Turns out there are not huge swaths of the American public spending their day using social media.  Here are some surprising stats posted by our friends over at Frogloop:

• Twitter: 1.1 % of the U.S. population is on Twitter. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• Facebook: While Facebook says that they have 150M U.S. “active” users, which is 48% of the U.S. population, only 50% of active users login any given day. So 24% of the U.S. population logs into Facebook on any given day to check or post updates. (source: Facebook)

• LinkedIn: 0.37% of the U.S. population is on LinkedIn. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• YouTube: 19.94% of the U.S population is on YouTube. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• MySpace: 1.19% of the U.S. population is on MySpace. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has conducted a study examining the top 25 news websites in popularity in the United States, looking into four main areas of audience behavior: how users get to the top news sites; how long they stay during each visit; how deep they go into a site; and where they go when they leave. The findings show that “while search aggregators remain the most popular way users find news, the universe of referring sites is diverse. Social media is rapidly becoming a competing driver of traffic.”  Here are a few of the key findings:

• Even among the top nationally recognized news site brands, Google remains the primary entry point. The search engine accounts on average for 30% of the traffic to these sites.

• Social media, however, and Facebook in particular, are emerging as a powerful news referring source. At five of the top sites, Facebook is the second or third most important driver of traffic. Twitter, on the other hand, barely registers as a referring source. In the same vein, when users leave a site, “share” tools that appear alongside most news stories rank among the most clicked-on links.

• When it comes to the age, news consumers to the top news websites are on par with Internet users overall. This stands apart from news consumption on traditional platforms, which tends to skew older, and may bode well for the industry.

• Even the top brand news sites depend greatly on “casual users,” people who visit just a few times per month and spend only a few minutes at a site over that time span.  USAToday.com was typical of most of these popular news sites: 85% of its users visited USAToday.com between one and three times per month. Three quarters came only once or twice. Time spent was even more daunting: When all the visits were added together, fully a third of users, 34%, spent between one and five minutes on the paper’s Website each month.

• There is, however, a smaller core of loyal and frequent visitors to news sites, who might be called “power users.” These people return more than 10 times per month to a given site and spend more than an hour there over that time. Among the top 25 sites, power users visiting at least 10 times make up an average of just 7% of total users, but that number ranged markedly, from as high as 18% (at CNN.com) to as low as 1% (at BingNews.com).

The Pew Hispanic Center released a report a few months ago on the use of digital technology by Latinos. There is a lot of debate among grassroots organizers about the topography of the digital divide — so it’s good to see some raw data. Pew’s survey showed that Latinos are “less likely than whites to access the internet, have a home broadband connection or own a cell phone.” And while Latinos lag behind blacks in home broadband access, they have similar rates of internet and cell phone use.  Here are some other key findings:

• While about two-thirds of Latino (65%) and black (66%) adults went online in 2010, more than three-fourths (77%) of white adults did so. In terms of broadband use at home, there is a large gap between Latinos (45%) and whites (65%), and the rate among blacks (52%) is somewhat higher than that of Latinos. Fully 85% of whites owned a cell phone in 2010, compared with 76% of Latinos and 79% of blacks.

• Hispanics, on average, have lower levels of education and earn less than whites. Controlling for these factors, the differences in internet use, home broadband access and cell phone use between Hispanics and whites disappear. In other words, Hispanics and whites who have similar socioeconomic characteristics have similar usage patterns for these technologies.

• Respondents were asked specifically about whether they access the internet and whether they use email, texting or instant messaging from a cell phone. The findings reveal a mixed pattern of non-voice cell phone application use across ethnic and racial groups. Hispanics are less likely than whites to use any non-voice applications on a cell phone (58% vs. 64%), and they are also less likely than whites to send or receive text messages (55% vs. 61%). However, Hispanics and whites are equally likely to access the internet and send or receive email from a cell phone. And Hispanics are more likely than whites to engage in instant messaging (34% vs. 20%). Compared with blacks, Hispanics are less likely to access the internet (31% vs. 41%) or send or receive email (27% vs. 33%) from a cell phone, but rates of texting and instant messaging are similar for the two groups.

