While the worldwide adoption of social networking is still increasing, other forms of social interactions, such as content creation, have experienced no significant growth in the past year, according to a new report from Forrester Research.
“Social Technographics data can be used as a benchmark to help understand where certain social media approaches might work and where they might fail,” said Forrester Research Consumer Insights Analyst Jacqueline Anderson.
“For example, while almost 40 percent of metropolitan Chinese consumers can be classified as Collectors, only 10 percent in Europe are [Collectors]. Providing the Chinese consumers with tools to easily tag content would be helpful, while resources would be better spent elsewhere for European target consumers.”
The number of people who joined social networks increased by 11 percent in Europe, 18 percent in metro China, and 11 percent in Australia. By comparison, North America saw slightly less growth, with only an 8 percent increase. On the other hand, between 2009 and 2010, no markets exhibited growth in the number of people who create social content.
“A lack of growth in social creation translates into a lack of fresh ideas, content, and perspectives,” said Anderson.
“For example, one-third of online consumers in the US regularly watch user-generated videos on sites like YouTube. But, only 10 percent of US online consumers upload videos they’ve created to public sites. The traits required to create social content are unique, and at this moment, the consumer market interested in these behaviors has plateaued.”