• 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

Or are they? The chart from the report looks at users on Twitter.com (as opposed to on phones or desktop clients):

Let’s start with the facts: In June of this year, teens and young adults made up 25% of the online population, which means that they’re disproportionately not using Twitter. Or Twitter.com. I can accept that.

But the chart on the other hand looks a little misleading. Let’s start with the age bands—technically, you’re supposed to be 13 to use Twitter (doubtful that they can enforce the TOS, but, hey, let’s humor them). If we assume (probably incorrectly, but that’s kind of moot) that the distribution in the 25-54 range is roughly equal and readjust the age banding accordingly, then we get:

Yes, teens and young adults are still slightly underrepresented. But remember this leaves out entirely everyone using phones to Tweet—and if I had to guess, I’d say that the same age group was slightly overrepresented on mobile usage.

Are teens not on Twitter? Maybe. The comments on Mashable point to at least one possible explanation—teens want to share personal information, but they want the granular privacy controls Facebook offers.

What do you think? Are teens on Twitter? If not, why not?

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iStrategyLabs spent the last six months collecting user demographic data and discovered the number of users over the age of 55 soared from 1 million to nearly 6 million. During the same 6 month period, high school and college users dropped by as much as 22%!

Here’s the breakdown:

At the same time Facebook continues to gray, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Andreessen–a Facebook board member–suggests the social network could realize revenue of $1 billion if it would only push harder with its advertising.

"This calendar year they’ll do over $500 million..If they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year…There’s every reason to expect in my view that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now," Andreessen said.

What’s interesting is that the 15-24 year olds are the ones that helped Facebook become the juggernaut it is today, but when you have champagne revenue goals while your audience has a beer budget, you need those with established incomes to pay the bills–or in this case, click on the ads.

Perhaps the key question is can Facebook continue to grow while losing its vocal youth? Arguably, high school and college users were the ones that evangelized Facebook to their older friends and family. Without them, will Facebook’s growth–and revenue–stall?

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So what the heck does this have to do with Facebook you ask? In an article at MediaPost it appears that Facebook may be having their own trouble with the number 55. For them, however, it’s not about a speed limit but rather the shift in demographics in a direction that Facebook is not too familiar with which is down.

Earlier this year, women over 55 were identified as the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook. Now it looks like they’re going in reverse. During April and May, the number of U.S. Facebook users over 55 actually dropped by 650,000 after increasing by 1.6 million the prior two months, according to new data from the Inside Facebook blog.

This wouldn’t be so interesting if the announcement touting the growth of this segment just in February hadn’t sounded so out of place itself. So what is the reason? The editor for the Inside Facebook blog, Justin Smith postulated

“Maybe older users are still getting acclimated to how to use Facebook’s real-time stream to share information with friends and family”

On a personal note, I have watched one person who fits this category actually come on board with Facebook in the past month. It’s my mother-in-law. As an aside, it’s for this precise reason that I don’t use my Facebook page for professional purposes. I never thought that getting a comment on my status from someone could be so touching and bone-chilling all at the same time.

Oh yea, Facebook and business. Sorry about that. The most interesting statistic about Facebook is actually not this sudden exodus of the Ensure crowd but rather the slowing of overall growth. Caution: The following statistic is one that bemoans decreased growth not a decrease in overall users. It’s one of those “Hey, that’s not enough growth!” scenarios that plaques the Internet as a whole. You’ve been warned

Facebook’s overall growth slowed in the last two months from the beginning of the year. In April and May, active U.S. Facebook users increased 4% to 60.4 million, compared to 11% to 56.1 million in February and March.

Here’s the whole picture in a pretty picture:

Hey, growth is growth. Maybe the 55 and older crowd had vivid memories of the Cold War era and couldn’t take the Russian investment news. Who knows? Should we care?

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New stats from Pew Internet suggest that 20% of 25 to 34 year olds have used Twitter, with those 18 to 24 only 1 point behind (19%). While that number drops off to just 2% by the time you get to adults over 65, 11% of the total US population have used the micro-blogging service.

