On November 12-13, I took part in a Washington D.C., hearing organized by the FDA on how pharmaceutical companies can use the Internet and social media to communicate with consumers. The hearing was a source of excitement in the healthcare industry – the FDA received more than 800 requests for 350 seats.

Over two days, more than 60 speakers – representing pharmaceutical companies, agencies, research firms, search and social media websites along with consumer organizations – shared their thoughts on how companies can responsibly engage consumers online, as well as questions and areas that need clarification from FDA.

Despite the variety of industries and agendas represented, I was surprised by the amount of consistency in the presentations and recommendations. Through the two days of the hearing, a few key themes emerged:

• No one can ignore the explosive power of social media.
  Several speakers shared great data about how often the Internet is used as a source for healthcare information. With patients, caregivers and doctors alike going online for healthcare information, it simply is not an option for pharmaceutical companies to remain separated from this discussion.
• No one company can be expected to monitor the whole of the Internet.
  In our Nielsen BuzzMetrics dataset of health-specific CGM sites, we collected an average of 83,000 messages per day over the past six months. This volume will only continue to grow, and no one can expect to monitor all of it.
• Pharma is ready to listen, but confusion persists.
  Most pharmaceutical companies would like to listen and even respond to consumer feedback online. However, there is confusion among pharmaceutical companies about how and when it is appropriate for them to engage with consumers online, and what responsibilities they have in doing so. This confusion often results in companies holding back on engaging in social media and sometimes even in listening to what their consumers are saying online.
• Adverse events are a red herring.
  Companies that have not done social media listening often have a fear that they will see a high volume of adverse events in online consumer conversation. (And for pharmaceutical companies, there is a requirement that these events are followed up and reported to the FDA.) In fact, the number of adverse events in online discussion is very low and manageable within the reporting systems that pharmaceutical companies already have in place.

This last point was the basis of my testimony at the hearing. In 2008, Nielsen analyzed online healthcare discussion to define the number of adverse events and found that just 4 of 500 messages contain adverse event information, and only 1 of those messages contained all of the criteria that are required for AE reporting.

For me, the key takeaway from the FDA hearing was this: More and more consumers are online looking for information on their health. Some of the information they find online is good, but some is not, and it’s not always easy to tell the difference. Right now anyone can contribute to the online health discussion except the pharmaceutical companies, who are waiting for guidelines from the FDA about how to engage online in an appropriate and responsible way.

There was a sense of hope among attendees at the hearing that the FDA will provide new guidelines on the Internet and social media relatively soon. When that happens, not only do we empower the pharmaceutical companies to interact with consumers online, but we give them a sense of duty to contribute to the conversation in a responsible way. Of course it’s not appropriate for pharmaceutical companies to get involved in every consumer discussion about healthcare online. But where these companies can contribute value to the discussion, let’s empower them to do just that.

Like many of my colleagues in the pharmaceutical/healthcare field, I look forward to watching and participating as the discussion continues to unfold.

• Download a healthcare-focused whitepaper authored by Melissa Davies: Listening to Consumers 101, How Marketers Can Leverage Consumer-Generated Media

SUMMARY: When is a phone not a phone? In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand—and limit—how children use new media.

• This article draws from a keynote speech delivered last month at the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) annual conference.

Digital media is an enabling framework for brands, parents and educators—it’s on demand, interactive, sensing and connected. And social media adds expression and sharing capabilities. A vast menu of web and mobile tools has been developed to facilitate information sharing and commentary on the Web. Applications and outlets have kept pace as consumers rush to populate blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, forums, message boards and online communities.

In the marketing world, the buzz is all about consumer-generated media. Companies have discovered thatno paid-for communication campaign has the impact of missives penned by consumers grounded in relevant, first-hand experience. Their influence is immediate, highly viral and authentic, with an extremely long tail attributable to archived material.

