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Study Breaks Down The Demographic Of Bloggers

Manoj Jasra — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:45:26 +0000

Social Media monitoring company, Sysomos has just released a study in which they analyzed over a 100 million blogs and reported data on age, gender and location of bloggers. Below is a summary of their findings:

Most bloggers are 21-35 years old
51% of all blog posts are written by females
USA contributes to a third of all blog posts, followed by the UK
Japan accounts for the third-most bloggers (4.9%), followed by Brazil (4.2%), Canada (3.9%), Germany (3.3%), Italy (3.2%), Spain (3.1%), France (2.9%) and Russia (2.3%).
California had the highest share of bloggers in the US
Ontario was the top province in Canada

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Age Differences Between MySpace and Facebook Users

Manoj Jasra — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:25:28 +0000

comScore’s recent digital year in review reveals that the MySpace demographic has gotten younger over the last year whereas Facebook’s 24 & under crowd decreased and its 25-34 year segment increased.

An analysis of demographic composition of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users revealed important differences that reflect their appeal to various audiences. MySpace saw its user composition shift toward younger audience segments in 2009, with people age 24 and younger now comprising 44.4 percent of the site’s audience, up more than 7 percentage points from the previous year. Facebook’s audience, by contrast, was evenly split between those younger and older than 35 years of age. The most noticeable demographic shift on Facebook during the year occurred with 25-34 year olds, who now account for 23 percent of the audience, up from 18.8 percent last year.

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The Growth of Twitter and Facebook Use By Age Demographic

Lisa Braziel — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:33:51 +0000

As I noted in my last article about the subtle shifts happening within MySpace, social network audience demographics are always on the move. Even still, there are skeptics who will still doubt that baby boomers are interacting on any network other than Eons. The truth is that these target audiences are also beginning to utilize social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The following chart by Nielsen shows that audiences above 25 have experienced a whopping 84% growth in Twitter adoption over the past 6 months. Also interesting is the 20% growth happening within the 55+ age range, compared to the 16% increase in 2-24 year olds. This slight discrepancy in growth doesn’t mean that younger audiences aren’t interested in Twitter, but suggests that they have already adopted it. (Also, after seeing the age ranges listed on this chart, I now want to see what a two-year old would tweet.)

InsideFacebook.com put together the following chart that shows not only the growths per age category, but also the ratio of males/females coming to the site per age category. As you can see, Facebook is experiencing a larger growth in female audiences in every age category but 55-65 year olds, where men are growing at a rate of 19%. Growth is also lowest in age ranges 18-25 because these audiences are likely to be already on the network.

Do you have any other interesting findings to add? Did any of these growth metrics surprise you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Older Generations Are Flocking To Twitter

Frank Reed — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:19:25 +0000

The folks at comScore put some numbers to what everyone already suspects. Twitter traffic is growing at a very rapid rate. What may surprise some are the people that are leading the charge. They also say that the March numbers to be released in the next week will raise some eyebrows as well.

Twitter has grown in legend and lore as of late. It is being used by Shaquille O’Neal, Ashton and Mrs. Kutcher, big business like Dell and Southwest Airlines and President Obama. You can’t seem to turn around without bumping into someone either blubbering over the importance of Twitter or another person bemoaning the decline and fall of Western civilization as a result of it. One thing is for sure, people read, write and talk about it a lot and as the talk grows so does the usage.

A look at the age demographics of Twitter users may be a surprise to some.

A Reuters blog post takes a look at this pattern and discusses the move toward older demographics using social media in general more.

Why this is a surprise to many is a surprise to me. Most users of social media are being attracted by the business applications of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. Many of the youngest people who have grown up squarely in the Internet Age are probably not that excited about these things anymore simply because their parents are now involved! I know that when I talk to my kids about something that they think is cool it immediately takes a lot of the cool out of it for them. Their logic is that it can’t be that cool if Dad is into it (welcome to my life).

Another driver for this business application by an older demographic is the economy. Twitter probably benefits greatly from the fact that everyone is scrambling to survive in this economic mess. As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Since it doesn’t cost anything other than time to be on these social media outlets and people don’t need to leave their house or office to do it the option becomes more attractive particularly to those who have to pay the bills.

