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NetSquared is an initiative ofTechSoup
NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
Social Web Survey Results
How are nonprofits using the latest generation of social web tools -- tools like blogging, podcasting and social networking? The results of NetSquared's Social Web Survey capture the range and flavor of the nonprofit sector's engagement with "Web 2.0". You might be surprised to learn that three-quarters of our respondents read blogs at least occasionally; that more than a third use social calendaring apps like evite; and that only ten percent are using wikis.
While survey participants were not randomly selected (and results are therefore not statistically representative of the nonprofit community at large), we would expect our sample to be biased primarily towards over-sampling relatively technologically savvy users, and under-sampling less technologically sophisticated users. The survey results are thus best understood as a picture of the relative popularity of different technologies and tools within the most tech-savvy elements of the nonprofit community, rather than as a picture of overall adoption rates.
You can read excerpts and highlights from the survey results on our Survey Highlights page.
- Methodology
- Blogging
- Podcasting
- Photo sharing
- Social calendaring
- Social networking and other tools
- Social bookmarking
- Wikis
About our methodology
Survey results are based on 949 responses, submitted over three weeks (April 10th-28th, 2006). We asked for survey participation on the NetSquared blog, on TechSoup discussion boards, and in the NetSquared and TechSoup weekly newsletters. Survey participants had the opportunity to win an iPod nano, with one winner drawn in each of the three weeks of the survey; it's possible that this biased our sample slightly towards people with an affinity for iPods, and perhaps therefore also towards people who listen to podcasts. We've stripped the personal information from our survey and included all responses as an attached file, which you can find at the end of this page.
Same news, New tools: Blogging, Aggregation and Monitoring
Blogging
Blogs are commonplace tools to most of the nonprofit community, if our survey findings are representative. Over three quarters of survey takers stated that they read blogs at least occasionally, with 13% (122) reporting that they read blogs daily.
More than one quarter of respondents write or contribute to a blog, and most use Google's free Blogger service to do it.
Twenty-six percent of all respondents use RSS to read multiple blogs, while 17% use blog search tools to monitor blogs.
Google's blog aggregation and search tools are also the most commonly used, but their lead over smaller web 2.0 companies and larger competitors like Yahoo! is slight.
RSS/Aggregation
Approximately 20% of RSS-users prefer the Google homepage, with Yahoo! and Bloglines tied for second place as mainstream blog aggregation tools, and just a few using Newsgator and Pluck. Over 40% of RSS readers use a tool not mentioned in our survey, with half of those using desktop and half using online aggregation tools.
Blog monitors
Technorati is a close runner up to Google's blog search among those who monitor blogs. Over 80% of blog monitors use one of these two tools, and of the remaining over half use multiple tools.
Getting familiar: Podcasting, Photo sharing, and Social calendaring
Podcasting
Nearly half of our survey respondents listen to podcasts. Most listen on their computers, and of those that don't, the vast majority listen to podcasts on their iPods or other mp3 players. While 96% of those surveyed said they do not create or contribute to podcasts, this is not very surprising. Most podcasters currently create and edit their podcastsusing software on their computers such as Garage Band, rather than online services like Audioblog.
Photo sharing
41% of respondents use online services to share photos with friends, family, and business associates. Of the 7 photo sharing tools we listed, Flickr was the most popular by far, garnering more than four times as many as all other listed tools combined. However, the majority of people who share photos online use tools we didn't list.
Social calendaring
Of the 37% who use social calendaring to share information about events, over half use evite. Upcoming.org and Meetup were both in use by a substantial though small percentage of respondents. Besides evite, most people who used social calendars use a tool not mentioned.
So what are those "other tools not mentioned" that keep coming up?
Though we didn't ask any questions specifically about social networking applications (which is a topic unto itself), they were by far the most often mentioned when we asked what other tools people were using for the functions we specify.
MySpace was used by various respondents for blog aggregation and monitoring, photo sharing and/or event calendaring. Other social networking applications like Friendster, Facebook, and LinkedIn were also mentioned.
Respondents also used Yahoo! tools other than those mentioned, tools from smaller companies not mentioned, and applications used only by their organization or community.
On the cusp: Wikis and Social bookmarking
Social Bookmarking and Wikis were the least widely used social web tools, with 13% using social bookmarking and 10% using wikis.
Social Bookmarking
Del.icio.us was by far the most popular social bookmarking service, garnering nearly twice as many users as all other social bookmarking services (named & unnamed) combined.
Wikis
Wikis in the other hand, are somewhat of an open field, with only MediaWiki (the software behind wikipedia) showing an edge over other tools. Writely came in second among the choices we offered, but people were very likely to use wikis on their own server, wikis on some other unnamed online service. 20% of respondents who said that they did use a wiki stated that they didn't know the name of the wiki they used.One could view these tools as a continuum, with blogging just now reaching majority use, and other tools on their way toward mainstreaming, though there is no way to know now. Perhaps wikis and social bookmarking will always remain on the fringe, or perhaps they're just waiting for MySpace or Google to make them commonplace.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Social web survey results shared.xls | 55 KB |