Giving voice
What motivates people to go online and on the record with personal opinions and information? In part, it is the very human need to be heard and to connect with others. It is the desire to make a difference, to influence the world around us. It is the drive to evangelize on behalf of the things and the people we love. And it is the ongoing quest for authenticity in a world governed by image.

Mobile devices represent a major impetus behind the social media movement, driving part of the 250% audience increase for the year ending February 2009. Teens represented 19% of the 12.3 million active social networkers.

Childhood connections
To adults, cell phones are a communications device. To children, they are a lifeline. Consider that the average 13-17 year old sends more than 2,000 text messages per month. Compared with the total mobile Internet population, teens are much bigger consumers of social media, music, games, videos/movies and technology/science.

Parental use of advanced data services mirrors that of their tween kids. If their children text, then 80% of parents will text as well. Although following their kids’ lead on devices and media, parents still set limits. Six in ten forbid downloads onto their children’s phone for financial and security reasons.

TV times
Even as social media dominates press coverage, TV viewing is on the rise among children and teens. Younger children age 2–11 spend almost 102 hours per month watching traditional TV at home—a 17% increase from May of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009. The increasingly popular time-shifted TV option averaged 5:26 hours during the timeframe, a 26% year-over-year increase.

Traditional TV viewing expanded at a slower rate (13.5%) among teenagers than among younger kids—to 101+ hours, and teen time-shifted viewing showed a 35% growth rate with 4:54 hours of watching time. Interestingly, Internet use was down (-15%), to 10:22 hours per month. The biggest media gainer was video viewing on the Internet, where Hulu and YouTube helped spike time by 66% for a total 2:41 viewing hours. Teens deployed mobile phones to catch videos, spending 6:30 hours with mobile video streams—a 20% year-over-year increase.

Young enough
The debate rages on: what is the right age to give a child their own phone? The answer seems to be younger every year, and if you don’t give them a phone, they’ll just borrow one. In 2008, the average age when kids started to borrow a cell phone was 8.6 years; in 2009, it was down to just 8 years old. As to ownership, in 2008, a child typically was given a mobile phone at age 10.1 years; by 2009, it was down to 9.7 years old.

The next time you hear “everybody’s got one”, the fact is, that classic ploy may be true. By age 10, roughly half of children own a mobile phone. By age 11, six in ten own a mobile phone. By age 12, fully three-fourths of all children have their own mobile phone.

Game on
How do they use phones? Two-thirds of tween mobile phone owners took pictures with their camera phones in the last year. Half spent time playing the pre-installed games. Four in ten activated the speakerphone feature. Twenty-eight percent filmed a video clip, and 24% listened to the MP3 capability.

More than half of the youngest (age 8) mobile phone owners used their cell to send text messages in the last 12 months. That figure soared to 81% for 12-year-old mobile users. The vast majority of text messages were directed to friends and family (90%). All other cell phone uses tracked in the single digits, such as voting on TV shows (8%), buying a ringtone or music (9%), buying wallpaper or a screensaver (4%), buying a game (5%), responding to an ad (5%) or looking up their horoscope (4%).

Parental controls
Surprisingly, given all the publicity about cyber stalking and cyber bullies, more than half of parents do not apply any parental controls offered by service providers to their children’s cell phone usage—although the use of these paid-for controls is increasing. Among those who do assert these built-in controls, 20% limit the number of calls, texts or instant messages, followed by download limits (17%), talk time or voice minute allocations (16%), mobile website access limits (15%), locator services and restricted in/outgoing number access (13% each), time of day restrictions (11%), and alerts to unauthorized texts, IMs or callers (6% each).

While the use of paid-for controls may not be high, just about all parents restrict how tweens use their phone and six in ten prohibit downloads that incur charges. Not taking the phone to the dinner table and maintaining certain grades are other rules put in place by 42% and 40% of parents, respectively.

Coming challenges
From a media perspective, choice leads to fragmentation, and ultimately, divided consumer attention and diminished import for a single medium. Even as social media gains popularity among the general public and marketers, there is no accepted benchmark or measure of effectiveness, making it difficult to forecast or predict the impact of a campaign.

