Boomers Social Media Stats-Rocking Out on Twitter, Facebook, AARP

Blowing off boomers as social media no-shows? Take a look at these statistics and then listen in to:

Boomers Step Into Social Media, hosted by Toby Bloomberg with guests, Des Walsh, Barbara Rozgonyi [me!] and Carlos Hernandez

Twitter Traffic Spiked by 45-54 year olds

The majority of Twitter’s roughly 10 million unique Web site visitors worldwide in February were 35 years old or older, according to comScore from an article called Twitter Older than it Looks by Alexei Oreskovic

45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter … another reason why ad agency CEOs should be on Twitter from twitter traffic explosion being led by 45-54 year olds by Michael Gass “Barbie turned 50 this year. Growing up, Barbie was my nickname. My cousins and my aunt still call me that.

Pew Internet Reports on Adults with Social Networking Sites

– 8% in February 2005

– 16% in August 2006

– 35% in December 2008

At this pace, over 50% of all adults will have be active on social networking sites by 2010.

Marketing to Boomers: Double Layers in One Generation

With almost 20 years between the oldest and youngest boomers, recognizing the differences in lifestyle is important. The youngest boomers, at age 44, still have six years to go before they can join AARP.

Original Baby Boomers have birthdays between 1946 and 1953 and are now 63-56. Younger boomers, also known as Generation Jones, have birthdays between 1954 and 1965 and are now 55-44.

With the president of the United States using social technologies for campaigning and his ongoing administration, Boomers retiring and wanting to stay in touch with their digitally expressive children and grandchildren, and with a recession causing need for all of us to connect to each other –expect an increase in social technology adoption across many generations. Jeremiah Owyang, How Baby Boomers Use Social Media

For companies wanting to reach out to the Baby Boomers online, this data shows that spending at least a portion of your budget on social applications for the group isn’t entirely a waste of time and money. The group isn’t as active online as younger generations are, but their participation levels are now moderate and increasing. ReadWriteWeb on reaching Baby Boomers online

Study: Social Networking Demographics Generation Y and Baby Boomers

According to the Consumer Electronics Usage Survey from Accenture study, baby boomers…

• Increased reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67% year over year; nearly 80 times faster than Gen Y (1 percent)
• Posted a 59% increase in using social networking sites—more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent)

USA Today Reports on Boomers and Social Networking 

According to Internet monitoring site comScore

– Social networking stats: 16.5 million adults ages 55 and older engage

– Facebook is seeing the most growth among users age 30 and older

– MySpace has 6.9 million/130 million users over 55 who spend an average 204 minutes a month

– AARP.org’ s one year old social networking platform now has 350,000 users in 1,700 groups

New York Times Says Baby Boomers Are Big Social Media Consumers

more than 60 percent of baby boomers are avid consumers of social media like blogs, forums, podcasts and online videos. That’s up from roughly 40 percent a year ago

New York Times Talks About Growth in 55 Plus Users on Facebook

According to the site insidefacebook.com,

– fastest-growing user group is women 55 and over, up more than 175% since last fall

– men over 55 increased almost 138% during the same time period

Want to know more? Check out How to Reach Baby Boomers with Social Technologies, a report by Jeremiah K. Owyang from Forrester.

Are you a baby boomer? How do you use social media?