There was an article last month in AdWeek about how new parents are incredibly active on Facebook via mobile devices. Some interesting points they mention:
- New parents globally post 2.3 times more photos, 2.9 times more videos and 1.8 times more status updates than average users.
- Despite the popular perception that posts about Facebook users’ children are not popular, new parents’ posts about their babies receive 37 percent more interactions from relatives and 47 percent more from friends.
- 66 percent of new parents said mobile technology helps them stay connected to family members.
It’s all very true. There is nothing I could post on Facebook that would garner as many likes as a picture of my son – even including this blog post. (And rightfully so. My son is very cute).
And I can’t stress the “mobile technology enables family connectedness” point hard enough. Thanks to chat apps like WhatsApp and video chat tools like FaceTime, my wife and I are able to send a constant stream of text, images, and video of our son to family members overseas. I often say that I don’t want to give too much credit to technology, but, on the other hand, FaceTime has singularly enabled my parents to be as close as reasonably possible to their grandson. It’s not at all the same as in-person, but it’s a heck of a lot better than a phone call.
And in a commercial sense, it’s amazing how much of this cycle Facebook owns. Literally. Other than the behemoth that is Facebook proper, their ownership of WhatsApp and Messenger – and in this case, to a lesser extent, Instagram – means that they own the entire social graph.
But that I mentioned Apple’s FaceTime before speaks to the importance of an app being “the default option” on devices. I use FaceTime (and not Messenger video or Skype or Google Hangouts) because it’s the easiest option for all parties involved.
Disclosure: I own shares of Facebook, because Facebook owns sharing. Just kidding. I’m waiting for them to issue dividends.
Silicon Spatula 