News Bits: What a Social Network Says About Its Users

Written by Erin Barker

Friday, July 10. 2009 at 11:25 AM EDT 4 comments

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A new study by Anderson Analytics reveals what a user's social network of choice says about him or her.

Designed to help marketers identify users' likely interests, buying habits, and media consumption, the study surveyed users of Facebook , MySpace , Twitter Inc. , and LinkedIn Corp. , as well as non-social networkers, to create profiles of each population:

Facebook: The Everyman
In terms of interests, Facebook users are more likely to be, well, totally normal. "Facebook is average because it has the most users. When stat testing, anything near the average is less likely to be significant," says Tom Anderson, founder and managing partner of Anderson Analytics. [Ed. note: Not to be confused with Tom Anderson, everyone's first friend on MySpace.] However, Facebook users are ranked higher than average in terms of loyalty to the site, with 75 percent saying Facebook is their favorite site.

Twitter: The Corporate Shill
Twitter users are more interested in topics such as news (all categories) and pop culture, and more likely than users of other social networks to be using the site to promote their blogs or businesses. Luckily, with all the work, they are also fully caffeinated: Twits are more likely to purchase coffee online.

MySpace: Young, Fun, and... Whoops, not using the site
The MySpace user, unsurprisingly, is more likely to be young, single, and interested in things like comedy and video games. They are also more likely to have joined the site for fun, and, unfortunately for News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), less likely to have used the site much in the past six months. MySpace users have the lowest average income of all those examined in the study, at $44,000.

LinkedIn: The Professional
Obviously, LinkedIn users are more likely to have joined up for work- or business-related reasons. They have the highest average income of all the sites in the study, and they are the only site in the study with more males than females (57% to 43%). Unsurprisingly they are also into golf. But they do have guilty pleasures: The rascals are also more likely to be into gambling and soap operas.

Nonusers: The Busy, the Old, and the Cynical
There are three reasons why people don't join social networks, according to Anderson: They don't have the time, they don't think it's secure, or they think it's stupid. The first two groups are more likely to be persuaded to eventually join.

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