Location based networking – a stats round-up

May 26, 2011 by Dirk Singer

Over the past few weeks several stats have been published about the growth (or not – depending on your point of view) of location based networking.   To summarise some of this research:

Over 1/6 UK teens use location based services

“Most teenagers don’t care about” location based networking saya a survey from UK agency Dubit.

A nice attention grabbing headline that got coverage in ZDnet among others, but I read the same results rather differently.

Dubit tells us that 48% of UK teens haven’t heard of location based services, while 67% that have heard of them don’t use them.    Or..turning the very same stats around, the majority of UK teens know about location based networking (52%), while over one in six use them (17.1%).   That’s actually quite a high figure, higher than I would have expected

Not surprisingly given the ubiquitous nature of Facebook in the social media space, most teens checking in via their mobiles use Facebook places.

45% of teens also don’t feel safe using location based services, while more males than females use them – something that is replicated across all age groups.

16.7 million Americans check-in

With the major location based networks having US roots, the States is slightly ahead of the curve in this space, and according to Comscore, 16.7 million Americans checked in via services such as Gowalla or Foursquare in April.   That’s 7% of the US mobile phone population.   Again, it is a higher proportion than I expected, especially as among smartphone users the proportion is 1/5

The UK survey I mentioned previously is all about teens, but in fact Comscore’s figures shows that it is a slightly older age group – 25 to 34 year olds, which is most keen on location based networking.  Comscore tells us that a third (32.5%) of all users of location based networks in the US were in this age bracket.

Not surprisingly, iPhone users over indexed when it came to checking in – being 1.3x as likely to check into a place via their phones.

Finally it is useful to see what smartphone check-in services were the most popular:   Travel services, shopping guides and restaurant information.

In other words, users of location based networks are starting to progress past the stage where these services were all about collecting badges or checking in for the sake of it.    Instead they are actually starting to have some utility.

In fact, the idea of Gowalla, Foursquare and their ilk actually having some practical use could be what causes them to take off.   For example, writing in the Independent, check in sceptic Sarah Barrell says, “perhaps where these social media come into their own as a traveller’s friend is as a city guide app.”

Women put off location based networks

Canadian social media pundit Amber McArthur has written about the fact that location based networks are still by and large male dominated.   In the Toronto Globe and Mail, Amber quotes stats from emarketer that 77% of women in the major Western countries are put off mobile check ins, the reasons being a mixture of privacy concerns and just not caring.

Amber does however mention that she likes posting on Instagram, and anecdotal evidence shows that the new mobile photo-sharing service is equally popular with men and women.   Instagram is a check in service of sorts, it gives you the option of tagging your picture to a location and integrating with foursquare, but you don’t have to enable these features to use it.

Instagram – four employees manage 4+ million users

And Instagram has very much caught the imagination of the social media community, despite being (for now) an iPhone only app.    Stats out yesterday show that the service has 4.25 million users, and is gaining 1.2 million users a month.   To put this into perspective, Instagram has achieved the same user base in seven months that it took Twitter two years to reach.

Amazingly, Instagram boss Kevin Systrom revealed in a Bloomberg interview that a grand total of four employees manage these 4.25 million users (there is more over on our Rabbit blog)

 

Top image – Ben Dodson,