Last month Nielsen’s Claritas division released data profiling the users of various social networks — which has been picked up by bloggers, social media consultants, like my friends at ClickMarkets, and now, today, by NPR.
In the piece, produced by Laura Sydell, teenagers talked about the social differences of social networks.
MySpace vs. Facebook
- Sixteen-year-old Nico Kurt (who attends an elite, private high school) lays out his view of the MySpace users this way: “It seems trashy to me. The only people who use it are trashy people.”
- “No one uses MySpace,” says 17-year-old Halie Pacheco, a student at The Urban School. She likes Facebook. “It’s safer and more high class,” she explains
- “By ‘high class’ I think she means organized,” adds 16-year-old Olivia Block. “With MySpace there’s a lot of clutter.”
- “I have friends who are white,” says 19-year-old Diego Luna. “They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”
- Benito Rodriguez, 16, adds, “Not to be racist or anything, but there’s more white kids on Facebook.”
Virtual Imitates Real Life
The data as well as the students’ insights point to two truisms about social networks — whether online or in real life that marketers should remember:
Birds of a feather flock together: Demographers, social scientists and market segmentation experts like Claritas, know that humans gravitate toward people that look, think and act like them. Look at any physical neighborhood or organization and you will find striking similarities of the neighbors or members based on race, income, education and even political views.
Know your neighborhoods: Profiling and targeting are just as important online as offline. Don’t just hop on a social network because it’s the most popular. Learn who lives in that neighborhood. Then, think about the profile of your desired target. Would they live there? If so, that’s the network you want to join.
