The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released new figures on the use of what they are calling “location based” or “geosocial” services (e.g., Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook Places). These services encourage social interaction through the sharing of location-based information. Usage patterns break down along some interesting lines. I have taken the liberty of compiling some tables for you.
Men are currently twice as likely to use geosocial services as woman.
Similar to trends in mobile Internet access, both Hispanics and blacks use geosocial services more than whites.
Young adult are by far the most active users of geosocial services with rates currently double that of any other category.
Unfortunately, the full data is not available, so we can not yet look at interaction effects. But, you can expect an update soon! For curious readers, Pew’s survey question reads:
Do you… Use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows you to share your location with friends and to find others who are near you?
Comments 2
nathanjurgenson — November 10, 2010
awesome! i wonder how much these effects are due to how, say, nonwhites are more likely to connect to the web via a mobile device. controlling for this, i wonder what the race, sex, age, etc differences in location-service usage is?
Data’ll Show ‘Em: Foursquare, Gowalla, and the Geosocial » Article » OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism — November 16, 2010
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