I thought Facebook was used by college/university students but I’ve come across a growing number of people in the tech world who have set up Facebook profiles. Rather than giving you a business card or telling you to search for them on LinkedIn, they offer you a link to Facebook. What’s going on here? VentureBeat has noticed the same trend as has the Globe & Mail.
I was out for dinner last with a huge table of family and friends. None of them with any technical bend. At a table of 11 people, ranging in age from 20 to 65, 7 had Facebook profiles. There was even a mother-daughter-aunt combo.
It’s mainstream
We’ve been doing focus groups with mainstream women in the UK, aged 20-55 and have increasingly found facebook being mentioned.
Under 27 the majority are on facebook, bebo and myspace. Over 27 usage tails off but mostly for the other two services which are seen as being ‘for kids’. Facebook appears to remain popular for the older groups.
I had a Facebook account in college, but never had anything on it until I found out that most of my co-workers had accounts. I’ve never had a myspace account, because I hated the interface, but most of my friends had myspace pages.
But then, after a few got fed up with it, they all just started lining up for facebook.
Let’s face it, unlike many other social networks, facebook does exactly what you want it to do every time.
something happened in the last month. facebook is everywhere now. its gone well beyond the university and into the mainstream. the predictions of facebook passing myspace might happen real real soon.
It’s clean. It’s efficient. It’s flexible.
What more can you ask for? That’s already three point ahead of MySpace.
I’ve been on Facebook for well over a year and I have to say it has matured rather nicely.
A lot of the interaction among users is also automated. So it makes it easier to find and communicate with one another.
Mark, if you’re not already signed up, I suggest you do. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Hey Mark, love your blog.
Your perception of Facebook as a ‘student-only’ social networking destination is certainly understandable. After all, it was open only to students until about six months ago. I’ve been lead to understand that having only students on it was considered a beta of sorts, testing out the software before it was put on the market for mass consumption.
I agree. Facebook is definitely mainstream!
I personally am interested to see where it is going to go in the future.