According to a Nielsen survey conducted last month, the average American now spends 68 hours per month (combined home/work usage) online.  Excuse me, what?  Unless I’m more of a Web addict than I thought, that strikes me as shockingly low.  I want to know who, exactly, was polled here to achieve such a paltry statistic.  Amish toddlers?  Tibetan monks?  Miley Cyrus, now that she has denounced Twitter?!

Between staying current on celebrity gossip, paying bills, virtual shopping and Facebook alone, I’m definitely spending more than a mere 2.26 hours online per day — and that’s not even factoring in work-related usage time.

What about you?  How much time do you typically spend online in any given month?

-Jessica

Yesterday, PR Week and MS&L announced the results of their first annual Social Media Survey. The overarching finding wasn’t too surprising…

“Despite the perceived prevalence of the use of social media in the marketing world, there are many companies that are still cautiously entering the space.”

I think most of us in the communications industry are aware that much of corporate America still thinks “the Twitter” and “the Facebook” are for teenyboppers and (if at all) are very cautiously considering the ever-diminishing MySpace (I don’t even remember my login details for MySpace!) for their debut in the social mediasphere. It’s sad because many of them could have improved their brand identities a long time ago, had they been ahead of the curve. Exhibit A: Wisconsin Tourism Federation (WTF?)

Here (in a nutshell) are some of the survey’s interesting findings:

• 37% of the 271 marketers surveyed reported that their company does not include any social media tools
• 49% of companies do not have a specific approach regarding the use of social media on behalf of the company
• 10% discourage employees to use social media to communicate on behalf of the company
• 22% allow only marketing and communications employees to use social media on behalf of the organization
• 20% of companies encourage all employees to use social media channels to share messages on behalf of the company or its brands
• Of the companies that do leverage social media…
  • 47% manage and monitor customer feedback
  • 40% reach key influencers
  • 39% use it to understand the consumer and competitive landscape
  • 32% use social media to create brand communities and fan pages
  • 31% use it for media relations
  • 28% for product launches
  • 19% for product reviews
  • 6% to monitor conversations

-Andréa S.

Despite a Wall Street Journal article last week stating that younger demographics are not hugely active on Twitter, new data from comScore (via Mashable) suggests that younger users (specifically, ages 12-24) are now Twitter’s fastest-growing audience segment.  What are we supposed to believe?!

Mashable makes a great point, stating that unlike other social media sites, Twitter is actually “aging in reverse.”

-Maria

This infographic has been circulating for a while now, but it’s so pretty and interesting. However, I would argue that the “loud mouths” who create 75% of all tweets and the users who have over 100 followers are probably the exact same people.

—Alyssa

Nielsen’s recent study on the ages of Twitter users was big news last week (in fact, I believe “teens don’t tweet” was even on Twitter’s trending topic leaderboard at some point). The study found that the majority (64%) of Twitter users are between the ages of 25 and 54, which corresponds to anecdotal evidence. In fact, only 16% of Twitterers are under age 25 (including me!), contrary to popular belief. This information is important to keep in mind when evaluating whether a brand should establish a Twitter presence — is its target demographic even on Twitter?

—Alyssa

We all know I’m just slightly biased regarding the supremacy of The New York Times. But in spite of that, let me just pose the following question: does any other news site create such incredible interactive graphs as NYTimes.com?

The above is a representation of how Americans spend their time, displayed on a minute-by-minute basis. The graph can be parsed by gender, race, employment status, age, education and number of children.

I’m constantly amazed by the creativity, artistry and genius behind the NYT interactive graphs (which I’ve blogged about before). But this kind of ingenious graphical representation takes supreme smarts and, ostensibly, cash. Thus, creations like the one above provide yet another reason to cross our fingers and hope that larger newspaper/media companies like the NYT stick around for a long, long time, as without them, this sort of invention could never be financed.

-Elise

When you see something online that you want to share with a friend, do you e-mail it to them, or just post it on their Facebook wall? Apparently, most people do the latter these days. Unless it’s something extremely personal, odds are your friend isn’t the only person who’d enjoy the little web tidbit. So why not share it publicly and spread the love?

—Alyssa

A new study suggests that only 22% of Millennials use Twitter. As a Millennial who does appreciate Twitter, I’d say that this is true, as most of the people I interact with on the microblogging site are older than me — the key demographic seems to be people in their late 20s and 30s.

I think this is because college students are so caught up in Facebook, and want to see what their friends who live down the hall are doing. However, once you enter the working world, you want your social network to expand beyond the people you already know from four years at college, and Twitter is a great place to connect with new contacts you might not have the chance to meet otherwise.

One more thing to note — take these survey results with a grain of salt, as the sample size of the study was only 200 consumers between the ages of 18-24.

—Alyssa

In honor of Mother’s Day this weekend (did you send your mom a card yet?), feast your eyes on the Top 10 Online Activities for Moms, a result of a study by the Marketing to Moms Coalition. Some activities that are strangely missing from the graph? “E-mailing offspring pictures of LOLcats,” “forwarding e-mail chain letters that have been circulating online since 1998” and “SuperPoking people on Facebook.” (Just kidding. Love you, moms!)

—Alyssa