When you're blogging, putting out Facebook ads and Twittering away, who is in the audience you should be targeting?

While the typical belief is that social networking sites are a hub for the young, a recent study by the technology Web site Pingdom revealed data that proves otherwise. Pingdom collected the age statistics and crunched the numbers for 19 different Web sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Delicious and StumbleUpon. They also used data from Google's Ad Planner service.

Open up a new Word document, folks, because what they discovered should definitely be noted if you want to make your Web sites successful: it's not teenagers and young adults dominating the social media sphere. Rather, it's their parents.

 

1.   A quarter of social media users are between the ages of 35 and 44.

While this may come as a surprise, it really shouldn't be. According to Pingdom, people of middle age are the most "social" age group out there, because they were the generation of people in their 20s when online social networking took off in the mid-1990s. These are the men and women who stuck it out through AOL and chat rooms to get to today's media Valhalla.

 

 

 

2.   61 percent of Facebook's users are middle aged or older.

Looking to reach your social networking tendrils out to more adults? Look no further than Facebook. While Facebook was originally created with college students in mind, older users have since taken over. According to Pingdom's study, 61 percent of Facebook's users are aged 35 and over, with the average age being 37.

Facebook isn't the only Web site with an audience falsely perceived to be young. A full 64 percent of Twitter's users are over the age of 35 as well, with the average age of 39. Who exactly is reading Ashton Kutcher's tweets?

 

3.  College-age people do not dominate any particular Web site.

While we always get the impression that social media is the kingdom of the young, Pingdom's study revealed no single Web site is the premiere choice for today's 18-24 year-olds. There are different reasons for this, including the fact that this age interval in the study is somewhat smaller than most of the other ones (7 years versus 10).

 

4.  The 17 and under crowd dominates Bebo.

The only social networking site to have any kind of grip on the under 30 group is Bebo, which has an average age of 28. On Bebo 44 percent of the users are below 17 years of age. Owned by AOL, Bebo offers many of the same benefits as Facebook, but with more options to personalize profiles. It also offers space to promote music and original written works. Myspace also had a young group of users, with 33 percent being under 17.

 

 

 

5. Senior citizens have not caught on to social media yet.

The AARP crowd, that is folks aged 55-64, and 65 and over, are not heavy social media users. Pingdom attributes this stat to various factors, including seniors' lack of technical prowess and interest in the Internet. There's also the fact that social networking sites tend to be pretty time consuming for users. The older generation, which wasn't raised with home computers or phones with Internet (and got along with life just fine) just isn't used to using the Web as frequently as others.

 

6. Classmates.com has the largest amount of older members.

Classmates.com had the largest number of users over the age of 65, at 8 percent. Another 78 percent are over the age of 35. Classmates.com, which has been on the Internet since 1995, allows users to find, connect with, and keep in touch with people from throughout their lives. While it may just sound like a more nostalgic version of Facebook or MySpace, in 2008 Nielsen Online rated the Web site as number three in unique monthly visitors. In the United States and Canada alone, there are 40 million active Classmates.com members.