alone. The study found that there is some overlap between sites, as shown in the chart below. Social Networkers, in General Out of the 110 million Americans (or 60% of the online population) who use social networks, the average social networking user logs on to these sites quite a bit. They go to social networking sites 5 days per week and check in 4 times a day for a total of an hour per day. Nine percent of that group stay logged in all day long and are "constantly checking what's new." Interacting with Brands When it comes to brands online, the study found that: 52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand, 17% felt positive when seeing a brand on a social network, 19% felt negative when seeing a brand on a social network, 64% were neutral or didn't care about brands on social networks, 20% would like to see more communication from brands online, 35% would not like to see more communication, 45% were neutral or didn't care. Social Networking Myths Shot Down A couple of interesting things that came out of the study included the debunking of some social networking myths. Social networkers are not as interested in friending strangers or creating "fake" friends to boost their ego. Out of the group, 45% connect only to family and friends and another 18% will connect only to people they've met in person. In other words, two-thirds are connecting to people they actually know. Only 10% of those surveyed said they will friend anyone. Also interesting is that only 15% of social networkers say they log on at work, thus debunking another myth about how prevalent social network use is at the workplace. Non-Social Networkers The study revealed the reasons why some online users aren't into social networks. Surprisingly, it's not because they hate technology - they spent just as much time on the web as the networkers do. Instead, they don't use social media because either they don't have the time, they don't think it's secure, or they think it's stupid. Yet even out of the time-starved group, 22% report they'll start using social media in 3 months and 27% said they'll start using it in a year. Continue to Part 2 for details on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Discuss

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Who Uses Social Networks and What Are They Like? (Part 1)

Mobile technology, virtualization, the social web, cloud computing - a think tank study has all our good friends on a hit list. The study, which shows primary security and privacy concerns of U.S. government IT leaders, is making the rounds among military and government bloggers. Policy makers are being told that the applications we know and love are dangerous and pose gaping security loopholes for cyberterrorism. Is a Big Brother overprotective meltdown? Or are our advances really causing greater risks for all users? Sponsor The infosec-focused Ponemon Institute polled 217 senior-level IT executives located in various federal organizations. They called out these as the top 5 trends in Internet technologies that - at least from their POVs - put businesses, governments, and users at risk: 79% Unstructured data 71% Cyber terrorism 63% Mobility 52% Web 2.0 44% Virtualization Some of these trends are quite longstanding; however, they still cause a great deal of concern among our friends in infosec. Data breach (40%), cyber crime (40%), cloud computing (39%), outsourcing (34%) and open source applications (18%) also top the study's list of security vulnerabilities as seen through the eyes of government IT pros. However, Vivek Kundra, a 2.0 champion and federal CIO, said in a recent post , "Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology... 'This technology supports every mission our government performs - from defending our borders to protecting the environment. IT is essential for the government to do its work, and it is essential that we have access to the latest and most innovative technologies." It's sad and frightening to see mobile tech, social networks, and cloud computing called out alongside cyber crime and cyberterrorism as perceived threats to data security. But how much validity do U.S. leaders' fears carry? The Ponemon Institute reports, "IT operations and IT security professionals identified cloud computing, outsourcing of sensitive information to third parties, external threat of organized cyber criminal syndicates, cyber terrorism, and a mobile workforce... We believe the findings from this study provide government organizations with guidance on which threats are more critical than others to address." What do you think about the assessment of these high-profile and popular trends being identified as threats by IT execs in government? Is this a case of out-of-touch government bigwigs cracking down on the social web when black hat hackers are truly to blame? Or are so-called social media experts remiss in their duties to ensure that any products they roll out are secure enough for across-the-board use? Or is it a little bit of both? Most importantly, how do we solve the problem of ensuring that government and corporate sensitive information remains secure while users get to enjoy the benefits of Internet-based applications? We welcome your comments below. Discuss

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Think Tank Study Shows Top Web Trends Are Security Risks

