Which Social Media do Millenials use?

Giving a guest lecture is great fun, I find. I recently had the chance to interact with about 60 college students. They were in their second or third year. The topic of the lecture was social media use within company. So, Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business. My slides can be found here (in Dutch...).

I kicked off my lecture with some open questions. I'd like to share the answers to one question with you. I was curious what social tools they use themselves to get things done in their lives. With all the talk about millennials being digital natives (or aren't they), easily moving in the social space, organizing their life and work with these tools, etc I thought I'd see if this if the case in practice.
I shared what I got from the students on Google+. In sum, this is what they told me.

Of the 60 students:
  • 40 use Twitter
  • Almost all use Facebook
  • Just over half use Hyves (Dutch social network)
  • 1 uses a bookmarking tool
  • 2 blog
  • 0 have a wiki (although all have experience using wiki's)
  • 6 use Google+
  • 2 use Foursquare
  • 16 are on LinkedIn
Let me reflect on this a bit.
Of course these results are not statistically valid. It's just 60 students from one college in a city in Holland telling me what they use. But I'll will poll them two more times this year. (Great idea from Chee Chin Liew!) Let's see what we learn from the trends in this class.
I didn't have time for a real discussion about the data. Of course you wonder why only 2 blog, for instance. LinkedIn is not much used either. Does this point to the fact that LinkedIn is a business network for people looking for a job or that have a job? This poll also shows Foursquare, Google+ and bookmarking are hardly used. The students using Google+ said they signed up to see what Google+ is and find out if it has added-value compared to their current toolset. Facebook is very popular and the Dutch network Hyves is clearly becoming an echo chamber for them. Several said they stopped using Hyves or just use it to be reminded of their friend's birthday.

Interesting data, don't you think? If you have any question I should ask them, please let me know!

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