As reported on Brian Solis, comScore also revealed insight into social consumers and their spending habits.  According to the report, 23% of Twitter users follow businesses to find special deals, promotions, or sales.  Of that, 14% of Twitter users reported taking to the stream to find and share product reviews and opinions.

comScore’s research also shows that Facebook and Twitter visitors spend more money online than average Internet users.  On Facebook, heavy users spend on average $67 online, topping the total internet average of under $50.  Active Twitter users spend an average of $63. Twitter users, regardless of how often they were on Twitter, outspent general Web users by upwards of 64%!

Taking a snapshot view, members of social networking sites spend 1.5x more online than the average Internet user, indicating that engagement or paid presence within social networks definitely offers benefits to businesses.  See Brian Solis for more detailed analysis and statistics.

70% of social networkers now keep in touch with family via their various online networks, up from 61% a year ago, showing a shift as those who signed up for social networking to keep in touch with friends are using these sites to connect with family members as well.

Two-thirds of all online adults today have visited a social networking site in the last 30 days, up from 53% in 2008 and 20% in 2007. Social networks have thoroughly penetrated the young adult market, as nearly 9-in-10 online 18-to 34-year-olds visit such sites today. Older Americans are definitely involved as well, with 41% of online adults age 50 and older making monthly visits to sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

The rise of social networking tracks closely with that of Facebook. As of April 26, 2010, 46% of the U.S. online adult population reported having visited Facebook in the past 30 days.

An astounding two-thirds of social networking site visitors (68%) say they have shown their support of a product, service, company or musical group by becoming a “fan” or a “friend” on a social networking site – this number is up 9% from last year.

Knowing that social networkers are comfortable connecting with products and brands they support, it’s important to understand which brands have the best opportunity to connect with this group. Specifically, Facebook users are full twice as likely as the average American adult to shop at H&M. Twitter visitors are 3.7 times more likely to shop at Nordstrom.

Geographically, the report shows that heavy users of social networking sites are primarily concentrated in the Northwest and markets that are heavily influenced by major colleges or universities.

See the 2010 Social Networking Report on Experian Simmons for more information, graphs, and the full PDF report.

Kistner notes that the decline of Web 2.0 and the rise of social media are connected. Since Facebook has hit the scene, the original social media tools have peaked in usage: blogs, wikis, forums and RSS.

Social media has been very popular for news outlets to cover (more so than Web 2.0 and new media ever were), and while has been quite disruptive to established media outlets, those that are embracing and even reinventing themselves are doing well (such as the NYTimes.com).

Facebook is the site receiving the most interest in the “explosion” of social media. It is so popular that no other search term in Google beats the number of searches for Facebook. The closest search term Kistner has found to rival the number of searches for Facebook is the word “the”!

Social media is showing dominance in traffic and usage in addition to monopolizing search attention. Compete.com is also showing Facebook as the mosted visited website, above Google and Yahoo.

Kistner concludes that social media is the innovation to invest in for businesses.

Please see socialfresh for all charts, graphs, and more information.

• 80% of respondents have an active Facebook account, and 23% of those without an active Facebook account plan to join in the next six months
• 67% of respondents have reconnected with people through social networking sites that they never would have otherwise
• More than 30% of respondents access Facebook and/or Twitter from their mobile phone (through a browser or application) once a day or more
• 50% of Facebook users click on Facebook ads to “like” a brand
• 37% learned about a new product or service from a social networking site
• 32% of respondents have recommended a product/service/brand to friends via a social networking site
• 32% of Twitter users re-tweet content provided by a company or product

As reported on MediaPost, Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, stated: “Social networks have made real and substantial changes in the lives of their users, in part by empowering them to more actively participate with brands and each other. More than a third of all respondents reported using a search engine to further learn after seeing an ad on a social networking site, for example, and more than a third think social networking sites are good sources of information about companies and products.” According to Middleton, social networking has led to a “more lively, two-way participation between brands and everyday customers.”

The study also revealed that consumers want to see more regarding products and services on social networking sites. Scott Haiges, noted that “Respondents expressed a strong desire to get more printable coupons [49%], notifications of sales and special deals [46%], and information about new products [35%] from companies or products on Facebook.”

