Checkbooks Ready: Social Media Booms

This is Web 2.0's day in the sun. Since Yahoo! bought del.icio.us last December, traffic to the site has more than doubled. In July, user-generated content sites made up five out of the top ten fastest growing Web brands. What's more, the traffic to particular social websites is neatly compartmentalized into demographic packets, which speaks to the advertising power these sites can offer.

LeeAnn Prescott notes that the social bookmarking site is still only ranked 6,793 among all Websites. So why should a marketer care that the site has gone from so-so traffic to moderate traffic? Prescott reveals who uses del.icio.us. The majority of its users are males between the ages of 25-34 with household incomes between $100k-$150k. They are members of the "Urban Uptown" and "Elite Suburbs." "Members of these social groups have higher than average incomes and tend to be highly educated and are more likely to be early adopters of technology," writes Prescott. "My guess is that they've heard about del.icio.us through news media or through friends and are using it because it's 'the thing to do.' This is not quite the MySpace crowd that I expected to find." The gallery-hopping, wine and cheese, Shakespeare Festival, plasma TV crowd. Marketers let out a collective "cha-ching." According to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark Murdok: