Library Voice

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released Teen Content Creators and Consumers today. From the summary:

American teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations.

Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey.

Accorrding to the report:

• 19% of online youth ages 12-17 have created their own blog. That is approximately four million people.
• 38% of all online teens, or about 8 million young people, say they read blogs.
• Only about a quarter (27%) of online adults do so.

Teens mainly read blogs of people they know:

While public discussion has raged about whether blogs constitute legitimate journalism or are a reliable source of information, for teens, blogs are much more about the maintenance and extension of personal relationships. When teens do read blogs, they mainly read the blogs of people they know. About 62% of blog-reading teens say they only read the blogs of people they know. The remaining group (36%) reports reading the blogs of both people they know and people they have never met. A mere 2% report only reading the blogs of people they do not know.

Synopsis available here. Full PDF available here.

Yahoo! and Ipsos Insight have a new report about RSS usage. The report finds that most RSS users don’t even know they’re using RSS:

The number of tech-savvy Internet users who knowingly sign up for RSS syndicated content is only four percent, while another 12 percent are somewhat aware of the term RSS. Twenty-seven percent of adult Internet users access RSS feeds through personalized start pages, though they don’t know that’s what they’re doing on personalized portal pages.

And how do you get others to use RSS?

Evangelism is apparently the most effective tool out there to educate new RSS users. Sixty-nine percent of respondents say their experience with RSS stems from “positive mentions.” Twenty-four percent find RSS easy and convenient, and 18 percent like it because users can choose what they want to read.

In other words, if you use RSS and like it, bring along a buddy to join the party.

The full report can be found here in PDF format.