If you guessed that the average Twitter or Facebook user is thirtysomething, you’re absolutely right.

Yet, a study posted on Royal.pingdom.com, “Study: Ages of social network users,” analyzing age statistics for 19 different social media sites, turned up a few surprises. The analysis took place over seven years and included Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, Friendster and Delicious. As expected, these social media sites were dominated by people 35 to 44 years of age. This cluster was the largest group for 11 out of the 19 sites (58%). The most significant revelation was that the group of 24-to-34 year-olds, often characterized as being tech savvy, only had the largest group for 1 out of the 19 sites (Bebo).

Just one week ago, techcrunch.com reported in “Nearly 75 Million People Visited Twitter’s Site In January“ that Twitter attracted an astounding 73.5 million unique individuals in January of 2010. If your current social media strategy isn’t taking into consideration the swell of middle-aged users, it definitely should start.

David Thimme, March 7, 2010

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