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I was just shown a great survey by Merrill Lynch on Social Networking, by @jbond on Twitter (note the link will take you to his Twitter). It offered a decent insight on how the users of Social Networks view things. I have my views but reading through the results has made me think of a few changes to Fuelmyblog.com more on that another day!

So, I have picked out the key responses and listed them below, Social Networking will be referred to as SocNet for obvious reasons:-

Firstly, of those surveyed so far, 67% are male with the average age between 22 and 25 years old. Interestingly only 5% are over 40 years old.

So, to the findings:-

59% purchase products on the net occassionally
89% use the net regularly to contact friends and colleagues.

76% of the SocNet users prefer to meet people face-to-face with the LEAST favoured form of contact being Video Chat. I wonder how this will change with increased internet speeds and technology?

36% use SocNet's daily.

53% use just one SocNet regularly, meaning that on average, a user has one favourite site, 80% use Facebook, 2nd most popular is Linkedin with 22%. Interesting is that 49% have between 100-500 connections across the sites they are members of.

The highest percentage of responses state that the user has invited between 0-10 people to join a site they use, this is a hard one to read into, if true, how do sites become viral?

The last time the majority (71%) of the SocNet users signed in to their accounts, they did so to contact a friend.

Asked the question "Which services would you use based on recommendations or offerings on a social networking site?", the highest percentage, 53%, would use/view Entertainment.

83% have never used a SocNet for professional opportunities.

And 57% would not use mobile to access a SocNet.

Finally, 82% would never pay to use a SocNet.

Any shocks in there? Some really interesting results, i'd love your views.