The popularity of social media platforms has skyrocketed over the last few years. And for businesses, it’s easy to get swept away by the latest new service. But even with shiny new platforms popping up, it’s important to go where your customers are.

If you’re currently trying to figure out which social networks are the best for your business, demographics can play a big role in decision-making. Pingdom, a service that monitors web performance, studied the age and gender distribution of the top 24 social media sites.

For example, Twitter has a much larger younger demographic than Facebook, which is often thought to be the other way around. However, the microblogging platform still maintains an adult demographic with 55 percent of its user base over the age of 35 — the average age being 37.3. That’s about a year older than the average of members across the other 23 networks.

Compared to a earlier study by Pingdom in 2010, the average age of a Twitter user has actually decreased by two years while Facebook saw an increase of two years. And when it comes to gender distribution, 17 of the 24 social networks have more females than males.

The most male-dominated network is Slashdot, with 87 percent males, while Pinterest is unsurprisingly dominated by women at 79 percent. Social royalty like Twitter and Facebook have a similar gender breakdown with 40 percent of their user bases being male and 60 percent female.

As a marketer, it’s not only important to define who your target audience is, but also where it is. Social media has made outreach easier and faster than ever, but it doesn’t matter if you’re not reaching the right people.

[Via: AllTwitter, Image credit: open hardware summit]