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Smaller share doesn't mean fewer young members

A first glance at a comparison of social networks today - Facebook and LinkedIn - appeared to show Facebook losing its young college audience.

Few things terrify a content company more than the prospect of losing a lucrative marketing demographic. No group receives more attention than the 18-24 crowd, as any cursory look at pop culture demonstrates.

We were surprised this morning in looking at Compete's side-by-side look at LinkedIn, Facebook, and shares of audiences broken down by age group. Fewer 18-24 year olds delivered traffic to Facebook in June 2008 when compared to June 2007.

Could Facebook be facing a doom where its original audience ages straight out of the site, and on to LinkedIn, while potential replacements among college age youth go elsewhere for their social networking fix? We asked Compete the age-old, I mean, age-young question about this shift, and heard back from Max Freiert, who replied thusly:

Over the course of that year, Facebook grew by over 50%

All of these metrics are share based.

As a result, the group of 18-24 year olds actually grew year over year in terms of absolute numbers, despite the dramatic loss in terms overall site share. So the best way to respond is that they aren’t necessarily leaving, but the older groups are flocking to Facebook, and consequently driving that share down.

Another (less data related) explanation is simply that a lot of the early Facebook adopters were college students when the site started to gain popularity, and (in addition to crossing that 24 year old line themselves) attracted older friends and co-workers to Facebook as they entered the workforce.

It's a smaller slice of the pie when it comes to the 18-24 bracket, but the pie is much bigger these days. Facebook advertisers may resume their normal breathing patterns at this time.