I’ve been compiling data from Google AdPlanner to see how the demographic make up of the leading social networks varies in the UK. What emerges is a fascinating picture full of insights for marketers looking to reach their target audiences through these channels.

First up is the age distribution of the leading social networks. I’ve included Disney’s Club Penguin as it’s now the undisputed training ground for our future social leaders and, no surprise, it has by far the youngest users. But it’s LinkedIn, Friends Reunited and Twitter that have the smallest proportion of younger users. Google’s Orkut is a bit of an anomaly; it has just 350k users in the UK, although about 38 million around the world, but almost 90% of the UK users claim to be aged 25-34; the 18 years minimum age restriction likely affects this:

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Next, I had a look at the education background of the users of each leading social network sites. LinkedIn really stands out as having the most educated users with 39% claiming to have a bachelors degree or better. Again, Orkut is an anomaly, with over a third of its users claiming to hold a graduate degree:

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Finally I collated household income data for users of these same social networks. Orkut has the lowest paid users, possibly because of its strength in Brazil and India, but MySpace and Twitter stand out most prominently as having the highest paid users, while Facebook also has a high proportion of users in the top pay bracket:

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I’ll share more insights from the data I’m collecting in future. Stay tuned for updates.