The preferred sources for product & service information

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Source:  Data from NMIncite (Nielsen & McKinsey), reported in NielsenWire 14th October 2011
Note - I'm assuming that this is based on US consumers only

42% of American Millennials like to watch TV mainly online

"Millennials Consume 42 Percent of TV Online
Millennials [16-34s] appear to have substituted television and print media for the increased online activity and media consumption. Millennials watch significantly less TV than Non-Millennials; fewer Millennials report watching 20-plus hours/week (26 percent versus 49 percent). When they are not watching live TV, Millennials are much more likely to watch shows mainly on their laptops (42 percent versus 18 percent), with DVR (40 percent versus 36 percent), or On-Demand (26 percent versus 18 percent).
Millennials Seek Peer Affirmation & Advice
Perhaps because of their need to share and to find commonalities, 70 percent of Millennials reported feeling more excited when their friends agreed with them about where to shop, eat and play. Only 48 percent of older adults were as heavily influenced by their friends and colleagues. Additionally, Millennials gather information on products and services from more channels - more Millennials than Non-Millennials reported using a mobile device while shopping to research products (50 percent versus 21 percent)."

Source:  Research from “American Millennials: Deciphering the Enigma Generation.” by Barkley with Service Management Group and the Boston Consulting Group, quoted in a press release, 18th August 2011

Methodology:  "Based on a survey of more than 5,000 respondents and 3.9 million data points, the study provides new information on a range of digital and social media habits of American Millennials as well as their attitudes in the areas of cause marketing, grocery, restaurant, apparel and travel."

Note:  For this study Millennials are defined as 16-34s year olds

72% of people active on Twitter daily publish blog posts at least once a month

"Who are Twitter users and why are they so important to your brand?
Of the users who are active on Twitter daily:
72% publish blog posts at least once a month
70% comment on others’ blog posts
61% write at least one product review a month
61% comment on news sites
56% write articles for third-party sites
53% post videos online
50% make contributions to wiki sites
48% share deals found through coupon forums
In essence: What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter."

Source:  Data from Exact Target, reported by The Next Web, 18th August 2011

Pandora users have made over 10 billion 'thumb' ratings

"Pandora has now clocked an impressive 10 billion thumb ratings, according to details disclosed by founder Tim Westergren in Los Angeles. "We've now reached 10 billion thumbs," Westergren told an audience at Musexpo at the W Hotel in Hollywood on Monday, and the accomplishment was later blogged on pandora.com.  "Of the many milestones we've hit over the past 6 years, this is perhaps the one that makes us most proud," Westergren relayed.   "Little by little we are all collectively creating a music discovery engine that might just deliver on the grand promise of the web - a completely personalized listening experience for every user, and an effective outlet for tens of thousands of deserving artists." "

Source:  DigitalMusicNews, 2nd May 2011

TripAdvisor has 45m reviews & opinions, and over 6m photos

"Milestones in the history of TripAdvisor:
- November 2000: http://www.tripadvisor.com goes live
- March 2002: The site is profitable
- April 2004: Sold to IAC
- August 2005: Part of Expedia, Inc.
- January 2005: The first hurdle of a million reviews and opinions is achieved.
- April 2008: 15 million reviews and opinions
- July 2009: 25 million reviews and opinions
- May 2010: 35 million reviews and opinions
- August 2010: TripAdvisor becomes the first travel site to have more than 40 million monthly users* to become the world's largest travel site.
- October 2010: 40 million reviews and opinions
- 2010: TripAdvisor launches 10 new sites around the world
- March 2011: 45 million reviews and opinions covering:
1) 85,000+ destinations
2) 474,000+ hotels
3) 100,000+ vacation rentals
4) 135,000+ attractions
5) 675,000+ restaurants
6) With 6,000,000+ candid traveller photos"
Source:  Press release from TripAdvisor, 12th April 2011
Note:  I'm not sure what constitutes an 'opinion' but I suspect it includes all comments on the forum

Yelp has 17m reviews and 50m monthly visitors

"Today the company has surpassed 50 million monthly unique users (as reported by their internal Google Analytics), up from 46 million the month before. And they have a total of 17 million reviews for venues around the world. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says that the service is seeing a faster rate of growth for both contributions (reviews) and users than it has historically— in Q1, users wrote 2 million reviews, while most quarters average 1 million. In other words, even if some of these other services are gaining traction, it isn’t hurting Yelp."

Source:  Techcrunch, 4th April 2011