At Attentio we are interested understanding new memes or trends that arise in the blogosphere, forums and of course social networks. Recently there has been much written regarding social networks and the amount of users have risen dramatically. Obviously the user behaviour and demographic breakdown of these communities is of interest to advertisers and marketers (and to Attentio) given the vast money paid for Myspace, significant venture capital investment in this area and the Google, Myspace cooperation.

In terms of the demographic breakdown, this is how we see the split:

- Myspace is primarily aimed at teenagers with an average age 17-19, median age is probably lower. It has 80% of all social network users. (see wikipedia link above)
- Bebo, Facebook, Univillage are aimed at the University age group say an average age of 20-22
- www.consumating.com is new and a little different but average age is about 25-28, we did the maths ourselves based on their published data. It feels like they are aiming at a different group of people definitely older than the previous two.
- Linkedin.com and other career focussed networks are likely to have an average age of 30+

It will be interesting to see:

- Can Myspace keep university students in the network or will they suffer serious churn?
- At what age will Myspace see major drop off or will they evolve to handle different age groups?
- Where are the networks that focus on the baby boomers (Born after WW2 but before 1965) are they out there now or are the user habits just too different to younger generations who live on the web not just use it as a tool? There is a good article here explaining the difference between internet as a tool versus internet as a place to live.

As more companies are interested in understanding what goes on in these networks it is clear that the demographic make up is vitally important. More on this later!

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