CNN President “Really Afraid Of” Social Networks

Over the years, there have been more than a few arguments about whether online news sites are killing newspapers.  Now, due to some almost startling comments made by the president of CNN, it looks like the next round of old media-new media disputes might concern social networks and cable news organizations.

According to the AFP, Jonathan Klein's remarks on this subject were in no way ambiguous.  He said at Bloomberg BusinessWeek's 2010 Media Summit New York, "The competition I'm really afraid of are social networking sites.  That's an alternative that threatens to pull people away from us."

Klein then explained, "The people you're friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. . . .  Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news.  We don't want the 1,000 people you follow in Twitter to be the most trusted sources for you. . . .  So I'm far more worried about the 500 million people on Facebook than I am about two million people watching Fox."

That's an interesting take on the power of social networks.  It implies - at the very least - that CNN anchors are going to spend a whole lot more time referencing Facebook and Twitter from now on.  An ad campaign and new apps could follow, too.

On a broader scale, Klein seems to be saying that social networks' users can easily - even unwittingly - make or break major corporations.

Facebook And Twitter See Big Mobile Gains

Facebook and Twitter access via mobile browsers has grown by triple-digits in the past year, according to the latest research from comScore.

More than a quarter (30.8%) of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago.  Access to Facebook via mobile browser climbed 112 percent in the past year, while Twitter soared 347 percent.

"Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.

"Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser."

In January, 11.1 percent of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. Much of the growth is due to smartphone owners accessing social networking sites on their mobile browsers. Just 6.8 percent of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.

Access to the most popular social networking sites via mobile browser continues to see significant growth.  In January, 25. 1 million mobile users accessed Facebook, up 112 percent from the previous year.  MySpace attracted 11.4 million users about half that of Facebook during the month.

Facebook's mobile browser audience surpassed MySpace in February 2009, three months earlier than the Facebook audience climbed past that of MySpace on the PC-based Internet in May 2009.

Twitter, which has experienced solid growth in both mobile and PC-based visitation, attracted 4.7 million mobile users in January, up 347 percent over the previous year.




 

 

Americans Favor Online News Over Newspapers

The Internet is now the third most-popular news platform, behind local and national television news and ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio, according to a new survey out today.

The survey of 2,259 U.S. adults, conducted jointly by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, found 59 percent of respondents gets news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day.

The Internet and mobile technologies are at the center of how people's relationship to news is changing. One-third (33%) of cell phone owners now access news on their mobile phones and more than a quarter (28%) of Internet users have customized their homepage to include news from sources and topics that are of interest to them.

Nearly forty percent (37%) of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or shared it via postings on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, people use their social networks to filter, assess, and react to news. They use traditional email and other tools to exchange stories and comment on them.  Among those who get news online, 75 percent get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52 percent share links to news the same way.

The survey also found the typical online news consumer routinely uses just a handful of news sites and does not have a particular favorite. Overall, Americans have mixed feelings about this "new" news environment. Over half (55%) say it is easier to keep up with news and information today than it was five years ago, but 70 percent feel the amount of news and information available from different sources is overwhelming.

 

"Americans have become news grazers both on and offline - but within limits," said Amy Mitchell, deputy director for the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"They generally don't have one favorite website but also don't search aimlessly. Most online news consumers regularly draw on just a handful of different sites."


 

UCLA Turns To Social Media To Improve Teen Health

With the average teen spending nine hours a week on social networking sites, the UCLA School of Public Health has partnered with Health Net of California to develop a health literacy program using social media in an effort to encourage teens from 13 to 17 to take better care of their health.

"Over 90 percent of teens today use social networking sites, not just to interact with their peers but also to get information about issues that are important to them," said Michael Prelip, a professor of community health sciences at the UCLA School of Public Health and one of the principal investigators of the project.

"This intervention will provide important clues about the effectiveness of social media in influencing adolescents' understanding of their health care rights, responsibilities and benefits so that they can become good health care consumers."

The two-year project, funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, will use a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of two different interventions - a Web-based social media intervention and a "usual care" intervention - to improve preventive care and decrease emergency room visits among adolescents.

"One of our chief goals is establishing best practices for encouraging teens to use their insurance and the health care system so they can become knowledgeable health care consumers as they transition into adulthood," said Nancy Wongvipat Kalev, Health Net's director of health education and cultural and linguistic services and one of the study's collaborators.

The study will look at the impact of various traditional and newer social media usage patterns regarding health literacy and preventive health practices.
 

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