The Winnowing Oar

Last week, Facebook announced that it had reached 200 million active users ("Facebook Hits 200 Million Users," MediaPost News, April 8, 2009). The rate of Facebook growth is even more amazing than the number of total users. Facebook had 100 million active users in August 2008. Just 90 days ago, Facebook had 150 million active users. In 2009, Facebook is averaging more than 550,000 new users every day.

Back in January, iStrategyLabs released some demographic insights into Facebook users in the U.S. Their report, based on the information Facebook provides their advertisers, showed some surprising trends. While 18-24 year-olds still dominate Facebook in terms of total number of users, Facebook showed the greatest rate of growth in the 35-54 year-old and 55+ demographics. iStrategyLabs reported nearly 7 million Facebook users age 35-54 and nearly 1 million Facebook users 55 or older.

Like Facebook, the micro-blogging tool Twitter has boomed in the last few months. comScore estimates that the number of Twitter users worldwide has doubled in the last 2 months, reaching 10 million. For February 2009, Nielsen Netview reported more than 7 million unique Twitter visitors in the U.S. alone.

According to Nielsen Netview, more than 41% of Twitter visitors (more than 2.9 million) were between 35 and 49 years old. More than 1.6 million of the Twitter visitors in February 2009 were 55 or older, while the 25-34 age group had just under 1.4 million visitors.

Beyond the sheer numbers, which are impressive, these statistics challenge the assumption that all users of social networking tools are in their teens and twenties. It is clear that those of us who are a bit older, who have jobs and families and responsibilities, are also finding some value in these tools.