Facebook and Social Startups Meme.

To say that Facebook’s engine keep running on the youth would be taking away the credit from the older age group. The social network owes quite a lot to the senior population as well. The stats put out by Nielson state that the number of users aged over 65 has increased from 11.3 Million in 2004 to over 17.5 Million, recording a good 6 Million increase during the duration. And not surprisingly enough half of those people spend a good deal of time on Facebook as well as YouTube. I am quite baffled, that is more than 55% increase and more importantly, each of those users spend around two hours a day using the web, which means an hour on of the two sites.

The tables provided speak volumes and show how popular the social network is amongst all age groups, rather it is beyond the confines of age and gender. Phenomenal rise, given that it was numbered at 45 just a year back and this is just getting ever more rapid. I mean we have seen how rapidly it grew to cross 350 Million user mark and how each thing associated to it continue to grow as well. Lets not talk about the larger chunk of Facebook population and focus on the seniors here for the time being.

The first question: why exactly are they using the social network and spending time on it? Perhaps that has something to with so much of activity they are able to do. I mean we have got social network like Farmville and other engaging content along with the ease with which each can connect with friends and family alike. Plus it brings them to a platform where they can be shared with things like photos, videos at ease. The point here is the ease of accessibility of each technology that in turn eases the mode of connectivity. We all know that many of the seniors aren’t that tech savvy, but with the trends changing that number is bound to increase more.