Omnivore or Inactive: Segmenting Internet Users
When it comes to consuming web 2.0, are you, as Charlene Li described in her recent Forrester Research report Social Technographics -- a creator, critic, collector, joiner, spectator or an inactive? Or are you an omnivore, connector, lackluster veteran, productivity enhancer, mobile centric, connected but hassled, inexperienced experimenter, light but satisfied, an indifferent or an off-the-network as John Horrigan calls Internet users in the Pew Internet and American Life Project report issued last week?
Source: Pew Internet and American Life Study
There seem to be a lot categories to choose from. But as Greg Sterling and Curtiss Thompson point out, the implications are important for companies and marketers. Millions if not billions of dollars are being spent trying to determine the best way to reach you and the less web-enabled. With market segments increasingly more fragmented and consumers more indifferent to traditional marketing, how do you target the largest base or a narrow niche? And with what tools?
Companies are calibrating product and marketing strategies to identify those who have or who are inching toward a web 2.0 lifestyle. They also realize they can't ignore the other half of all Americans who, that Pew Study reported, are only occasional users of modern Internet gadgetry. Making my living in the blogosphere, I tend to forget how few users have fully embraced web 2.0 -- a point that John Paczkowski, Rex Hammock, Dan Farber and Larry Dignan all emphasized on their blogs last week. On the other hand, Mathew Ingram, George Nimeh took a more hopeful stance. Nimeh, for example, saw the 31 percent of American adults who are “elite tech users” as “incredibly encouraging.”
With the growing number of studies and searches slicing and dicing the American consumers’ Internet usage patterns, I asked Charlene what distinction she draws from her study and that of the Pew report.
Praising the Pew study for its comprehensive segmentation, Charlene wrote me:
"Our Social Technographics was designed to be a strategy planning tool, and deals specifically with people’s actions, and primarily online. It’s not a strict segmentation in the way that Pew has done it, but rather, a categorization that helps understand how people move up and down the ladder depending on their participation levels. My belief is that people can be motivated to be Creators or Critics in different areas of their lives. My personal example is I’m a Creator when it comes to social media, but a Spectator when it comes to the environment and politics. But I can easily see myself moving “up the ladder” in these two areas. Social Technographics thus becomes a strategy planning tool for deciding how to approach social strategy, based on the specific Social Technographics profiles of your target audience."
It seems then that categories are a useful framing device and that one size may not fit all. As for me, I am clearly an amalgam but according to the Pew Internet Topology Test, I am a connector. Larry Dignan reports that he "is a cross between an omnivore and a lackluster veteran," while Rex Hammock jokingly discovered much to his surprise that he is "a male in his mid to late twenties."
Using Pew’s segmentation terminology, I don’t have the many gadgets of an omnivore, but I “voraciously” participate in cyberspace, express myself online and do a range of web 2.0 activities. At the same time, I'm like a mobile centric “feeling less technologically competent and definitely needing help getting new technology to work.” And like an off the network user, I am probably more likely to flip on an episode of South Park, without Tivo, on Comedy Central on a non-plasma television than download the latest YouTube video. I recognize the value of user generated content as entertainment and know where to find it, but I don’t live it. Social media is much more professional; it’s business and source of much intellectual curiosity.
Ultimately, given the myriad Internet usage patterns, companies are not well served by merely jumping head first and deploying a laundry list of Internet tools to reach the growing number of web 2.0 users. As Forrester advises, “a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.”
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: Social Technographics; Forrester Research; Charlene Li; Social Media; Pew; Pew Internet and American Life Survey; John Horrigan; Market Segmentation;