M+R Research Labs recently conducted an interesting study on whether “failing to communicate with your [email] listmembers consistently might cause them to not respond to your organization’s emails as consistently as they might if you stayed in better touch.” M+R looked closely at the effect that gaps in email communications have on listmembers’ responsiveness.  In other words: Do Email “Silences” Matter?

To find the answer they gathered data from four national nonprofit groups – The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, American Rights at Work, and The Wilderness Society.  They looked only at email advocacy messaging across all the groups, such as filling out an online petition. Here’s are the key results:

• Three of the four organizations experienced declines of at least 1% in click-through and response rates after gaps of one or more months in their email advocacy messaging. The other organization had only a one-month gap in its messaging and its click-through and response rates fell only slightly (less than 1%) the next month.

• An email silence of two to three months resulted in lower click-through and response rates to the next advocacy message. The gap in communications caused click-through rates to drop an average of 3.80% while response rates dropped an average of 3.03%. A one-month gap in advocacy messaging resulted in an average drop of 1.41% in click-through rates and a 1.06% drop in response rates to the first advocacy message after the gap.

We know that floodiing the inboxes of our members is a “no-no” — but now we know that regular, measured contact is key to keeping an active list.

In response to a recent study showing that as many as half of congressional staffers believe online form messages are fake, M+R Research Labs put together a helpful tip list on how to “turn online advocacy into real-world change.” The list was developed to help groups targeting Congress, but they’re equally usefully for local legislative organizing.

1. “Online petitions” should only be the first step. For most organizations, easy online advocacy actions such as petitions or letters to Congress are the best way to recruit large numbers of new supporters. But don’t stop there! Think of your online petition as an entry point for a new activist or a way to begin engaging your list on an issue, and then build up to higher impact actions like phone calls, letters to the editor, and offline events.
2. Make high-impact advocacy easier. Congressional offices pay much more attention to phone calls than online messages (as long as they’re from actual constituents!). But picking up the phone is much harder than filling out an online form to send a letter, and many supporters can find it intimidating. Make sure you’re guiding your advocates through the process and arming them with information, and consider using online tools to make calling and writing letters to the editor easier. For instance, M+R recently helped AARP create, implement and roll out a tool that helped constituents call their legislators with just one click. When users clicked the “call now” button, a personalized link made action-taker’s phone ring immediately, automatically connecting them to their own Members of Congress — no dialing required!
3. Integrate online and offline work. If you’re offering an offline petition, make an organizational commitment to deliver the petitions at a lobby day or press event, tell supporters what you’re going to do, grab some video or at least a few good photos while you’re doing it, and then report back to your activists on how it went. Hold virtual lobby days so that your supporters are writing and calling at the same time that representatives of your organization are visiting Capitol Hill. And help your most hardcore supporters meet with lawmakers on their own. The Human Rights Campaign ran integrated campaigns in 2009 and 2010 that helped ordinary supporters set up meetings with their Members of Congress in local district offices. The sign-up tools and promotions were all online, but the online effort was backed by a strong field team that followed up with constituents to provide them with the resources and support they needed to be successful (and to ensure that their meetings actually took place!)
4. Take advantage of social networks. A recent study found that 64% of surveyed Hill staffers think Facebook is an important way to understand their constituents’ views. Direct your supporters to their representatives’ Facebook pages and ask them to write on their walls. Encourage your supporters to tweet members of Congress who are on Twitter. Last year, the ENOUGH Project flooded the Facebook walls of ten members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee with messages in the hopes of getting the conflict minerals bill out of committee. 48 hours and over 500 messages later, two of the ten — as well as another three who had not been targeted — decided to co-sponsor the bill, which passed into law a few months later. During the health care reform debate, Organizing for America built a “Tweet Congress” tool that allowed users to enter their zip code to find their Representative or Senators, making it easy for them to connect and apply pressure via a new medium.
5. Go local. Capitol Hill is crowded and noisy. New tools make it easier than ever to reach supporters, and easier than ever for supporters to contact Congress — so more people are doing it than ever before. To avoid being drowned out, reach out to members of Congress in their home districts. M+R’s grassroots mobilization team puts organizers on the ground in key states and districts to mobilize local partners, recruit and train activists, push an issue in the local media, provide support to national online organizing, and facilitate congressional contact at town halls and district offices. We use online tools to connect supporters to organizers, generate grassroots momentum, and turn out attendance at locally organized events. It’s a highly effective combination!

