Forty Million Americans Now Contribute to Social Networking Sites: Who Are They?
According to a new report from Netpop Research, 76% of all U.S. broadband users actively contribute to social media sites in one form or another, and 29% contribute regularly to social networking sites. Among these social networkers, Facebook is quickly catching up to MySpace, though iMeem, LastFM, Digg, and LiveJournal are also very popular with college students. The report also compares the online habits of these social networkers with those broadband subscribers who choose not to contribute to social media sites and finds a number of very interesting differences.
Social Networkers vs. Non-Contributors
The report, which is available for free until January 31, 2009 if you register at Netpop, provides an extremely rich amount of data.
Netpop, for example, found that the typical social networker is female (57% vs. 43%), between 18 and 29 years old, employed (55%) or a student (23%), and single (48%). The average social networker uses the Internet to connect with more than 18 people one-to-one in a given week, and with close to 110 one-to-many.
Interestingly, those broadband subscribers who don't contribute to social networks tend to be male (57%), married (57%), and older. They also connect with less than 3 people online per week.
Social networkers spend an average of about $101 online, while those who don't contribute to social networks only spend $80. On average, social networkers are also interested in a more diverse range of topics, with music, friends, movies, and games being the most prevalent interests.
Facebook vs. MySpace
Netpop also compared Facebook and MySpace users. Most of the results there aren't highly surprising, but they do provide hard evidence for some of the more anecdotal stories we have seen about the two services.
Facebook users, for example tend to skew towards the 18 to 29 year olds, while MySpace users span all age groups. Facebook also has more users with college degrees (74% vs. 56%) and these users are less likely to be married than MySpace users.
MySpace users, however, spend more time online during the week (5.5 hours vs. 5.1 hours) and also remain more active during the weekend.
In terms of interests, MySpace users are more interested in NASCAR, astrology, and gardening, while Facebook's users are predictably more interested in school, science, and investing.
Advertising
Netpop concludes the report with a longer discussion of what this means for online advertisers. A lot of this advice is right along the lines we have already discussed in earlier posts: engage with users on social media sites, give consumers a voice, enable companies to listen and learn, and allow your 'fans' to influence others.
With over 40 million Americans now contributing to social networking sites in one form or another, this is clearly a lucrative market for advertisers, but also one that is very different from more traditional online and offline media sources.
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Nice post.Social Networking has entered mainstream. Research by other organizations also points to this. This mainstream adoption is Phase 1 where people get familiar with Social Networking - both from a technology standpoint and from a social/professional standpoint.
Phase 2 is porting this experience to all websites. As Scott Brown, Marketing Strategist of Cisco mentions "You are going to see aspects of community in pretty much every corporate website".
That's where Facebook Connect and OpenID come in. For e.x to voice a concern a User could Log into Cisco's website using his Facebook account. We are in the early stages - but forward looking companies already have social networks tailored to their business objective.
Identity portability and social graph portability will pick up in 2009 according to Chris Brogan and i agree with him there. Here is the link http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/allyson-kapin/radical-tech/10-experts-predict-how-web-20-will-evolve-2009/
With the rapid growth of social networkers, it's necessary to understand those environments and working on new approaches to advertising will become increasingly important as social media consumption continues to increase.I believe the above study will bring in new approcahes to online advertising
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