Facebook Touts Diversity of Its Members
While Facebook is under fire for disclosing more data about its users to the public, Facebook is also touting that data about its users shows that they are increasingly diverse, with a racial and ethnic breakdown that nearly mirrors the overall diversity of the U.S. population, according to a blog entry posted on the social networking site on Wednesday.
While Facebook users in the U.S. were primarily white and Asian in the beginning of 2006, blacks and Latinos are increasingly joining the site, and now comprise 11 percent and 9 percent of Facebook users, respectively. And 6 percent of U.S. Facebook users are Asians, down from about 8 percent four years ago.
Facebook data team researchers Lars Backstrom, Jonathan Chang, Cameron Marlow and Itamar Rosenn wrote that they were interested in finding out more about the composition of race and ethnicity among Facebook users.
