Thursday, August 5, 2010

facebook: it's not just for kids anymore

Facebook, it isn't new, but it keeps increasing in users, usability, and pop culture.  several recent TV references to Facebook, or if they try to get clever, calling it Facespace to throw off the legal eagles. What is the cause of my recent interest in blogging about Facebook? I found an interesting article while google searching today. 10 little known facts about Los Angeles Facebook Users. This is great information for the advertising world. Who actually uses facebook- how can we monetize facebook users to our clients? We all know that social media is in the forefront and groundbreaking the old "grassroots" word of mouth advertising. The website, allfacebook.com lists some interesting facts that can most likely go across the whole facebook community, not just Los Angeles.

According to the US Census bureau, there are about 9,862,049 people living in the LA area, 6.173 million are on facebook- nearly 63% of the city is on FACEBOOK! they site that over 50% are women, so does that mean that nearly 50% are men... a 50-50 split...even though many believe that women are on facebook more than men as it is the true "gossip central" like going to the neighborhood nail salon and swapping "did you see what she was wearing" stories.

Many have thought that facebook is a way for teens and college students to communicate, not so fast.... according to www.allfacebook.com the 13-17 age group has 600,000 users, the highest are group is the 25-34 year old with 1.6 million, second is the 18-24 year old with just under 1.6 million, third is the 35-44 with over 1 million, even the 45-54 beat the 13-17 year old.I thought this was extremely interesting that with this research, we can now target advertising to companies based on this data, the money demographic of A25-54 has a great showing in the Facebook world.

Speaking of the college age group, about 20,000 users on the site are currently enrolled in college, 30% will be graduating in 2011. there are many academic universities in the LA area. Note to businesses that cater to college kids...hello IKEA, facebook is a great place for you to try to attract this group.

Love the article's mention of Print media being a dying breed, the LA Times only has about 7,000 fans and only half of those are in LA.

The LA Facebook community is the same size as the fourth largest city in the country, Houston!