Who is in control of your brand?

Doing some simple analysis of Facebook users in Australian confirms the belief that we want to be younger (or older); and we’re happy to lie about ourselves to the world.

It also reinforces the uncomfortable feeling I get when researchers (including people in my team) do focus groups, surveys & other prompted research – when you ask someone about their values, views or habits it’s likely that they’re going to lie.

So back to Facebook where we have a very unique scenario, 46% of all Australians 13 yrs+ are on Facebook and they have to answer a series of questions to create an account, resulting in a very large sample size of data, although not many ways to cross tabulate the data.

Using Facebook’s advertising system, where you can build demographic profiles based on all kinds of attributes; you can estimate the number of people in any given segment on Facebook.

Using the tool I discovered the following audience sizes, 25-34 being the largest, and more women than men in every age group.

Australian’s on Facebook (blue) vs. Men (red) vs Women (green)

For kicks I compared these numbers to the actual population in Australia with the intention of understanding the % of Australians in each segment on Facebook. Instead I discovered that Australian’s want to be younger (or maybe older) and are happy to lie about it.

Australian’s (red) vs. Australian’s on Facebook (blue)

The graph above shows the number of Australians in each age group compared with the number of people on Facebook who claim to be the given age.

Digging a little further it was clear the discrepancy was only with the women.

Australian Women (red) vs. Australian Women on Facebook (blue)

And the discrepancy isn’t tiny, it adds up to over 257,000, even with some margins of error that’s a big gap. Another way of looking at it is that there’s 115% of Women aged 25-34 on Facebook, an awesome stat, if only it could be true.

% of Australians on Facebook (blue) vs. % of Men on Facebook (red) vs. % Women on Facebook (green)

I’m making a big assumption here, as it could be an error, 13 year olds wanting to be 18 or something else, but I believe it’s a reflection on the pressure from society, media & our peers to be and live more youthful lives.

It highlights the impact of the new world we live in where Facebook (and social media generally) plays an interesting role in our social & professional lives, giving us more power to manage our own brand, reputation & image, unless someone else takes control, uploading those awkward photos of us from our best friend’s birthday party.

Oh, and to point out the obvious and the reason I actually did this analysis, 46% of Australians are on Facebook. Just for good measure here’s another pretty chart of visits to three sites in Australia from Google Trends to confirm traffic is trending up or down, and it’s up.

I posted a question on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook asking people if they loved or hated their iPhones… These kinds of questions often spark interest, but this one certainly got some traction.

I have one and love/hate it, but can’t let go of it. What do you think of your iPhone?

This is what a range of my contacts said:

Ian (Source: LinkedIn)

Love it and hate it. Isn’t enterprise ready( can’t make apprs with one of your contacts for example). When it can do this and have a half decent battey life then it’ll be close.
Catch your soon Simon.

@starr_sonic (Source: Twitter)

An iphone is the definition of love!

Les (Source: Facebook message)

Hi Simon, do you have one ? There are lots of pros and cons to it.
I dont have one, I have a Nokia N95 but considered one, as well as the Blackberry Storm & also the Nokia N97 coming out soon. They all have pros and cons, storm didnt do all that well in reviews, iphone – well, you cant mms off it, nor can you use the laptop to send sms’ which I do a lot.

Various (Source: Facebook status)

Timothy Neilen at 15:11, on 19 December.
I love it, but it decided to pack it in.. it just won’t turn on or charge, so I’m getting a new one.

Rino Del Zoppo at 15:12, on 19 December.
LOVE IT – the minor issues are outweighed by the fabness of the rest of it – one gadget to take with me now – instead of a phone and ipod and a diary. LOVE.

David Messer at 15:21, on 19 December.
Love it, but i like anything with an apple logo on it… http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20081217/appleonapple_07.jpg

Luke Revill at 15:24, on 19 December.
I have about 20+ mobile handsets, none of them is an iPhone.

Rino Del Zoppo at 15:24, on 19 December.
hahaha brilliant pic. mmmm apples.

Rino Del Zoppo at 15:25, on 19 December.
lol at luke – 20 brilliant phones will never equal an iphone. you are right.

Simon T Small at 15:28, on 19 December.
haha! no iPhone haters around?

David Campbell at 15:29, on 19 December.
Love it! except for when it crashes when you’re half way through doing som…..

Rino Del Zoppo at 15:30, on 19 December.
david – just turn it off and on every few days…. keeps it running clear… i find anyway.

Luke Kowald at 19:06 19 December via Facebook Mobile
I love it.

It’s an aesthetically beautiful and easy to use device.

It does have some current drawbacks that we’re all likely familiar with (including not being able to cut and paste David’s Apple pic from mobile facebook), but all in all a sweet device.

Rino Del Zoppo at 01:33, on 20 December.
and you can’t forward sms or cut n paste from sms. but i am sure that will be fixed ne day. i saw an iphone tonight had been dropped – not pretty – some people do not deserve to own an iphone… no respect.

Simon T Small at 10:08, on 20 December.
in summary, apples are yummy, you are all funny, and I think I love mine.

Rino Del Zoppo at 10:29, on 20 December.
think? how very dare you? not ‘think’ but ‘know’ you know you love yours.