Comments on: Social Nets – A Fundraising Distraction?

By: Laurie

Laurie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:14:09 +0000

I would like to see these stats broken down by country: Canada, the UK/EU, the USA. My personal experience is that Canadians across most age groups tend to use Facebook over MySpace, but that’s nothing more than my personal experience.

Are their any good studies looking at the demographics by country for social networking sites? I’ve looked and not found anything particularly significant.

By: Jonathon Grapsas

Jonathon Grapsas — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:42:32 +0000

Funnily enough, the first blog I posted on my own blog last June focused on the same topic.

http://jonathongrapsas.blogspot.com/2008/06/social-networking-next-big-thing-for.html

For me, right now – a distraction.

Jonathon

By: Social Ch@nge » Blog Archive » What good are social networks?

Social Ch@nge » Blog Archive » What good are social networks? — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:59:16 +0000

[...] the responses of the blogosphere, the Agitator has run two interesting posts on the theme. The first talks about the recent Pew study, and points out that your donor base might not fit the [...]

By: Allyson

Allyson — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:39:32 +0000

Tom. Great post! Utilizing online social networks should be viewed as just one of many sources for non-profits to raise money and they should only expect to raise money on a small scale. Care2 has a social networking ROI calculator over on the frogloop blog that can help NPO’s decide how much of an investment to make into online social marketing.
http://www.frogloop.com/social-network-calculator

By: tbelford

tbelford — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:42:53 +0000

Harry,
The further demographic info you ask about is provided in the full Pew report. Just follow the link in the post.
Tom

By: Harry Lynch

Harry Lynch — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:21:06 +0000

Tom, you couldn’t have said it better. The buzz has gotten *way* ahead of where social net sites actually are as far a fundraising tools. And your stats are priceless for fundraisers trying to hang onto a modicum of realistic expectations. So thank you so much for this piece.

P.S. I’d be very curious if you have any further details on the demographics of who is using which sites. You show that MySpace has more than a 2 to 1 lead over Facebook in aggregate, but I’m assuming that MySpace skews *much* younger, and thus sharply away from our best donor groups? Thanks in advance.