It’s fascinating stuff.

Teens are continuing to use Facebook in extremely large numbers. About 81 percent of all teens use at least one social media platform; 94 percent of all teen social media users have Facebook accounts.

But teens are less satisfied than they were with Facebook — for reasons noted in this post title — and they are increasingly compartmentalizing their social media choices.

The report gives no data for the prevalence of Snapchat use, but notes that it is growing fast with a high degree of user satisfaction. Note in the chart at the bottom the relative weakness of Pinterest and Google Plus. Given my own positive experiences with Instagram, I suspect the use of it will continue to rise, especially since it seems likely that more and more teens will have high-quality smart phones in the future.

Fewer teens are using Tumblr than I expected, which makes Yahoo’s recent $1.1 billion purchase of the site more problematic on the one hand, but on the other hand there’s ample room for revenue growth. I wrote about some of those issues in a recent post.

The data and details are so sprawling and interesting that I’m just going to use a series of block quotes for the rest of this post:

• Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they did in the past. For the five different types of personal information that we measured in both 2006 and 2012, each is significantly more likely to be shared by teen social media users in our most recent survey.
• Teen Twitter use has grown significantly: 24% of online teens use Twitter, up from 16% in 2011.
• The typical (median) teen Facebook user has 300 friends, while the typical teen Twitter user has 79 followers.
• Focus group discussions with teens show that they have waning enthusiasm for Facebook, disliking the increasing adult presence, people sharing excessively, and stressful “drama,” but they keep using it because participation is an important part of overall teenage socializing.
• 60% of teen Facebook users keep their profiles private, and most report high levels of confidence in their ability to manage their settings.
• Teens take other steps to shape their reputation, manage their networks, and mask information they donâ€t want others to know; 74% of teen social media users have deleted people from their network or friends list.
• Teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-party access to their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.
• On Facebook, increasing network size goes hand in hand with network variety, information sharing, and personal information management.
• In broad measures of online experience, teens are considerably more likely to report positive experiences than negative ones. For instance, 52% of online teens say they have had an experience online that made them feel good about themselves.

Teens donâ€t think of their Facebook use in terms of information sharing, friending or privacy: for them, what is most important about Facebook is how it is a major center of teenage social interactions, both with the positives of friendship and social support and the negatives of drama and social expectations. Thinking about social media use in terms of reputation management is closer to the teen experience.

Twitter draws a far smaller crowd than Facebook for teens, but its use is rising. One in four online teens uses Twitter in some way. While overall use of social networking sites among teens has hovered around 80%, Twitter grew in popularity; 24% of online teens use Twitter, up from 16% in 2011 and 8% the first time we asked this question in late 2009.

African-American teens are substantially more likely to report using Twitter when compared with white youth.

Those teens who used sites like Twitter and Instagram reported feeling like they could better express themselves on these platforms, where they felt freed from the social expectations and constraints of Facebook. Some teens may migrate their activity and attention to other sites to escape the drama and pressures they find on Facebook, although most still remain active on Facebook as well.

Most teens express a high level of confidence in managing their Facebook privacy settings. […] only 5% of teen Facebook users say they limit what their parents can see.

Teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-party access to their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.

Female (age 16): “And so now I am basically dividing things up. Instagram is mostly for pictures. Twitter is mostly for just saying what you are thinking. Facebook is both of them combined so you have to give a little bit of each. But yes, so Instagram, I posted more pictures on Instagram than on Facebook. Twitter is more natural.”
Female (age 15): “I have a Facebook, a Tumblr, and Twitter. I donâ€t use Facebook or Twitter much. I rather use Tumblr to look for interesting stories. I like Tumblr because I donâ€t have to present a specific or false image of myself and I donâ€t have to interact with people I donâ€t necessarily want to talk to.”

I wasn’t even sure what he was talking about.

But since I started blogging just over two years ago and since I’m a teacher of journalism classes at Armstrong Atlantic State University, I’ve spent some time figuring out what Tumblr is all about. More of my opinion on that in a minute.

Tumblr had about $14 million in revenue in 2012. Yahoo is now apparently purchasing the business for $1.1 billion. Huh?

From Forbes’ The Intolerable Revenue Lightness Of Tumblr:

So Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for a company that made $14 million in revenue last year. It took Tumblr five years to generate as much annual revenue as a moderately well-managed New York deli. You know – the sort that offers more than six cheese varieties.

But before we jump on the bandwagon bashing Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer, consider this piece from Business Insider in January: Here’s Tumblr’s Total Revenue For 2012 — And How It Will Make A Profit In 2013. From that piece about the recent moves of Tumblr CEO David Karp:

But so far Tumblr has been very careful. It has restricted paid media to its “radar” and “spotlight” features, which take up a tiny proportion of each user’s dashboard. Most of those paid ad exposures can’t be seen unless you have an account and are logged in.

Tumblr hasn’t even begun to sell most of its real estate to advertisers.

Yet Karp has moved closer and closer to the ad biz all through 2012. Consider:

• He signed up a traffic analytics company, Union Metrics, to give marketers real performance data.
• He named 12 agencies to a hot list of companies tapped to work with Tumblr.
• He poached Groupon sales chief Lee brown to be Tumblr’s ad sales chief.
• He set a minimum buy-in price of $25,000.
• He hired Rick Webb of The Barbarian Group to build sales and marketing.

