Your Social Network Tells About You

Your favorite social network may tell a lot about you. For example, Twitterers are more interested in sex than users on other social sites. LinkedIn users are more likely to watch soap operas and MySpacers are generally not into exercise. According to an Anderson Analytics study, a user’s social network preference can identify “likely interests, buying habits, media consumption and much more.” Tom Anderson, Anderson Analytics founder tells Ad Age, “There are definite data-driven segments in the social-networking-site market, both for non-users and users.”

Conservative estimates say that about 60% of the U.S. online population uses social networks or about 110 million people. On average users visit social sites about five days a week, four times a day for a total of about one hour each day. The study was completed in June with a sample of 5,000 demographically representative respondents. Ad Age then worked with the Anderson team to create the following mini-profiles. Here’s some of what they uncovered. For more details visit AdAge here.

Users Overall
• 45% link only to family and friends
• Most users not wasting company time. Only 15% said they visit networks at work
• Four categories: business users, fun seekers, social-media mavens (key group) and late followers

Non-Users
• Not tech haters, still spend time surfing web
• Three groups: no time, concerned about security and think it’s stupid

Facebookers
• 77 million users skew a bit older, extremely loyal

Twitterers
• Entrepreneurial, super-user group
• Skew very high interest in news, pop culture, music, movies with buying habits to match

MySpacers
• Young, fun and fleeing
• Overall useage down, but 67 million still having fun