Bizcommunity posted an interesting article the other day that spoke about the Friendship 2.0 study that was commissioned by MWEB. The study showed a very interesting statistic:
The average age of Facebook users in South Africa is 33; MySpace is 32; Twitter and YouTube come in at 31; and the youngest in the survey is MXit with an average age of 27. These findings dispel perceptions that social networking is for teenagers only.
Unbelievable! That means that people on Facebook, Twitter, MXit and YouTube could have more decision making power than we think. We may need to start changing the way we market to these networks because we may be missing the mark completely. Generation X are the ones we can meet with social networking. Very exciting news!
One question is begging though? Where are all the teenagers?
It is absolutely the weirdest thing.
I was looking for somebody to look after a small part of our business and was going for a relatively young candidate (23). I asked her for details of her Twitter, Skype or LinkedIn accounts for my records and she looked at me blankly.
I don’t know if you have ever been to one of these “Tweet-ups” that Ryan Gibson drives but the last one I went to – most people were well over 25. Audience included decision making bankers, business analysts, musicians etc.
These were people with money to spend and decision-making ability without question
Hi Marc
Thanks for the comment and for adding a bit more weight to the topic.
Thanks for sharing Mike. I believe generation X carries a great importance in the social media field as this crowd will be the ones we will only focus on in a few years time. To explain it even further, the X people had technology around them most of their lives so it’s really not that new to explain to them the importance of social media, benefits, etc.
Thanks for the informative course, we haven’t finished yet, but learnt something already!
Intersting Article
awesomeness…..
;)
Thanks Anton
They are on MXit ;)
Thanks for this blog Mike – very interesting. I wonder if it is partly because Gen X would have the freedom to use these media during work hours? Thanks…
Hi Mike
Yea me again, awesome article through and through. and from a Young persons point of view. ( not teenager but 21 ) it is funny to see how many people ( friends ) don’t know these things, only the online active gamer, or PHP coder sure they know all about it yet there is such a big gab where so many people (young people) are seeing these things as stupid grown up things. Ask 10 nineteen year olds if they have twitter, response will be : ” Nah twitter is lame, my dad is on it” Come on! These social media platforms are becoming an open market for business !. Teenagers do hang on MXIT A LOT ! That i do know every second kiddo is walking around chatting on MXIT. haha.