Social media has not only transformed how consumers shop, but it has empowered them to advocate for the products and stores they love. Retailers need to communicate in a way that encourages trust, engagement, customer satisfaction and, ultimately, advocacy.

Hopes rose for a comeback in the U.S. housing market with recent announcements that new home sales rose again in July, posting the highest numbers since September 2008.

Melissa Davies, Healthcare Research Director, Online Division
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 …

Rebecca Bley, Research Analyst, Nielsen Company
“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 …

Interview by Sue MacDonald, Research Manager, Online Division
In a difficult economy of rising unemployment, struggling newspapers and advertising agency cutbacks, Alexa Robinson graduated this year from the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill with a degree in… journalism and advertising. But she wound up finding a position that carried an entirely new job title — one that didn’t even exist when she started at UNC — “Twintern.”
As Pizza Hut’s first-ever Twitter intern (Twitter + intern, hence, “Twintern”), the 22-year-old Greensboro NC native has been on the job in Dallas since late …

The notion that teens are too busy texting and Twittering to be engaged with traditional media is exciting, but false. To develop the best strategy around teens and media, start by challenging popular assumptions about teens.

David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research / Sue MacDonald, Research Manager
You’ve probably heard of the Morgan Stanley report that declares “teenagers do not use Twitter,” based on a sample size of one 15 year-old intern named Matthew Robson. Morgan Stanley rightfully disclosed that they do not claim that his study is representational or merits statistical accuracy, so we thought we could provide both with our NetRatings panel of 250,000 U.S. Internet users.
Twitter’s footprint has expanded impressively in the first half of 2009, reaching 10.7 percent of all active Internet users …

Charles Buchwalter, Senior Vice President, Research & Analytics
There has been much talk in the Internet industry around the importance of the “long tail” (niche content and service-oriented sites) and how consumers gravitate to it. The central concept is that people tend to be most engaged in content that is core to their specific interests, rather than more generalized content.
Looking at our newly expanded panel that includes more than 30,000 sites, we have found that short tail sites (those with a greater than 1 percent reach) remain the most engaging …

Anticipatory buzz around the release of the latest model of the iPhone most likely helped Apple secure the top traffic spot among hardware manufacturers in May 2009. The site drew 55.7 million unique viewers, more than double that of Hewlett Packard which attracted more than 21 million visitors.

Hardware Manufacturer Destinations: May 2009*

Rank
Brand
Unique Audience
(000)

1
Apple
55,716

2
Hewlett Packard
21,294

3
Dell
16,826

4
Sun Microsystems
3,410

5
Nintendo
2,212

6
XBOX
2,212

7
Gateway
1,847

8
MagicJack
1,812

9
Intel
1,648

10
IBM
1,606

Source: The Nielsen Company
*U.S. Home and Work

In June, anticipation of the new iPhone 3G S sent blog mentions up 1,226 percent week-overweek on June 8, the day of the announcement. After the initial …

Nic Covey, director of insights for The Nielsen Company posed the question at the annual What Teens Want Conference. Experts from Brandweek, Marvel Comics, The Hollywood Reporter, and Microsoft’s Massive discussed texting, gaming, comic books, movies and more. Learn more about Nielsen’s research on teen media habits in the just-released How Teens Use Media report.