MIMA - Lee Rainie - Internet Usage

I attended and spoke at the MIMA (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) Conference yesterday.

The conference had around 700 attendees with backgrounds in design, marketing and advertising. I was really impressed with the conference and came away with some nice nuggets.

First up was Lee Rainie. Lee is the founding Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. They study in detail the impact of the internet on American families. Lee's talk was jam-packed with stats. The podcast will be available next week as well as the slides which I will post then.

First, some basic stats.

Internet Usage:

• 72% adults
• 93% high schoolers
• 98% college students (with margin of error could be 100%)

Broadband has reached almost 50% homes in U.S.

• 55% of online teens have created their own profile
• 51% of young adult internet users have uploaded photos to the internet

• 26% teens remix stuff they find on the web as posts, blogs, etc.
• 9% of adults

From their research they break down internet users into 10 types (unfortunately I am missing some of the percentage breakdowns). The big surprise is that the low tech crowd is 49% of the population! And only 8% are technophiles!

High End Group

Omnivores - 8%
Late 20's. The gadget lover crowd. Own an iphone (probably live in the bay area :-). Photo & video freaks. Wireless. Lots of students & racially diverse. Broadband 90%.

Connectors - 7%
Late 30's. Email & IM primarily. Really into technology but messaging is critical. Skewed toward women & upscale African American.

Lackluster Veterans
40'ish. Broadband 77%. Tech is necessary for them, but not exciting. The like the experience of being off the grid. Often rather watch TV than youtube.

Productivity Enhancers - 8%
40'ish. Broadband 71%. Flipside of lackluster. Use for productivity. Skewed toward english speaking latinos.

Middle Group

Mobile Centric - 10%
Skewed toward African Americans & Latinos. Not early adopters. Phone texters. Photo takers.

Connected but Hassled
Mid 40s. Female dominant. Worries about information overload. Tech is not fun!

Low End Group

Inexperienced Experimenters - 8%
Enthusiastic, but very inexperienced. Not tech savvy at all. Easily confused by the technology & blames themselves.

Light But Satisfied - 15%
Prefer Traditional Media. Mid 50s.

Indifferent - 11%
Broadband - 12%. Lifetyle choice is to NOT be online and be proud about it.

Off the Network.
Mid 60s. Female dominant. Diverse Race. Poorest Group. Broadband - 0%

To find out what type you are, take the quiz at the their site.

The last nuggets was Lee's take on 10 ways the internet changes the life of people it touches.

• Volume of Information. Long tail expands
• Velocity of Information. Smart mobs, wisdom of crowds, bottom up intelligence (think google search, social networks)
• Venues of Intersecting. Place shifting, time shifting, having "absence presence" (e.g., physically there but chatting with someone else over the internet)
• Venturing for Information. Search strategies change, expectations of what you can find out changes.
• Vigilance for Information. Attention is truncated. Continuous Partial Attention and elongated attention (deep dives for information). Result is "expert amateurs". Someone goes home from Dr. and researches medical condition and sometimes can know more than the Dr. did about the specific condition and latest treatments.
• Valence (relevance) of Information. Being Digital. The Daily Me. The Daily Us. People become alienated in social & information bubbles of their choosing.
• Vetting of Information. Becomes more social. Credibility tests change as people ping their networks.
• Viewing of Information. Information is disaggregated. Becomes more horizontal. New reading strategies to digest information. Coping mechanisms.
• Voting & Ventilating. Tagging, rating, commenting. Collective intelligence emerges.
• inVention of information & Visibility of new creators. The read/write web. Everyone can publish. More people become "famous".