Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49.3 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks – including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 – women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men.
The only social networks studied that didn’t have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were venerable old LinkedIn (where incidentally the 25-34 age group was tops) and a site called Perfspot.
Other highlights:
- Women ages 14-24 dominate activity on social networks and have more friends than men of the same ages.
- Men ages 35+ are more active and have more friends than women of the same ages.
- The average social network user has 2-25 friends.
- There are a disproportionately high number of 69 year olds across various social networks. (my guess is that it’s the most popular ‘fake age’)
Rapleaf states that it “analyzed people who are on at least one social network and in which there exists age information on these individuals.” The study was done 10 June ’08 and approx 90% of the 49m respondents were from the US. Here is the full data, courtesy of Rapleaf:
Gender and Age Analysis of Social Networking Users: Social Network Sites
Gender and Age Analysis of Social Networking Users: Number of Friends
You can also download the full dataset as a spreadsheet here.
