If your publication, classified site or firm seeks to target a specific demographic, the latest study by Online MBA would be helpful indeed. The higher-education service site learned the following:

• Women make up a whopping 82 percent of Pinterest users
• Forty six percent of Facebook users are 45 years of age or older
• Of the 90 million Google+ users 71 percent are male, and the largest group are young engineers and other technical professionals. Nearly 44 percent are single.
• The top reason 5.5 million monthly visitors turn to Reddit is for humor. Visitors stay more than 16 minutes on average – more than twice that of time spent on LinkedIn. [Additionally, Reddit recruitment listings launched in 2009; as of today 3360 openings are listed, and 3950 candidates have posted their availability. ]

There’s much more in this insightful infographic. Mashable reported the details, including the graphic below.

The YellowAPI allows developers to tap into YPG’s database of 1.5 million business listings – still the largest in Canada – to power their apps. There are two components to the API: “Places” which is focused on streaming local search content into apps, and “Deals” which is still under development but that will deliver deals and coupons, albeit from a third party, RedFlagDeals. The Deals API will be available later in 2012, the company says. A beta program is currently underway.

YPG touts its database as not only being the largest but also “curated” so that it is “relevant and clean” and updated on a daily basis. And, oh yes, it’s free.

Among the 35 apps that have already been developed are Poynt (a mobile search app); Dealscanr (it searches for local deals using a police scanner interface); Rendezview (allowing two people to find the perfect place to meet); Reservedly (helps you make restaurant reservations); and a real odd bird – MoodFood that lets you rank what “color” is your hunger.

On a more serious side, YPG has partnerships with both Twitter and Foursquare.

YPG was upbeat as it pushed the re-launch. Nicolas Gaudreau, the company’s vice president of digital and print media, said the API has enabled YPG to “accomplish a great deal in terms of driving digital innovation and in providing greater exposure to our advertisers across multiple channels.”

Hyperbole aside, YPG has unsurpassed content assets. If it can put its attention to a solid marketing program for the API re-launch, it may have what it takes to re-succeed.

That may not sound so radical, but consider why today’s group buying sites are succeeding where older services like Mercata and MobShop failed: the latter deterred potential buyers by leaving them “waiting for days before confirming whether or not they had got the offer they had signed up for.”

The Toronto Star adds that consumers felt like “it wasted their time, giving the deal a high opportunity cost. Even though they get their money back, they [still] suffer a ‘psychological loss.’”

In contrast, today’s sites show the number of users who sign up in real time. That eliminates uncertainty and boosts confidence, writes the study’s co-author Prof. Ming Hu. And 24-hour deals lower the “opportunity cost” of participating even more. Hu says the same principle can be applied to crowd-funding sites like Crowdrise and Kickstarter.

For the study, researchers set up two purchasing mechanisms: a simultaneous one – where no one knows how many buyers have come before them – and a sequential mechanism, where a second group of buyers has the advantage of knowing the size of the first group. The sequential model won the day.

The U of T study also compares the strategies of current sites – which successfully focus on such premium-priced services as gym memberships or a discounted day at the spa – and older sites which Hu says failed by offering low cost physical products that didn’t have enough added value to make the wait worth the trouble.

The study also had some other interesting findings:

• Facebook is “nearing” its saturation point in Canada while there is “still room” for other social networks to grow (Comscore points specifically to Twitter and LinkedIn as the services with the most potential).
• Online video views in Canada are up 58 percent with YouTube accounting for half of all online video viewing in Canada.
• Smartphone penetration has reached 45 percent in Canada; daily usage is growing by 50 percent.

In the report, Comscore is understandably upbeat about the direction the digital media industry is moving in Canada. “It’s evolving in extraordinary ways,” Bryan Segal, Comscore’s Canada VP said in a release on the new report. “2012 is poised to be a defining year for digital as consumers grow their engagement with social, video, mobile and other emerging media.”

We’re not so sure. A comment by another newspaper exec on the panel revealed a surprising lack of understanding of the direction digital media is heading, leading us to worry that these big wigs’ positive predictions may be premature.

“I believe there will always be an appetite by people to read a newspaper, to feel it, to touch it, to carry it,” Paul Godfrey, president and CEO of Postmedia Network, said. Good enough. But then he added, “I think to read everything on a digital tablet, people will get tired of doing that 24 hours a day, whether it’s through a computer or their digital device.”

Perhaps he’s never spent serious time with an iPad or even an iPhone. From what we’ve seen (and personally experienced), it’s pretty hard to put one down once you’ve gotten started.

Maybe it’s an age thing. Godfrey admitted that as people get older, they want the paper on their doorstep. Now, we at AIM Group don’t have a digital crystal ball (we went looking for one on EBay but all we found was a next generation Pez dispenser), but it seems pretty clear that such a strategy is inherently non-scalable. The question in our mind, then, is the classic “not if, but when.” It’s one that went unanswered at the panel.

