Old Ideas Still Make Great Headlines

A new Nielsen Social Media Report is making the news this week. One of the big headlines is the fact that the study found only 2.6% of Internet time is spent on current events and global news. 

A few blogs and "experts" have already declared this is "sobering" for the news industry. Well, my position is they are completely wrong.

Social networks and blogs win the usage war online with over 20% of time spent with this category. Online games is just under 10% and the remaining list looks like this:

E-mail 7.6%
Portals 4.5%
Videos/Movies 4.4%
Search 4%
Instant Messaging 3.3%
Software Manufacturers 3.2%
Classifieds/Auctions 2.9%
Other (including broadcast media, sports and porn) 35.1%

Now, let's look at Google Insights for the past SEVEN days.

In Search terms, the top searches are the following:

Facebook
How To
You 
YouTube
Yahoo
Google
Craigslist
Weather
Games 
News

Rising searches were the following:

Freddie Mercury +4,100%
Maryland Uniforms +3,550%
Republican Debate +2,600%
9/11 +350%
Dead Island +300%
Droid Bionic +170%
Sons of Anarchy +170%
NASCAR +80%
U.S. Open +70%
U.S. Open Tennis +70%

As I've shared before, there are two types of content. What everyone is talking about ... and those things you create to get people talking. 

The search examples bring the philosophy to life perfectly.

Facebook is something everyone is talking about, while Maryland Uniforms was something that created talk. Get the idea...?

All are news and current events ... and all are discussed, shared and consumed across blogs, social sites, search, IM, e-mail and so on. 

There is a paradigm shift happening around real-time information and topicality that expands beyond the definition of the category presented in this study by Nielsen. 

Many, as I do, believe the next real opportunity is around the real-time web and not on getting caught up on old definitions. It's where many of my clients are seeing great results already and will benefit as "first in" while others are just thinking about social media. It's where the real impact can happen for you too, so I'm hoping you'll see the real possibility of current events and global news and not get caught up in a headline.