Social Media Demographics – Part 2

The social media demographics analysis that comsScore released early this week hopefully will clean up the common misconception that all social media networks are alike. That there is no real difference from one user-generated (UG) site to another and thus marketers can employ a common tactic successfully across the whole network. The demographic data shows not only how each of the major social networks attracts a different demographic group, but that as the social network sites become more mainstream those demographics will skew upwards as a larger percentage of the general population joins in.

Interestingly, the demographics data showed that MySpace, which has a reputation of attracting a high school/teenager audience, actually attracts a much older audience. Over the last 12 months we have seen advertisers interested in reaching the youth market spend a lot of time, money and effort, reaching out to this audience on MySpace. One of the common complaints from MySpace advertisers is the poor ROI that they are seeing. Now part of the reason for that is the “interestingness problem” as Fred Stutzman calls it. But part of it might be the fact that 68% of the visitors to MySpace are 25 and older!

In August 2005, 24.7% of the visitors to MySpace were between the age of 12-17 (that high school/teenager audience). By August 2006 that demographic group was responsible for only 11.9% of the visitors. As MySpace moved into the mainstream, the percent of visitors over 25 went from 49.9% in August 2005 to 68.3% in August 2006. Today there are almost as many over 55 year olds using MySpace as there are teenagers (11.9% to 11%)!

If you have a product or service aimed at the teen market, then MySpace might not be your best social media site to advertise on. So where did the teenagers go? It appears that they went to Xanga.com where 20% of its users are in the 12-17 age range (about where MySpace was a year ago). So if this is your target market, then advertisers might reconsider moving some of their marketing dollars from MySpace to Xanga.com.

My takeaway from the comScore data is that the composition of a social network undergoes significant changes as that network becomes more mainstream. The younger early adopters leave to find to the next “cool site” while the older mainstream demographics enters to see what the network is all about. As marketers, if you are not aware of this dynamic than you will end up developing advertising campaigns for an audience that no longer exisits.