A particular challenge for companies wanting to incorporate social media into their communications arsenal is the blurred line between private and public information, given the highly personal nature of many postings. Advertising models are still in flux, exploring boundaries of ethics, taste and transparency.

Untapped potential
Social media presents a world of new possibilities. Not a better mousetrap, but a new operating DNA for interacting with consumers. It can serve as an early radar or warning system, alerting to trouble spots and yielding fresh insights.

For parents, old rules still govern new media. They will need to stay engaged, enrolled and involved in their children’s lives. The motto “trust but verify” applies. For advertisers, old rules also are still in force. The need for transparency and trustworthiness becomes amplified on new media circuits. Ultimately, the nature of new media will prove its value, as all parties engage in an interactive, ongoing, mutually beneficial conversation. Social media is organic and ever-evolving, constantly presenting new opportunities and challenges.

Kid Stuff
For more on children and their media habits, check back next month. We’ll be exploring television, DVD, DVR, VCR, on demand, online streaming and gaming preferences for children ages 2–11. The silver screen represents marketing gold!

According to the Nielsen Annual Real Estate Market Report, home shoppers are spending 4.5 hours a week on real estate web sites, with specialist web sites such as realesate.co.nz and trademeproperty.co.nz accounting for almost three of those hours each week.  Another 110 minutes was spent on search engines while 106 hours was spent on the sites of individual real estate agents.  The trend to turn to the Internet shows no signs of abating: real estate web site traffic in May 2009 was up 19 percent over the same month on 2008.

“The increased research taking place online is perhaps showing us that property buyers are getting a large amount of their information needs ticked off via the web before using other media options or physically going to see the property itself,” said Tony Boyte, Research Director of Nielsen New Zealand’s online division.

The Nielsen Annual Real Estate Market Report is based on a site-intercept survey on New Zealand real estate web sites conducted in May and June with a sample size of 1,206 respondents.

“Nielsen’s online data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking website in the last year and that number grows every quarter,” said Wils Corrigan, AVP, Research & Development, Nielsen Claritas. “The rising popularity of these sites and the deep engagement consumers have with them has advertisers and marketers asking for more and more detail as to which lifestyles should be targeted for their online advertising and promotions.”

Facebook vs Myspace

Through Claritas, Nielsen defines U.S. households in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct segments like “Young Digerati” or “Beltway Boomers.” When those segments are overlaid with the activity of Nielsen’s online panel of more than 200K, we see a marked difference in the demographic makeup of the two largest social networks, Facebook and MySpace.

• Facebook users have a largely upscale profile. The top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence were 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the lower third.
• The bottom third segments related to affluence are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.
• Users of Facebook were also much more likely to use LinkedIn, a network geared towards business and professional networking, than those who use MySpace.

Bloggers more urban as well

According to Nielsen Claritas, the blogging and tweeting community at large isn’t necessarily more affluent, but bloggers and tweeters do live in more urban areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. The penetration rates of the top two most visited blogging platforms (Blogger, Wordpress) and the most popular micro-blogging platform (Twitter) show that Nielsen’s 12 Urban lifestyle segments are more likely to blog and tweet than Nielsen’s 22 Town & Rural segments.

Not surprisingly those lifestyle segments most likely to blog and tweet also tend to use Facebook and LinkedIn more often than those segments that typically don’t blog or tweet. Case in point, the Urban lifestyle segments for Blogger are 18% more likely to be Facebook users and 140% more likely to be LinkedIn users than the below average segments.

About the methodology

Nielsen examined the seven most-visited social networking websites and platforms: Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Twitter, WordPress, ClassmatesOnline, and LinkedIn. Website penetration by segment was calculated by dividing the number of unique visitors to the website per segment by the total number of households in each segment.

