If you're on a social networking site, chances are you have less than 100 friends. If you have thousands, you're not only in the minority, but you're probably male. According to a large study of people with at least one friend on a social networking site, men have more friends than women. Men and women also seem to be motivated by different values. That's the conclusion of a study by Rapleaf of 30.74 million social networkers.
There are some interesting patterns about how the number of friends we have and why. This may not come as a surprise - overall men are more focused on acquiring "friends" than building relationships with them. Women spend more time on social network sites but aren't as likely to have more than 1,000 friends.
The information comes from these sites: Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, LiveJournal, MySpace, Flickr, and others. Of this group:
* 80% have fewer than 100 friends.
Women have on average 62 friends. Men have on average 57 friends. The majority are women.
* 9% have more than 100 friends.
Women have on average 185 friends. Men have on average 172 friends. The majority are women.
* Less than 1% have more than 1,000 friends.
Women have on average 1,837 friends. Men have on average 1,944 friends. This group is more likely to be men.
* .02% have more than 10,000 friends.
Women have on average 24,077 friends. Men have on average 24,584 friends. This group is more likely to be men.
I don't know if they excluded people like "Tom" on MySpace who befriends everyone and others who want to be like Tom - a friend to all. I'm curious of Marketing Pilgrim readers, how many friends do you have on what sites and how much time do you spend interacting with them?
I don't spend a lot of time on any social sites except Twitter. Facebook comes in second - where I have 103 friends right now. Most of them are people I know well in real life, but of those I haven't met 14 in real life, and about 3 are businesses or groups. Perhaps 5 are people I don't know and don't interact with.
