Interesting Facts about Social Networking Sites

April 28th, 2008

I’ve been a long-time advocate of using social networking sites to promote your brand and your business. In case you haven’t heard the “Web 2.0″ revolution has already happened and if your business isn’t taking advantage of it, you’re missing out. For example, guess what my #1 source of referral traffic for this blog is? Business.com? Google AdWords? YellowPages.com? Not even close! My #1 source of referral traffic is social networking and document sharing site, docstoc.com.

Docstoc is a user generated community where you can find and share FREE professional documents, legal documents and business documents; and upload your documents for all the world to share. Founded by Jazon Nazar, he considers docstoc to be the “Youtube for professionally created legal and business documents”. As an early user of docstoc, having previously used another doc sharing site called scribd.

I simply love docstoc’s functionality, extensive feature set and vibrant user community.I’m not sure what Jason and the docstoc team are doing differently, but I got absolutely no traffic from my page at scribd and hardly any feedback on the documents I had uploaded. What I like most about docstoc are some of their kick-ass features like embedding docs into your site, user ratings, one-click sharing, RSS feeds and user blog promotion. I’m constantly getting feedback (good and bad) on the documents I upload, significant traffic to this blog and even emails requesting my assistance or expertise.

I’ve actually networked with several docstoc users and gained a few freelance gigs!! So be sure to check out my page at docstoc, and all the free marketing templates and business documents I’ve uploaded that are perfect for small business and startups.On that note, I’d like to share some user data on social networking sites (complied by pipl.com). Keep reading for a glimpse into the Demographics, Trends, Size and Growth of the different Web 2.0 social networking sites. I think you’ll see that social networking sites can be a great medium to promote your business, grow brand awaress and drive targeted traffic back to your website.

NOTE: CLICK ON THE GRAPHS FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW

1. The Women Are Younger, The Men are Older

This is the most consistent demographic characteristics across all social networking sites surveyed, the younger demographics is female dominant while the older demographic is mostly male.

The graph below demonstrates the gender distribution for MySpace, but this data is consistent for Bebo, Hi5, Facebook, Friendster, and Xanga as well.

Online Marketing for Small Business gender-age Interesting Facts about Social Networking Sites

2. Bebo and Xanga have the Youngest Crowd

While other social networks have a broader age demographics, member profiles in Bebo and Xanga consist mostly of teens and early 20’s.

Online Marketing for Small Business age Interesting Facts about Social Networking Sites

3. MySpace is still the largest, by far

With 184.1 million active member profiles, MySpace is still the largest social networking site.

Over the past 12 months, MySpace grew at a rate of about 157 member profiles every minute totaling about 82.7 million new profiles, this translate to 81.5% year over year growth.

Online Marketing for Small Business size-growth Interesting Facts about Social Networking Sites

4. European, Asians and South American Members are getting Younger

While the average age of new members in the US did not show any clear direction and in some cases it even showed an increase, the age of new members in other parts of the world is dropping rapidly.

The graph below demonstrates the gender distribution for Hi5 in Asia, but this data is consistent for Friendster, Myspace and in other regions as well.