Philip Young has posted about the results of Euroblog 2007 – a European academic research project that looks at how social media is affecting communications.
The full results are available for download, but at first glance they appear to show that, compared to the 2006 research, social media is rapidly moving from being a niche interest in communications to the mainstream.
Almost every question that was asked seemed to show a big jump in usage and adoption for social media in communications.
A note of caution though: the paper itself acknowledges that the sample for this research isn’t representative and is biased towards an early adopter group. Put simply, the trends shown are probably exaggerated compared to the population as a whole.
That said I think the findings are still valid – don’t get hung up on the exact scale of the trends picked up, but do believe that they are happening.
There’s also a good section about some of the challenges for adoption of social media tools in communications. This section particularly resonated with me:

Committed bloggers face a triple bind:

• carving out time in their busy workdays
• reacting to audience feedback
• being creative with new posts

Check out the full Euroblog 2007 findings if you need any more evidence that the communications landscape really is changing, and why marketing and PR professionals will need new skills to be effective in the future.