We’ve got a category at the AIM Group we call YACLWs — “yet another Craigslist wannabe.” Today we’re officially adding a new category: “Yet another ‘Aw shucks, I’m just little ole me, Craig Newmark’ interviews.”

This week’s offender is Inman News, a site we generally admire tremendously. Yet the ridiculous, for-no-apparent-reason Craig Newmark interview this week on Inman News is just silly. Or stupid. Or really, offensive, since none of the important questions that could have been asked of Newmark were asked.

Inman, a real estate site, plopped the interview down on the site without explanation about why it felt it was worthwhile, why now, why Newmark instead of Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster (who actually runs the site, which is obviously of great interest to real estate agents and brokers)?

What would we ask Newmark or Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, if we could ever get them to  answer our questions?

— “With profits in the tens of millions of dollars annually, what does Craigslist do with its money?”

— “You voluntarily eliminated ‘adult services’ ads in 2010, although you were under a lot of pressure from law enforcement officials and anti-trafficking advocates to do so. Do you still feel that was the right choice? Do you feel Backpage.com should eliminate the ads as well? If so, why? And if not, why not?”

— “Now that you’re closing the Craigslist Foundation, will Craigslist be increasing its support of the Craigslist Charitable Fund?” (Craigslist Inc., owned primarily by Newmark and Buckmaster, has donated more than $11.2 million to Craigslist Charitable Fund since 2008. The fund, in turn, makes direct donations to hundreds of charitable organizations.)

— “And what about your personal charitable contributions?” (None of our business, or anyone’s, we suppose, but we’d still ask.)

— Newmark has launched a site, CraigConnects.org, that serves as a technology support platform for non-profit organizations and a blog for his thoughts on charitable needs. “How’s it going? What’s it accomplished? Any specifics?”

(We used to talk to Newmark and Buckmaster from time to time, but ever since we started publishing our annual Craigslist revenue reports, they ignore us or put out nasty comments about us on Buckmaster’s blog.)

The questions in the Inman interview — it’s here, but why bother? — range from the simple “what is one mistake you made” to the asinine: “What’s one thing most people don’t know about you … ?” which brought the equally asinine response, “I actually exist.”

Yeh, Craig. So you exist. But what do you have to say about substantive issues? You’re great at ducking those questions — the ones with any real meaning.

Today in the US is Bill of Rights day, which involves a celebration of the 220-year-old First Amendment*. At a time when many project the death of newspapers, the Knight Foundation and the American Society of News Editors (ASNE)  have collaborated on this Twitter-based FreeToTweet competition. It’s a smart way to get out the message that traditional media are evolving to multimedia, and to help create top-of-mind awareness of newspapers among a younger demographic. While it’s not a classified-focused or even advertising-focused project, this marketing is important to the success of both.

During FreeToTweetDay – today, December 15 – Students 14-22 can tweet #FreetoTweet or email their message about what the First Amendment means to them. They can attach and include links.  The top 22 tweeter or emailers will be awarded $5000 college scholarships.  A panel of judges will first narrow down the entrants into a group of finalists, and then choose the winners. It’s a great idea, though we wish they’d brought the public into the judging at some point – generating even more discussions on Facebook and Twitter. This could have virally marketed the message even further.

Some of what we’ve seen so far:

Read the press release here.

*Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Adicio’s recruitment, automotive and real estate Web platforms are already optimized for mobile. With the new service, Adicio clients can now offer advertisers their own branded mobile classified presence, with custom content, vanity URLS, flexible color themes, instant alerts and more.

Sony's recruitment mini-site in behalf of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The mini-sites maintain the functionality of Adicio’s full-blown mobile platforms. Job-seekers can use them to see an employer’s latest listings and apply for jobs. Home buyers can view properties and contact Realtors for showings. Auto buyers can see an auto dealer’s inventory and schedule test drives.

“Adicio’s Mobile Mini Sites put job seekers, home shoppers, and car buyers in touch with online classifieds from their mobile phones,” CEO Rick Miller said in a release. “With almost 80 percent of the nation’s population using mobile phones and 71 percent of smartphone users searching for products and services after seeing an ad, this solution merges the power of mobile with the power of advertising to customers on the go.”

It’s a premium service to Adicio clients. Price depends on volume, Chief Alliance Officer Tony Lee told us, and whether the request includes a “wrap” – Adicio parlance for indexing listings from specific advertisers’ sites. “It depends on the number of mobile mini-sites we create for advertisers on behalf of the client,” he said. “Some clients will want a few just for their top advertisers, while others we’ve spoken to anticipate selling hundreds of them each month.”

Adicio’s full release is here.