Well, the average age of a Twitter user  is 39 years old
The Average Age of LinkedIn User? 44
And the Average Age of Facebook User? 38

This and a bunch of other social media insights on this infographic from the tweeps at Flowtown: click here for the full hi-res version.

The latest technology and internet report from Nielsen shows that Australians’ internet consumption in 2009 increased by 9 per cent from 2008 but not at the expense of TV or any other traditional media that you might imagine.

I’d love to know where we are finding the time to do all this - obviously watching TV or listening to the radio while using the internet can explain some of it but according to the report, simultaneous media consumption is on the decline also.

The only plateau or decline I can see is in watching DVDs and exercise - oh and there’s a decline in accessing the internet via mobile phones which seems surprising given the huge take up of iPhone’s.

2008 - Green, 2009 - Orange

The article in The Australian Financial Review today which covers this also highlights some other interesting stats from the report:

• 84 per cent of Australians use the internet
• 93 per cent of those use it at home
• 98 per cent have broadband connections
• Facebook accounts for 21 per cent of the time spent online
• 41 per cent of internet users download videos (compared to 25 per cent in the UK)

NB For those who don’t have a paid subscription to AFR.com which the link takes you to - the story is also covered on Mumbrella.

I remember when mobile location based services were first being touted in 2000 - in the midst of the dotcom boom and getting our heads around exactly what e-commerce was, it was all so exciting and held so much promise.

It was around the same time when I believed the hype about voice recognition software and that in just a few years I’d have no use for my touchtype training all those years ago on an old typewriter (to the beats of some rather uplifting piano music no less) but instead would be having lovely realistic (an authentic Australian accent was even promised by one vendor) conversations with my laptop.

However, it seems a different story with Foursquare and its competitors. According to a report released this week by Juniper Research revenue from mobile location based services could reach US$12.7 million by 2014. An article in the Washington Post provides a good analysis of the report here.

I’m not surprised having spent the last few weeks evangelising to everyone I know (and nearly everyone I meet) about the potential of Foursquare and other similar services. While it has been around since mid last year, it was limited to select cities so unless you travelled globally, it was hard to get your head around the potential of it, but since the start of the year it can be used anywhere now.

Foursquare is basically a service you can download to your mobile phone that allows you to let everyone know where you are - it’s like Twitter for socialites.

Instead of telling everyone what  you are doing, you let your friends know where you are by ‘checking-in’ to various locations either already in the system or you can add them if you are the first to check-in there.

For those whose ears I haven’t chewed off about this topic as yet, below is a good video from the Wall Street Journal as to what Foursquare all about. And this article also from the Wall Street Journal highlights the benefits  small businesses are gaining from combining social media with their marketing.

There are literally hundreds of mobile location based services around including Gowalla, Yelp (which has had its own problems with iliciting bad reviews which we wrote about recently) and even early forerunners like Brightkite, Loopt and My Town but Foursquare is getting a lot of attention perhaps because of its quick growth - some quote it as having more than 1/2 million users already, but its also been in the news with the recent concerns over privacy and its partnership announcements with high profile brands like Bravo and Zagats.

But if people are going to worry about privacy on Foursquare they’ll be horrified to learn about another service Blibby which goes one step further and allows you to tell your friends where and what you are buying somewhere. A story in the Financial Times this week claims the service already has 10,000 users since its launch in December ‘09.

But back to Foursquare, some including Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider, say that Foursquare’s will be ousted from its ‘mayorship’ in the space if other more established and popular social networking sites like Facebook add location based services. And the introduction of Google Buzz adds another interesting element to the mix.

Nicholas also gives a nice comparison between some of the services in his article:

Yelp

• Advantages: Scale, brand, ardent community, large app install base. More money from investors like Elevation Partners.

• Disadvantages: Not your real friends. It’s a site for writers. No Foursquare-like gaming element.

Gowalla

• Advantages: Closer to mainstream than Foursquare. Has more money than Foursquare, from sexy investors like Greylock. Not based in New York so it’s closer to “real” America.

• Disadvantages: Not based in New York, which is the perfect city for this kind of software.

Facebook

• Advantages: Huge scale. Has tons of engineering talent. Like with Foursquare, Facebook friends are your real friends — the kind of people you want to join you when you go out.

• Disadvantages: Unlike Foursquare, Facebook can afford to fail. Potential rivals also include Twitter and CitySearch

Momentum is certainly growing in all these services and a lot of people are talking about it, but there are those who aren’t convinced just yet.

It seems a pretty safe bet that business will gain real benefit from these services (a lot safer than betting on my talking laptop at least), so the real issue is whose going to lead the way.

Some interesting slides in this deck (although the data is a year or so old), especially around how companies who have “Best in class Social Media Practices” outperform other companies in terms of customer retention, ability to predict customer needs, and so on. Also very interesting visualisation of the areas in an organisation that are effected by social media / corporate networks (slide 16) from Aberdeen Group