Facebook is getting old. In other words, its population is aging. In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it’s 33. Interesting, when you consider it was built for the exclusive use of college students.
So where are today’s college students hanging out now? Playing tennis, inspired by Mr. Federer’s fluidity in footwork?
Not really. It’s more like fluidity of fingertips. A lot of them have migrated to Twitter, leaving the Facebook space to moms, dads, aunts, uncles, bosses and grandparents. After answering “Where are you now?” a million times on the cellphone, it is only natural GenY wants to key in the answer for posterity.
Strangely, GenY had, not long ago, dismissed tweeting as “Narcissistic” and “pointless”. We will assume the ones that are tweeting now belong to a different set of young people.
Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace’s is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and of course, Facebook is 33. In December 2008, 19% in the age group 18-24 were keying in tweets. Now it is 37%. Even in the 25-34 group, the percentage is up touching 31.
Maybe we should introduce Twitter to kids who refuse to write. But will tweeting help you to write well? Maybe…