Jim O’Hara, President, Media Product Leadership, The Nielsen Company

The Findings

One of our primary tools for observing three screen behavior has been the TV/Internet Convergence Panel, which is made up of 1,000 households in the U.S. that formerly participated in our TV ratings panels. These households, accounting for almost 3,000 people, were asked to install a Nielsen software meter on their computers in addition to the meters these households had already permitted us to install on their televisions, enabling us to measure both Internet and television activity.

What we have found to date is that despite the initial presumptions and fears of some, media consumption has actually increased. Each of the three screens has its benefits and people are using them as complements, not as substitutes, for one another. With respect to TV and Internet usage, we found that a fair number of people are doing both simultaneously, though in relatively small increments per day – an average of ten minutes per day per person. In our multitasking culture, watching TV while checking e-mail or surfing the Internet has become more and more common: more than half of our panelists had some simultaneous activity. Among that group, 3.7% of the time they were watching television they were also on the Internet and 31.6% of the time they were online they were also watching television. What was rather unexpected was that this behavior was not limited to any one age demographic: a teen was as likely to be engaged in simultaneous usage as was someone 54 years old. And the amount of time they were doing this was comparable.

So who is sharing their time online with TV? Women age 25 and over and persons 35 and up are most likely to juggle the two media. Further, they tend to be above-average consumers of each platform. Simultaneous users watch 14 percent more TV a day and use the Internet 61 percent more than the average consumer. Clearly, during that expanded timeframe they are exposed to a large number of ads and the opportunity to reach them is greater.

Implications for Marketers

Until fairly recently, marketers would develop campaigns based on the individual medium – one for TV and another for the Internet. Often times, these campaigns would bear little resemblance to each other. But today, we know that doing so risks passing up an opportunity to reach a captive audience. The simultaneous usage phenomenon presents new marketing opportunities: the unique strengths of each medium can be leveraged to allow consumers to be reached – and allow them to reach back – in ways that they choose themselves.

For example, TV can deliver the call-to-action via advertising. The Internet can provide a convenient venue for the action, and enable the consumer to get more information about or actually purchase a product or service. Advertising that takes advantage of this linkage of platforms is already being implemented with particularly strong results.

To gauge the effectiveness of this concept, we looked at a few traditional retailers during the 2008 holiday season to see which of them were most successful in stimulating cross-platform behavior. In December, the highest percentage of people who watched TV while using retailer web sites went to Target.com Target was also among three retailer web sites (second to Walmart and before Best Buy) that were uniquely able to draw a high percentage of simultaneous Internet and TV users – 3.8 percent. Visitors to its web site were more likely to be watching TV while at the site, and 10.2 percent of Target.com visitors said that they had seen a Target commercial on TV. Based on these figures, it seems clear that the simultaneous use of the two media had a measurable effect on behavior.

All signs are that media consumption across screens will continue to grow. Advertisers and media outlets that develop ways to capitalize on consumer cross-platform experiences and leverage the strengths of each will likely benefit. Now more than ever, a call-to-action – be it to visit a web site for more information or to make a purchase – can yield an immediate reaction from the consumer using both TV and Internet. But regardless of the medium, the key to successful marketing is having the right message that can make a real impact with the target audience the advertiser wants to reach. With increasing numbers of consumers expanding their use of media, marketers have more opportunities than ever to do so.

We are now expanding the scope of the Convergence panel to include measurement of video viewing on mobile phones. So expect more from Nielsen on simultaneous usage, cross-platform measurement and marketing implications as the three screen evolution continues.

SUMMARY: As social media continues its meteoric ascent, newly empowered consumers wield more control than ever before. Although retail sales are dominated by brick and mortar stores, the influence of the Internet on offline purchases is becoming increasingly important. Retailers must listen to and engage their customers through social media by participating and encouraging conversations. The end result will improve customer service and will help turn loyal customers into passionate advocates.

