What Your Social Media Habits Say About You

I read an interesting article from AdAge on the different "profiles" of people who use the various forms of social media. I've supplied some of the findings below and added my own 2 cents.

In general:
"Their top three interests are music, movies and hanging out with friends, and they use social media most to stay in touch with friends, family and classmates... Anderson's research breaks down general social-media users into four categories: business users, fun seekers, social-media mavens and late followers."

My perspective - In general, I think social media users started out as the sorority or student council type who were on the networks, but now it has pretty much expanded to include people of all different "profiles", especially those 16-40 in the working world and frequent internet users. It would be interesting to see if the economy's downturn has increased the social media users as a cheaper way of staying in touch, networking or more effective way of looking for jobs/getting job leads.

Facebookers:
"They are more likely to be married (40%), white (80%) and retired (6%) than users of the other social networks. Facebook users skew a bit older and are more likely to be late adopters of social media. But they are also extremely loyal to the site -- 75% claim Facebook is their favorite site, and another 59% say they have increased their use of the site in the past six months."

My perspective - Facebook has different usage levels, the casual users who just want to keep in touch and don't use regularly, all the way to the "Crackbook" users, who are on facebook every 10 minutes and is their "go-to" when they have a moment of downtime. Facebook is definitely more of a time commitment and leans more toward social rather than job connections. Personally, I think if you don't have a Facebook page in this day & age you are so out of the loop.

Twitterers:
"Twitterers especially like pop culture, with music, movies, TV and reading, ranking higher than average. They're more likely to buy books, movies, shoes and cosmetics online than the other groups. Twitterers are also entrepreneurial. They are more likely than others to use the service to promote their blogs or businesses. Some 31% buy coffee online, far above the average 21% of other social networkers. They're more likely to be employed part-time (16% vs. 11% average)."

My perspective - Twitter users are like Facebook users but to the extreme. They are either super addicted or just join because they want to say they are on it, but don't really know how to use it. I think its more effective for advertising, marketing, celebrity and news world, but not a good way for schools or employers to reach their audience.

MySpacers:
"The 67 million who are still there are into having a good time. They're more likely to have joined MySpace for fun and more likely to be interested in entertaining friends, humor and comedy, and video games. They're less into exercise than any other social group but seek out parenting information more than any other. Their average income is the lowest, at $44,000."

My perspective - Is this seriously still a site people use? It's kind of like the WT of social media if you ask me. People who have Myspace pages and not Facebook pages are just too lazy to swtich.

LinkedIn:
"LinkedIn has the only user group with more males than females (57% to 43%). They have the highest average income, at $89,000, and are more likely to have joined the site for business or work, citing keeping in touch with business networks, job searching, business development and recruiting as top reasons. Excluding video-game systems, they own more electronic gadgets than the other social networkers, including digital cameras, high-definition TVs, DVRs and Blu-ray players. Here were two surprises among the things they're more interested in than the others: gambling and soap operas."

My perspective - LinkedIn is the Facebook of the job and networking market. It's for working professionals and isn't something that requires updates very often to stay relevant, which fits the working professional profile.

Check out the whole Ad Age article by Beth Snyder Bulik "What Your Favorite Social Network Says About You."