Other interesting stats:

• 27% of bloggers use Twitter
• 35% of city-dwellers use Twitter
• 76% of Twitter users use the internet wirelessly
• Only 10% of those earning more than $75,000 use Twitter, while 17% of those making less than $30k use the service.

No data on how many people have ever seen a FAIL Whale, but we suspect it’s in the upper 90’s.

UPDATE: Twitter just announced new funding to help it figure out a revenue model.

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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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The Online Publishers Association, a non-profit organization of brand name media companies, dropped a note in our inbox about their look at where marketers place their ads. Content is king, they suggested.

Even though certain brands may be perceived as having some kind of golden touch by virtue of their names, OPA said content sites outperform portals in a couple of ways.

A content site, like a media presence, helps raise “brand favorability” and “purchase intent” for people who view ads on them. Portals aren’t viewed as having the same depth, which detracts from the marketing message.

The group proceeded so far as to say sponsorships on sites with branded content are 36 percent more effective than a portal presence. Of particular interest for advertisers: the coveted 18-34 bracket as well as affluent audiences show they respond more to ads dropped on content sites.

We expect that little morsel will benefit astute advertisers, especially with the approaching holiday shopping season later in 2008.

The study found that around three-quarters of Internet users aged 18 to 34 believe that web content is primarily focused on their age groups. Another 55% of Internet users between 35 and 44 believe that it’s focused around their age group. After 45, however, there is a decline, with a little more than 1 in 3 of the 45-54 group agreeing, just over 1 in 5 of the 55-64 group agreeing and about 1 in 8 of the 65+ group agreeing.

Obviously, not everyone between the ages of 18 and 45 can be the primary focus of all Internet content. Then who among these groups is correct—or all they wrong altogether? While we probably can’t say for sure without doing some sort of survey of Internet content and Internet content creators, I think there are a few important take aways here:

• Much of Internet content is ageless. It’s entirely possible that a 22-year-old could be thinking of the same websites as a 33-year-old and a 44-year-old when they say that web content is primarily focused on them.
• People find content they’re interested in on the Internet. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the majority of content on the web isn’t interesting to me. But when people find things online that are aimed toward them, they will probably assume that this content was written for their demographic, regardless of whether it was or not. And since we tend to gravitate toward things that appeal to us and interest us, it will probably seem like most of the content on the Internet is geared toward us and our peers.
• People are naturally self-interested. Don’t you ever forget it. Appeal to that self interest.
• People over 45 feel left out. This may not be a bad thing; perhaps they feel a certain pride in not being the focus of Internet content. But if this demographic is your audience, you need to make an extra effort to appeal to them, to make it clear that your site is about them and to cater to their needs.

Naturally, of course, if you’re trying to appeal to a younger audience, you’ll want to make it clear on your site that you’re focused on them. Then again, they probably already think you are .

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I chatted briefly with Ask spokesperson Nicholas Graham about the company, now that the initial shock of proposed changes at the site has passed. The infamous Marge Simpson plan has morphed into “search with a focus,” and the focus happens to be on the demographic that is most typical of the Ask.com user.

Women look for reference, health, and entertainment information on Ask. To serve those requests, Ask will aim at delivering answers. Don’t look for the iconic Jeeves to return; the methodology may resemble the original aims of Ask, but the butler won’t be part of it.

Ask hopes to render the answers they provide in a compelling way. They are looking to build emotional connections with their searchers.

How they plan to do this, how it will look, and advertising’s role in the repurposing all fell under the unfulfilling “stay tuned” mantra. It has only been a few days since Ask’s big reorg took place, one that sent WebProNews favorite Gary Price off the employee roster, so it is early to expect a response.

Though Graham took issue with the original reports of Ask becoming a women’s search engine, Ask’s attention to the demographic does appear to figure in their strategy going forward.

Those who underestimate the financial power of women in the world need to recall what happened when their set their clocks forward this past weekend. The change provides more daylight later in the day, when the women who largely influence and direct their household spending shop for needs and wants.

Shifting time to allow for more opportunities for shoppers to get money into the economy, that’s a big move. It shouldn’t be surprising Ask wants to direct their strategies in a similar way, and define a clearer niche for itself rather than fighting Google et al for pieces of search market share.