A new study of teen activity online, conducted by Online Testing Exchange, shows that on average, those in the 13-to-17 age group spend 11.5 hours a week online.
The No. 1 activity of teens is instant messaging, but that is followed by visiting social networking sites. Other online activities used to a lesser degree include email, searching and visiting virtual-community sites. The average teen is signed up for over four social networking sites and belongs to two.
The study also shows that 58% of teens have purchased something online and spend an average of $46 per month on these purchases. 26% of those making purchases spend $50 a month or more.
Teens also indicated that they are receptive to advertising on these sites. This could be good news for PicApp, which is making images available for free to bloggers and those creating social-network sites. Each image published is accompanied by an ad and image creators share the ad revenue.
The potential market for such uses is huge. There are 100 million bloggers (not all teens) and 1.8 million new posts a day. About 2 million of these bloggers are considered active and on average, 10 people read each post.
To the degree that social networkers are interested in using pictures, photographers participating on Alamy's new Novel Use service could also benefit. In this case, the image user pays a small fee for the image, but doesn't have to put up with any advertising.
As social networking grows - and the number of active bloggers has doubled in the last eight months - these two sites should indicate whether users prefer free pictures with advertising, or will pay to eliminate ads.