According to a review of the newest Pew Internet report, average ages of the top social media sites are shifting and converging. Social media, it seems, is becoming common.

“Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace’s is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and Facebook is 33,” says the site.

Facebook is getting old. No, people aren’t getting tired of it, it’s actually getting old, as in its population is aging. In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it’s 33, a good seven years older. That’s an interesting turn of events for a site once built for the exclusive use of college students. So where are today’s college students hanging out now? Well, to some extent, they’re still on Facebook, despite having to share the space with moms, dads, grandparents, and bosses. Surprisingly though, they’re also headed to another network you may have heard of: Twitter.

As it turns out, Gen Y likes Twitter…Well, maybe not, but they are using it

Over the course of the year, there have been countless reports – some more substantial than others – but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. The reports generally cited members of this demographic as saying Twitter was “pointless” and “narcissistic.”

Apparently, that’s beginning to change. Well, maybe not their perception of Twitter, but certainly their use of it. Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace’s is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.

When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter’s network.

Needless to say that my Mother still doesn’t ‘get’ Twitter and Facebook – “Why would anyone want to waste their time on those?”

It appears that Students wouldn’t want to give up emailing and texting.

Looking at some interesting stats from eMarketeer that shows that more American students would miss their Social Networking sites more than visiting other websites. This goes to show how far the Social Web has come in such a short time but the survey also shows that good ‘old’ emails and texting are still the top 2 activities that Gen Y wouldn’t do without.

Will be interesting to see the changes over the next few years when Social network sites become more integrated with other parts of the web

As the article goes on to say “These results may be surprising to some, but not if you consider the role email continues to play in the day-to-day lives of Gen Y,” said Michael Della Penna, PMN co-founder and executive chairman, in a statement. “As long as email remains the collection point for social networking updates, including alerts around new followers, discussion updates and friend requests, it will remain a powerful force in marketing and our lives.”

On average, respondents spend 33 hours per month on social networking sites, compared with 31 hours with e-mail, a small difference considering the hype around social networking.

Text messaging was tied with e-mail as the most “need to have” activity for college kids, nearly one-half of whom sent and received more than 500 messages a month.

First-half 2009 research from ExactTarget showed that social networks were not decreasing the time US Internet users spent with e-mail. In fact, the users most likely to be using e-mail less were also the ones who were using social networks less.

comScore released the results of a UK study of online display advertising on social networking sites, based on data from the Ad Metrix service. The study found that social networking sites accounted for 13.8 billion display ad impressions in August 2009, representing 25.5 percent of all display ads viewed online.

The good news is that demographically active people with money (25-54 year olds) make up almost two thirds (61,3 percent) of the unique visitors to social media sites. Marketeers are a bit slow to grasp that and so the percentage of display ads shown to this group was only 59,3 percent of the total impressions. At the same time younger people (15-24 year olds) who make up 23 percent of social media visitors got 29 percent of the display ads targeted at them.

I would suggest that in absolute numbers display advertising to all age groups will grow. Advertisers start to target older age groups and then the display ads served by the age group will reflect more closely actual percentage of unique visitors from that group.

Other important findings include:

* Telecommunications companies, such as Telefonica O2, Deutsche Telekom, and British Telecommunications, are the biggest social media advertisers with almost 950 million display ad impressions
* The retail advertiser category, including brands like DFS, Tesco, and John Lewis, came in second with 753 million display ad views
* Not surprisingly teen content advertisers Habbo, TeenLifeCheck and others delivered the highest proportion of their ad impressions in the social networking category at 37.3 percent. Followed by online dating advertisers with 33.8 percent.

Top 10 Online Display Advertiser Categories. Ranked by Total Display Ads Delivered on Social Networking Sites, August 2009, Total UK Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations, Source: comScore Ad-Metrix.

The travel industries low number (11,5%) seems a bit odd to me. I think there are a plenty of opportunities to engage consumers on social networking sites with travel. The possibilities for travel ads to be relevant in social sites are much better than for let’s say retail or telecom.

“CPMs on social networking sites have traditionally suffered relative to other content categories, in part because of the perception that much of the audience are younger consumers with lower spending power,” said Mike Read, comScore managing director, Europe.

In my view the biggest problem with the social media CTR is that people are there to hang out with their friends and this is cognitively long way from interacting with brands or thinking about buying stuff. I would guess that advertisers who manage to get involved in these conversations will see stellar CTRs.

“Given the overall reach and volume of ads delivered on social networking sites, brand advertisers who ignore this channel may be missing a significant opportunity and enabling their competitors to gain a dominant share of voice in the channel.” Mike Read, comScore managing director, Europe.