The Pew Internet Project has come up with a new typology for users of information and communications technology (ICT).

Pew sorts folks into ten groups, distributed within two main buckets. The chief determinant of which bucket you fall in is your attitude toward and usage of mobile ICT.

Here’s how Pew sorts us. And here’s the 14-question Pew survey you can take to find out which group you belong to.

Bucket #1: "Motivated by Mobility": Five groups in this typology — making up 39% of the adult population — have seen the frequency of their online use grow as their reliance on mobile devices has increased. For these groups, growth in frequency of online use is linked not only to increasing broadband adoption, but to positive and improving attitudes about how mobile access makes them more available to others.

• Digital Collaborators: 8% of adults use information gadgets to collaborate with others and share their creativity with the world. [The survey puts me here, but you’ll never reach me on my cellphone!]
• Ambivalent Networkers: 7% of adults heavily use mobile devices to connect with others and entertain themselves, but they don’t always like it when the cell phone rings.
• Media Movers: 7% of adults use online access to seek out information nuggets, and these nuggets make their way through these users’ social networks via desktop and mobile access.
• Roving Nodes: 9% of adults use their mobile devices to connect with others and share information with them.
• Mobile Newbies: 8% of adults lack robust access to the internet, but they like their cell phones.

2. "Stationary Media Majority": The remaining 61% of the adult population does not feel the pull of mobility — or anything else — drawing them further into the digital world. Across the five groups that make up this part of the population, several have a lot of technology at hand and have seen their tech assets grow in recent years. Yet ICTs remain on the periphery in their lives.

• Desktop Veterans: 13% of adults are dedicated to wireline access to digital information, and like how it opens up the pipeline to information for them. [Here’s where I would have expected to be.]
• Drifting Surfers: 14% of adults are light users — despite having a lot of ICTs — and say they could do without modern gadgets and services.
• Information Encumbered: 10% of adults feel overwhelmed by information and inadequate to troubleshoot modern ICTs.
• The Tech Indifferent: 10% of adults are unenthusiastic about the internet and cell phone. For the Tech Indifferent, modern gadgets and services are too much trouble with too little payoff.
• Off the Network: 14% of adults are neither cell phone users nor internet users.

The full report provides fuller profiles of each user category.

This typology won’t help you raise a dime. But most Agitator readers are probably in one of the "power-user" categories, and it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that there are plenty of folks we try to raise money from who aren’t quite as plugged in and infatuated with instant communications as we are. Fortunately, most of them still read letters!

Tom