| [November 07, 2007] |
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Faves.com Asks Just How Social is the Web?
SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- More than 36 percent of Web users "highly trust" the information they receive from friends and acquaintances in their online social networks, according to a new social Internet survey by Faves.com, a social discovery and bookmarking site. The same survey found that 34 percent of respondents visit a social networking site at least weekly.
The number jumps to 90 percent when you add those that moderately trust their social network contacts, while In contrast to the more than one-third of Web users who highly trust information from social networks, only 4 percent of people highly trust content/opinions from vendors or advertisers, 4 percent highly trust comments on blogs or forums, and 3 percent highly trust news communities such as Digg or Reddit.
"People are interacting differently with the Web today, and as the survey results show, people trust their online social networks more than any other online resource," said Rob Dickerson, chief executive officer of Faves.com. "Also today people are much more comfortable posting to the Web, whether it's expressing an opinion, uploading digital content, or adding a comment on a blog. Two years ago only 13 percent of the people we surveyed visited a social networking site weekly -- today, that number is 34 percent. Two years ago only 9 percent visited a media sharing site, such as YouTube or Flickr, weekly -- today, that number is 26 percent. These are tremendous increases."
When asked if they participate in the following activities now, and two years ago; respondents indicated that:
-- 78 percent of respondents have recently voted or rated something online, compared with 47 percent two years ago;
-- 63 percent have recently uploaded photographs or videos; 40 percent had two years ago;
-- 44 percent have recently commented on a forum or blog; 23 percent had two years ago;
-- 28 percent have recently written a product or book review: 15 percent had two years ago; and
-- 16 percent now maintain a blog; 9 percent were maintaining a blog two years ago.
More than 70 percent said they sometimes or frequently rely on online product or book reviews, and another 62 percent rely on the popularity of information based on users' votes or ratings.
"People are becoming more comfortable with the social aspects of the Web, particularly voting or rating content online and using other people's opinions and ratings to help them in their own research," said Dickerson.
Each week 69 percent of respondents use the Internet to keep up with friends and family, 48 percent to follow a favorite hobby and 53 percent to follow special interests. While more people are using the Internet for social networking and for tracking topics they find interesting, only 25 percent of respondents felt that the Internet definitely met their needs with regard to following favorite hobbies, and 29 percent with regard to following special interests.
"We also discovered that most people are finding it difficult to build their social network of friends online. The majority of people never use any of the tools designed to make it easier to find friends," commented Dickerson. "And while half of the people surveyed use the Web to track special interests, only 8 percent of them are using social news sites to do it. We feel this survey strongly validates the market for Faves.com, which delivers personalized home pages populated with community-rated Web content based on members' favorite topics. With Faves.com, people no longer need to search as hard for stuff that interests them, or work so hard to build networks of friends who share their interests."
For more information on the Faves.com Social Internet Survey, please visit www.faves.com of call.
This survey, sponsored by Faves.com, was conducted by Zoomerang. 820 people between the ages of 18 and 65 based in the United States responded to this survey.
ABOUT FAVES.COM
Founded in October 2004, by Mohit Srivastava and Sumit Sen, Blue Dot, Inc./Faves.com is a Seattle-based company whose mission is to help people find the highest ranked web content across a broad variety of topics. Through a new type of communication described as Social Discovery(R), Faves.com's free Web site delivers recommendations personalized to each user's topics of interest. Through a unique Topic Network, Faves.com users are connected to other members who are making the highest quality recommendations of interest to them. Faves.com is led by an experienced group of entrepreneurs formerly from Microsoft(R). To learn more about Faves.com, please visit www.faves.com.
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