Digital Media at Macmillan Cancer Support

I don't normally post on US stats, as stats bore many people and US stats aren't UK stats. However, I have included these as they go some way to explain why I keep harping on about my dislike for people to equate 'Smartphones' with 'iPhones'. Increasingly (and in the US, rapidly so), 'Smartphones' should be equated, if with anything, with 'Android'. Additionally, people have a preoccupation with Apps. The second table reinforces the fact that SMS/texting is still far and away the most common function used on mobile phones (how much SMS/texting does Macmillan do?). Other research I've seen also notes that somewhere between 80 and 90% of all downloaded Apps are either games or social media Apps - so although there is an App phenomenon, it isn't a business-related one as yet. As UK trends do often reflect US trends (in the longer term), this really should make anyone stop and think before creating an iPhone App (and then decide not to!) and really should encourage us at Macmillan to more fully explore what SMS/texting services we can put together to meet some of the more practical (but perhaps less glamorous) needs of PABC.

Smartphone Platform Market Share
78.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in June 2011, up 8 percent from the preceding three month period. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 40.1 percent market share, up 5.4 percentage points. Apple strengthened its #2 position with 26.6 percent of the smartphone market, up 1.1 percentage points from the prior reporting period. RIM ranked third with 23.4 percent share, followed by Microsoft (5.8 percent) and Symbian (2.0 percent).
3 Month Avg. Ending Jun. 2011 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2011. Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+. Source: comScore MobiLens

Mobile Content Usage
In June, 69.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 1.0 percentage points. Browsers were used by 40.1 percent of subscribers (up 1.5 percentage points), while downloaded applications were used by 39.5 percent (up 2.2 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 1.8 percentage points to 29.1 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 26.9 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.2 percentage points), while 19.0 percent listened to music on their phones (up 1.1 percentage points).
3 Month Avg. Ending Jun. 2011 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2011. Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers (Smartphone & Non-Smartphone) Ages 13+. Source: comScore MobiLens

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Socially Searching

Posted by Anonymous at 4:49 PM

For a while now, Google have been basing a lot of the search results you receive on what your social links have been sharing, talking about and rating.

To see how influential your own social graph is to your Google Search results, try this search query:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=active&source=hp&q=macmillan&btnG=Search&tbs=frim:1

It’s just a Google search for ‘macmillan’, but the ‘tbs=frim:1’ bit at the end makes any Google search query only use your social influences.

You’ll see why you receive certain results by the line under each one saying things like:

Katie Smith shared this

Macmillan Cancer shared this on Twitter - 28 Jun 2011

Mike Hobday shared this on Twitter - 4 Oct 2010

Macmillan - Digital shared this

or my favourite:

Rebecca Cryan shared this on Twitter - 4 Feb 2011

Since each Google Search for the same term can now return completely different results for each user, influencing the usual ‘dumb’ search is becoming less and less important. Queries like the one above, along with the work of Louise and Richard in Marketing, help us understand how our social interactions are influencing our search rankings… and for whom.

There’s more on this SlideShare presentation.