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What do people put in their Skype profiles?

November 2, 2005 11:47 AM

Topics: Life | statistics

Skype users share data about themselves in their profiles. SR Consulting sampled 3.9 million profiles for statistics about age, country and gender. Some of their data from October suggests these findings. Dr. Hartwig Ruell (left) and Sebastian Ruell (right)

Skypers are 30 years old, give or take.

  • Average age: 29.7 years
  • Mode: 25 years (most common age)
  • Percent of users 40 years old and Younger: 80%
  • The average age of Skype users within countries ranges from 19 in Lithuania and Bulgaria to 40 in Ecuador.

Oldest countries
CountryAverage Age
Ecuador40
Faroe Islands39
Kenya38
New Zealand (Aotearoa)38
India37
Sri Lanka36
New Caledonia36
South Africa36
Nigeria35
Netherlands35
United States35
Netherlands Antilles35

Youngest countries
CountryAverage Age
Lithuania19
Bulgaria19
Jamaica20
Latvia21
American Samoa22
Macau22
Myanmar24
Zimbabwe24

Some people don't share their age due to perceived age discrimination (too young, too old) and a general sense of privacy.

Europe and Asia beat the Americas.

About 46% of Skypers are in Europe, but Brazil and China have the most Skype users of any country, each with 8.1% of the Skype population.

Skype users found in survey
ContinentPercent in sample
Europe46%
Asia28%
North America10%
South America10%
Oceania3%
Africa2%
Other1%

Most Populous Countries in Survey with at least 2% of overall population
CountryPercent of Samle
Brazil8.1%
China8.1%
United States7.0%
Taiwan5.8%
France5.3%
Germany5.0%
Poland4.5%
Japan4.3%
Great Britain (UK)3.2%
Netherlands2.8%
Malaysia2.5%
Italy2.4%
59.0%

Men report their sex more than women.

SR Consulting collected sex data, but 52% of users declined to state. We already know that women often "Decline To State" to avoid problems (harassing phone calls, for example) so this data is not worth sharing, IMHO.

More about the survey

Sebastian Ruell, CEO, said "We comply 100% with the Skype EULA and that we do not collect or store personal data of any kind. We take the privacy of skype users very seriously and avoid data like the person's real name, phone numbers or anything else that could connect the data to an individual person."

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Comments

Posted by: Jean Mercier at November 2, 2005 2:26 PM

"Men report more their sex then women" ... i agree, but there are in my opinion two other reasons:
1. Men are in general more computer minded then women.
2. There are some cultural reasons ...
see my comments on: http://mathaba.net/MNN/www.skype-news.com/x.htm?http://mathaba.net/MNN/www.skype-news.com/item/?x=408348

Perhaps there are more reasons ...

Posted by: Francis Connor at November 2, 2005 2:51 PM

Do you have any numbers on how many female/male skypers there are in the US? Maybe even by state? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Posted by: A. Carson at November 2, 2005 4:25 PM

I agree with Jean.
Probably there are just more male Skype users than there are females. I don't quite understand how you come to the conclusion that "Men report more their sex then women"? If users "decline to state" we just don't know their sex and can't assume that there are more women among these unknowns.


I'd really like to see some of the sex data too. 48% out of 3.9 million is quite a lot and still worth to share in my opinion.

Posted by: luizjb at November 3, 2005 3:06 AM

I think now its time for skype to change the brazilian rates to "SkypeOUT Global rate" :)

Posted by: Jean Mercier at November 3, 2005 7:38 AM

From 276.820 US profiles analyzed, (but there are more users then that in the US), the average age is 35 years old and 76.7% are males according to the consultant who collected the data!

Posted by: A. Carson at November 4, 2005 8:08 AM

I just invested a few bucks and downloaded the full report from Sr Consulting. As it appears to me 48% is the number of skypers that "declined to state". That means that 52% of all users actually filled out the gender field.

Maybe you got the numbers wrong in your article??

Posted by: Martina at April 11, 2006 2:39 AM

Numbers

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