Online Media Cultist

Lots of fun stats to pick through from a recent Universal McCann report on social media (found via ReadWriteWeb).

Some quick takes:

83% watch video clips, up from 62% in the last study in June 2007

The maturation of social media tools based around video has just begun. This is going to be an area of experimentation, funding, and entrepreneurship for years to come. Video advertising and video metrics is in its earliest stages as well.

78% read blogs, up from 66%

A remarkable figure, particularly in the face of those who dismiss the blogosphere. It’s here to stay kids.

RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%

Many inside the web-obsessed folk take RSS for granted these days, but we see that it’s really starting to tip over into mainstream consumption for the first time. That’s great news for innovative plays like Readburner, which harnesses RSS feed reading and story sharing and creates community features around it.

China is the world’s largest blogging market with 42m bloggers versus 26m in the US

Social media is worldwide and growing. It will be fascinating to see if and how social media and blogging adoption in China will affect government policies and reaction.

Overall, it’s easy to conclude that the social media monster is growing with no signs of slowing anytime soon.

A new study produced by Clearswift shows that lots of people use “social media” and “web 2.0″ sites at work. In fact, we’re told that “87% of office workers access web 2.0 sites each week.”

The implication of the study is that businesses should take note of “red flags” such as people spending too much time on non-work related tasks and the potential for “data leaks” (in the e-roof, I guess?).

I’ve got some issues with this study and its analysis as presented by Clearswift. First of all, I’d love to learn how they define social media and web 2.0 sites as compared to the rest of the Internet. In fact, the Internet is social media: it’s an interactive medium. Every time you hit that keyboard or click that mouse on a website, wham-o, you’ve just entered social media-land. That’s so web 2.0, you want to say. And you should. But not out loud, please.

Secondly, didn’t we already know that people spend lots of time goofing off at work in front of a computer? Does MySpace really provide the extra excuse people need to not put a cover sheet on the old TPS reports? In fact, if people want to screw around and not work, there is any number of ways that they can do it. Remember how you always used to see bored secretaries playing Solitaire and Mindsweeper?

In terms of “data leaks,” this comes down to common sense more than anything. Tom from MySpace and the fellas on your Fantasy Football message board aren’t trying to manipulate you out of the Great Secret Project that your company is building. “Social media” websites don’t play greatly into the equation. Either you have a good sense of what and what not to reveal about your personal life and your workplace, in real life or in front of a computer screen, or you don’t.

I’m being slightly tongue-in-cheek here. There are doubtless sensitive situations that come up when an employee engages in business-related discussions within a publicly viewable web environment. This collaboration with colleagues is doubtless largely a boon for the employee’s knowledge base and therefore benefits the organization.

So I would think that instead of laying down the hammer and restricting Internet access in the workplace, a short memo from the brass to the note of think before you type and try to give the Facebook and the Twitter and the AIM a break every now and again, we may be watching, ha ha ha, cough cough cough would be much more appropriate, and really better serves long term interests all around.

Web Worker Daily (which uses the coolest Soviet-looking font ever in its header) provides some good and practical tips for laying off the ADD-vortex of the Internet, including setting aside blocks of time for e-mail, and allowing yourself the right to lay off registering for yet another site “just because all the cool kids are doing it.”

Mashable, a blog that tags itself with the line “social networking 2.0,” has emerged as a leading source for news and analysis of the hyperactively growing nebula of web products and services that fall loosely under the handle of “social media” or “web 2.0″ (think everything from social networks to widgets to new fangled web communities to analysis of web start-ups and everything in between).

Mashable is now issuing an intriguing offer to its readers, which it calls Mash 10: write a well written story that reviews start-up companies in a given space (Mashable honcho Pete Cashmore uses the examples of “19 Ways to Make Social Sites Pay” and “MySpace Layouts Top 10″) and get paid around $.07 per word for doing so.

When done right, this kind of story has the chance to become very popular. Blog readers love Top Whatever lists, and followers of online media deeply appreciate sources that can break down the explosive growth of the industry and help to define and parse what is going on in various sub-spaces. For example, there are hundreds and perhaps even thousands of start-ups hoping to achieve some glimmer of MySpace’s popularity. Who is going after the Austrailian market, though? Are college football fans being tended to? What about Star Trek convention peoples?

These are all areas that are potentially worthy of exploration (along with several trillion others) and it’s intriguing that Mashable is seeking research and writing from its own readers for help in doing this. The money part is also a rather fascinating experiment. Let’s say that Mashable pays a reader $70 for a 1,000 word piece. Will the site make that money back and more in advertising revenue generated around the popularity of one story? It’s certainly possible. More likely though is that if 100 stories are bought and paid for, three or five or ten of them may help to bring the site increased long term readership and help to bring it closer to the TechCrunch range in terms of popularity.

The most challenging part about this experiment, I imagine, will be fielding responses from writers, discarding the junk, helping the good stuff to shine, managing the relationship with writers, and handling the money exchange. In other words, organizing and running any kind of editorial operation – particularly where money is involved – is labor intensive.

I hope that Mashable reports back on how Mash 10 plays out. If it manages to harness the skills, intelligence, and research powers of its own readership, look for other ambitious and growing sites to try something similar.