Who Participates in Social Media

Fascinating chart from Business Week showing what people are doing online:



They don't describe the chart as "social media" - but looking at the online actions listed (creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, inactives) seem to be a decent representation of activities associated with new Internet media/content, and of course all media is becoming social media.

The most interesting aspect of this data is not that it confirms conventional wisdom (that kids/youth are driving the user generated content trend), but that the distribution of participants in social media also contains a fairly large percentage of "older " (22-26, 27-50) also participate actively in contributing to online media.

For example. almost 30% of the 27-40 age group have joined social networking sites; similarly, almost 20% of 41-50 year olds have commented on blogs and posted ratings/reviews. Suggesting, quite naturally, that maybe the user-content shift is deeper, and wider, than had previously been thought.