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

Frugal consumers continue to look for deals both in-store and online. At grocery, almost one-third of purchases are bought on deal and online visits to coupon and reward web sites are surging. It’s important to take note of the demographics behind the growing numbers of online deal hunters:  Consumers visiting couponing and rewards sites tend to be women, over the age of 55, residing in smaller households, without children and their household income skews toward the affluent ($100K+).

While beleaguered shoppers will be looking for ways to make the season bright, retailers can do their part by bringing some much needed holiday cheer to the shopping experience:

1. Tempt taste buds with in-store tasting and cooking demos.
2. Savor the smells of the season with aroma therapy.
3. Lighten moods with music from local school bands or choirs.
4. Touch the lives of others by collecting food bank donations.
5. Switch out in-store TV ads with broadcasts of holiday classics.
6. Reward frequent shoppers with holiday prize drawings.
7. Partner with manufacturers on donations to local charities.
8. Enhance the décor with holiday decorations.
9. Serve up a smile and an appreciative attitude.
10. Respect staff workers with reduced holiday hours.

As the Internet and social media continue to play a critical role in how consumer make purchase decisions, tune into the webinar, 2009 Holiday Season: What Consumers Have In Store for Retailers This Season on November 16 to learn more.

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!

In the beginning there were ISPs, which then gave way to portals ― aggregators of content and links ― which then led to the rise of “search” as the dominant form of Internet navigation or, how we get to where we we’re going on the web. However, as with most forms of evolution, change is constant, and over the past two years search navigation has appeared to shift to social media.

We continue to see that social media has not only changed the way consumers communicate and gather on the Web, but also impacted content discovery and navigation in a big way. But how? Is social media taking the place of portals and search as the hub of online navigation?

These questions led to some in-depth research – including an online panel survey of 1,800 participants fielded in August 2009 – in which we looked at three main consumer segments using search (Searchers), portals (Portalists) or social media (Socializers) as their primary vehicle for content discovery.

What We Found
In a nutshell, there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool — roughly 18 percent of users see it as core to finding new information. While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure. And as social media usage continues to increase (unique visitors to Twitter.com increased 959% YOY in August) I can only expect this figure to grow.

The appeal of Social Media
At the root of the changing nature of content discovery is the sheer amount of information that is available on the Web. If you want to learn more about the latest smartphone released into the market, your favorite search engine is sure to provide you with hundreds, if not thousands, of articles about the device. But with the increasing number of resources available, it’s difficult to know what you should believe or take at face value. Socializers – those who spend 10 percent or more of their online time on social media – feel this effect more than others do. When asked, 26 percent feel that there is too much information available on the Internet, compared to 18 percent of people who predominantly use portals and just 5 percent of people who primarily use search engines.

But why does too much information lead one to use social media as a navigation tool? The short answer: Socializers trust what their friends have to say and social media acts as an information filtration tool. This is key because Socializers gravitate towards and believe what is shared with friends and family. If your friend creates or links to the content, then you are more likely to believe it and like it. And this thought plays out in the data.

We saw the power of opinions posted online in our global study earlier this year about trust in advertising, and the point came up again in our recent findings. Social media is becoming a core product research channel. Almost 15 percent of Socializers most trusted information they found on blogs when researching new purchases online, while nearly 20 percent trusted most the information they found on message boards.

So are social networks replacing portals or search engines? Perhaps. Regardless, if we don’t understand and address people feeling increasingly alienated by the amount of information on the Internet, and the need for a human guide, yes, your favorite social network (or something like it) will become the next great content gateway.

For more, join me for our webinar The Evolution of Content Discovery on Tuesday, October 6 (2PM ET)

In the past, we discussed ways that social media has transformed the internet, having been so bold to say that social networks fundamentally changed the way we consume online media. So, if social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet’s original “killer app?”

We decided to churn some quick data to test our hypothesis that “Consumption of social media decreases email use.” First, we broke the online population into four groups. The first three are terciles of social media consumption in minutes. The fourth is a group that doesn’t use social media at all. We then looked at each segment’s time of web based email consumption over the course of a year. Finally, we subtracted the email consumption of those that do not use social media from those that do, basically to show a lift over possible external forces. Clearly, there are more robust approaches that could be taken (controlling for factors other than consumption for example) but for the sake of this simple experiment, we tried to keep it straightforward.

Here’s what we found:

At least from this small experiment our hypothesis was disproved, but interesting nonetheless.  It actually appears that social media use makes people consume email more, not less, as we had originally assumed – particularly for the highest social media users. Intuitively this makes some sense.  Social media sites like Facebook send messages to your inbox every time someone comments on your posting or something you’ve participated in, and depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity.  Also, it’s perfectly logical that as people make connections though social media, they maintain those connections outside of the specific platform and may extend those connections to email, a phone conversation or even in-person meetings.

