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Wednesday
08Jul2009

Is Facebook Aging?

Remember the days when college-age cool kids dominated Facebook? As Facebook evolved, its audience changed too. Take a look at the most recent demographic stats compiled by iStrategyLabs after reviewing Facebook’s ad data.

Between January 4, 2009 and July 7, 2009 users between the ages of:

  • 25-34 has grown by 60% from 11.2 million users to 18.1 million users
  • 35-54 has grown by 190.2% from 6.9 million to 20.2 million users
  • 55+ has grown over 500% from 954,000 to 5.8 million users

While the 18-24 year-olds still have a solid presence on Facebook at 18 million users, they have only grown by 4.8%, which indicates a much slower growth rate as compared to older demographics. In addition, the number of people who identify themselves as high school and college students has declined by -16.5% and -21.7%.


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Reader Comments (3)

I wouldn't have even made the title a question... more like "Facebook is Aging" (of course, that can be read with a few different angles).

Great stuff, thanks for posting.
July 8, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterGarth Moore
Using danah boyd's hegemonic/subaltern class analysis for market segmentation, Facebook already had overwhelming dominance in the 18-24 hegemonic segment in the US ... and as far as I can tell hasn't been actively targeting the subaltern segment. So it's no surprise that they grew by "only" 4% over a six month period there.

Also, does Facebook experience a drop in HS/college student identification every summer? It could be that students graduating in June change their identification, and new students don't start until September.

jon
July 8, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterjon
Hi Garth:
Yes it was my attempt at a double entendre.
July 8, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterAllyson Kapin

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