According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life Project, a steady influx of adult users is flocking to social networking sites. The research group says that approximately 35% of online adults now have at least one profile on a social networking site. This number has quadrupled since February 2005, when it was only 8%.
While young adults and teenagers still outnumber adults 2-1 on these websites, adults still make up the bulk of the users. How does that add up you ask? Well adults make up a larger proportion of the U.S. population than teens, so the 35% represents a larger number of users than the 65% of online teens who use social networks. More importantly what this really means is that social networking sites have grown up.
MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook are no longer just sites for teenagers and college-aged kids to post information and meet but rather it is a forum for the entire public to interact with one another and share information. I remember when you had to belong to a valid high school or college network to join Facebook. However, in 2006 Facebook was opened to the public and allowed people of all ages to register. In the two and a half year span since, according to NetPop research, social networking sites have grown over 93% and Facebook has grown 500%.
Not Mixing Business with Pleasure
Oppose to professional sites like LinkedIn, adult users are networking on the aforementioned sites for personal reasons. The same report from Pew Internet says that 89% of respondents are on to keep up with friends and family, 57% to make plans with friends, and 49% to make new friends. Small cohorts of friends are using social networks to organize events, plan parties, or just share pictures and messages with each other.
Moreover, this causes continued action and usage as well. For instance, you have a young couple that likes to post pictures of their new baby or the family’s recent vacation to Disney Land, on Facebook. Well this drives grandparents to register on sites like Facebook and Flickr so they can see pictures of their grandchildren.
Plus the need for social networks increases if relatives don’t life close to one another. Whether older adults are tech-savvy or not, they are realizing the purpose and myriad of uses for these social networking sites. They are starting to realize why teenagers and college kids flocked to them in the first place, because sites like Twitter and Facebook provide a unique forum to network, share, and make friends with similar interests.
Just For Fun
I’ve talked about the professional opportunities that social media offers, and they are still very true. Instead of asking, “How useful is social media,” companies are now asking, “How can we best utilize social media.”
Nonetheless, the growing trend of adults using social networks brings up a very interesting theme when it comes to advertising and marketing. As consumers are becoming more tech-savvy, it is also becoming harder and harder to reach them with the traditional advertising tactics. People are DVRing through commercials, watching television online, and getting their news from online sources. So can these sites be useful places for business to advertise and target their audience?
Recently, we’ve seen companies like Huggies, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Comcast begin to integrate social media with traditional tactics and they have had pretty good success. Maybe we’ll see advertising on users’ walls, more content on sidebars, or more interrupter ads that are beginning to pop up on websites. Whatever it may be, marketers are going to have to respond to this growing trend.
Ultimately, these sites crave advertising because it helps draw users and creates a financial pipeline. The advertising world has noticed the recent popularity of Twitter and Facebook, and is taking notice of adult users as well. Business wants to be where customers are, so the way I see it, these two industries are a match made in heaven.
