Los Altos, CA November 19, 2008 – MerchantCircle, the largest social network of local business owners in the nation, today announces a comprehensive study conducted by RapLeaf on a representative sample of MerchantCircle's 650,000 members. The study shows that 62% of the local business owners using MerchantCircle have no other social networking profiles. Among those members that were found to have a social networking account, 15.1% use MySpace, 14.3% use Facebook, and 12% use LinkedIn. The study also reveals the gender and ages of MerchantCircle members, with 86.3% older than the age of 26 and 54.2% older than 36 years old.
"Our goal at MerchantCircle is to get every local business onto the internet, and we've had good success reaching local businesses in small towns across the country," says Darren Waddell, Vice President of Marketing, MerchantCircle. "This research proves that MerchantCircle is reaching a new, untapped audience of local business owners who have no previous experience with social networks. We're very excited about the level of engagement local merchants display as they use our network to create unique, local user-generated content."
"The MerchantCircle member base is unique compared to others we've researched," says Dan Scudder of Rapleaf. "Unlike many other audiences we studied, the MerchantCircle base skews male, is slightly older, and is less engaged on social networks like Facebook and MySpace."
In conjunction with the study results, MerchantCircle is announcing a record amount of local content being created on its network during the month of October. During October, network members:
- Received more than 100,000 local business ratings and reviews on their MerchantCircle listings
- Published nearly 35,000 local business pictures
- Created more than 15,000 local coupons
- Wrote more than 10,000 local business articles
- Authored more than 2,000 small business forum posts
- Sent more than 2,000 unique local newsletters
"When local merchants create unique local content they not only improve their ability to attract more customers online," says Waddell. "They also improve the local consumer search experience. We're delighted to provide a better consumer experience for the nearly 9 million unique visitors who've visited MerchantCircle over the past 30 days."