This Old Space

Posted by: Rob Hof on October 05

It looks like MySpace is not just for teens after all. For better (broader audience) or worse (yuck, who are all these sketchy old guys here?), some 68% of people on MySpace are 25 or older, according to Comscore. Kids 12 to 17 represent only 12% of the audience now, less than half the percentage of a year ago.

I do wonder how active these older people are on the site, though. (In fact, John DeMayo doubts the numbers altogether.) Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia, yesterday noted that the reason social networking has skewed younger is not that older people don’t want to do it or that they’re hidebound when it comes to technology. It’s that younger people are all too willing to spam their entire IM or email contacts to join MySpace, while people older are more careful of annoying their friends. So in other words, the raging popularity of social networking is built largely on the lack of respect younger people show toward their friends? I’m sure it’s more than that, but I bet older people use these social networks very differently.