Each year, we gather data from brand marketers and social media influencers to gain insights into the changing SMS industry and provide guidance to better connect these two groups. Last year’s results showed us that there is:

• A general lack of awareness and understanding for disclosure requirements.
• Significant discrepancy between what a marketer and influencer believe is fair compensation for a tweet or blog post.

The survey is anonymous and only takes a few minutes!

We look forward to your feedback!

Get started:

My teenage years were spent in the early 80s. We cherished our princess phones that gave us the convenience to gab away with girlfriends in the privacy (or so we thought) of our own bedrooms. We passed hand-written notes to friends in school in between classes. Email was nothing more than a typo. As for text messaging, you wouldn’t have found any results if you searched that on Google (had Google existed).

Depending on which era you grew up in, your answer may vary significantly from how a teenager in 2012 would respond to the question “How do you prefer to communicate?”

The 2011 Teens and Digital Citizenship Survey sponsored by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project unveiled some predictable findings related to the tools teens use to communicate, with a particular focus on mobile devices. You can read the entire Teens, Smartphones & Texting report, but here are some interesting stats about texting, in particular:

• Overall, 75% of all teens text, which is right in line with the percentage of those who have cell phones (77%).
• 63% of all teens say they exchange text messages every day with people in their lives. This far surpasses the frequency with which they pick other forms of daily communication, including phone calling by cell phone (39% do that with others every day), face-to-face socializing outside of school (35%), social network site messaging (29%), instant messaging (22%), talking on landlines (19%) and emailing (6%).
• Older girls remain the most enthusiastic texters with a median of 100 texts a day in 2011, compared with 50 for boys the same age.

Speaking as a Verizon Wireless employee, we understand every family has different needs and rules as it relates to wireless communication. We also firmly believe that parents know what’s best for their teens, tweens and young ones.

Regardless of your family’s texting philosophy, there are several resources available for you. Mayo Clinic put together this great overview on how to help teens avoid the risks of texting, including how to talk to your teen about texting and setting appropriate limits. There are also some smart suggestions on the We Are Children’s blog related to what parents can do to prevent text messaging from having any negative affects on their children’s lives.

To add to those resources, Verizon Wireless developed a public education program called Smart Phone Parenting to help parents make informed decisions about their families’ wireless usage – including text messaging. Additionally, our Usage Controls service allows parents to limit how much and when their kids text and talk on their cell phones.

We live in a world where immediate communication via mobile devices has become the norm for teens and many other demographics. While the way in which teens prefer to communicate has changed, what remains consistent is the importance of having a healthy balance between all methods of communication.

What are your thoughts? If you have teens, do you monitor their texting usage? If so, how? Please share any tips or thoughts you have.

Michelle Gilbert is part of the Verizon Wireless Midwest PR team and handles PR for the company in Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky. Connect with her on Twitter
– @VZWmichelle.

The WeReward Engineering team will be deploying an update this evening to the WeReward database in preparation for a mobile release later this week.

The new release includes several layout updates and fixes for the Patron Portal, a fix for the IOS 5 ‘Swipe to Checkin’ crash, and a lot of ground work for updated polls and downloads.

The release will start at 8pm ET and we expect it to be complete by 9pm ET.

On Friday, the Engineering team intends to submit another update that will correct some less serious formatting issues and will also include several enhancements, such as improved GPS speed/accuracy, as well as decreased memory usage and faster initial load times.

IZEA Holdings, Inc. (IZEA:OTCBB), the world leader in social media sponsorships, today announced the release of WeReward Insights, a new survey feature for its WeReward mobile rewards application that allows consumers to earn money from brands by performing real-world actions with their mobile device.

Through WeReward Insights, advertisers can offer surveys to segments of the WeReward app user base. WeReward holds a wide range of opt-in demographic data, such as purchasing habits at stores and restaurants, which can be analyzed and aggregated. The secure, anonymous data is then available to brands as a detailed, real-time snapshot of their targeted users.

“Brands and consumers directly benefit through the use of WeReward Insights,” said Ted Murphy, Chief Executive Officer. “Advertisers gain unprecedented visibility into the demographics of the respondents because the platform provides them with aggregated information about purchasing, opinions, location, and mobile task behaviors. Consumers that complete surveys are given another way to earn cash rewards for only a few minutes of their time. Our WeReward ecosystem offers the biggest variety of rewards for people to earn money for checking into places, using products, downloading mobile apps, and now completing surveys.”

Brands can set their own WeReward point amounts for each survey, which are placed into the user’s account upon completion. Each point is worth one penny, and users can transfer their points to real cash at set intervals to PayPal accounts.

“Ever time a user contributes information, it makes WeReward Insights smarter and more valuable to our client-partners,” said Ryan Schram, Chief Marketing Officer. “We can tell you if Democrats prefer Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or if iPhone owners are more eco-conscious than their Android counterparts. The entirety of this data enables businesses to better understand their customer, and in turns, helps them to make more powerful marketing decisions.”

The WeReward mobileapp is currently available to iPhone and Android device users. Businesses and consumers can also signup at www.wereward.com.

About IZEA
IZEA Holdings, Inc., (“IZEA”) is a world leader in social media sponsorship, operating multiple marketplaces including WeReward, SponsoredTweets, and SocialSpark. IZEA connects advertisers with social media publishers, helping them monetize their social media presence. The company has completed over 2,000,000 social media sponsorships for customers ranging from small local businesses to Fortune 50 organizations. For more information about IZEA, visit www.izea.com.

Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Please read the full statement and disclosures here: http://izea.com/safe-harbor-statement

For an overview of how the platform works watch the video below:

With this update, we also added a few new measures to combat fraud in the system which include limiting the accounts per device to two and requiring a unique PayPal address for each WeReward account.

Unfortunately, the initial release of this locked the accounts with a duplicated PayPal address and did not allow you to log in.

After a bit of discussion with the Engineers, we made the decision to delete all of the duplicate PayPal addresses out of the database which will allow you access your accounts and re-add this information once you are ready to cash out again.

At that time, if the address you enter has already been taken, you will then be able to add a different address.

We believe this should alleviate the current issues.  However, if you have any additional trouble, feel free to open a support ticket via your app by clicking the ‘Accounts’ tab at the bottom right and then on the ‘info’ button at the top left of that page to get to the ‘feedback’ button.

Development for BlackBerry is more expensive and cumbersome than other mobile operating systems. We have invested a lot of time and money developing the WeReward BlackBerry app, but at the end of the day the operating system and phones themselves make it extremely difficult if not impossible to create the experience we want to. I know we are not alone in our frustration developing for BlackBerry, I believe it is one of the reasons that BlackBerry is losing market share.

BlackBerry users account for about 1% of our user base. They are much less active on a daily basis than their iPhone and Android counterparts. We will be sad to see these users go, but we believe the best use of our resources is to create the best iOS and Android experiences we can for now.

The WeReward for BlackBerry App will no longer function after September 30,2011. You will see BlackBerry removed from our site between now and then.

If you have a BlackBerry and you aren’t ready to upgrade your phone there is still hope. WeReward will soon available as a website, with different types of tasks that can be completed independent of a phone.