VentureBeat

Rapleaf, a company that provides people-focused search services to corporate clients, spends a lot of time mining social networking data. It has just released a survey studying the social networking habits of the 49.3 million people it has information about, divided by age. Sample sites include MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr.

Here’s some of the findings, lifted directly from the survey:

- 120 million social network profiles (total) were found, with each person averaging 2-3 social networks

- Women and the 14-24 year old demographic are more likely to use Myspace and Facebook than other demographics (the 14-24 year old demographic represents 65.5% and 66.25% of total users respectively)

- Men and the 25-34 year old demographic are more likely to use LinkedIn and Flickr than other demographics (the 25-34 year old demographic represents 51.0% and 38.1% of total users respectively)

Of particular interest to VentureBeat readers, who our own surveys show tend to be male and at least in their 20’s.

Since older men tend to be more transactional and given the transactional nature of LinkedIn and Flickr, it can be seen from our study below that the average demographic for these social networks are older than Myspace, Facebook, and the majority of other social networks.

Okay, the title may be a slight exaggeration, but the data from a new study by the social contact search site Rapleaf is nonetheless interesting.

In what they claim is the largest social network study ever done, Rapleaf looked at the social connections of both men and women. All told, they collected data from over 30 million people on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Hi5 and others.

Interestingly, when you focus on users with fewer connections (well, relatively speaking — we’re talking about one group of people with between 1 and 100 connections, and another with between 100 and 1,000), women tend to have more friends than men. However, when you get to a really large number of connections (1,000 to 10,000, and also 10,000+), men have more friends. Since it’s highly unlikely that someone (here’s looking at you Robert Scoble) actually knows 10,000 or more people well enough to consider them friends, this data would seem to suggest that men are simply using these networks more for business rather than personal usage.

Here’s some of the key data (find the full data here):

Of the people with at least 1 friend, 53.57% are female and 46.43% are male.

Social Networkers (1-100 friends):

- Around 80% of the sample set

- Women have on average 62 friends

- Men have on average 57 friends

- Women are more likely to be Social Networkers

Connectors (100-1,000 friends)

- Around 19% of the sample set

- Women have on average 185 friends

- Men have on average 172 friends

- Women are more likely to be Connectors

Super Connectors (1,000-10,000 friends):

- 0.66% of the sample set

- Women have on average 1,837 friends

- Men have on average 1,944 friends

- Men are more like to be Super Connectors

Uber Connectors (10,000+ friends)

- 0.02% of the sample set

- Women have on average 24,077 friends

- Men have on average 24,584 friends

- Men are more likely to be Uber Connectors

Auren Hoffman is one of the Silicon Valley’s most connected people. For a while, he made his living with his Rolodex, hooking people up through his firm Stonebrick.

Last year, he started a company called RapLeaf, designed to keep track of your reputation for reliability as you buy and sell things online. It works across Web sites, and so takes eBay’s reputation system and extends it universally (our story here).

So it is ironic that Hoffman has been attempting to tidy up his own online reputation, by signing onto Wikipedia under the name “MLK Hamilton” to make changes to his profile there.

Someone first noticed that “MLK Hamilton,” the alias of the person making changes to Hoffman’s Wikipedia entry, seemed a strong coincidence, given that Hoffman lists Martin Luther King and Alexander Hamilton as two of his personal heroes. When, in turn, that person noted the coincidence at Wikipedia, another anonymous person, with the same IP address of MLK Hamilton, came along and removed the reference. Was Hoffman secretly trying to clean up his online profile and then, additionally, trying to protect himself when he was found out? Valleywag, Silicon Valley’s gossip site, began asking questions, though didn’t get confirmation from Hoffman himself.

We called up Hoffman, and he told VentureBeat that he had gone in to change his profile because a friend, Jonathan Abram (of Friendster fame) had added “silly” things to his profile like how his San Francisco loft is decorated with pictures of prominent Rebublican politicians, and that he was a good dancer. Hoffman said he is not a good dancer, and that pictures on his wall aren’t relevant. Since Abrams had added the entries as a prank, Hoffman said, he felt justified using pranksterish means to make the changes. “I didn’t change anything relevant,” he told VentureBeat. “I didn’t put anything up there that makes me sound good.” When we asked whether his actions might contradict the spirit his own efforts to create a reliable online reputation company, he said he didn’t think so.

Another reported deletion request was about his connection to a public relations firm that took Pentagon money to bribe Iraqi journalists.