Nielsen + McKinsey: What is social media used for

Nielsen’s recent Social Media Report (we’ve posted about it before on this blog) revealed the size of the audience and the degree of consumption across social networking platforms in the U.S. New research by NM Incite, a Nielsen collaboration between Nielsen and McKinsey Company, further explores the reasons U.S. social media users visit social networks a bit more. Below, you can find the top drivers for social media (not surprisingly, top drivers of social media use among social networkers are keeping in touch with family and friends (89% and 88%, respectively) and finding new friends (70%).

Other drivers of usage
Another driver of use is the desire to view and contribute to reviews of products and services, as 68% of social media users (71% of parents and 64% of non-parents) go to social networking sites to read product reviews and more than half use these sites to provide product feedback, both positive and negative.

According to Nielsen, the study also looked at the differences in use among social media users with children and those without, finding that parents are more likely than non-parents to use social media for almost every thing, with dating being the exception. Parents are26 percent more likely than non-parents to visit social networks to play games, 23 percent more likely to use as a creative outlet and 20 percent more likely to use for entertainment.

Wow!?
No, these statistics and numbers are not surprising. But they will help us in our journey of better understanding the way social media is shaping the future of the internet, I guess 😉