05 Aug 2009 Facebook and Twitter Growth by Age Group
As I noted in my last article about the subtle shifts happening within MySpace, social network audience demographics are always on the move. Even still, there are skeptics who will still doubt that baby boomers are interacting on any network other than Eons. The truth is that these target audiences are also beginning to utilize social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The following chart by Nielsen shows that audiences above 25 have experienced a whopping 84% growth in Twitter adoption over the past 6 months. Also interesting is the 20% growth happening within the 55+ age range, compared to the 16% increase in 2-24 year olds. This slight discrepancy in growth doesn’t mean that younger audiences aren’t interested in Twitter, but suggests that they have already adopted it. (Also, after seeing the age ranges listed on this chart, I now want to see what a two-year old would tweet.)
InsideFacebook.com put together the following chart that shows not only the growths per age category, but also the ratio of males/females coming to the site per age category. As you can see, Facebook is experiencing a larger growth in female audiences in every age category but 55-65 year olds, where men are growing at a rate of 19%. Growth is also lowest in age ranges 18-25 because these audiences are likely to be already on the network.
Do you have any other interesting findings to add? Did any of these growth metrics surprise you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
