Just for grins, I decided to look at which states are the most socially active in the US.
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By socially active, I'm talking about social in the digital sense.
So, which states in the United States have fully embraced online social networking and social marketing? Which states are laggards in becoming active with social networking sites?
Since Twitter is quite popular, I decided to use Twitter as the base metric for the analysis.
Without a doubt, my methodology is flawed. To get the numbers used for the analysis, I just did a simple Twitter search on, for example, "location: California" in Twitter.
That search won't find people who typed in, say, "San Francisco" as their location, and there may be some other issues with the approach. But since we are using the same technique for every state, the assumption, right or wrong, is that this technique is still getting the right state rankings on a relative basis.
If there's a better way to do this analysis, let me know.
Here, in decreasing order are the states with the most active Twitter populations per capita. If you want the data that generated this list, we are happy to send it over to you.
Most Social States in the United States of America
(ranked by per capita use of social networking sites)
1. Washington DC
2. Washington
3. Maine
4. Oregon
5. Hawaii
6. Kansas
7. Alaska
8. Vermont
9. Colorado
10. New York
11. Utah
12. Iowa
13. Idaho
14. Ohio
15. Delaware
16. New Hampshire
17. Virgina
18. Oklahoma
19. Michigan
20. Texas
21. Florida
22. Rhode Island
23. Minnesota
24. Arizona
25. Guam
26. Indiana
27. Montana
28. Wyoming
29. California
30. Maryland
31. Nebraska
32. New Jersey
33. Wisconsin
34. Arkansas
35. Connecticut
36. Alabama
37. Massachusetts
38. Georgia
39. Nevada
40. Kentucky
41. New Mexico
42. Missouri
43. Tennessee
44. South Dakota
45. North Carolina
46. South Carolina
47. North Dakota
48. Louisiana
49. Illinois
50. West Virginia
51. Mississippi
52. Pennsylvania
53. Puerto Rico
54. US Virgin Islands
55. American Samoa
56. Northern Mariana Islands
FaceBook and MySpace Usage by City
Here's another way of looking at social networking adoption rates by geography. This data was provided by comScore. It shows penetration of visitors to individual sites from a given DMA (as opposed to States). The data is from May 2008.
From this comScore data, you can make conclusions like "Folks from New Orleans are more active on MySpace than folks from San Antonio" or "Milwaukee's Facebook users are much more active than Chicago's Facebook users."
It's a different slice on the same questions: Which locations are embracing social media and social networking sites at the fastest rate? Which locations are not jumping on the social networking bandwagon?
| MYSPACE.COM |
% Reach |
| BURLINGTON-PLATTSBURGH | 49.1 |
| ORLANDO-DAYTONA BCH-MELBRN | 47.5 |
| HONOLULU | 46.7 |
| NEW ORLEANS | 46.7 |
| LOUISVILLE | 46.6 |
| FRESNO-VISALIA | 46.5 |
| CHATTANOOGA | 46.0 |
| LEXINGTON | 45.7 |
| HUNTSVILLE-DECATUR,FLOR | 45.6 |
| LOS ANGELES | 45.6 |
| TRI-CITIES, TN-VA | 44.7 |
| SAN ANTONIO | 44.6 |
| COLORADO SPRINGS-PUEBLO | 44.5 |
| DAYTON | 44.1 |
| PADUCAH-C.GIRD-HARBG-MT VN | 44.1 |
| HOUSTON | 43.9 |
| MEMPHIS | 43.5 |
| TAMPA-ST. PETE,SARASOTA | 43.5 |
| NORFOLK-PORTSMTH-NEWPT NWS | 43.1 |
| COLUMBIA, SC | 43.1 |
| BATON ROUGE | 43.1 |
| MOBILE-PENSACOLA | 42.9 |
| SHREVEPORT | 42.9 |
| JACKSONVILLE, BRUNSWICK | 42.7 |
| CHARLOTTE | 42.6 |
| CHARLESTON-HUNTINGTON | 42.6 |
| FACEBOOK.COM |
% Reach |
| JACKSON, MS | 38.7 |
| LITTLE ROCK-PINE BLUFF | 37.4 |
| DES MOINES-AMES | 35.3 |
| CEDAR RAPIDS-WATERLOO&DUBQ | 34.3 |
| MILWAUKEE | 32.5 |
| BOSTON | 28.8 |
| WASHINGTON, DC | 28.7 |
| KANSAS CITY | 28.7 |
| WICHITA-HUTCHINSON PLUS | 28.2 |
| GREEN BAY-APPLETON | 27.6 |
| FORT WAYNE | 27.5 |
| DETROIT | 26.7 |
| RICHMOND-PETERSBURG | 26.6 |
| ROCHESTER, NY | 26.6 |
| HARTFORD & NEW HAVEN | 26.2 |
| PROVIDENCE-NEW BEDFORD | 26.1 |
