Inspired by the Social Technographics work by Charlene Li at Forrester Research back in 2007, Lansons Communications commissioned Opinium Research to carry out a “UK Social Media Census 2011.” Conducted in March of this year, to coincide with the UK’s official census, the study captures an alternative snapshot of Li’s (and latterly developed by Josh Bernoff) six levels of participation: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Spectators, Joiners and Inactives.

Lansons defines a total of nine social media usage types, summarised below:

• Commercialists – Directly promoting or selling goods or services.
• Creators – Publishing their own blogs, images, audio, video or documents.
• Collaborators – Sharing online documents or web-spaces to which others can contribute.
• Collectors – Bookmarking, voting for, or subscribing to web content, pages or feeds.
• Critics – Posting reviews or ratings of products and services.
• Conversationalists – Posting messages, updates or comments to social network sites.
• Connectors – Having social media profiles so as to find others, or to be found, online.
• Crowd-members – Reading, watching or listening to social media content, but not participating.
• Currently inactive – Not yet using social media at all.

Lansons also created an interesting infographic to provide an insight into the results:

The ColdFusion, Flex and Flash User Groups represent a central information resource for all UK Adobe developers. With the increasing importance of Rich Internet Applications, Rapid Application Development, the popularity Adobe software and industry recognition of the ColdFusion, Flex, Flash and AIR products, these user groups assist developers in defining their role within the Adobe and wider community. These groups aim to provide information resources and a chance to meet fellow developers and network within the community.

To join the groups and start networking, simply click on the appropriate link below:

UK ColdFusion User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/27811/79F5911ECBBE

UK Flex User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/27255/6343D73C42C2

UK Flash User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/27401/0E94A97A7DD4

The Flex and Flash User Group websites are still being designed/developed, but you can email them at

info [at] ukfxug [dot] org

info [at] ukflug [dot] org

respectively with ideas on what you would like to see on each site.