FYI PPL: Understanding the Communication Styles of Teens

September 2nd, 2009 • 2 comments Behaviors, Teenagers
Tags: Uncategorized

The other day, I received the following IM from my 14 year-old niece: “So, wats up? How ru? Gtg … mom is callin me. C ya l8r k? Byee.” (Translation? “So, what’s up? How are you? Got to go! Mom’s calling me. See you later, OK? Bye.”) To say that I’m concerned about my niece’s academic future — based on her communications skills — is an understatement. Recent research, however, has reassured me that while teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world and craft a significant amount of electronic text, they see a fundamental distinction between their electronic social communications and the more formal writing they do for school or for personal reasons.

According to a Pew Internet Project study , teenagers are utilitarian in their approach to technology and writing, using both computers and longhand depending on circumstances. Their use of computers for school and personal writing is often tied to the convenience of being able to edit easily. And while they do not think their use of computers or their text-based communications with friends influences their formal writing, many do admit that the informal styles that characterize their e-communications do occasionally bleed into their schoolwork.

• 57% of teens say they revise and edit more when they write using a computer.
• 63% of teens say using computers to write makes no difference in the quality of the writing they produce.
• 73% of teens say their personal electronic communications (email, IM, text messaging) have no impact on the writing they do for school, and 77% said they have no impact on the writing they do for themselves.
• 64% of teens admit that they incorporate, often accidentally, at least some informal writing styles used in personal electronic communication into their writing for school. (Some 25% have used emoticons in their school writing; 50% have used informal punctuation and grammar; 38% have used text shortcuts such as “LOL” meaning “laugh out loud.”)

All of this matters more than ever because teenagers and their parents uniformly believe that good writing is a bedrock for future success. Eight in ten parents believe that good writing skills are more important now than they were 20 years ago, and 86% of teens believe that good writing ability is an important component of guaranteeing success later in life.

So, next time I receive an IM from my niece, I can be assured that her informal writing style is not indicative of her future academic success. OMG, I <3 that.

What Women Want from Social Networking Sites

August 18th, 2009 • Behaviors, Studies & Research
Tags: eMarketer, facebook, linkedin, MySpace, ShesConnected, twitter, women and social networking

According to the female-oriented social networking site ShesConnected, women who are core social network users expect a lot, according to “The Power of Social Networking For Women Research Study.” Participants in the survey were recruited through several social networks and were encouraged to share it with friends, as reported by eMarketer.

Is Twitter Pointless Babble or A Legitimate Communications Tool?

August 17th, 2009 • Behaviors, Social Networks, Studies & Research
Tags: Gizmodo, microblogging, Pear Analytics, twitter

With Twitter being the shiny new penny of the social media world, many are eager to find out how people are actually using the microblogging platform.

Pear Analytics, a data analytics company, studied the content of tweets to find out how people are really using Twitter. The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value.

The winner? Pointless babble tweets, with over one-third of all studied tweets fitting into the “I’m clipping my toenails” category. Conversational tweets came in a very close second with 37.55 percent. Pass-along value — or RTs — captured third-place with only 8.7 percent, but, interesting enough, spam only accounted for 3.75 percent of all tweets studied.

Other key findings:
- News tweets are heaviest at 2:00pm CST on Tuesdays
- Pass-along value tweets are most frequently seen at 11:30am CST on Mondays
- Spam tweets flow consistently all day, everyday
- Conversational tweets are heaviest on Tuesdays

Gizmodo recently published a blog post “If Only 100 People Were on Twitter”, with data visualization by Dave McCandless. What’s significant is that there are“5 loud mouths” per 100, or 5 percent of the folks who contribute 75 precent of the tweets. What does this mean? A handful of narcissistic people are contributing a significant amount of pointess babble to the Twitterverse.

As Twitter continues to develop, not only as a brand but as a communications platform, it’s likely that the usage trends will also evolve. Hopefully, the largest violaters of pointless babble will stick to Twitter’s inherent 140-character philosophy: Less is more.