Now, did the people at Twitter predict this type of usage pattern from the start? They will say yes I suppose but who knows. The reality of social media though is that no one can truly predict how any one avenue will be adopted by any particular group. It’s the newness and the Wild West aspect of all of this that keeps it interesting.

As things are shaping up though it appears that the money for social media will ultimately be from those who want to apply it for commercial use and not for those who want to simply share the incredibly ridiculous and inane details of their otherwise empty lives. Was that too harsh?

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Older Women The ‘Dominant’ Demographic On Facebook

Taylor Pratt — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:47:08 +0000

Yep, you read that headline right. According to MediaPost, women over the age of 55 are the fastest-growing user group on Facebook over the last three months. This is significant considering how rapidly Facebook has been growing these last few months (600k users a day!).

The study also reports several other statistics that marketers should take note of:

Women make up 56.2% of Facebook users—outnumbering men in almost every age group
25% of U.S. Facebook users are over the age of 35—considering that Facebook started as a college platform, this is very surprising.
45% of U.S. users are over the age of 26—this isn’t as surprising as you take into account that this is now about the average age of early Facebook adopters.
Teenagers only account for 12% of Facebook users. This actually made my jaw drop. I would have thought teenagers would be the dominating age demographic on a social site like Facebook.

Are you surprised by these statistics? How will this affect your marketing strategy?

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Does Age Matter In Marketing?

Rohit Bhargava — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:43:18 +0000

Sometimes I can’t resist a post that will result in a few irate responses. This is likely going to be one of them. It is essentially about my distaste for something that I have seen far too many marketers blindly rely on … age statistics. Just about every web site that tries to sell advertising reports on the age stats of their visitors. Television programs report on their ability to reach wide demographics whether it is the "coveted" 18-34 males or moms from 25-44. Let’s face it … this is a pretty idiotic way to report and to target for lots of reasons. Here are just a few off the top of my head:

People are age shifting and not living lives based on their ages.
The top end of a demographic (34) has almost nothing in common with the low end (18).
Age demos leave out influencers, gift buyers and others for whom a message may be relevant, but don’t fit the age requirements.
Focusing on age can take you away from emotional or relevant benefits.
People lie about their age all the time.

Now let’s focus on a secret that smart marketers already know. Age doesn’t matter. What matters is relevance. Of course, there are some types of messages that work better for teenagers and others that work better for moms. But my argument is that if you find the right 25 year old that thinks like a teenager, or a 36 year old mom (who may technically be outside your age demographic), then that’s a good thing. So here’s my open question … should marketers stop thinking about age demographics and refocusing on methods of targeting that actually matter such as interests, affinity groups, location, and others?

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18 Or Older To Use Google?

Philipp Lenssen — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:47:02 +0000

Google has this bit in their terms of service:

You may not use the Services [defined as “Google’s products, software, services and web sites"] and may not accept the Terms if … you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google

The oddity of this has been pointed out before: many states in the US require that you be 18 year or more to form a binding contract… hence Google does not allow many kids and teens to use their services! Now, Chris Soghoian investigated a bit more and also got statements from Google, as well as comparisons with other sites’ terms. A Google spokesperson said:

We’re not in a position to verify the age or legal status of any user, given the tremendous number of users accessing Google services. That said, when we become aware of a user who is violating our Terms of Service, including not being of proper age to accept the Terms of Service, we take appropriate action, which could include the termination of the user’s Google Account.

Laws, it seems, are a language all of its own with little chance for people outside the craft to really understand it (even if it’s supposed to affect them; but do you read through every word of an agreement of a website though?). Chris points out that this discrepancy is especially interesting in the light of Google’s Doodle 4 Google contest… which is aimed at kids and teens.

However, is there any legal obligation for users to agree to a site’s terms of services in any case? Google’s terms say, “In order to use the Services, you must firstly agree to the Terms. You may not use the Services if you do not accept the Terms.” But can a site have a legally binding agreement that becomes active without any opt-in, just by visiting say Google.com… which does not even link to the terms straight from its homepage? (Imagine the terms would include a bit like “by using the site you agree to buy a dishwasher from us” etc.).

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