Social Networking Growing Older – No Longer Teen Stronghold

Let’s look at any technology and how it’s been adopted. Of all the latest tech trends that have emerged, be it websites or gadgets, mostly the teens have jumped to it first. It has almost been accepted that any technology that is/could be a source of entertainment, the early adopter revolution has been spearheaded by the youth. Facebook began as a networking site for college students, and today, if it was a country it would be one of the largest. Social networking as a movement was understood to be for the youth. Leaving aside a few sites like LinkedIn and others which did not cater to the youth market, the major leaders then and now, MySpace and Facebook were always about the youngsters.

Come 2009, social networking has changed. The reasons could be several, from the fact that it has received so much attention, everyone’s doing it, to the fact that marketers and the corporate world have seen the potential for development on the  social media platform. Advertising seems to have found a new platform – social media. And the demographics are slowly changing. You know social media is important to not just youngsters when the Economic Times presents articles on it. Every medium and those promoting it are defined by their target group? Social networking has officially grown up. And Twitter is the brand manager of this new social networking.

From that surprising intern in Morgan Stanley who created a furore by saying “Teens don’t Twitter” to other studies that discovered age patterns on Twitter, one thing is obvious, it’s not the youngsters who are using Twitter. It’s others.

Forrester Research has a few stats on the same : And the good news is that companies can now target people over the age of 34 with media campaigns on the internet. Important points (some quoted from the PCWorld article on the same).

This age group (around 34) is the largest segment using Facebook, Twitter and other social media.  While people in their teens and 20s were the first to adopt social networks for everyday use, they aren’t just for the younger crowd anymore, according to the report, “The Broad Reach of Social Networks,” by Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran. “Much of the growth in social networks today comes from people older than 34,” he wrote. Compared with last year, adults over the age of 34 increased their participation in social networks by more than 60 percent. “Now more than half of adults ages 35 to 44 are in social networks,” Corcoran wrote.

Though the older generation in their 40s and 50s still don’t use it as much, it’s beginning to grow. “Seventy percent of online adults ages 55 and older tell us they tap social tools at least once a month; 26 percent use social networks and 12 percent create social content,” he wrote.

Corcoran in his study of social media categorizes people who use social media as:

• Creators (bloggers, uploaders, those who create online content)

• Critics (those who view, rate, opinionate – on forums, on comments etc)

• Collectors (Social bookmarking – Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, RSS feeds – basically those who aggregate or help proliferate UGC)

• Joiners (those who subscribe to social networks and participate in the spreading – 2nd hand)

• Spectators (those who view the User Generated Content – the end user from all the above who does not take part in the discussion)

People in the 35-54 age group are increasingly joiners and creators, while adults over 55 are more likely to be spectators.

Only 18 percent of survey respondents don’t currently use social networks, compared to 25 percent in 2008 and 44 percent in 2007. The report is based on a May 2009 survey of 4,455 people between the ages of 18 and 88 in the U.S. Any guesses on the Indian Standards?