Pew has yet another new study out tracking who we are online.

Released last week while I was offline at the beach, the November 2010 survey found:

• 47% of American adults, or 59% of adult Internet users in the U.S., use at least one social site.
• More than half of social users are 35 or older.
• 56% of social users are women. (When did that happen?)
• Facebook, that alternate World Wide Web, attracted 92% of social users, followed distantly by MySpace (still?), LinkedIn and Twitter (hot on the heels of LinkedIn).
• More than half of Facebook users and one-third of Twitter users engage daily.
• Internet users in general, and Facebook users in particular, are more politically active than most people.
• On average, the surveyed sample had 229 Facebook friends. (And since most people have trouble keeping track of more than 20 people at a time, that suggests to me that people are moving their entire universe online.)

As always, kudos to Pew for counting.

The PEW Internet and American Life Project reports that 77% of Americans are now online. That’s up from 14% in June 1995.

It broke 70% — actually reaching 72% — in September 2005. Internet use got as high as 79% in two previous polls — April 2009 and May 2010. The easy growth is apparently over.

Pew surveys traditionally show a sizable minority of respondents who have no interest in joining the digital world, for one reason or another. Cost of equipment and access have always been cited.

Here’s what it looks like over time.

I’m a sucker for a data-filled infographic.

Ignite Social Media parsed the numbers for 54 social networks worldwide and picked the winners and losers.

The envelope please.

Gainers:

• Tumblr
• Weibo
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• LinkedIn

Truth be told, I can’t tell whether these five were measured on percentage increase (from a small base) or numerical increase on the same scale.

And the not winners, aside from MySpace, which everyone knows leads the list:

• Friendster
• Ning
• Hi5
• Kaixin001

Doesn’t matter how these five where measured. Their numbers are heading the wrong way.

Some of the most interesting insights involved demographics.

For instance, YouTube ranked among the top 5 networks with the youngest audience.

And my people, where are my people (the geezer generation)?

• Plaxo.com
• Newsvinecom
• Reunion.com — Currently called MyLife but still at reunion.com.
• Gather.com
• Fark.com (Had anybody ever heard of this?)

And finally, what makes wer-kennt-wen.de stand out? Oh, never mind. That’s too obvious*.

The infographic is just too long to publish here, but I encourage you to take a look.

I told you it was too long.

* wer-kennt-wen.de has the highest percentage of women.

Jakob Nielsen, my favorite usability expert, excoriates search engines and searchers in his latest Alertbox.

The problem, or problems, in his eyes (but my words).

• We are lazy f-bombs and accept the first results we see.
• We search before we think.
• We don’t use advanced search, and when we do, we screw it up.

Now his words:

The problem … is that search engines are turning into “answer engines”. Users are being trained to limit themselves to pages included in the SERP (search engine results page) listing.

… Ironically, the better search gets, the more dangerous it gets as people increasingly assume that whatever the search engine coughs up must be the answer.

Depressing, but important, reading.

Two new sets of statistics show just how deeply Facebook — the Internet within the Internet — is insinuating itself into … well, everything.

First, comScore reports that 93% of Filipinos who go online visited Facebook during February. That’s like the percentage of people who breathe or use the bathroom every day. 93%!

Here are the other entrants in the Top 10 global markets for Facebook by penetration:

Then comes a little Gem from AT&T, which reports that 41% of small businesses surveyed have a Facebook page, up more than 50% from last year.

Small businesses, the ones without the big IT departments and consultants, have Facebook pages.

Noted.

I’ve been saying it myself and for my IWS colleagues, and I find I’m not alone: We (as individuals and as marketers) have too many social media options. We need to pick a few and excel.

Matt Thornhill, founder of the Boomer Project, wrote this quite eloquent explanation of our dilemma, for MediaPost:

As a publisher of seemingly useful information for those interested in marketing to today’s Boomer consumer, we see two obstacles. First, there are many voices with similar platforms. On the surface, all seem equally qualified and talented, but closer examination shows most rely on smoke and mirrors, repurposing insights provided by others, rarely adding to the knowledge base. There’s nothing keeping them from cutting and pasting their way to a presence on the Web. Retweet that.

The second problem is there are too many outlets, too many “channels” for distributing content without any barriers. Tweeters tweet. Bloggers bloviate. Everyone has something to say so they say it, and then comment on it. And then someone “likes” it. Like it matters.

Can our company really maintain a meaningful presence on Facebook, Twitter, our blog, YouTube and LinkedIn and still maintain as a business? Ha! The no-upfront-cost aspect of having a presence in social media comes with an extremely high time cost.

We simply cannot be all things to all people by appearing in all social media. Nor can we consume all social media. We’re going to pick and choose. We’re going to focus our efforts where we can have a presence and share insights for an audience that knows us and appreciates our work. The scattershot approach is not a viable strategy for us.

And it likely isn’t the best strategy for those marketers trying to reach Boomers online. Just as you would select a handful of print magazines in which to run your ads, you should select a manageable number of social media sites to build a presence in. Leave the rest to others.

Way to go, Matt!

Driven by the “growth in smartphone adoption, 3G/4G device ownership and the increasing ubiquity of unlimited data plans,” almost half of mobile users in the U.S. (47%) used their device to connect with the Web, up almost 8% from the previous year, according to comScore.

“Mobile media users,” as defined by comScore, “browsed the mobile web, accessed applications, downloaded content or accessed the mobile Internet via
SMS.”

Talkers — the folks who used their device for voice only – well, they declined by 16% and now represent fewer than three in 10 users (27.6%).

We have have long known that countries in Europe and Asia, where folks are less tied to their land line carriers, use their mobile devices, formerly known as cell phones, to do a lot more than we in America do. Now we can start to get a measure of that.

comScore’s inaugural Mobile Year in Review report for 2010 looks at the top highlights in mobile across the U.S., EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) and Japan. Good stuff.

The online audience gets younger and younger and younger.

A new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop found:

• Of the very young children who use the Internet, 80% do so at least once a week.
• At age 3, about one-fourth use the Net daily.
• By age 5, almost half do so.
• And by age 8, more than two-thirds use the Internet on any given day. (Page 16)

That’s a whole new online marketing demographic

What are all those munchkins doing online? Video, what else. (Well, yes, some gaming.)

Those findings should show up in Beloit College “mindset list” of things graduating high school students have always lived with – Class of 2029 edition.

Here are some other media activities for the younger set, from the Always Connected report:

Think of technology — all of it, not just the two or three things you know about — and then imagine all its elements laid out in relation to one another and in chronological order.

I couldn’t either.

Mitchell Zappa, however, could and did. And he makes the headache pass quickly.

It is much harder to comprehend complicated information on a mobile device than on a desktop screen.

You might conclude that intuitively (and be correct), but now comes a study from the University of Alberta to put numbers to it.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen, writing in his latest Alertbox, cites the study by R.I. Singh which found that users of mobile devices the size of an iPhone understood information less than half as well as those using a desktop monitor. Size matters!