MySpace Teen Juggernaut Also Attracting Older Users
Posted on July 17, 2006
TheStreet.com has an article about how MySpace is attracting olders users as well as teenagers and young adults. The number of MySpace users in their 30s, 40s and 50s is starting to grow. This new demographic is what is helping MySpace get closer and closer to 100 million members -- currently the number of MySpace users is over 94 million.
In fact, the News Corp. site has recently experienced declines in its audience aged 12 to 17, 12 to 24 and 12 to 34, while seeing increases in the 21-to-34, 25-to-34, and 35-to-54 demographics, according to data from comScore Networks.Social networks are following the trend seen often with other Internet tools and services. They are first discovered by teens and geeks. Then they become more and more popular with a growing mainstream audience. Teenagers have been quoted as saying they prefer social networks like MySpace to email so there is a potential here for social networks to replace some email use. If the number of high school and college graduates using MySpace gets large enough it could become a serious threat to fee-charing services like Classmates.com and Reunion.com."A lot of people have a faulty perception about the MySpace audience,'' says Phil Carpenter, vice president of marketing of Simply Hired, the job-search engine that powers the newly launched MySpace careers section. "It's a lot more diverse than what people believe it to be.''
The change in audience demographics may be attributable to factors beyond MySpace's control, such as the fact that many college students take final exams in May and should in theory be studying instead of hanging out online. Some leveling off in younger users is also to be expected, given the explosive growth of the site, which launched in January 2004.