Aptus Consultants

A poll of NMA readers suggests 69% think social networks are better for running brand campaigns than campaign sites

The Mintel report found that consumers are most likely to pay attention to ads placed on search engines (54%) and price comparison sites (43%) than social networks (28%) and email (22%).

The report also found key gender and age differences for which types of sites consumers pay more attention to ads on.

In the digital world a social network is an online community of people who are brought together usually because they have some form of common interest, activity or characteristic. Whilst the precise features and benefits of each social network vary, they all tend to offer users the ability to:

Mobile social networking grew by 152% between November 2007 and November 2008 in Western Europe, according to ComScore.

The figures show that in November 34% of mobile social network users in Western Europe accessed social media exclusive of all other mobile web content.

The UK has the highest penetration of mobile social networking at 9%, nearly triple that of Germany, where the activity is the least popular at 3.3% penetration. The average penetration rate across all countries is 5%.

When Derren Brown wowed the nation by correctly guessing six lottery numbers in a live TV show, he claimed to have used the 'Wisdom of Crowds' as the means by which he identified the winning sequence. Great entertainment no doubt, but what has all this got to do with process improvement, risk reduction and cutting the cost of regulation?

The digital media hype merchants would have you believe that the fact Facebook now has over 300 million users is a sign of a new social phenomenon. In reality of course, communities have grown and thrived since the dawn of time, so are social networks really anything new?

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A short explanation of social networking websites and why they are popular.