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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Who's On Facebook?

Remember the great comedy routine, "Who's On First?". The hilarious and ambiguous skit by Abbot and Costello left you wondering who really was on first. And many people are asking the same question these days about Facebook - who is on there and what does that mean to me?

Well the answers are easier to find and decipher than those in the comedy routine. Facebook tracks that information themselves and provides the details through their Social Ads Platform. And here are some interesting details, taken right from those statistics :

  1. The largest number of U.S. users on Facebook are ages 35-54 years old - that is 29% of the user base.

  2. The largest increase in users came in the 55+ age group - up 922% since 2009. That turns out to be over 8.8 million new Facebook members over the age of 55 in the last year.

  3. During 2010, Facebook grew to over 103 million users in the U.S. That is up 144% from 2009.

So what does that mean to businesses trying to get the most out of the social networking site? It tells us that Facebook is still growing - at an impressive rate. And that growth continues to represent an excellent opportunity for marketing - so it is worth the time and effort to use it as a part of any marketing campaign.

It also tells us that the use of Facebook is not as lop-sided as it once was. Even over the last year, Facebook has morphed into a place for those over the age of 25 to connect, discuss and develop business. Before that, it was often assumed it was a phenomenon for those under 25. The new reality is that the middle age demographic is engaged in the social networking community.

So now that you know who is on Facebook, use the information to tailor the social networking portion of your marketing. And if your business has not started working with social networking, maybe now is a good time.