We are the 5 percent

Last week, two studies caught my eye. The first one was a Pew study about curation and creation.

Curation is on the rise, according to a recent Pew study. But not only is curation a growing trend, thanks to sites like Tumblr and Pinterest, but so is original content. Of course, content is loosely defined. Pew found that 46 percent of adult Internet users post the photos and videos they themselves have created. It also found that 41 percent of adult Internet users curate the content they find.

Some other interesting stats about these social platforms: 12 percent use Pinterest; 12 percent use Instagram; 5 percent use Tumblr; 16 percent use Twitter; 20 percent use LinkedIn; 60 percent use Facebook.

These platforms are breeding grounds for both content creators and curators: 56 percent do at least one; 32 percent do both.

Another interesting tidbit: the creators are in the younger, 18-29 subset, and many of them live on the social platforms. LinkedIn, not surprisingly, skews older.

The second was a JD Power study about tablet media consumption and how it’s biting on the PC’s heels in terms of time spent and user satisfaction.

A new J.D. Power and Associates study (Tablet Satisfaction Study) puts some numbers behind the growing use, time spent and overall satisfaction of tablets. It found that tablet owners spend 7.5 hours per week on their tablets compared to 9.6 hours on a PC, and that “tablet owners who also have a smartphone spend 40 percent more time browsing the Internet on their tablet than on their smartphone.”

Publishers should be paying attention to this. Increased use and satisfaction of tablets means less use of desktops, which means lower results on desktop advertising, which isn’t all that great to begin with. And the advertising that dominates the desktop, the banner, won’t be efficient on a tablet or smartphone.

Creating a tablet strategy means shifting the way business is done. New ways of working advertisers are, pardon the pun, popping up all over the place. Content marketing and sponsored stories immediately come to mind. But new consumer behaviors also touch on design. A publisher can’t just port its online content onto a tablet device.

The responsive design movement, already an undercurrent for many publishers, will only get stronger as tablet usage increases. Publishers cannot ignore the consumer shift from desktop to mobile — smartphone included. The mobile maelstrom is, indeed, coming.

I wonder if the Pew numbers will shift when the social networks create better mobile/tablet experiences. That is, of course, assuming social networks actually crate better mobile/tablet experiences.