Social Media: Social Networking Driven by Age, Work; Kids Today? Feh!
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 23, 2008 | Share This
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When I was a kid we had to network socially by punching a random bunch of digits into a keypad, (or twirling a dial with your finger – a dial!) picking up a big clumsy plastic thing attached to a squiggly wire, and speaking into it. If you were lucky your buddy was on the other end. Worse, it was done one person at a time! You kids never had it so good!
The reality is that even Facebook, a site that was originally designed for college age students and younger, has seen most of its growth from adult users, and not just the ones who are auditioning for To Catch a Predator. In fact the latest evidence from Nielsen Online is that the most successful blogs skew towards the 25-49 age range. Their blog points out Tagged as a prime example. Tagged started out as a site targeted to high schoolers. As the Wall Street Journal noted back in 2006:
“Tagged, no relation to TagWorld, has another approach entirely: targeting a subset of MySpace users — teenagers, and especially high-school students. Tagged’s co-founder, Greg Tseng, says he is a great admirer of Facebook, a college-oriented version of MySpace that has been nearly as successful.”
Recently Tagged, like Facebook before it, decided that they were limiting themselves (and likely their growth) by excluding adults. The result according to Nielsen has been year-over-year growth of 116% for Facebook and an amazing 330% for Tagged.
MySpace is still the number one networking site according to the same survey, but growth is stalling out – eking out 1% year-over-year. MySpace, not coincidentally, targets highest amongst users 12-17. If Facebook keeps growing at the pace it has (which it may or may not do) it will surpass MySpace next year.
For marketers the salient news here is that social networking sites are not kids stuff – adults are finding them useful not just to hang out and re-connect but, as in the case of Linked In (No. 4 site with 193% growth) as aids to doing business. Twitter, the fastest growing net with 343% growth, is another great example of this.
The influence of social media sites on perceptions of mainstream, major brands will only grow as more people in this key age group begin to rely on social networking as an everyday part of their work and leisure lives.
Topics: ECommerce, Facebook, MySpace, Social Media |