Mike Andrew Consulting

Females, 18-34-Yr-Olds Most Active Social Networkers

By mike, Sep 14 in blog with 0 comments

Females make up the majority of visitors to social networks and blogs, and people aged 18-34 have the highest concentration of visitors among all age groups, according to a September 2011 report from The Nielsen Company. Data from “The Social Media Report Q3 2011? indicates that during Q3 2011, women were 3% more likely than average to use social networkers, and 18-to-34-year-olds were 8% more likely than average.

In addition, Asian/Pacific Islanders were the ethnic group most likely to visit social networks and blogs, indexing 3% than the overall average. Other leading indicators of social network usage include living in New England (2% higher than average), holding a bachelor’s or postgraduate degree (6% higher than average), and earning less than $50,000 per year (2% higher than average).

Facebook Almost Triples Audience of Nearest Competitor

Looking at the top 10 US social networking/blogging sites during Q3, Nielsen finds that Facebook, with an average monthly audience of more than 140 million, almost triples the average monthly audience (50 million) of its nearest competitor, Blogger. Facebook reaches 70% of active internet users. Nielsen also determined the following facts about the top 10 social networking/blogging sites:

LinkedIn and Wikia are the only sites in the category where the percentage of men visiting the respective site exceeds the percentage of total active male Internet users (47%).
62% of page views on Facebook are from female users.
75% of Blogger’s users have a household income of $75,000 or more.
African-Americans are represented on Twitter more than any other social network.
25% of WordPress visitors have a bachelor’s degree.
Teens view twice as many MySpace pages as the average user.
LinkedIn users with a postgraduate degree visit the site three times more than the average user.
Female teens are represented more on Tumblr than any of the other nine leading social networking/blogging sites.
The Pacific region has a higher concentration of Six Apart users than any of the other nine leading social networking/blogging sites.
New England has a higher concentration of Pulse visitors than any other region.
18-to-34-year-olds are more represented on Wikia than any of the other top sites.

Web Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Any Other Web Brand

Facebook users average 53.4 million minutes per month. This dwarfs the monthly minutes spent by users of any other web brand. Yahoo users come in a distant second with an average of 17.2 million minutes per month, less than one-third Facebook’s total.

Other social networking/blogging sites trail Facebook much more dramatically. None even come close to 1 million minutes per month. Blogger ranks second with about 724,000 monthly minutes, which is more than double the roughly 325,000 monthly minutes spent by users of number five social networking/blogging site LinkedIn.

Social Networking 3rd-Most-Used Smartphone App

Social networking is the third most-used type of mobile application among US smartphone owners who download apps. Sixty percent use social networking apps, only beaten by apps for weather (65%) and games (67%). Facebook ranks as the most popular app across all operating systems and Twitter is the fifth-most used app on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile operating systems.

Other Findings

Mobile internet audience to social networking sites is up 62% compared to Q3 2010.
Thirty percent of smartphone users say social networking apps are the phone feature they value most.
Social networks and blog sites accounting for 23% of time Americans spent online in Q3, more than twice the amount of time spent on the #2 category, online games.
Social networks and blogs reach nearly 80% of active US internet users.
Close to 40% of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone.

Pew: 2 in 3 Online Adults Use SocNets

Two-thirds of adult internet users (65%) now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up almost 7% from 61% one year ago, according to an August 2011 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That’s more than double the percentage that reported social networking site usage in 2008 (29%), and about eight times the 8% who said they used social networking sites in 2005.

Looking at usage on a typical day, 43% of online adults use social networking, up 13% from 38% a year ago and more than triple the rate of 13% in 2008. Out of all the “daily” online activities that Pew polls about, only email (which 61% of internet users access on a typical day) and search engines (which 59% use on a typical day) are used more frequently than social networking tools.

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.