This modest kitchen sink experiment further stoked our curiosity; the next step is to take a more robust approach to develop correlations between platforms to understand if this relationship is different across specific demographics and behavioral groups – rather than by levels of consumption.

If you have other theories or questions, we’d love to see your comments or questions below. Of course, you can contact us by email or social media.

“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.

“Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands.  We will now be able to add deep knowledge of this important social network to our unmatched media measurement and consumer insight across all three screens.  Together, we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how Web content and online advertising affect consumer behavior,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen’s online division. [Watch the Advertising Week keynote from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg featuring comments from John Burbank.]

The alliance comes at an important crossroads.  As with most advertising, online spend was down, but only 2 percent on a year-over-year basis.  At the same time, however, advertising on the top social network and blogging sites increased by 119 percent.

Read the full press release.

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 June. Alexa took time from her 140-character-a-message day to talk to Nielsen about what it’s like to be entrenched in the social media campaign of one of the country’s largest food brands. (Disclosure: YUM! Brands, owner of Pizza Hut, is a Nielsen client). Pizza Hut’s Twitter account had roughly 3,000 followers when Robinson started, and it now has 15,000-plus followers; she’s Tweeted about giveaways, promotions, new products, the Pizza Hut iPhone app, menu changes and more, and invited fans to send Tweets about their favorite foods/vacation photos/celebs).

Q. Is a “Twintern” what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Alexa Robinson: When I headed off to college, I was an undecided non-major. Until the end of my sophomore year, I just took general college arts-sciences classes, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. When it came time to declare a major, I thought about business, but I decided I would take an intro class to the journalism school, with advertising as my major. I thought that advertising looked fun, and I was curious about it. I’m really glad that I did, because I had an incredible experience. All the professors I had were amazing, and well-versed in everything that they taught, and many of them had been in the industry. During my last semester, I took a New Media class, where we discussed Twitter, Facebook, mobile marketing, social media…all of the changes going on in the world of media. I had been involved in social media before that class, but it definitely gave me an idea about how social media was going to transform the marketing and PR worlds.

Q. How did you find out about the “Twintern” job opening? What intrigued you about it?
A.R.: My parents both graduated with degrees in journalism, and my mother was watching CNN toward the end of April, and saw a news interview with Pizza Hut’s VP of marketing, Bob Kraut, about his plans to hire a Twintern. She called me and told me, ‘I just saw this job position on CNN, and I think it’s really up your alley. I really think you should apply.’ I had nearly forgotten about it when I got a call from Pizza Hut’s HR department for a phone interview, and I was surprised. It was a great opportunity and I jumped at the chance to talk to them. It’s unreal to me that I got chosen.”

Q. What’s been most surprising about the job so far?
A.R.: I had no clue what to expect coming in. I knew I was going to be in charge of the Twitter account and engaging with our followers there, hoping to increase the amount of awareness about Pizza Hut on Twitter. I think the most surprising thing has been how open the senior management is to the fact that my position exists and of moving further into the social media space in general. I know a lot of companies are hesitant about getting involved in the online space, or they’re not sure it’s a place for their brand. None of that hesitation is present at Pizza Hut. It definitely reflects on the company as an innovative leader. Brands want to be where their consumers are, and where those consumers are having a conversation. You definitely want to be a part of that so you can contribute more. If your consumers are all on Twitter, why wouldn’t you join in? That’s Pizza Hut’s philosophy. Obviously there are risks to getting involved, but I think they’re necessary risks if you want to get involved and converse with your consumers.”

Q: What’s been the reaction on Twitter?
A.R.:“A lot of people who didn’t know about the Twinternship position were surprised when I started tweeting so much about so many different things. When I started, it sparked a lot of conversation – not just on Twitter but about companies and brands that are on Twitter, and I think that’s been good for the social media space. I don’t think Twitter is just a fad. It has so many different applications, and people use it for so many different things – personal, business, networking – that I think there are a lot of different ways that brands can spin it in the future. And I’ve learned a lot about what kind of voice companies and brands are using on Twitter, and watching what other companies are doing in the social media space. I’d like to create a general awareness of how Pizza Hut is involved in the online space…and look for other places to explore that we aren’t in yet. I hope to leave some sort of mark…

Q: Pizza Hut just announced a program to “Send the Twintern to the edge” to promote its new Edge Pizza. Consumers are asked to suggest “on the edge” places in America to send you to deliver pizza. Are you up the challenge?
A.R.: Sure. We have just started taking entries. I’m hoping I’ll get to go to some pretty neat places. I think it’ll be a really good contest.