Friday, April 16, 2010

The aging Face of the Internet Age


While in recent years it was mostly young people using the internet, today we realize a shift of age, above all in Social Network channels.

Social networks online started out amongst the younger audience. However, as the networks have become more mainstream with the passage of time, it isn’t surprising to see the audience becoming broader and older. According to Nielsen (2009) "This shift has primarily been driven by Facebook, whose successful formula opened up the possibilities of social networking to a much wider audience. In terms of sheer audience numbers, for example, the greatest growth for Facebook has come from people aged 35-49 years of age (+24.1 million). Furthermore, Facebook has added almost twice as many 50-64 year olds visitors (+13.6 million) than it has added under 18 year old visitors (+7.3 million).
Consequently, people under 18 years old are making up less of the social network and blogging audience, whereas the 50+ age group are accounting for more of the audience." (Nielsen, 2009, p.5).

What does this shift, the aging face of the internet demographics, mean for us as PR professionals?
We have to target another age group via social networks than we used to.
This might be an advantage as, for instance mums and generally people aged 35-40 are more likely the ones who have purchasing power.


Eva


Reference:
Nielsen Company (2009). Global Faces and Networked Places: A Nielsen report on Social
Networking’s New Global Footprint. Retrieved, March, 17, 2010, from,
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/nielsen_globalfaces_mar09.pdf

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