It’s easy to see the effect of the boom of social networking sites on high school and college culture however their effect and use by the older affluent users often goes less noticed. These sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Digg, and Youtube have become the cool thing too do in the younger culture, but what value do they hold to an older generation of businessmen.

Networking is a key to business and being able to interact quickly and efficiently with others is priceless. Previously face-to-face meetings were the main and only acceptable practice of real customer communication, but now with the growing age of increasingly tech savvy users, online interactions are becoming more and more common. These interactions provide a much quicker alternative to personal meetings for the already time pressed businessmen. Additionally with such a large younger audience as members of these social networks (Those age 18-44 50% visit social networking sites) these wealthy individuals are just going to where their potential customers already are. As a result when surveyed 24% of wealthy adults are joining social networking sites, such as facebook, that are aimed a much younger audience. A majority of these individuals, 69%, even continually maintain their site profiles.

Blogs, a different social driven online media, are another commonly frequented area by the wealthy. Blogs are a convenient way to get opinions, articles, summaries, in a condensed form. Specifically blogs could contain financial tips, world news, and other political information; Information in blog form can be digested quickly, something important for people who’s time is generally quite valuable. 90% of the wealthy say they get information online about finance and investing, a large portion of this from blogs. 72% of the wealthy internet users said they read blogs; even more prevalent than the 69% aged 18-44. These users are not just observers of the blogs either; many leave comments on a weekly or even daily basis.

While some of these affluent users found these sites after they became rich and others used these sites to help them reach where they are today, all benefited by becoming more efficient and connected in their everyday lives. Some people say you can learn from those that have already achieved success, if you believe so this may not be a bad place to start.

Sources:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/media/article/wealthy-people-tap-social-networking-sites-comment-blogs_516250_15.html