U.S. NetworX

The Digital Surgeons company has released a graphical breakdown of users of the two social media leviathans Twitter and Facebook, with data mostly from users in the United States.

Click here to see the graphic

Some interesting data to ponder:

• Facebook’s users out-populate Twitter users by a factor of five
• Facebook users are more likely to login every day
• Twitter users, though, are more likely to update their status every day – so it seems Facebook might be more read-only
• There are a few more non-U.S. users in Facebook
• While Facebook users are far more likely to follow a brand, Twitter users are more likely to purchase from that specific brand
• Education-wise, Facebook seems to be skewed more toward the younger crowd, as there are more high school users
• However, Twitter seems to be much more popular for currently enrolled college students by almost twice as much
• Going hand-in-hand with the education data, the age breakdown supports the notion that Twitter is being used by an older population, with a large portion (74 percent) in the 26-54 span vs. Facebook’s 53 percent in that same age span

Putting it all together, what does it mean? I find one interesting thing to ponder is who wants to market to which platform. Facebook is getting heavier use from the younger crowd, so if you had to market to tweens, teens and high school students, you can’t go wrong. Twitter, on the other hand, would be best used for those marketing to an older, educated crowd (read: has the disposable income). It also seems that Twitter users are more willing to engage with a brand via a purchase.

Trends in 2010

On a related note, both Facebook and Twitter have posted “end of the year” reviews that dig into their own usage data.

Facebook takes a look back at the top trends in 2010

Twitter lists the most popular retweets as well as what it considers some of the most powerful messages.

I’ve been following two large-scale events over the last month that look straight out of the movies or some Tom Clancy-type techno-thriller. Let’s look at both today.

Call a plumber, you have a WikiLeak

Most likely you’ve heard/read about WikiLeaks and all things associated with it. From the hosting of U.S. State Department cables between countries, to Julian Assange’s arrest for alleged sex crimes, all the way up to a community-based distributed denial of service attacks … it’s been a wild ride.

Here are some recent recaps of what’s been going on:

New York Times’ series on the cables and diplomatic reactions to the content

Der Spiegel’s coverage

El Pais’ extended reporting

NYT’s primer on the WikiLeaks site and related developments

Swedish documentary film about the WikiLeaks organization

An anti-nuclear worm unleashed by a spy agency?!

Less known than all of the WikiLeaks drama is the Stuxnet mystery. This “worm” is being investigated as a possible weapon designed for subtle damage to specialized industrial equipment: centrifuges used to purify materials for possible nuclear weapons. It appears to have been spread via a USB memory stick and looks to be targeting high-level industrial locations and factories. Taking that a step farther, there are some hints in the worm’s code that might connect it to Israel as being the developer.

Now for the big disclaimer: none of this has been proved yet, but how are those JFK conspiracies going?

Here are some reports on the Stuxnet worm:

F-Secure security group runs through a (sometimes funny) Q/A review

CBS reports that Iran says Stuxnet stopped their centrifuges

Fox News does a good job wrapping the details together