Younger folks juggle a whole range of electronic devices in their daily lives. Pew has put out a new study that found that younger users prefer laptops to desktops and using their cell phones for a variety of functions, including internet, email, music, games, and video.

Among the findings:

• Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults, especially for adults under the age of 65. Some 85% of adults own cell phones overall. Taking pictures (done by 76% of cell owners) and text messaging (done by 72% of cell owners) are the two non-voice functions that are widely popular among all cell phone users.
• Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, with 69% of Gen X, 65% of Younger Boomers and 64% of Older Boomers owning these devices.
• Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop:  70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop.
• While almost half of all adults own an mp3 player like an iPod, this device is by far the most popular with Millennials, the youngest generation—74% of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with 56% of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).
• Game consoles are significantly more popular with adults ages 18-46, with 63% owning these devices.
• 5% of all adults own an e-book reader; they are least popular with adults age 75 and older, with 2% owning this device.
• Tablet computers, such as the iPad, are most popular with American adults age 65 and younger. 4% of all adults own this device.

Additionally, about one in 11 (9%) adults do not own any of the devices we asked about, including 43% of adults age 75 and older.

Turns out that Facebook activity on Election Day provided a sneak peak into the results with suprising accuracy.

Facebook’s political team found that 74 percent of House candidates with the most Facebook fans won their races, while 81 percent of the candidates won in 19 Senate races. Facebook “upsets” included Christine O’Donnell, Daniel Webster, Meg Whitman and Sharron Angle.

On Election Day, users over age of 18 were able to click an “I Voted” button and post a story to their Facebook wall telling their friends that they voted. More than 12 million people clicked the “I Voted” button, compared to about 5.4 million in 2008, according to Facebook.

So remember, Facebook can serve as both a social networking AND a metric tool.

According to a new study out of the University of Michigan, college students today show less empathy toward others compared with college students in decades before.

Researchers looked at 72 studies that gauged empathy among 14,000 college students in the past 30 years, and tracked that empathy has been declining — especially since 2000.  Digging a little deeper, students today show 40% less empathy vs. students in the 1980s and 1990s. The students are less likely to agree with statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me” and “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.”

Why? Well the researches didn’t try to answer that, but they wonder whether it’s because your people are having fewer face-to-face interactions, communicating instead through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.  They argue that empathy is best activated when you can see another person’s signal for help.

According to a survey conducted last year by the Boston-based marketing outfit Cone, nearly three quarters of those surveyed agreed with the statement that new media raise their awareness about causes but do not motivate them to do any more to help, and 39 percent said they didn’t trust that their efforts would actually help the cause.  For the study, the company defined new media as “dialogue among individuals or groups” on social networks, blogs, Twitter, online games, mobile devices, message boards, and sites that allow people to share photos, audio, and video. In some cases, the company also included e-mail and Web sites.

Among the other reasons participants sited for the lack of engagement:

• I’d rather spend my time and/or money supporting causes offline. (31 percent)

• I didn’t see any existing results or impacts. (27 percent)

• I felt overwhelmed by the number of causes on new media. (22 percent)

• My favorite issue, cause, or organization doesn’t use new media. (19 percent)

• I didn’t understand the tool/application. (17 percent)

“Americans are actively engaged with causes on new media, but they’re lacking a degree of trust that takes them to the next level of engagement,” Alison DaSilva, Cone’s executive vice president. “Organizations can overcome this barrier by showing tangible and compelling results, offering multiple consumer touch points, and making the bridge to offline activities wherever possible.”

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released their latest report examining social media use among teens and young adults.  One important finding is that teen blogging is on the decline while social media use is on the rise. Here are some key points of the report:

• Just 8 percent of Internet users ages 12 to 17 reported that they use Twitter.
• Blogging is declining as a means of communication for teens.
• Many teens are migrating from MySpace to Facebook.
• Three-quarters of teens and 93 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 have a cell phone.