The latest Nielsen research report reveals the following:

• Americans spend nearly 25% of the time they’re on the Internet from their PC (about 6 hours/month), on social networking sites and blogs.
• The demographics of people on social networking sites is trending older. Twice as many Americans over 50 visited social networks than kids under 18. Adults are using such sites as a new way to socialize with friends and reconnect with old friends.
• As social networking gains in popularity—Facebook now has more than 500 million members—its newer members tend to be older, more racially diverse, and more varied by social class.
• Half of U.S. time online is spent on three activities: social networking, playing games, and e-mailing.
• Americans spend 36% of their time communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal e-mail, and instant messaging.
• Online games have overtaken personal e-mail to become the second most popular activity: 10% of time spent. Half of all Americans online spend some time playing games.
• E-mail is now third at 8%.
• Instant messaging is fifth at 4%.
• Americans spend 3 hours 15 mins per month watching videos or movies.
• Americans use the fixed Internet (from a personal computer) differently from their mobile devices. E-mail is dominant on mobile devices at 42%. Smartphones are expected to account for a majority of phone sales in the U.S. by the end of 2011.

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Last month, we told you about the official LDS Church Twitter accounts.

There is now a Twitter list that compiles the tweets from each of the official Church Twitter accounts into one feed. You can follow it at twitter.com/ldstech/official-lds-church-accts and get all the official tweets from the Church.

Note that the LDSMediaTalk Twitter feed is not an official Church account, so it is not included in the Twitter list mentioned above. You can still follow us at twitter.com/ldsmediatalk and facebook.com/mediatalk.

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The LDS Church’s page on Facebook just passed 300,000 people who “like” the page! Please share http://facebook.com/lds with friends and family.

Learn more about the Church’s main official page on Facebook and other official Church pages on Facebook.

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Social media use is really increasing, not just among the general population but also at work for both personal and professional reasons. A recent survey found the following results:

LinkedIn was the top site for professional social networking in 2009, followed by Twitter, which was used by 76% of respondents for professional reasons.

The top reasons users gave for using social sites at work were professional networking with colleagues (79%), learning about colleagues (66%), and general research (61%). A comparatively low 37% logged in to social sites for marketing to customers.

Of those who logged in to social sites during work for either personal or professional reasons, 61% did so at least once daily and 15% said they were on the networks “constantly throughout the day.” Even though 3/4 say it is unacceptable to check Facebook unrelated to work, more than 9/10 do so, and 2/3 see no problem checking personal e-mail on the clock.

Here are their results of what people deem to be acceptable social media activites at work:

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The official LDS Church page on Facebook has a new name. You can go there directly at facebook.com/lds.

There are now 281,840 people who like the Church’s page. You may want to recommend it to your friends. In yesterday’s article, I mentioned how you can help promote LDS Church content on Facebook by clicking “Like” on posts on the Church’s page.

Interested in getting started on Facebook yourself? Need to teach someone else how to get started? Watch this easy-to-understand video on how to use Facebook. It’s a simple tutorial to help grandparents (or anyone else) create a profile on Facebook, and upload a profile picture

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Social media is now the #1 activity on the Web. (Hitwise reports that Facebook has overtaken Google as the most popular Web site in the USA.) eMarketer estimates that nearly 60% of Internet users will use a social network at least once a month this year.

And it’s more than just teens and young adults who use social networks: it’s 60% of Internet users aged 35-44 and 50% of those 45-54. Women—especially moms—are driving much of the growth. Within 5 years, more than half of the 55-64 year-old Internet users will visit social networks regularly and nearly 40% of the seniors 65+.

Facebook has 400 million active users, 50% of which log on to Facebook every day. You can help promote Church content on Facebook by clicking “Like” on posts on the Church page or the Mormon Messages page, then any new posts on those pages will appear in your news feed and be seen by all your friends. Also use the “Share” link to make that post appear to your friends.

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine and 3rd most popular site on the Internet. It gets over 100 million unique visitors/month and over 2 billion views/day—that’s more daily page views than the daily primetime audience of the 3 major television networks combined! The Mormon Messages videos have been viewed more than 11 million times. 

Twitter has 75 million users. 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter—people update anywhere, anytime. Lots of usage is on mobile phones. You can help promote Church content on Twitter by using the keywords #lds and #mormon to flag tweets about the Church and #ldsconf when tweeting about LDS General Conference.

