If you read this blog often you probably wouldn’t know that I’m actually aware that there are other sites out there. I use various social networking/media sites but write about LinkedIn because that’s what I know best. As time moves on I hope to start bringing in some thoughts on the others.
I recently took a look at the ranking of several social networking/media sites and thought they were interesting. I’m not exactly sure what the rankings and stats mean but I’ll share them.
These results were taken from Alexa.com and include site statistics and demographic data.
Site Rankings: (membership included in parentheses – rough estimates in some cases)
YouTube (100.9 million viewers per month): 3
Facebook (165 million): 4
MySpace (80 million): 11
Twitter (8 million): 20
Flickr (7.5 million): 30
LinkedIn (42 million): 82
Google is number one.
Minutes Per Day Spent on Site
Facebook: 25.6
YouTube: 22.5
MySpace: 19.8
Twitter: 8.6
LinkedIn: 6.5
Flickr: 4.8
Sites Linking In
YouTube: 489,059
MySpace: 335,770
Facebook: 258,619
Flickr: 236,171
Twitter: 169,785
LinkedIn: 55,771
Not sure about all of these but I find it amazing that LinkedIn has less that 56,000 sites linking in to it.
Demographics – relative to the general internet population how popular each is with the listed demographic
Age:
Facebook: 18-34 (ex – Facebook has a higher share of 18-34 year olds than the general internet population but a lower share in the 45+ age group)
Flickr: 18-34
LinkedIn: 25-44
MySpace: 18-34
Twitter: 25-44
YouTube: 18-34
I would expect LinkedIn to have a older user base and not surprised that Twitter does as well. What’s interesting is that none of the sites seems to be doing that great with the over 45 internet user.
Education:
Facebook: College Graduates and Graduate Degree
Flickr: College Graduates and Graduate Degree
LinkedIn: College Graduates and Graduate Degree
MySpace: Some College
Twitter: College Graduates and Graduate Degree
You Tube: College Graduates and Graduate Degree
Not much difference noted here, with MySpace being the only one doing better with those who attended college but did not graduate
One thing that I do not go into is that in each of these categories some are stronger than the others. Alexa user a bar graph with no numerical notations so while you can see who is stronger in a particular demographic I did not see how to quantify it.
Wrap Up: I’m not sure that the above statistics provide much relevance. I think the most telling stats are the rankings and the time on site. One thing to keep in mind is that all of the sites are pretty open as far as users with the exception being LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is primarily used by business professionals which is a smaller population than the others. LinkedIn has been working on the 18 to 34 market recently launching a microsite dedicated to recent graduates – http://grads.linkedin.com/.
If you’re bored go to www.alexa.com and you can check out the stats on these and other sites.
