Projects Done (At Least for Now)

This week I had a group project, which we finished on Saturday night. Whew! It felt great to finish two days ahead. I could now put my total attention on my first deliverable or part 1 of my final project. This was also due in two days so I knew I had to get going.

Earlier during the week I surveyed about 16 of my Facebook friends. Luckily, most of them completed the survey in 24 hours so I had my results. I just needed to analyze the results and link the results to other resources, find a Web 2.0 tool to share those results, and lastly, write a summary that highlight my findings. It’s Sunday night and I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

I had a really hard time choosing the tool to showcase my results. I wanted to use a new tool, but I knew it couldn’t be a tool that was difficult to learn because I didn’t have much time. Needless to say, I was frustrated and grouchy for most of the day on Sunday. I forced myself to take a break and do some errands with my husband. I came back still lost but with a clearer mind.

I looked at the resource, 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story. I previously watched many of the Dominoe stories using the various tools. I wrote down my favorites so I started with that. I made an account for Empressr then opened up my PowerPoint when I saw I could embed a slide show into it. I worked on my slides and got bored at around the third slide. I needed some new ways to present my survey data. I went to Google and I found Infogr.m. At first, I was just going to use that site to create a bar chart but then I saw some of the examples. I started to explore the site. I am proud to say that I played around with it and found that this was the tool I would use for my project.

Here’s the link to that part and below is my summary:

Analysis of a Social Media Survey
Amount of Survey Participants (n=14)
Men (n=4)	29%	More women use social media.
Women (n=10)	71%
Age
20-29 (n=2)	14%	Participants from age 30+ responded to survey and did it quickly. The two non-participants came from the 20-29 group.
30-39 (n=3)	21%
40-49 (n=6)	43%
50+  (n=3)	21%
Tools Used (Participants could choose more than one.)
Facebook (n=14)	100%	Facebook was the most popular social media tool used. Two participants said that they use Pinterest but only when they have time and still use it infrequently.
Twitter (n=3)	14%
Instagram (n=1)	7%
Pinterest (n=3)	14%
Frequency of Use
Once a day (n=1)	7%	Most participants frequent social media sites more than once in a day. One participant commented that using social media tools takes a lot of time and can be highly addicting.
Several times a day (n=12)	86%
Once a week (n=1)	7%
Main Use (Participants could choose more than one.)
Social (n=12)	86%	When given a choice to answer, their main use of social media tools was for social reasons.
Business/Work (n=2)	14%
Education (n=4)	29%
Other (n=2)	14%

Out of 16 surveys I sent out, 14 people responded. Of these 14 people, 10 were women and only 4 were men. In selecting my participants, I set out on Facebook to get an equal amount of men and women to send my survey to. However, I quickly realized that I had more women as friends on Facebook than I did men. The obvious reason for this fact is that I am a woman so I have more women as friends. However, in the report on the Demographics of Social Media Users, from the 2012 Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, women were shown to more likely to be on social media sites than men. I also found that my older participants, those ages 30+, answered the survey and responded quickly. The two people who did not respond to the survey at all were from the youngest group (i.e. 20-29). I can only guess that my 20-year-old participants were too busy to respond to my survey. After all, the same Pew report mentioned above showed those 18 to 29 are the ones most likely to use social media sites.

From my 14 participants, Facebook was the most popular social media site used. It seems that this is true not only for my survey participants but also the vast majority. According to Digital Marketing Ramblings (DMR), a site that offers a monthly running tally of how many people are using social media sites. In their July 2013 report, Facebook has 1.15 billion users. My 14 participants and I are part of those numbers.

Along with this fact, this site offers many other interesting facts about Facebook and other social media tools. Clicking on the links will open new tabs so you won’t lose your way. I would highly recommend visiting this site, and thus I give it 5 stars.

Below is a list of other facts from the DMR report I found that highlight my survey results:

·      The amount of people using Pinterest had a notable change and rose from 47 to 70 million since their last report in June 2013.

·      Twitter has a total of 200 million active users and a total of 500 million users total.

·      Both Pinterest and Twitter shared the second spot for the most used social media tool from my survey participants.

·      Facebook has 699 million active users and another 819 million active users on a mobile device.

·      Since 86% of my survey participants frequent social media several times a day, I’m sure they are part of these numbers.

·      The average daily Facebook likes is 4.5 billion and Justin Bieber is the most followed celebrity on Twitter with 42 million followers (Isn’t the minimum age for a Twitter account 13!).

·      Liking someone’s post and following Bieber indicates that many people are using social media for social reasons. With that, the 79% of my participants who chose ‘social’ for the main reason they use social media echo those statistics.

References:

Duggan, M. and Brenner, J. (2013, Feb. 14). The demographics of social media users – 2012. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Social-media-users/Social-Networking-Site-Users/Overview.aspx

Smith, C. (2013, July 14). How many people use the top social media, apps, & services. Retrieved from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/