If you are a Facebooker, you are already old
Sunday, November 8, 2009
There was a time when the so-called "generation gap" was about 20-25 years. Which is why, once you became a teenager, you never could relate to your parents. But that phenomenon itself was a "generation gap" ago.
Now, what was cool a few years ago is no longer the "geek factor" in your life. Take Facebook. It has more than 250 million users and is the toast of almost everybody's online life. Yet, if the latest US-based Pew Internet Review report is to be believed, Facebook is no longer the "youngest" site in the world.
Surprisingly, it's not even Twitter. It's MySpace.
The median age of a Facebook user is 33; with Twitter it is 31 and with MySpace it is 26. LinkedIn, the popular business networking site, has a median age of 40.
According to ReadWriteWeb, "When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37 per cent of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19 per cent did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31 per cent are now using the service compared to only 20 per cent in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network."
The report also explains why the newer generation is flocking to Twitter rather than share space with parents, uncles, and other seniors on Facebook: "Some 19 per cent of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others.
This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11 per cent of internet users said they use a statusupdate service.
"Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users-those under age 44.
"In addition, the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status. Fully 39 per cent of internet users with four or more internetconnected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter, compared to 28 per cent of internet users with three devices, 19 per cent of internet users with two devices, and 10 per cent of internet users with one device." Clearly, Twitter is giving Facebook a hard time.