FEED: consumer experience report

Razorfish, a web-design agency, released it's FEED report in which it describes the results of a survey that investigates how connected consumers (those that use a broadband connection) behave online. It seems that the social aspect of web use seems the most promising way for businesses to engage these connected consumers. Some 76% of the respondents think that brands should advertise on social media properties while 49% claims to have purchased something based on a recommendation through a social website. About forty percent spends more than four hours per week on these sites. Mainly to stay in touch with people, but also curiosity plays an important role: social websites like Twitter provide peeks into the living of others.
The challenge for social websites will be to provide specific enough added value to keep members active. The survey reveals that 27% of the respondents indicate to use social sites because they like to try new things. If the newness loses it's shine, there should be enough value to keep participating. This seems hard: the latest stats show that the growth rate of sites like Facebook and MySpace is dropping significantly. If this happens for a site, it should be prepared to show it's unique value and proposition to users. Facebook and MySpace are very general and profit mainly from their size of the current community, but what is their next step? LinkedIn focuses on professionals, an interesting group because of the scarcity of talents. And Nike has its Nike+ website that concentrates on the running community. The report describes different lessons that could be drawn from the first experiences. Besides the social aspects, some other trends like mobile experiences and micro interactions are described as well.