Over the past decade, Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However, there have been signs that more social and distributed forms of online shopping are gaining traction. eBay, in particular, is beginning to lose ground . In this post, we review the past decade of e-commerce and the key trends. Advances in recommendations technology, together with the emergence of social media and mobile commerce, have combined to change the way e-commerce is transacted. Sponsor This is the third in a ReadWriteWeb series looking back at some of the key trends of the past 10 years. We previously covered the online music industry and the democratization of news media . Recommendations Technology Advances Over the past decade the online retail industry has seen great strides in the use of recommendations technology . Amazon has consistently led the field in this, with its sophisticated blend of personalized, social and item recommendations. Many of the retail recommendations in use today rely on implicit user data . These systems typically track user data, which is then analyzed with a set of usually proprietary algorithms. The end result: recommendations for users. Earlier this year we looked into Baynote's recommendation system : "Baynote observes real-time user behavior on a site and looks for implicit, emergent patterns. It uses collective intelligence and an affinity engine to analyze the data. Common behaviors which it tracks include page refers, queries, mouse movement, time spent on a page, peer behavior." Other similar recommendation technologies we've profiled include MyBuys , ATG and richrelevance . Social Media Takes Retail to Blogs, Social Networks As with nearly every other industry, shopping sites have increasingly used social media to promote their wares. According to Shop.org's recent eHoliday Study , 47.1% of retailers surveyed will be increasing their use of social media this holiday season. Specifically, more than half of retailers have "added or improved their Facebook page (60.3%) and Twitter pages (58.7%)" this year. Nearly two-thirds (65.6%) have "added or enhanced blogs and RSS feeds" over the same time period. One result of this has been a big increase in implicit social recommendations data across social networks and blogs. Another trend with ecommerce sites is distributed sales. Anyone can embed an Amazon store into their blog or social network these days. As Kurt Collins of social commerce vendor Cartfly told us in December , this won't replace "end destination e-commerce" - but it will "augment sales tremendously" at the edge of the network. Mobile Commerce Arrives, Albeit Slowly... The growth of mobile phones has been a big trend this decade. However, as Sarah Perez wrote in September, mobile commerce in the U.S. market has struggled for momentum. According to data from eMarketer , more than 70 million U.S. mobile phone users will access the internet from their devices this year. Despite this, the m-commerce market remains immature. In an April 2009 survey by RIS News , privacy and security concerns are still at the forefront of both shoppers' and retailers' minds. There is some promise that mobile commerce will finally gain traction in the coming decade. Mobile payments firm Billing Revolution found that on-the-go consumers are happy to purchase small ticket items like pizza and movie tickets, for example. One market that has shown strong signs of mobile commerce growth is Japan, according to Morgan Stanley . See also our analysis of mobile payments . Conclusion New recommendations technologies make it easier every year for consumers to find what they want, social media has driven a lot of retail activity to small websites and social networks, and mobile commerce has slowly but surely gained a foothold in e-commerce. These are just some of the trends in e-commerce over the past 10 years. While Amazon.com and eBay continue to be the giants of online retail, the Social Web and advances in web technology have both had a big impact this decade. See also: Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Online Music Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media Discuss

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Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: E-commerce

The social media data company Rapleaf has just released the final parts of their 3-part study involving the demographics and online behavior of webmail users. In the first part of the study , gender and age data was examined and revealed some interesting findings...like the fact that Gmail has more female users than male, for example. In the final sections of the study, the company has turned its attention to social networking data to discover more details about webmail users' social media profiles, memberships and network preferences. Sponsor Social Network Membership Data In the latter parts of the study, the company looked specifically at social network membership data for users of the AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services. Not surprisingly, the study found that Facebook was the most popular network across the board. What's more interesting is how well MySpace fared in some cases. On both the Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services, Facebook only had a small lead. Here, around 20% of all Hotmail and Yahoo webmail users were found to be on Facebook and MySpace. What does this reveal about the Hotmail and Yahoo user base? That they're a little more behind the times? Or that they've been around on the net longer and at one time had created (and possibly now abandoned) their MySpace pages? Unfortunately, the study can't provide us with these sorts of answers. The study also showed that Twitter is far more popular among Gmail users than anyone else. In fact, on the other services, it's 4-5 times less popular than Facebook. We would like to think that's because Gmail users are just more web-savvy and cool, but it's possible that it's because they're just younger than everyone else. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn is the least popular social network, but as Rapleaf points out, many LinkedIn users may have registered with their business email instead. Participation Levels - Hotmail Users have Most Profiles, Gmail Users Better-Connected When it comes to how the webmail users participate on social networks, Rapleaf found that the majority of the users have only one social media profile. But the service where the average number of profiles is the highest might surprise you - it's Hotmail. There the average is 2.5 profiles per user. Hotmail is followed by Yahoo, then AOL, and it's Gmail users who have the least number of social media profiles. That finding seems odd considering that Gmail users are younger and more likely to use Twitter in addition to Facebook. In fact, it almost seems like this data doesn't even fit with the rest of the study. However, the discovery that Gmail users are better-connected than the other users makes more sense. On average, Gmail users have the most friends on social networks with 46.2 friends while Yahoo users have the least with 40.0. Since again, Gmail users tend to be younger than the rest, it goes to reason that they would be in a demographic where their peers are more likely to have social membership profiles. Older webmail users, meanwhile, are still signing up for these sites. Although baby boomers and other middle-aged folks are joining sites like Facebook in droves these days, social networks are still dominated by the young . Methodology For the Rapleaf study, the company sampled 120,000 webmail accounts from users with @aol.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses. They then looked into the users' age, gender and social networking data by collecting information from public social media profiles. Obviously, in doing so, they've skewed their findings a bit, as the company notes in their original blog post . However, the sample size is large enough to form some conclusions about the members of these services, even if it relied on a particular subset of users. Discuss

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Gmail Users Better-Connected, More Likely to Tweet than Members of other Webmail Services