And he did all this after spending years insisting he was not interested in advertising, a position he maintained even in early 2012.

Given its traffic, if Tumblr were to install even the most basic web ad operations — by selling a native ad format on a private exchange, for instance, like Facebook does — it would instantly become fantastically profitable.

Even if it alienates some users, advertising on Tumblr will have an instant, dramatic reach since it’s a wide open field.

Still, it’s an interesting — and big — gamble, one that has brought Tumblr co-founder and CEO Karp personal wealth of $275 million.

From the BBC’s Tumblr and Yahoo: Why sex, jokes and gifs are worth $1.1bn:

Yahoo is desperate to be cool again.

And, like that kid at school who always got the newest gadgets and video games to impress his “friends”, there’s seemingly no shortage of money available to get what it wants.

Now, just two months after splashing out millions on a UK teenager’s app Summly, Yahoo is set to buy one of the hottest properties in social media: Tumblr.

It will reportedly cost $1.1bn (£723m), a smidgen more than Facebook paid for photo-sharing service Instagram last year.

Yet with users already threatening to leave Tumblr en masse, will simply owning something trendy actually boost Yahoo’s internet cred?

“It’s very hard to just buy something cool from somebody else and for it to remain cool,” says Robin Klein, a partner at technology investors Index Ventures.

I started a Tumblr a little less than a year ago as another place for showcasing some of my photography while at the same time attempting to drive a little more traffic to this blog. All these months later, I rarely update bill dawers photography and the site gets just a couple of unique visitors per day.

Still, the sheer visual ease of Tumblr and the ability to customize pages with various themes are natural draws, especially for younger people trying to assert their individuality (even if thousands of others are using the identical theme).

I routinely look at a number of different Tumblr pages, all of which are visually stimulating and satisfying in ways that ordinary blogs, websites, and Facebook pages are not. I periodically check in with performers like Triathalon, Heyrocco, and Astronautalis. But such Tumblrs aren’t very effective at guiding new listeners — they’re really for fans who already feel they’re on the inside.

I love seeing what’s on Michael Stipe’s mind these days and occasionally visiting more esoteric sites like The Paris Review, which asks a great question tonight:

If William Faulkner were with us and knocked on your door tomorrow, where in your neighbourhood would you direct him for a whiskey?

In spite of such obvious positives, I have some major reservations about Tumblr.

First and foremost: is the “reblogging” of images on sites like Tumblr and Pinterest tantamount to copyright violation?

And what about all the disturbing stuff on Tumblr that seems to be far more worrisome than what can be found on Facebook or on other social media sites? Just one example: the steady stream of posts by young women and girls advocating anorexia.

Then of course there’s all the porn, which tends toward the quick publication of viral imagery, often of “amateurs”, “selfies”, and the like. There seems to be a wide range of opinions on how much the site relies on porn for its traffic. From the HuffPo’s Tumblr’s Porn Can Stay, Suggests Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer:

Tumblr pornographers, take heart: Yahoo comes in peace.

During an investor call Monday morning announcing Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of media network Tumblr, Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer emphasized that Yahoo wants to “let Tumblr be Tumblr,” which she suggested would include allowing its numerous X-rated accounts to continue pumping out pornography undisturbed. […]

“I think the richness and breadth of content available on Tumblr — even though it may not be as brand safe as what’s on our site — is what’s really exciting and allows us to reach even more users,” said Mayer, who did not mention pornography as such, but referred obliquely to content that was not “brand safe.”

But it might not be that easy. From a 2011 Gawker post The Porn and Spam Behind Tumblr’s Meteoric Rise:

But the obvious prevalence of Tumblr smut, combined with the company’s public ambivalence about it, means Tumblr’s traffic is not as sustainable as, say, Wikipedia’s. It’s not hard to imagine Tumblr cracking down on adult content to appease advertisers; it would hardly be the startup’s first controversial or heavy handed content intervention.

And is any company worth $1.1 billion if Google search trends have such a short history — no matter how impressive that history might be?

So many interesting issues here that are worth watching.

That’s a followup to last week’s post:
Jobs recovery: A tale of two Georgias

In those posts, I look at the payroll jobs estimates and the civilian labor force estimates for metro areas across the state. The pretty clear picture that emerges is that Atlanta and environs are seeing pretty solid job growth, but other areas — most notably Savannah, Augusta, and Dalton — are seeing continued year-over-year job losses.

I also am still looking for advertisers for those 125×125 squares at the top of the right sidebar. Click here for more information.

I have been experimenting for a while with various ways of presenting some of my ongoing photography. As regular readers might know, I have a cheap DSLR body with a very good lens that I’ve been taking along with me — especially for some of the great bands coming through town. Recent photo posts include G. Love & Special Sauce, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, These United States, and the SEAM Fashion Show at Brockington Hall. Sometime later today, I’ll be posting some pics of last night’s gig by American Aquarium at The Jinx.

Anyway, I have a couple of boards up on Pinterest, but I also decided that I will be posting some photos, many with links to the appropriate post on this blog, on a new tumblr page. It has taken me longer than I would have thought to get the knack for how the kids interact on tumblr. Still, I like the various template options and I just personally like the effect of being able to see pictures from so many events and places in one glance. If you’re interested, click here for my tumblr.

As always, you can find my recent Savannah Morning News City Talk and Man About Town columns in a feed in the right sidebar.