Over the weekend I read an article that included some interesting demographic and traffic stats comparing facebook, myspace, flickr and linkedin, unfortunately they had used US data (not that handy for us Brits) and it was pretty old (July 2008) so I decided to take a look at it myself. Here at iCrossing social (and search) is what we do, so better understanding this area is always of interest to us.
The table below looks at some of the key stats for the four social networking sites (unique visitors per month, total pageviews, number of times a user returns per month and how long they spend on the site).
A quick look at the numbers reveals that the heavy weight title that once belonged to myspace is now facebooks. With 17 million unique visitors every month (here in the UK) and 250 million worldwide facebook has taken the social media crown. Facebooks users also appear to be the most engaged users, spending the most time on site (in the UK) and returning back to the site most often.
The graph above charts facebooks rise to power, overtaking myspace in July 2007. Is this growth sustainable, probably not, but the key will be remaining relevant, they don’t want to become another friendsreunited. The interweb is notorious for its fads, but perhaps with its slightly older, less fickle audience (see below) facebook can remain on top.
Above we can see the different age groups that use these sites. Myspace has a younger demographic (on average) compared to facebook, with myspace being most popular with 18-24 year olds and facebook popular with 25-34 year olds. Unsurprisingly Linkedin, the networking site for professionals has very few users under the age of 25, the majority falling between 25-54.
Looking at the male/female breakdown for the sites we see that there are more women then men using these websites, does that mean they’re more social? Interestingly, flickr is slightly more popular with men then women (although just by a whisker).
Finally we looked at average income levels across the four sites. Users of Facebook, perhaps because they’re slightly older, earn more the myspace users but king of this hill is Linkedin where most people earn over £50,000 (or at least say they do!).
So if you’re looking for young friends (or people to advertise to) head to myspace, want rich friends/prospects head to linkedin or if you simply like to follow the crowd head to facebook, everyone else is.
Matt on 
February 12th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Nice piece of research Greg. I have the media kits from most of the these sites for the Display team and one thing about LinkedIn that amazed me was page views and time on site per user. A comparison of these metrics will help establish the level of engagament the audience has with each site. Knowing the overlap might be interesting too, ie do consumers have a main account and then check the others less frequently, like we tend to do with email addresses etc.
February 12th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I remember a while back when facebook was still growing (and Myspace was king) the guys from facebook kept emphasising how even though they had fewer registered users then myspace their users were more active on the site (ie kept logging in everyday) and therefore of more interest to advertisers. Well, looks like creating a more engaging site paid off in terms of number of users aswell as now facebook is king.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Your graphs on age demographics, are they for the Uk only or the whole world? And how did you source the data?
thanks, Jay
May 13th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Hi Jay,
The demographic data is UK only. The information is obtained from market research data, consumer user panel data, search data and other third-party market research.
I hope this helps.