Online retail sales have grown at a staggering rate—from $5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009 to $30 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to the U.S. Census. And while this growth is extraordinary, it still represents a relatively small portion of all retail sales activity—only 3.5% of sales are transacted online. However, even though retail sales are still dominated by brick and mortar stores, the influence of the Internet on offline purchasing is becoming increasingly important. Website visitation, online advertising and social media all impact offline purchasing. Visibility into online behavior has become critical across the entire retail enterprise.

Mainstream phenomenon
The social media frenzy—also known as consumer-generated media (CGM)—refers to content being created 24-hours a day online on blogs, message boards, social networks like Facebook and platforms like Twitter. CGM has come a long way from the early newsgroup days and continues to grow rapidly.

Traffic to Facebook is up almost 200% over the last year, and Twitter has seen an increase of almost 1500%. Social Media is no longer just for techies or younger generations—it has become a mainstream phenomenon. Compared to a year ago, not only are more people visiting these sites, but they are also spending more time there—time spent per person is up 67% over last year.

So, why is social media so big? The answer is relatively simple: it taps into a few basic human needs and emotions. Social media satisfies our need to be heard, it provides us with a platform to reach more people than ever before and it enables us to advocate for and promote the brands and topics we feel strongly about.

Amplified advocacy
The purchase consideration process has always been a social endeavor. Before the advent of social media, a shopper may have consulted with a limited number of friends and family members before making a purchase. Today, shoppers’ networks have gone from being composed of just a handful of people to hundreds—or even thousands—many of which are likely strangers.

Social media has not only transformed the research and purchase consideration phase, but it also provides shoppers with a platform to advocate for the products and stores they love. Advocacy has always existed, but social media has made this stage even more critical, amplifying the size of the audience reached.

Listen and engage
CGM provides retailers with a unique opportunity to not only listen to what consumers have to say, but to actively take part in that conversation. Through online listening, retailers can observe conversations that occur naturally to understand consumer attitudes and needs—and then proactively engage customers transparently to answer key questions or concerns.

Listening to consumers through CGM is complementary to other more traditional methods of market research, and provides unique value. Instead of soliciting feedback through a survey or focus group, social media allows retailers to tap into what consumers are passionate about and what they proactively discuss. Companies across all industries can listen to social media to gain insight into key areas of business:

• Brand Health Tracking: Keep a finger on the pulse of consumer sentiment toward brands
• Consumer Insights: Delve into specific issues facing brands and identify opportunities to make improvements
• Campaign Tracking: Assess a campaign’s impact and whether the marketing message is resonating
• Reputation Monitoring: Uncover risks and address them in real-time
• Online Customer Relations: Identify customers in need of support and pinpoint the issues they are discussing

Take note
There are many unique listening opportunities for retailers. Below is a framework for how retailers should think about listening through social media:

1. In-Store Experience—Shoppers actively discuss their experiences at brick and mortar locations online. Find out what consumers are saying about shopping experience, employees, return policy, store layout and more.
2. Website—Understand how consumers are using your website regardless of whether or not you sell products online. Are they using it as an informational or couponing resource? If it is a transactional website, what are shoppers saying about the shipping charges and delivery windows?
3. Products—Learn how shoppers feel about your product selection, availability, pricing and quality, as well as private label brands.
4. Marketing—From brand health to community relations to coupons and circulars, listening to social media gives retailers the opportunity to gauge awareness of corporate initiatives and marketing.

Case in point: private label perceptions
Nielsen analyzed proprietary content systems of blogs, forums, social networks like Facebook, and micro-blogging platforms like Twitter to gain insight into consumer perception about private label brands. A review of the retailers, brands and attributes that consumers associate with the concept of “store brand” showed that, not surprisingly, consumers expect store brands to be “cheaper” and “less expensive” than brand names, but interestingly, they also expect the quality of store brands to be “as good as” brand names.

