Pew: Visuals as Social Currency

A new Pew research study suggests that photos and videos are becoming key online social currencies.
  Almost half (46%) of adult Internet users post original photos and videos online (that they themselves have created).  Pew identified this group as creators. Almost all in this group have posted and shared photos (45% of all adults, 98% of creators); what was more surprising was that more than a third of them created and posted videos (18% of all Internet users, 39% of creators).

  The study also found that 41% of adults using the Internet were curators - people who have taken photos or videos they found online and posting them on a site used for sharing them with others.  Over a third (35%) of adult Internet users have done that with photos (85% of curators), and a quarter (25%) of adult Internet users have done so with videos (61% of curators).  There is a large overlap in the creator and curator groups - almost a third (32%) of all adult Internet users are both creators and curators, and 56% of all Internet users have engaged in at least one of the creating or curating activities.
  The rise and diffusion of social visuals-sharing systems have certainly contributed to the growth of these activities.  Clearly YouTube has made video sharing (whether your own or someone else's) quite easy, and most basic social media systems have incorporated the capacity to share images and videos.  The Pew study focused on several of the newer social media-sharing services - Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr.  They found Pinterest was predominantly used by women (1 in 5 women, 12% of all Internet users).  Instagram had a similar overall penetration (12% of all Internet users), but was dominated by younger users - more than 1 in 4 people in the 18-29 age group (27%) have used Instagram.  Only 5% of adults using the Internet reported using Tumblr to share images.  The report provides additional demographic breakdowns.

  As indicated above, if there was a real surprise in this study, it was the numbers on creating and sharing videos.  While the development of social media systems for sharing photos and videos is likely the most immediate factor contributing to video creation and curation, I'd add two other enabling factors - first, the expansion of video capabilities into most digital cameras and many mobile devices, which has given many more people the capacity to shoot video; and second, the expansion of broadband Internet access, which has boosted the ability to watch, and share, online videos of increasing quality.

  What makes creation and curation activities social currency is the notion that the content provided drives a lot of the increased attention to, and use of, social media and the Internet.  They provide the value that guides audience actions.

Source - Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online,  report from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.