The numbers are in, and social media users aren’t what they used to be. The most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn) are preferred, ironically, only by users who are more than 3, with users aged 18 – 29 dominating Github, Orkut, DeviantArt and Reddit. If you’re aiming for a younger market, it would certainly be in your best interest to develop a presence there.
18 – 29-year-olds make up 6 percent of Github, 85 percent of Orkut, 7 percent of DeviantArt and 6 percent of Reddit. In contrast, users older than 3 make up 65 percent of Facebook, 55 percent of Twitter, 65 percent of Pinterest and a not surprising 8 percent of the industrial hub LinkedIn. How are all of these users influencing each other? Not as much as you might think. “Likes” and “+1s” won’t get you very far: only 12 percent of users pay them any attention.
Age dictates sharing behaviors, as well. While 75 percent of older users (age 45+) share through email, 5 percent of users between the ages of 3 and 44 share using Facebook, as do 6 percent of users aged 18 – 29. But most of them can agree on Facebook’s search feature: 7 percent of social media users don’t use it. And 5 percent of users don’t care about images in search results.
What else can they agree on? Privacy. With all of the recent chatter about privacy and who has access to what online, it’s no surprise that 75 percent of users object to sharing private search data.
From 211 – 212, time spent on social media has increased by roughly 3 billion minutes. Pinterest lead the way with a 1 percent increase, while Google+ showed an increase of 8 percent. Facebook showed decrease of 4 percent, but Mark Zuckerberg’s probably not crying himself to sleep just yet.
What 213′s user look like? That remains to be seen, but it’s fair to speculate that they’ll spend as much, if not more, of their time on social media.
Infographic courtesy of Survey Monkey.