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Social media is big and getting bigger, providing marketers with a combination of reach, relationships, and relevance: * Reach: Social media has overtaken email as the most popular consumer activity, according to a recent Nielsen study. Importantly, consumer growth is coming from an older demographic than social media's historical base; for example, Facebook's strongest growth is coming from 35-49 year-olds, adding twice as many 50-64-year-olds as opposed to those under 18. (Nielsen “Global Faces and Networked Places,” March 9, 2009; MediaPost Blogs Research Brief, “Social Networking Is No Respecter of Age,” March 18, 2009.) * Relationships: Social media's strength is in the personal connections it enables, the peer-to-peer contact, providing reasons for consumers to visit regularly and for extended periods of time. * Relevance: Consumers are extremely engaged with the content and connections that their friends are creating because of its personal relevance.