Kudos to Glen Burchers of Freescale Semiconductor, who strung together some statistics from Internet World Stats and Alexa.com, to come to the conclusion in a Freescale Smart Mobile Devices blog post that the average smartbook user is someone whose Internet usage is dominated by Facebook and YouTube (while he didn’t mention it specifically, I have to believe that Twitter and the lesser social networks form part of this milieu).
It’s obvious that a social-network user favors a smaller device – Motorola is among the many vendors who have optimized a smartphone specifically for Facebook use. Both Burchers and a couple readers commented that the full-time engineer or programmer over 25 may tend to favor a full-size laptop instead – not only for expanded communication and storage capabilities, but because screen size over 10 inches means it’s easier on those poor, tired eyes of the prematurely aging.
I’ll place a slightly different bent on the equation. Recent articles in the New York Times and elsewhere suggest we should not necessarily equate social networks with the young, as Twitter in particular is not used by teens. Rather, that certain class of college-age and young adult 20-something job-hopper seems to be the primary audience that could best take advantage of smartbook features. As the wonderful T-shirt vendors at Despair.com remind us in their T-shirt pictured here, social network users occupy the center of that Venn diagram defined by the three dimensions of narcissism, stalking, and ADHD behavior. Sounds like marketing and journalism and PR types to me!
Before we get too many nasty comments, let me reiterate that I count myself among the annoying addictive personalities. I may be a grumpy old man by Burchers’ statistics (my personal blog is even called “iconocurmudgeonclast”), but I exhibit exactly those ADHD and OCD tendencies that make me a social network and video-clip junkie. So it’s no surprise I can’t wait to get my hands on a smartbook.
Loring
