majority

iPhone music apps and mobile videos may soon become as important to marketing and artist whose audience skews older as it already is those whose fans are under 24.  A new Nielson survey shows that 82% of iPhone users are over 25 with 53% over 35 years of age.

Author and Murdok Blog Partner Michael Stelzner, has put together an interesting report based on a survey of 900 marketers. The report looks at the state of social media marketing. Interesting stats from the report include:

The majority - or at least the majority of the few folks who voiced an opinion - will indeed rule.  Facebook's governance vote is over, and although its declared participation threshold wasn't met, the social network is preparing to adopt the terms of service most voters favored. 

The majority (84%) of Americans say online customer reviews have an influence on their decision to purchase a product or service, according to a new survey from Opinion Research Corporation. Only 28 percent of respondents said they had posted their own feedback online while 66 percent had checked some type of online review forum when looking to purchase a specific brand of product or service.

Social media will be adopted by more than 60 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies with a Web site by 2010, according to research firm Gartner."A key benefit of establishing a community is the amount of information an organization can gain about its customer base, which can be used for short-and long-term customer relationships," said Adam Sarner, principal research analyst at Gartner.

The overwhelming majority (90%) of U.S. retailers rank site search, search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing as the most important ecommerce tools helping to promote their online businesses, according to a survey from SLI Systems.Forty-percent of retailers ranked social media tools, such as blogs and podcasts, as gaining importance, and 38 percent said that user-generated content is increasing in popularity.

The majority of businesses have no formal plans to adopt social media or use its benefits that can lead to better customer relations and increased sales.Fear and apathy are the primary barriers to using social media, according to a global survey by Avanade, an IT consultancy company.Over half of respondents to the survey said senior executives and IT staff resist adoption out of fear it will reduce employee productivity.  Sixty percent believe management does not understand the potential social media offers employees and customers.

The majority (61%) of high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86 percent do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45 percent and 71 percent respectively, in 2006, according to a new report from Horowitz Associates, Broadband Content and Services 2007.