Understanding the demographics of chosen social networks is essential for solid social media strategy, especially when considering the amount of time that different cohorts spend on these networks. For example, the average American spends over 3 hours per day on social networks, with usage trending higher among females, under-35s, business owners, and executives:

But beyond these averages, what are the specifics across social networks? Marketers must prioritize time and dollar spend, and so these specificities are vital to inform any social media strategy.

Uptime and performance monitoring company Pingdom had the most comprehensive user data of almost any other site. The study brought in various aspects of the social networking landscape, and concisely compiled them into a series of easy-to-digest charts.

The stats of the surveyed networks are incredibly revealing. These accumulated statistics are based on US data, but are still nonetheless informative as far as the tone, type and substance of content and interaction for businesses engaging on social media.

Here are our highlights, followed by the republished graphs.

  • Even though the under-35s spend more time on social networks (see above graph), social media is not just the domain of the young. The over-35s make up the following percentages of social networks: 55% of Twitter users, 63% of Pinterest users, 65% of Facebook users, 79% of LinkedIn users.
  • On the flipside, the networks where the majority of users are under 35 years old are: Reddit, Github, Hi5, Hacker News, deviantART, and Orkut.
  • Facebook’s user base is getting older, growing 2 years from the previous study to 40.5 years old, while Twitter is getting younger, dropping to an average age of 37.3 years old.
  • 17 out of 24 sites have more female users than male
Average age distribution across 24 surveyed networks:

Average age across the surveyed communities:

Age range distribution across the surveyed communities:

Gender distribution across the surveyed communities:

But though the internet may be a global phenomenon,  browsing habits differ widely from region to region and from country to country. One example: the different ways internet users in various countries interact with brand social network presences, as observed in a recent study.

The November 2012 study, by Ipsos OTX and Ipsos Global @dvisor, found that large numbers of internet users in Latin America and parts of Asia-Pacific flock to brands’ social networking pages, while internet users in North America and Western Europe are much more likely to give such pages the cold shoulder.

In Latin America, 70% of consumers in Brazil, 72% of consumers in Mexico and 64% of consumers in Argentina agreed that they were “very much” or “somewhat” likely to regularly check brands’ social media pages. In Brazil and Mexico, just 12% in each country considered themselves very unlikely to check in on them.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region displayed more variation. In India, 40% of internet users said they were very likely to regularly check brands’ social media pages, and a mere 6% considered themselves very unlikely to do so. In Japan, by contrast, only 4% were very likely and fully 51% were very unlikely.

The varying degrees of enthusiasm for brand social media pages seem to roughly correspond to the maturity of the digital markets in each country. eMarketer estimates that 10.9% of the population in India will be on the internet in 2013, whereas in Japan 76.1% of the population will be.

Corresponding to this trend, internet users in Indonesia and China, both countries where internet use is still developing, appeared considerably more interested in seeking out brand social media content compared to internet users in South Korea and Australia, where the internet is well established. Latin America tends to fall somewhere in the middle in terms of internet adoption: eMarketer projects that 46% of the population will be internet users in 2013.

In North America and Western Europe, where internet adoption rates tend to resemble Japan’s and Australia’s, interest in brand social media pages is similarly muted.

This correlation could be explained by the fact that, in countries where the internet is still largely the province of early adopters, social networkers are more likely to be interested in brand social media offerings than the general population. Another possibility is that countries that are accustomed to the internet have grown numb to brand social media offerings, while in other countries these offerings are still novel and exciting.