Web Usage: Facebook grows older, watch for the retirement fund API

As you know there’s been a recent surge in new users signing up for Facebook, now that it’s open for anyone (not just college students like before). Comscore released some results, here’s a few stats that should be highlighted (and what they mean to us):

The largest segment area appears in the 35+ age.
Comscore didn’t break out that age group, so it’s somewhat skewed

The 25-34 age group (my range) has the highest percentage growth
I’m not surprised, most people I know are moving to Facebook

The average time spend on site per month is 130-200 minutes per user. that’s 2-3 hours
Of course, we know attention is a horrible metric to track as users can leave tabs open

Features and Applications will mature
While I’m being somewhat sensational with that title, I predict in addition to the ‘best friends’ API that let’s people poke, hug, and kiss each other, that we’ll start to see some practical APIs from investment groups, maybe a classmates.com plug in and other tools that let older demographics benefit from the network effect. It’s a good thing!

One example of that is already coming true, as Zoho has released an office application to use within Facebook. You can now created, edit and share documents (word processor, spreadsheet, and other tools) with your network of friends.

What would be really interesting if Sharepoint finally opens up and becomes relevant by having a play within Facebook, watch Sharepoint Buzz to find out if they ever do.

Facebook Predictions
By the way, have you read my predictions on the future of Facebook, LinkedIn, APIs and Identities? A lot of my predictions came true.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 2:03 am and is filed under Social Networking, Web Analytics, Web Usage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.