Update: Who's On Social Networks

Last week I wrote about a new study suggesting that social networking users were starting to skew much older and that this trend should be accounted for and studied when groups like NPI, CIRCLE, and Young Voter Strategies studied the uses of social networks in the 2006 campaign cycle.

That study is now being called into question.

ComScore’s methodology is also being questioned: they use software installed on computers to track usage, and it’s being suggested that teens won’t necessarily log out of their parent’s accounts before going to social networks. That could skew the data for all the sites: Friendster, Xanga, MySpace and Facebook.

Mostly the trends still hold - each of the Big 4 sites skew to a different demographic:

The general trend, however, seems to be that Xanga skews very young, Facebook is more popular with college students, Friendster is more of a grown up site (20 and 30 year olds) and lots of parents are visiting MySpace (although not necessarily signing up).

As I said in my original post, young people really are still the targets for campaigns, and the initial motivation for going on these sites. But it will be interesting to see if any of the research groups can figure out what the demographics look like for social networking users who actually did something for a campaign - whether that means inviting more friends, spreading the word on other networks, or something more traditional like volunteering or donating.