According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, internet users seem to be getting more involved in both the management of their own online reputation and also keeping an eye on the privacy settings of their social networks.
57% of the 2253 Americans over 18 responded that they have used search engines to see what information about them is available online and that 71% of these users have changed their privacy settings on their social networking profiles.
Does this mean that people are becoming increasingly privacy conscious in the fallout of the recent Facebook privacy scandals and stopped trying to SEO their social network profiles? As with all things survey-related, it’s difficult to be sure.
Internet Marketing
The young adult demographic appears to be the most privacy-conscious – 44% of this group have taken steps to minimise the amount of information that they share, have deleted comments and untagged pictures and 28% of these same 18-29 year olds say that they would “never” trust social networking sites with their information. Pew suggests that the rise in privacy control is down to increases in business policies around social networking sites, although this largely contradicts the recent Consumer Reports study which stated that many users don’t care about the privacy settings on their Facebook account.
This survey doesn’t necessarily mean that internet and social media marketing is dead in the water however, it simply means that advertisers and marketers will need to make sure they’re zeroed in on their target audience rather than taking a blanket approach and hoping for the best.
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