The Young and not so Restless
Rasmussen reports say that nearly one in three Americans (29% to be exact) belong to social networks, with more than half of those under 30 and 45% of those 30 – 39 belonging. And, the majority of those who use social networks use them primarily for personal activities (88%).
Not such a newsflash.
That means that only 11% of them use social networks for business. Of those who use social networks for business, nearly a third of those are 50-64.
Which sort of begs the question of the future of LinkedIn vis a vie Facebook and MySpace.
Okay, maybe something of a newsflash.
I’ve talked to Gen X-ers and Y-ers who tell me that they rarely, like never, go to LinkedIn unless they are looking for a job. Networking is done on Facebook or MySpace where the lines, it seems, between friendship and business networking seem to blur. The exception, I’ve observed, is Gen X-ers and Y-ers who are in sales and marketing or recruiting who use LinkedIn for prospecting.
I am curious to your thoughts regarding the appeal of LinkedIn to a younger audience who has grown up online, and also on Facebook as to whether LinkedIn as a professional networking community will attract their networks. Gen X and Y certainly have networks – the number of friends they have dwarf my now 109-person network by a factor of 7 or 8 most of the time. But do Gen X and Y manage their lives the same way that Boomers do – those I work with and those I hang with – or are they one in the same? Is that simply a life cycle phenomenon or a lifestyle indicator?
Would love your thoughts.
Print This Post
Email This Post
Filed Under:
Digital Media, Internet-Based, Technology, Social Networks, privacy, consumers, Web 2.0, Internet, two-sided market
As a 1963-born Gen X, the only time I interface with LinkedIn, is to initiate or approve a connection. Nothing else ever happens beyond that. LinkedIn is more like a personal white pages of my professional contacts and little more. But although I rarely go to Linked In, I’m glad its there. It provides a place for me to channel boring professional people that want to “social network” with me, but that I really don’t want reading my tweets and seeing the pics of me from the will party last weekend that inhabit the Facebook world. I tightly restrict Facebook friending to friends –true social friends–only. Facebook should be grateful for LinkedIn. If I was inundated with uninteresting, strictly business professional contacts (for whom I have to maintain stiff, professional face–I’m in the banking business) buttting into my fun Facebook world, I’d dump Facebook like a stone.