Social Machinery

Some few weeks back my mother, which is 70 years old, started her own Facebook account. As a new social media user it took her sometime before she really understood the concept of social networks, but after three weeks she started uploading pictures, tagging people, commenting on walls (sometimes without distinguishing between walls and direct messages) and increasing her network by adding all our extended family.

Maybe this is good reflection on how Social media sites are becoming a mainstream channel for communication. And in the case of Facebook, it looks like its attracting a bigger amount of old users meanwhile younger users are focusing more on microblogging.

This is one of the main findings from Pew Internet report. The company found that average user age from Twitter is 31 compared to Facebook average age of 33.

At a first glance, it doesn’t seem to be a big difference, but the fact is that Twitter rejuvenates one year and Facebook grew old seven. In May 2008, Facebook’s average user age was 26, meaning that the social networking site grew old 7 years in less than 18 months.

Where are all the college students hanging around?

When it comes to Twitter the trend moves in the opposite direction. During December 2008, 19% of the users where between 18 to 24 years old. Today this group represents 37% and the group between 25 to 34 increased from 20% to 31%. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter population.

Actually Twitter, which median is 31, is the second-youngest social networking site compared to Myspace (26), Linkedin(39) and Facebook (33). 

So it looks like digital natives are starting to like Twitter. This trend it seems to be a little bit contradictory to most analyst reports claiming that Twitter was not interested for Gen Y mainly because their focus on real time news and narcissism. 

One of the reasons given about this behavioral change from Digital natives was their interest to get closer to older social networkers who can be found in Twitter. Maybe their bosses, teachers, office colleagues are creating some pressure for this segment to join their social networks for being updated about their status.

Still there is not clear answer about this change; nevertheless, the only clear trend is that social networks are becoming a mainstream activity across all segments.