Media Matrix is deemed by many as one of the best sources on trends amongst Social Networking Sites. From the stats in the table provided (by them) below, they just concluded:
“MySpace.com has the broadest appeal across age ranges, Facebook.com has created a niche among the college crowd, Friendster.com attracts a higher percentage of adults, and Xanga.com is most popular among younger teens."
The ability to accurately state such comparisons, while interesting to us as simple bloggers, is extremely critical in understanding the multi-billion $ market that each of these networks is striving to capture. For instance, if being "most popular among younger teens" is especially highly (or lowly) considered, such a finding could imply hundreds of millions of more (less) dollars of comparative worth for that Social Network (Xanga) in terms of valuation. Advertisers relying upon such findings, too, will design their campaigns to address these differences. If they base their demographically-catered campaigns upon false premises, they stand to lose millions of $ in returns due to bad targeting.
| Demographic Profile of Visitors to Select Social Networking Sites Percent Composition of Total Unique Visitors August 2006 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Internet | MySpace.com | Facebook.com | Friendster.com | Xanga.com | |
| Unique Visitors (000) | 173,407 | 55,778 | 14,782 | 1,043 | 8,066 |
| Percent (%) Composition of Unique Visitors | |||||
| Total Audience | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Persons: 12-17 | 9.6 | 11.9 | 14.0 | 10.6 | 20.3 |
| Persons: 18-24 | 11.3 | 18.1 | 34.0 | 15.6 | 15.5 |
| Persons: 25-34 | 14.5 | 16.7 | 8.6 | 28.2 | 11.0 |
| Persons: 35-54 | 38.5 | 40.6 | 33.5 | 35.4 | 35.6 |
| Persons: 55+ | 18.0 | 11.0 | 7.6 | 8.1 | 7.3 |
Source: comScore Media Metrix
I have a real problem with stats that don't add up. And you can probably attribute my heightened sensitivity to the fact that I was a college stats prof for many years. Above, the 'Total Audience' for each network is 100.0 (%), but the portions attributed to the subsetted demographic groups below each social network column fail to account for the full 100%. The unaccounted-for %'s are below:
I-net MySpace Facebook Friendster Xanga
? | 8.1 | 1.7 | 2.3 | 2.1 | 10.3 |
So what makes up these missing segments? Are they Persons: 1-11 ? Are they respondents who failed to provide an age - in other words, Persons: age unknown ? Or is the study flawed because they failed to calculate the stats correctly?
If they are Persons: age unknown , they should just be omitted as missing data and the subtotals should be recalculated to add up to 100.0 (%) with the header reading: Percent (%) Composition of Unique Visitors reporting their age. Only then would the age %'s for the social networks be truly cross-comparable. In other words, only use respondents providing their age to calculate stats based on age.
If they are Persons: 1-11 , I question how a survey can assess that accurately to begin with since interviewing a 6-year-old is hardly feasible ("Hi little girl, I understand you use the Internet for social networking. May I ask what site you use and how old you are?"). And since on these sites you can't self-profess to be younger than 13 anyway, it is not a statistic that Media Metrix could passively collect.
So the stats are flawed. And, hence, flawed-alike are the conclusions drawn from them.
Media Metrix: Exposed and Discredited.
So. (glares at One_Hot_Diva's comment). If all that's too dry and uninteresting for you, try this:
Women: most Exposed when most Fertile.
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