InsightExpress just released the results of a study that looks at the attitudes of social network participants toward advertising.  The upshot?  Traditional ads – not so good.  Participatory and opt-in marketing campaigns – good.

The responses do vary quite a bit based on which sites the respondents are using; CafeMom users are especially passionate about the site and open to ads.  Some key stats:

• 43 percent of the online population reports using a social networking site
• Of those individuals who participate in a social networking site, most have profiles on two or more different properties (71 percent)
• MySpace, Facebook and Classmates are identified as the networks with the most obvious advertising, while LinkedIn has the least number of individuals who think the advertising is obvious
• 40 percent of social networkers find opt-in ads acceptable
• Behavior-based campaigns are far less acceptable with only 20 percent of respondents finding them acceptable
• 23 percent of LinkedIn, Facebook, Classmates, MySpace, and Reunion profilers say randomly generated ads approach are acceptable; but 43 percent of Cafemom, Twitter, and Flickr users find them acceptable

The research was conducted by InsightExpress between December 15, 2008 and January 12, 2009 using the companys e-RDD sampling methodology. A total of 1,593 respondents completed the survey, and the results were weighted to reflect the online population.

• Bebo: 40 million total registered users as of Nov 2008
• Digg: estimates range from 16.3 million to 35 million unique users per month
• Facebook: more than 120 million active users (does not indicate measure of active); the 4th most-trafficked website in the world
• LinkedIn: 8 million to more than 30 million
• MySpace:  more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe as of Jan 2008
• Reunion:  50 million registered members as of Nov. 2008
• Second LIfe: logged-in during last 30 days: 985,92 (out of 16 million total registered)
• Twitter: 5.57 million global visitors to Twitter in Septembe; Tokyo is the city with the most tweets
• WeeWorld:  25 million registered users, and 1million unique active visitors in last 30 days
• Delicious: 5 million users and 150 bookmarked URLs

We’ll repeat Jeremiah’s caveat that the accuracy of these numbers are very much up to debate!

From his comments, here are some other links to sites that are collecting social media stats:

• Social Media Research Snack Facts
• Best (free) Sources To Get Social Media Audience Usage Research on Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
• Nielsen’s September 2008 ranking of the ten largest and ten fastest-growing social media sites