Costco’s private label line, Kirkland, was the only store brand name to be mentioned explicitly. This finding spurred an in-depth look at conversations around the store brands of three large club stores: Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s. Comparing market share (based on 2008 revenue) to buzz share (percentage of total online discussion that mentions the retailer), the data showed that while Costco accounts for 55% of the club-store market, it makes up 71% of the buzz.

What is causing this discrepancy between revenue and buzz? The high level of online advocacy is not driven by social media outreach programs, but instead by the products and services that Costco delivers. A very clear illustration of this advocacy is in the fact that when shoppers found that Costco did not have an official Facebook fan page, they created their own. There are a number of pages created by fans, with some attracting more than 50,000 fans. To put this number into perspective, the largest BJ’s Facebook fan page has just over 200 fans at the time of this publication.

Costco’s elevated level of buzz also applies to its store brand line, Kirkland. Kirkland maintains a steady lead over the store brands of its club store competitors. So, what are consumers saying when they talk about the store brands of Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s? Price and comparisons to big name brands are the key topics driving discussion and Baby Care is the most frequently referenced product category.

The baby category presents a large opportunity for club stores—especially for BJ’s. Almost two-thirds of discussion about BJ’s store brands focuses on diapers, formula, and baby wipes. CGM research revealed that some mothers are hesitant to give their children generic baby formula. This presents an opportunity for retailers to use social media to educate consumers on FDA regulations and address safety concerns. Additionally, retailers should offer detailed product information on their websites to help avert concerns.

Reaching out
According to Forrester Research, almost two-thirds of retailers have already invested in CGM in some way, and another 22% plan to get involved in the next year. Additionally,  Internet Retailer reports that over 30% of retailers say that social networks perform better as a marketing vehicle than paid search engine optimization.

Retailers can use social media to engage customers in two key ways: through the retailer’s website and leveraging third-party tools like Twitter and Facebook. Through these avenues, retailers have the opportunity to connect with customers in a number of ways:

• Marketing Campaigns: Drive awareness, attract new customers
• Customer Service: Increase customer satisfaction through proactive outreach and timely response
• Corporate Communication: Give the retailer a voice; promote transparency; manage crises quickly
• Product Reviews: Take the risk out of trying new products
• Crowd-Sourcing: Leverage the wisdom of customers for product/service development
• Internal Communications: Increase employee satisfaction, promote sharing of product/service ideas

Retailers should give shoppers a reason to visit the website and keep them engaged—know that many shoppers are not going to come proactively. Because of this, the majority of online effort should be concentrated on expanding the digital footprint and reaching shoppers where they are already congregating by participating and encouraging conversations through third-party tools (blogs, forums, social networks, Facebook, Twitter). Importantly, all forms of social media outreach, whether through the retailer website or third party tools, must be transparent and should support a common goal.

There are a number of retailers who are using best practice principles to successfully engage customers through social media:

• Zappos uses Twitter as a key customer service platform in addition to a 24/7 phone line and email.
• Walmart takes advantage of product review platforms.
• Starbucks’ “My Starbucks Idea” program encourages customers to submit ideas for new products and services.
• Best Buy uses a private social media network for internal communications with its employees to promote employee satisfaction and idea-sharing.

What happens online does not stay online
Assume that consumer control/power will continue to grow—now is the time to listen to your customers. When you are ready and adequately resourced, engage, participate, and respond to customers through CGM. Nurture and protect brand credibility by being honest, open and transparent. Do not neglect your website, it is one of your best marketing vehicles, but focus majority of effort on reaching customers where they’re already congregating. Think about how you can provide better customer service through social media and turn your loyal customers into advocates. And lastly, learn from everyone in your organization.

Surprisingly, online advertising by these top real estate companies declined month-over-month, with online display ads decreasing by 42 percent, from 37.1 million impressions in June 2009 to 21.4 million in July.

Who’s House Hunting Online?

In July, people living in households of just one or two were nearly 50 percent more likely than the average Web visitor to head online to check real estate listings. Potential home buyers between the ages of 25 and 34 were 29 percent more likely to visit the top real estate sites and those with no children were 32 percent more likely to check out these sites in July.

