DISQUS

Nick Shin · 2 months ago

Another nice overview and insight into the top social networking sites. The household income as it relates to linkedin is not surprising as well as the large difference in the age groups between myspace and others.

briansolis · 2 months ago

Thank you Nick...

fardjohnmar · 2 months ago

Nice analysis. I would caution folks not to read the data on income levels on social nets and other tools as meaning that communities of color are not engaged online. I've said this in the past, and I'll say it again here: the digital divide is not based on race, but income. A few months back I talked about this issue during a Webinar produced the U.S. federal agency AIDS.gov (which is affiliated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). Learn more about this presentation here: http://blog.aids.gov/2008/09/catching-up-wit.html

briansolis · 2 months ago

Well said, take a look at the closing lines of the post. Agree?

fardjohnmar · 2 months ago

Absolutely!

fardjohnmar · 2 months ago

Brian: Your research and a few other articles I read inspired a blog post focusing on what the growing class divide means for the industry I'm engaged in (health marketing communications). When you get a chance, please take a look at my thoughts. I'd love to get your (and others') comments on what I think is a very important issue: http://blog.pathoftheblueeye.com/2009/10/16/wha....

John Slevin · 2 months ago

Very interesting - as parent of teens and college children (and HH income above 75) I still do not see great participation from them on Twitter, and obviously LinkedIn. The stats here confirm this - Facebook is easy, engaging and channel of choice. Twitter has not caught on in the Midwest with that younger audience.

Amanda · 2 months ago

Interesting stats, but not surprising. I always felt MySpace would lose ground while Facebook & Twitter would continue to soar. My kids do FB, as do all of their friends & relatives. None do MS.

briansolis · 2 months ago

I have interesting data on the youth migration that i'll publish soon...

Mark Drapeau · 2 months ago

The phrase "class divide" connotes something negative. I'm not necessarily sure that, in this case, one class of people using one social network and another class using another is a "divide" - though it is certainly a noteworthy difference that deserves research and analysis. (I think that it also suggests that MySpace is "worse" than Facebook, which may be a media and tech elite bias more than anything.)

kydinseattle · 2 months ago

i think this is interesting, especially in light of recent research that has highlighted the geographic differences of MySpace users. (and with 70 million of 'em still, nothing to sneeze at!) i think your point is right on - that categorizing users simply by income and education level leaves us with an incomplete idea of who they are and how they use those networks.

"[MySpace users] largely populate smaller cities and communities in the south and central parts of the country. Piskorski rattles off some MySpace hotspots: "Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Florida.""
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6156.html

"We see that most locations where national news and traditional and social media are produced get fewer than expected log-ins, while places like Louisville, Tampa and Dayton clock up twice as many log-ins as expected."
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/08/wil...

although i had once declared myself one of those who had abandoned MySpace, i recently found that it just serves me in a very different way than when i first started using the site. i am interested to see what the trends for use of myspace are a six months and a year from now. maybe it will have evolved further into what i think its becoming at the moment, which is a clearinghouse for artists (major label but especially independent ones) to promote and communicate with their fan base in a more engaging way than they can on twitter.

Dennis O'Neil · 2 months ago

Thanks for sharing this.
I'd be very interested in stats listing users' social networks of choice based on education level, as opposed to just income. Was that included in Nielsen Claritas report?

Rich Harris · 2 months ago

Very refreshing to get some really valuable data/metrics all in one blog post. There aren't many good tools yet to pull all that stuff together easily into one report. :-)

Your last quote is one that I only think a handful of people innately get:

"This is why, in social media, digital anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and psychology prevail…"

The answer is already known. It's in our DNA.

steveellwood · 2 months ago

My son's at college in the UK; doing a computing/virtual environment course. Virtually the whole class used Facebook; he was the only one who also used twitter, posterous, and had a Wave invite. Few of them even had heard of RSS. I'd guess most of the youngsters have a fairly shallow engagement with the sort of tools many of us use - and choose the one their peers use - which is: Facebook.

jack09 · 2 months ago

Thanks Brian. Amazing info. As a Canadian living in Montreal I wonder whether this data would look the same in Canada? I doubt it would in Quebec (always a profoundly different market)...

Patrick · 2 months ago

Very Good anaysis, and a well written article.

I will be following your articles much more closely going forward. This is a subject that is very close to my heart, as I have ben following it for a while. I had a book on facebook statuses (www.theisbook.com) published in April, about how when you collate these statuses together it can give you a unique insight into life in the 21st century, as people tend to be more honest when hiding behind their computer.

You're analysis is second to none, and includes a lot of facts and figures that I haven't come across before.

Keep up the good work mate.

aangbiz · 2 months ago

thank u so much

Jessica · 2 months ago

Great Info! Thanks for the post!

lesliefischer · 1 month ago

This was a very interesting article, and timely, to say the least. The statistics regarding household income and users of social media were especially intruiging.

lesliefischer · 1 month ago

This article was very interesting. I especially enjoyed the statistics on household income and specific social media sites.

briansolis · 1 month ago

Thanks Leslie...