Would you ever imagine that your relationship status determines whether or not you’re likely to use a Facebook app? Well, according to a new white paper from BLiNQ Media, it does. The entire paper debunks common assumptions about social media behaviors. According to the findings, some branders may be missing the mark on their “sweet spot” of target users.
“User Behaviors in Online Social Network Applications Present Untapped Marketing Advantage” is based on the analysis of Facebook gifting application usage data comprising more than 9 million users and 117 million records. (!) The study examined behavior through several filters, including number of actions by member, total numbers of days of application use, lag time to accept gifts in the application and the resulting effect on future action within the application. Profile investigation revealed patterns related to gender, age and relationship status. Never in a million years would I have guessed that my relationship status would impact my likelihood to use a gifting app online!
Some of the key revelations include:
– A small percentage of the users accounted for a large percentage of the activity. For example, only 6% of the users were responsible for 56% of the activity.
– Not all users are in the 18-24 age bracket as assumed: The top 50% of high activity users of the social media app were 32 or older, while the lower app activity users were predominately 32 and younger (80%).
– While females represented the largest group of application users (73%), 54% of the men were more likely to be heavy app users.
– The majority of users (70%) took over 30 days to respond to a gifting request. Acceptance activity picked up after 30 days and continued until 132 days later.
– The most active wall posters are not the most active application users, at least for this app.
In the press release, Stephen P. Stuk, Ph.D., Co-founder, Chief Intelligence Officer for BLiNQ Media said, “Historically information about patterns in online behaviors has been largely inaccessible and/or unusable. That is not to say that research has not been conducted: There is a growing body of theoretical research in modeling social networks. However, these studies tend to be purely theoretical without use of data. This is the first time that this level of analysis has been done with actual data. The results revealed some surprises.”
I’ve certainly not heard of anyone analyzing 117 million records in Facebook. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the guys at BLiNQ Media and I can tell you they have unique access to social media intelligence.
They’ve got a Facebook Fan Page and a Linked In Page if you want to be “in the know” about some future studies they’ve got coming.