Surprisingly, despite the fact that lower home prices are affording a wider range of income levels to get into their first home, visitors to the top real estate sites over-indexed among the wealthy, those earning a $100k or more per year.

Growth Mixed Globally

While U.S. growth to real estate sites was notable, not all countries are experiencing the same uptick in real estate ventures. A few of the countries that Nielsen measure’s, experienced month-over-month declines in unique visitors to the top real estate Web sites in July. In France, traffic fell 10 percent, while Spain experienced a 7 percent decrease and Switzerland a 4 percent decline.

On a positive note, the number of Brazilians who visited the top real estate Web sites increased by 30 percent month-over-month, growing from 2.1 million visitors in June to 2.8 million in July. Germany has the 2nd highest growth rate in July, increasing 19 percent.

Just as the offline conversation about health care reform is growing in the U.S., we are watching the online discussion grow and evolve as well. In the past month, health care reform discussions have increased by more than 1,000 percent, outpacing the online talk surrounding Swine Flu and the government’s “Cash for Clunkers” program.

President Obama is keenly aware of the important role that bloggers play in sharing information about health care reform. On July 20, the President called for bloggers to help drum up support for his health care bill, causing another jump in online conversation in the days that followed. The White House has also been using Twitter to get the message out to the public. Of the 24 tweets that have been sent out in the last two weeks, 14 have been about health care reform.

Online discussion about health care reform – like offline discussion – is highly polarized. YouTube chronicles of recent protests at various public town hall meetings (which have been at the top of the list for most-cited videos in the last week), may have created an assumption that most citizens are strongly against the reform. However, in the past week there has been a slightly larger Web presence of those in support of reform, although the split is fairly narrow and is similar to other national polls on the topic. The bottom line is that the conversation is growing on both sides of the debate, as the following chart shows.

Much of the conversation centers around sharing the latest information on the health care reform debate, with both sides adding their own spin and attempting to debunk myths and misconceptions. The discussion is also highly charged, with some bloggers engaging in one-on-one arguments that degenerate to insults and name-calling. Some of these conversations are taking a very ugly turn, as we have seen them do in person as well.

While the health care reform conversation is taking place continues to grow in online political blogs and forums, it does not represent a significant share of conversations occurring on health care sites. Although patients may have the most at stake in health care reform, the conversations about this reform tend to be more political in nature and are less prominent in health forums and communities.

As the debate rages, consumers are increasingly turning to the official White House Web site to understand the key issues. In the last month, unique visitors to the health care pages of Whitehouse.gov have increased 390 percent, from 41,000 unique visitors in June 2009 to 201,000 in July. The administration has also established a site specifically dedicated to debunking the health care reform myths, www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.

Where do you stand?

“Life moves pretty fast,” Ferris Bueller warned us. “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Director John Hughes managed to capture slices of that fast-moving life on film, offering iconic, relatable characters like Ferris and the Breakfast Club kids to an entire generation. When he died suddenly on August 6, the Internet mourned the loss of a great voice in Hollywood. On the day after his death, Hughes was the most-discussed person on the Internet, according to Nielsen’s BlogPulse.
In the following days, thousands of fans reminisced about their favorite Hughes films, according to a Nielsen analysis of Hughes-related online consumer buzz. They pointed to movies like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as key points in their formative years, shaping how they viewed their high school experiences and their places in society.

Those lucky enough to have interacted with Hughes personally shared their memories of him. When blogger Alison Byrne Fields wrote of her years as Hughes’ pen-pal, links to her post skyrocketed, boosted by a link from Gawker and an interview on NPR. It quickly became the most-cited blog post on the Internet on Saturday, August 8, according to Nielsen BlogPulse. More than 1,200 users commented, many describing their own grief at Hughes’ passing.

“Thanks for sharing,” said one reader simply. “John Hughes understood us.”