125,000,000 Facebook Users Can't Be Wrong (at least not all of them)

I came across a few interesting stories and statistics about Facebook usage today.

The first, published by eMarketer, notes how people of different ages and ethnicities vary in their frequency of Facebook use. While it's not surprising to learn that people from 18-34 spend the most time on the site--in average number of hours per week and in the percentage on Facebook of total weekly time online--it was a bit eye opening to me that Facebook users over age 55 spend more than 4-1/2 hours per week on site.

The same article also reveals that of U.S. internet users, Asians spend the most time on Facebook, followed by Blacks, Whites and Hispanics, and that individuals with incomes over $100K spend the highest percentage of their total time online on Facebook.

A previous article by eMarketer showed statistics indicating that individuals who utilize Facebook most heavily are also tend to be those who spend the most money online. The top 20% of Facebook users spent an average of $67 in online shopping during the 1st quarter of 2010, while Internet users who did not visit Facebook at all bought significantly less online than average, spending only $27 during the quarter. 

I guess this is why everyone is trying to establish a marketing presence on Facebook, although I worry about the signal-to-noise ratio once it becomes commonplace for companies to send out commercial messages on Facebook. 

But as another article I saw today--this one by MarketingCharts.com--indicates, although Facebook usage was off a bit in June, both in the number of new users added and activity by the site's prime 18-44 demographic, there are now 125,000,000 active Facebook users in the United States--50% of whom log on in any given day. (The U.S. population is approximately 307 million people.) An estimated 400 million people worldwide are active Facebook users.

This is pretty staggering, and if indeed accurate, means that about 20% of the U.S. Population, across all ages, uses Facebook on a daily basis and almost 41% uses it regularly.

In recent months, there have been issues raised about Facebook's seemingly perpetually-changing privacy policy, which this Newsweek article by Daniel Lyons suggests is misguided and aimed to leverage user data for commercial profitability. There were stories about how people were threatening to stop using Facebook, but none of my 118 Friends dropped off and although I'm sure Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg and crew have noted the June decline, I don't think they have too much to worry about just yet.