Facebook, Twitter & YouTube are the heavyweights of social media – and for good reason. They each have their target market in which businesses desperately want to get a piece of. Everywhere you go, you see and hear of these three platforms more than any other platform. So it’s no wonder they’re the most recommended and used platforms in the social media industry.
But are they right for every business? Have we elevated these platforms to the point in which now if a business isn’t apart of them, they feel as if they’re not doing justice to their social media strategy?
I spotted an interesting data point in the recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, entitled “The Social Side Of The Internet.” The basic findings of the report – that Internet users are more social – may perhaps come as no surprise, but I love to look for little “spicy meatballs” in data like these – the interesting, dramatic disparities that you might not have guessed. Here’s one: Twitter users are far more likely to have discovered groups on the Internet, and spent more time on group activities, than are users of social networking sites in general, as the following table illustrates: