We continue to track the number of comic book fans on Facebook. This week’s entry is a head scratcher as the overall count of people identifying themselves as comic book fans has increased but demographic info like the education took dip.
Total Estimated United States Comic Book Fan Facebook Population = over 1,864,140. This is an increase of 3,100 over the week. Below is the usual further breakdown.
Men vs. Women
While both men and women dipped about 70,000, the “unknown” category for gender skyrocketed by 130,000. It’s completely unknown as to why this is the case. Education also dropped across the board, which is strange. My guess is this can be chalked up to glitches in the mechanism to get this information, but we’ll see next week if the numbers change more like last week’s.
Age
Again the age stats are a bit odd like the education ones. The universe for those under the age of 17 increased as well as those 34-37. Overall, everything else dipped. Relationship Status
Again showing how odd these numbers are the stats for the gender breakdown do not add up to the overall total. The numbers were looked at multiple times, each bringing back the same results. The reason, who knows.
Gender Interest
Numbers continue to be all over the place as the percentages have dropped overall for everything. Could it be that it’s summer and people are hiding their status in hopes of meeting that special someone?
The numbers this week are bizarre. I can’t explain why they’re all over the place and will have to wait until next week to see if they bounce back.
It’s the latest entry of our series looking at the demographics of comic book fans on Facebook. This ongoing series looks at 29 different “likes” having to do with comic books. These likes include publishers and general terms and does not include individual series, writers or artists.
Total Estimated United States Comic Book Fan Facebook Population = over 1,861,040. This is an increase of 58,540, a sizable difference than the previous week’s gain of 2,220. Below is the usual further breakdown.
Men vs. Women
Both genders saw a gain of about 30,000 individuals. It’s interesting that the gain was so even between the two, making me think there might have been issues earlier with Facebook’s indexing of the data, but we’ll see next week if this holds up.
Education shifted a bit as expected, but nothing that really stands out. I’d expect we’ll see some shift of high school to college and college graduates, but we’ll see how that goes.
Age
Again, we see overall gains no matter the age bracket. There was some strong gains with women over the age of 58.
Relationship Status
There were gains overall as expected, but the Married status made the most gains out of everything. Single still makes up the majority but there’s a lot less single geeks out there this week.
Gender Interest
Again, gains all around for this statistic. The largest gain was men interested in women and second highest is women interested in men. Men interested in men also has come close to breaking the 2% mark.
We’ll wait to see next week’s results to make sure this week wasn’t an anomaly.
It’s our third entry in our series that looks at comic book fans on Facebook and their demographics. For this entry I’ve added a 29th like into the mix, but that only added a dozen new fans than just going with the original 28.
Total Estimated United States Comic Book Fan Facebook Population = over 1,802,500. This is an increase of 2,220 individuals since last week. Could the lack of a high profile movie like Thor or event like Free Comic Day account for the slower growth? We’ll pay attention to the overall growth as more big summer movies open up. If similar increases like last week happen around the release of a movie, we can assume this plays into it somehow.
But, onto the breakdown.
Men vs. Women
The female population actually took a dip this week by 4,000 individuals, while the “unknown” population and men both increased by about 2,000 and 4,000. It’s interesting to see one demographic take such a dip while the others gained. While the overall percentage of men remained pretty stable, women dropped by about a half a percent.
Education also shows an interesting dip in college grads which also decreased almost 8,000 people. The education for women also increased across the board in both raw numbers and percentages. There’s less women, but they’re more educated. An interesting blip that might be just that.
Age
The age breakdown is actually really consistent from last week. There’s not really anything that sticks out to me for sudden shifts. There’s a loss of women age 18-21, which might explain the dip and who was lost above.
Relationship Status
Overall more people marked down this stat. In the big picture has changed that much and it’s all stabilized with the numbers coming in about the same as last week.
Gender Interest
This is another one that’s a bit odd. Men who are “interested” in men dropped by about 1,000 while men “interested” in women increased by about 7,000. Women “interested” in men remained the same while women “interested” in women increased a small amount. While I don’t believe these numbers completely align with orientation, it’ll be interesting to see any patterns that might develop over time.
Overall, there’s still nothing that really jumps out other than the decrease in women and the decreased gain overall in the population size from last week. It’ll be a few months before we can really start guessing as to some of the factors that might play into these numbers.
Last week we posted the second entry on our look at the demographics of comic book fans on Facebook. You can check out the previous entry as to how it was gone about. Since the last week we had Free Comic Book Day and the opening of the movie Thor in the United States. Numbers have moved, but unfortunately, we don’t know why and two weeks does not make enough data sets to look at patterns. We’ll see if similar increases happen around the releases of other blockbusters like Green Lantern and Captain America.
Total Estimated United States Comic Book Fan Facebook Population = over 1,800,280. This is an increase of 39,900 individuals since last week.
Men vs. Women
The percentages and raw numbers of both men and women increased as those not giving a gender decreased since last week. Men still make up the majority with 66.41% and women have 33.22%.
Education was generally the same with a little movement, but not much.
Age
There were some shifts in the ages. 21 and under increased for instance while the 22-25 age demographic decreased. That was the only age bracket that decreased, all the rest saw gains.
Relationship Status
There was actually a decrease in married women who are comic book fans on Facebook. Everything else increased, while that one decreased. Is spring the season for divorces?
Gender Interest
The numbers for what gender people are interested in remained fairly stable percentage wise. This statistic is not to be confused with orientation as people can be interested in certain genders for friendship or activities as well as romantic relationships.
While there were some changes in the raw numbers since last week, two weeks does not indicate anything in particular. It’ll be interesting to see if we see similar bumps as other summer movies open.
On Friday I grabbed the data for comic book fans outside of the United States on Facebook. It’s been a busy weekend, so the post took a bit to write. Future editions of this will be posted on Saturdays going forward.
The Methodology
You can find out the general gist of how I went about getting the information in this post. For the “international edition” I focused on just a few countries, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Brazil, Canada and Mexico. I think out of the two editions, this one is more flawed as foreign languages would need to be taken into account, something that wasn’t done with this inaugural post.
Much like the last post focusing on the United States, this one also has the statistics for Facebook in general in these countries. The total population of self-identified “international” comic book fans on Facebook is over1,480,060. The total population total is 168,050,240, making comic book fans a little over 0.88% of the population, less than those living in the United States.
Men vs. Women
Women still make up the majority of the overall Facebook population with 50.12% to men’s 48.12%. Women actually make up a higher percentage of comic book fans but men still dominate. International male comic book fans make up 61.19% and women 39.39% (no idea why that’s over 100% and yes I ran that number multiple times).
Much like in the United States, comic book fans are more educated than the general population. Women are the majority in college or high school, but aren’t the majority with college degrees.
Age
While the 18-21 population makes up the largest segment for the general Facebook populace, it’s under 17 that’s the majority of comic book fans with a drop off as people age. The general Facebook population is similar to that of the United States. There is an interesting uptick of women age 42-45 making up a larger percentage of comic book fans as well as men 34-37.
Relationship Status
For the general Facebook population, relationship status is much more even, but for the comic book fans “single” dominates with “married” making up a sliver compared to the United States stats.
Gender Interest
Gender interest isn’t available for some of these countries, we’re guessing due to privacy or discrimination laws.
Last week I launched a regular report that will look at the demographics of comic book fans on Facebook. This weekly column will now appear on Tuesdays to coincide with the #comicmarket discussion that occurs on Twitter (seems appropriate). For this second entry, I’ve done two things, expanded the universe examined and also grabbed the data to compare how comic book fans compare with the Facebook community as a whole.
The Methodology
Questions on how I went about gather this data left a lot of people questioning the results from the inaugural entry. That entry was rushed, I more wanted to prove it can be done, than really going all out. The methodology is simple, Facebook allows individuals to identify their interests/likes. In the inaugural entry, I used nine points of interests.
This second entry sees that expanded to 28. I’m not going to list all of them, but they are general comic book companies/publishers/lines and what I’ll call the “medium,” so manga, comic books, graphic novels, etc. I stayed away from individual books and personalities as well as related comic book tie-ins like movies, video games and toys. What’ll you’ll see though is as the total number of identifiers tripled, the volume increase wasn’t that much.
These statistics are also for individuals on Facebook who are marked as living in the United States.
Total United States Comic Book Fan Facebook Population = over 1,760,380 – this is the total number of people who identified themselves through these 28 items. There are a total of 160,549,620 Facebook users who are identified as living in the United States. That means on Facebook a little over 1% of those located in the United States are comic book fans.
Men vs. Women
There was a flaw in my original graphic, those who are “unknown.” These people have declined to give their data. For purposes, I’ll now include that when applicable. Here is the first major break from the general United States statistics. In the general US statistics, women make up the majority with 51.06% versus men at 42.39%. Comic book fans fall into the steroetype with men dominating almost 2 to 1 at 64.14% to women at 33.12%.
When breaking down education you also find that comic book fans are more educated than the general populace.
Age
The age breakdown of both comic book fans and Facebook has been greatly expanding. Ages are now in a four year span. Though the breakdown somewhat matches as far as the largest segments for each (18-21), that age group makes up 31.81% of the universe for comic book fans but 19.95% of Facebook users. You’ll also notice at age 40, the number of comic book fans halves with each grouping, but there’s a more gradual decline in Facebook fans. Almost 80% of comic book fans are under the age of 30 while just under 55% are in this age range for the general Facebook populace.
Relationship Status
By a slight majority comic book fans are “single” with 51.27% while only 33.24% of the Facebook population is. The single population is overwhelmingly male (68.33%) while more even for the the general populace. For comic book fans, this comes at the expense of the “married” status which is 17.77% for comic book fans and 39.4% for general Facebook users.
Gender Interest
There’s been some comments about what words I use for this statistic. Facebook labels this as “interested in.” To me this is different than orientation. People can be “interested in” the same sex for friendship for example. While this is an interested statistic, I don’t believe it necessarily denotes these users’ orientation. As far as the overall percentages of what users are “interested in,” comic book fans have slightly higher percentages when it comes to same-sex.
With this data we now have a base for future comparison. With Free Comic Book Day and numerous movies based on comic book franchises on the horizon, we’ll see if these numbers shift at all.
