Stats

Generations Online in 2010. Generations Online in 2010 There are still notable differences by generation in online activities, but the dominance of the Millennial generation that we documented in our first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.

Milliennials, those ages 18-33, remain more likely to access the internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone. In addition, they still clearly surpass their elders online when it comes to: Use of social networking sitesUse of instant messagingUsing online classifiedsListening to musicPlaying online gamesReading blogsParticipating in virtual worlds However, internet users in Gen X (those ages 34-45) and older cohorts are more likely than Millennials to engage in several online activities, including visiting government websites and getting financial information online. Finally, the biggest online trend: While the youngest and oldest cohorts may differ, certain key internet activities are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. How Videos Go Viral [INFOGRAPHIC]

In the past three weeks, almost 10,000 Facebook users have "liked" this brief clip of the world's cutest dog playing with a chew toy.

Coincidence? Or spot-on calculations leading to a viral sensation? How videos get passed around the web — in other words, how they "go viral" like the latest strain of influenza — is more a science than an art. Certainly, creativity is a factor; but there are also tried-and-true formulas for online video success. And the most important factor of all is optimizing for shareability. For example, on average, a 15-second clip will get passed around nearly 37% more than a slightly longer clip, and Facebook accounts for three-quarters of online shares of video clips — by far more than e-mail and Twitter combined.

Given those factors, it's not surprising that the above-linked video, a female-targeted Facebook clip, was so widely viewed and shared. Click image to view full size. Lead image courtesy of iStockphoto, Kronick. Americans & TV: How Social Media Users Watch Video [INFOGRAPHIC] Researchers at Lab42 did a study of social media users, surveying 400 adults earlier this month.

Using applications within Facebook and MySpace, they found out that even bigger changes are underway in TV land, and viewers are doing lot more of their TV viewing online. In this exclusive graphic, you can see that viewers, particularly those under 34 years of age, are more willing to watch TV shows online. And, an overwhelming majority of the respondents are recording their TV shows on DVRs such as TiVo. It's no surprise that social media users are a lot more tuned in to video on the Internet, but the most unexpected statistic was that at least 72% of those aged 34 and younger are watching TV shows online.

Looks like that prediction we heard last year that online video will quadruple Internet traffic by 2014 might happen even sooner than expected. According to Lab42, the 400 respondents were equally distributed across age groups and income levels. Social Networking Dominates Our Time Spent Online [STATS] Social networking now eats up twice as much of our online time as any other activity. According to new stats from Nielsen, sites like Facebook and Twitter now account for 22.7% of time spent on the web; the next closest activity is online games, which make up 10.2%. The stats also show the degree to which social networking is displacing other forms of communication, with e-mail as a percentage of online time plunging from 11.5% to 8.3% from June 2009 to June 2010.

Instant messaging also saw a significant drop in share, with a 15% decline from last year. However, e-mail use on mobile is still on the rise – from 37.4% to 41.6% — presumably as users continue to migrate to smartphones from feature phones. Here’s the full breakdown from Nielsen: Are these trends consistent with your own online usage and the trends you’re seeing elsewhere? [img credit: foreversouls]