Letters to the Web Strategy Editor: Social Networking Usage numbers, Facebook and MySpace

I’m getting a few more great letters of folks asking for info, if I know the answer, I’ll often blog it. I track a lot of info and put onto this blog, often you’ll find it under the ‘web usage’ category tag on the right navigation. Here’s a letter I got in from a friend who’s speaking on the subject soon. Hopefully this will aid him:

The current installed base and rate of increase for FaceBook?
July 07 numbers from Business Week say it’s at 26 million.

Comscore (also this month) show that growth over past 12 months has been 89%.

I don’t have any prediction numbers for the next year, but I’ll expect it to be in the thousands of percent.

The number of people under 30 on FaceBook?
I did the math on the same Comscore report and 60% are under 35. Sorry, I can’t accurately break it down to age 30, but you can make some guesses.

Also, for MySpace: “half of the users are age 35 and older, while users age 18-24 make up only 17%. On Facebook, older users make up 40%, with college students (29%) being the next biggest group.”

It’s interesting to note that same BusinessWeek article differentiates MySpace as being blue collar, and Facebook being White collar.

The current installed base for MySpace and the rate of decline?
68 million unique users logged on to MySpace in the last month, says the same Business Week article.

Myspace’s younger demographic rates are decreasing says this Business Week’s July 07 report: “but U.S. visitors under 18 to MySpace dropped 30 percent over the past year, while Facebook’s rose about 2 1/2 times”

Any statistics or facts related to b to b and blogging or social media?
Oh yeah, here’s what I think is the most important report this year regarding social media and IT decision makers (B2B): “Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that social media content and user-generated tools have made for a more informed purchasing decision, and more than three-quarters believe they have made their lives more efficient.”

I was lucky to have recent reports in my mind (all from this month) so these are pretty up to date. Data is important, as it controls where the money goes.

By the way, I don’t use myspace, but my Facebook profile is here, if you add me, I’ll add you back. But please, whatever you do, don’t zombie bite me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 7:33 am and is filed under Social Media Measurement, Social Networking, 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.