Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Anderson Analytics’ GenX2Z releases partial findings from 2009 US College Student Report. The longitudinal study tracks college students attitudes and behaviors since 2005. This years special focus is social media including blogs, and Social Network Services (SNS) including Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

This week we released partial findings from our 2009 US College Student Report. The longitudinal study tracks US college students’ attitudes and behaviors since 2005. Different from other surveys which track youth trends, Anderson Analytics’ surveys contain several open ended questions which allow unaided, more accurate insights into which advertisements, brands, and websites are most important among students. Results are then coded using advances text analytics.

Advertising Age will probably cover our report in a bit more detail, but I thought I would at least say something about it here as well. This years GenX2Z study went beyond the most popular ads, brands and websites, also taking took a closer look at students use of social media including blogging, discussion boards, and social network services (SNS) such as Facebook, Myspace, and even professional networking site LinkedIn which we recently conducted an interesting project with.

Facebook remained the number one website this year after overtaking MySpace in 2007. Myspace has continued to drop and is currently in fourth place after Google and Yahoo! which both have offered additional services which students appreciate. Three new sites this year among the college students top-10 are LiveJournal, Amazon, and CNN.

LiveJournal which is now in 6th place after YouTube is new on Anderson’s list and is indicative of how blogging is catching on among students. The popularity of blogging is being largely driven by college women who are three times more likely than their male counterparts to maintain a blog.

I was surprised to see how blogging has gained in popularity among college students. From our other research we know that among online adults, only about 13% read blogs and 3% have their own blog. Students are four times more likely to blog, which means blogging will continue to be a relevant and popular new media.

Students are heavy users of social networks, however Facebook is by far more popular both overall and in terms of frequency of use. Over 80% of students use Facebook compared to 40% for the second most popular MySpace. Facebook is also used more often with 74% of students accessing the site at least once a week. Interestingly, social networking site LinkedIn, which has a much older member base, is also starting to catch on among 10% of students.

Anderson Analytics – GenX2Z College Study is conducted every year in the Fall semester among 1,000 US college students. All participants have confirmed .edu emails. Sample provides statistics with a +/-3.1% confidence interval at the 95% confidence level.

I plan to give you a taste of what the face of youth blogging looks like. I may interview one or two of our GenX2Z panelists who are also bloogers. Stay tuned.

-Tom

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