This growth is amazing. Online social networking didn’t even exist a few short years ago. To learn more about social media, watch the video Social Networking in Plain English or read about social media on Wikipedia.

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If you plan to tweet (post on Twitter) about this weekend’s LDS general conference, remember to use the hashtag #ldsconf.

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This weekend, the Facebook page of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“the Mormons”) passed 200,000 fans.

Interested in getting started on Facebook yourself? Need to teach someone else how to get started? Watch this easy-to-understand video on how to use Facebook. It’s a simple tutorial to help grandparents (or anyone else) create a profile on Facebook, and upload a profile picture

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BYU Professor Daniel Peterson and Scott Gordon FAIR have launched a new website with the testimonies of Mormon scholars: Mormon Scholars Testify. Bro. Peterson explained his rationale to the Church News:

“I hope to gather up testimonies from, well, Mormon scholars,” Brother Peterson said. “I’m trying, thereby, to comply with a request made about a year ago by Elder M. Russell Ballard and reiterated by other authors in the October Ensign that we use the Internet as a way of sharing our testimonies of the gospel.” (via LDS Church News)

Bro. Peterson suggested this could be one of many “vertical” websites highlighting the testimonies of Church members:

“I think there ought to be similar on-line collections of testimonies from athletes, executives, farmers, housewives, morticians, retirees, chess players, stamp collectors, everybody. The possibilities are endless, and I hope many others will take to the Web with their expressions of faith.” (ibid.)

More Good Foundation’s website Mormons Believe, or the yet-to-be-built Why I Believe, announced at the Boston singles conference, could be the home for these many testimonies, organized by profession, location, interest, or some other attribute.

Mormon.org itself has a few select testimonies and could conceivably offer a repository of testimonies someday.

24 Hour Fitness has a website with the stories of members whose lives have improved through fitness. It includes categories such as life improvement, recovery, athletic, and social. Imagine a similar website for the stories of people whose lives have been blessed by the Gospel in even broader and more lasting ways.

CORRECTION (Jan 18, 2010): As Daniel Peterson mentions in the comment below, this website is not affiliated with FAIR.

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Posts over the last few weeks have talked about using social media for sharing the gospel and staying connected with friends. But how do you decide which social media site(s) to use? Below is a quick review of each of the major social platforms.

Facebook

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: entertainment, lifestyle brands, and non-profits
• Biggest opportunity: building fans
• Biggest challenge: few appreciate Facebook advertising
• Metrics: fans, comments, likes, wall posts
• Helpful tools: Lexicon, ad interface, applications, analytics, connect, etc.

MySpace

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 15 to 25
• Ideal fit for: music and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: providing music samples
• Biggest challenges: noisy; losing market share quickly
• Metrics: friends, favorites, groups, impressions
• Helpful tools: Open Platform, MyApps, MySpace Toolbox

LinkedIn

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: service providers, industry associations
• Biggest opportunity: creating thought leadership via Q&A and Groups
• Biggest challenge: time commitment
• Metrics: profile connections, best answers, group members, discussions
• Helpful tools: Applications, Salesforce plug-in

Blogs

• Primarily used for: creating
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: about anything
• Biggest opportunity: develop thought-leadership
• Biggest challenge: requires significant resources over time
• Metrics: feed subscribers, comments, visits, unique visitors, page views, Technorati rank, pingbacks, inbound links, visibility in search engines
• Helpful tools: WordPress plug-ins

Twitter

• Primarily used for: creating (microblogging)
• Primary demographic: 35 to 45
• Ideal fit for: service industry, sharing ideas
• Biggest opportunity: customer service, consumer insight, sales and marketing
• Biggest challenges: noisy; reliability issues; platform limitations
• Metrics: followers, @ replies, retweets, direct messages, custom hashtags
• Helpful tools: BingTweets, TweetBeep, TweetDeck, HootSuite, CoTweet, Mr. Tweet, Twitalyzer, blog plug-ins

YouTube

• Primarily used for: creating, sharing, voting
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: big brands and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: creating viral content
• Biggest challenges: noise; conversions
• Metrics: views, comments, subscribers, ratings
• Helpful tools: TubeMogul, YouTube Insight

Adapted from Kent Lewis

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