| BURLINGTON-PLATTSBURGH | 25.9 |
| SYRACUSE | 25.7 |
| NEW YORK | 25.7 |
| GRAND RAPIDS-KALMZOO-B.CRK | 25.4 |
| MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL | 25.0 |
| BALTIMORE | 24.8 |
| ATLANTA | 24.6 |
| COLUMBIA, SC | 24.1 |
| CHICAGO | 24.1 |
| ST. LOUIS | 23.6 |
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We welcome your comments regarding this analysis and which states are most active with social networking.
|
| Mike |
7/28/2008 |
Typical ... I live in Pennsylvania ... apparently we are all in a state of electronic social limbo! :O)
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| Mike Templeton |
7/28/2008 |
Iowa rolls in at #12. And actually, I'm not very surprised. When our state is home to #dmtweetup, several web and social media consultancies, co-working ventures and startups, how could we not make the top 15?
Keep up all the hard work you social Iowans!
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| WorkingWriter |
7/28/2008 |
I suspect a TwitterLocal (http://www.twitterlocal.net/) search would be much more accurate. It's based on phone area codes, and don't cross state lines.
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| mike Gorski |
7/28/2008 |
I'd pull this down if I were you. It's seriously flawed. For example, "CA" pulls up some 22,000 from twitter. While "California" only pulls about 9,300. You're results favor states that don't have big cities either. In addition the per capita metric is skewed to favor rural states.
You mention that you think your methodology is flawed, but you still think the relative ranks can be accurate. That wrong, if the methodology has strong state-by-state biases then the whole ranking should be thrown out.
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| Ken Gaebler |
7/28/2008 |
Mike Gorski, I agree that there's bias on this because folks who live in states without big cities are more likely to say they live in State X and not City X. I was wondering why some rural states were doing so well - thought it was because there wasn't as much to do there, outside of social networking online.
If I have time, I will rework this analysis. I don't claim to be an analyst at Forrester or Gartner, so I'll leave it up with all its warts for now. Maybe it will encourage somebody else to do a proper analysis, in which case my work (all 35 minutes of it) will have a positive outcome.
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| Adam Audette |
7/28/2008 |
yeah! Oregon at #4, represent! pretty interesting to see Maine so high and Washington state above them...
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| Jamie Duklas |
7/28/2008 |
Analysis is clearly flawed (as said already city X vs state X is a huge part of it), but a fun concept. Considering doing some research on it myself. If I do I'll post on Twitter (jduklas) and on www.WebistheNewBlack.com. Cheers!
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| Jacob |
7/28/2008 |
This is flawed. Twitter is not the most popular social network. Use google trends. That's at least a little closer.
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| Aaron |
7/28/2008 |
Your analysis may be slightly flawed but I think it's reasonable. Every analysis makes some assumptions that are flawed or uses imperfect sample data. To see another take on the same question, check out http://www.twitterlocal.net/stats
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| Brandon Waite |
8/4/2008 |
It's interesting how Facebook appears to be more popular in the North and MySpace appears to be more popular in the South. Once you update your analysis, it would be interesting to compare your numbers to states' rates of higher education.
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| Linda Roeder |
8/6/2008 |
I knew Pennsylvania would be at the bottom of the list. People around here just got email addresses in the past two years.
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