Twitter introduced its advertising system in April, first allowing companies (including Starbucks and Sony Pictures) to pay to display their postings on pages of search results for popular topics.  Unlike search results, a trending topic appears on the main page Twitter users see when they are logged into the service, at the bottom of the user-generated list of the 10 most popular talking points on the site.

Coke chose to become the second company to sponsor a trending topic during Wednesday’s final qualifying matches, when teams from the US and England – two of the biggest nations on Twitter – go through to the next stage of the tournament.

“We have formed fabulous relationships with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,” said Carol Kruse, vice-president for global interactive marketing at CocaCola. “We get a lot of first looks and we jumped on that one [promoted tweets] immediately.”  Such enthusiasm from a large advertiser will come as a boost to Twitter’s efforts to generate revenues from its 190m monthly visitors.

Although Ms Kruse did not reveal how much Coke spent on the campaign, she indicated the test was not expensive compared to other forms of online advertising.

If any readers are able to locate the Experian Hitwise report, please post a link below.

The report concludes that B2C companies generally obtain more value from their social media marketing efforts. 51% percent of B2C companies have acquired a customer from Twitter, compared to 38% of B2B companies. The difference is greatest in customer acquisition figures for Facebook:  68% of B2C companies have obtained a customer from Facebook, but only 33% of B2B companies.

When it comes to professional social media network LinkedIn, the trends reverse. 45% percent of B2B companies have obtained a customer from LinkedIn, compared to only 26% of B2C companies. Figures for company blog customer acquisition are closest in range, with 57% of B2C companies and 43% of B2B companies obtaining a customer through this channel.

As reported in Mediapost, results indicate that both B2B and B2C marketers have difficulty with executive social media buy-in. However, a much higher percentage of B2B marketers report low executive interest than B2C marketers. Twenty-three percent of B2B marketers report their executives are curious but need education, compared to 39% of B2C marketers. The two groups converge at the top level of having executives who support and are actively engaged in social media (14% of B2B and 13% of B2C).

Survey results indicate that while a sizable percentage of both B2B and B2C marketers have little or no social media engagement, the obstacles they face are somewhat different,  with insufficient personnel to maintain social media being a common problem for both B2B and B2C but other obstacles include a lack of organizational knowledge, preference for traditional marketing and perceived irrelevance to their field.

The survey strongly indicated the need for better internal education tools for B2B marketers to prove the value of social media.

For additional information, and access to the complete PDF file and charts, please visit White Horse.

The study examined the social media consumption habits of 630 technology professional respondents and 350 technology marketing respondents, reveals a gap between social media usage and marketing – “While many technology marketers have established a presence on Facebook and Twitter, many are not taking full advantage of the sites that technology professionals frequent and value most, such as LinkedIn and blogs,” said Brandon Friesen, VP and online strategist at UBM TechWeb.

For technology professionals (CIOs, IT VP/Directors, IT Managers, Line-of-business management, etc.), social media now accounts for an average of 13% of the total time they spend consuming media for work purposes, and four in ten respondents plan to increase the amount of time they spend with social media.  LinkedIn and blogs were ranked as the top two social media most used for business purposes,  and almost 60% use social networks to get information about technology purchases.  Technology marketers (CMO/SVP/VP Marketing, Directors, Managers, Media Management, etc.) see Facebook and Twitter as the most influential sites, and they plan to increase spending on marketing for social media outlets over the next year.  One-third of technology marketers will expect to use social media to deliver a marketing ROI in 2010.

“Understanding the technology decision-making audiences’ motivations and behaviors when it comes to social media is exceptionally critical – especially at this stage where marketers are still feeling their way when it comes to social networking,” said Scott Vaughan, VP Marketing, UBM TechWeb. ”Social media allows you to get a market pulse and truly listen to what your customers and prospects are saying, driving both short and longer term go-to-market strategy.”

Social networking experienced the strongest growth in application access, increasing 240% to 14.5 million users. Accessing news applications followed, growing 124%, while sports information and bank account applications both experienced a 113% surge.

Social networking also ranked as the fastest-growing category accessed via browser, growing 90% from the previous year to reach almost 30 million users, followed by bank accounts ( growing 69% to 13.2 million users).

“Social networking is by far the fastest-growing mobile activity right now,” said Mark Donovan, comScore’s senior vice president of mobile, as reported on digitalmediawire.  ”With 20% of mobile users now accessing social networking sites via their phone, we expect to see both application and browser usage continuing to drive future consumption of social media.”