Facebook Growing Amongst Older, Wealthier Americans
Last week, Inside Facebook reported that the fastest growing segment of Facebook users in recent months is women over 55. Now, new data from Hitwise confirms that Facebook’s American audience as a whole is becoming older and wealthier.
According to Hitwise, users aged 18-24 accounted for 42% of all US Facebook visits in January 2008, but that same age group accounted for only 24% of all US visits in January 2009. Today, over three fourths of Facebook’s US traffic comes from people over 25: 28% are 35-34, 23% are 35-44, 18% are 45-54, and 7% are over 55. Clearly, Facebook is catching on amongst people in their 30′s, 40′s, and 50′s in the US.
And with the shift in demographics has come a shift in household income characteristics for Facebook’s audience. Facebook leads MySpace in US social networking traffic in all income brackets over $60,000/year. Look out for more Audi virtual gifts in 2009!
February 11th, 2009 at 7:25 am
I’ve been telling people that this segment was bound to respond to Facebook. I’m thrilled to see this study confirm that.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:25 am
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February 12th, 2009 at 2:11 am
[...] the rest here: Facebook Growing Amongst Older, Wealthier Americans Add this to : Digg it Save to Del.icio.us Subscribe to My RSS [...]
February 12th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Awesome stats!! I’m telling my peeps to come read this post, Justin. Anyone in business needs to be active on Facebook for sure – and understand that (for some time!) it is no longer a platform “just for kids.”
And bring on the Audi Gifts. ha! If only they were real.
Cheers,
@marismith
February 13th, 2009 at 1:09 am
[...] http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/11/facebook-growing-amongst-older-wealthier-americans/ [...]
February 14th, 2009 at 9:39 am
[...] The numbers right now are pretty compelling. Six hundred thousand new users PER DAY, and fully three-quarters of the 175 million users are over 25. In fact, the fastest growing segment is women over 55. Whoda thunk [...]
February 14th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
[...] Facebook Growing Amongst Older, Wealthier Americans [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Great stats and pretty charts with a nice summary of the information. Its interesting to see the income demographics for both Facebook and MySpace which are trailing each other for the higher bracket.
The information for women and the middle age range explains the variety of targeted ads I see on Facebook, haha. I’m certain advertisers and marketers are taking note of this data. Can we get some Aston Martin gifts thrown in now?
@nakeva
February 15th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Ah – so I finally fit in! – except, I’m in Canada :-)…
February 20th, 2009 at 9:47 am
[...] This report caught my attention. Mainly because of the point it makes that the fastest growing segment of new Facebook users in the US is women over 55. Mothers want to keep in touch with their kids. [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
[...] evolving demographics of the site might seem to favor this. According to this article on the blog InsideFacebook, dated February 11, almost half of Facebook’s U.S. traffic (48 [...]
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
[...] users over age 35 doubled over the 60 days preceding March 25th, 2009. 3/4ths of Facebook’s users are older, wealthier Americans over age 25. A recent Mashable survey illustrates the power that [...]
July 10th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
[...] that a social media application whose users are largely young (66% are under 35) and largely middle- and upper-class would find a way to use the application’s resources as a platform for talking about themselves [...]
January 17th, 2012 at 11:04 am
[...] While 16% of Facebook using households make less than $30,000 a year, 34% of Americans do. In fact, the wealthy are over represented on Facebook. Only 6% of households actually make over $150,000, yet more than 10% of the Facebook users do. [...]