More Than 50% of Merrimack Uses Facebook

A recent report detailing overall Facebook populations in New Hampshire indicates that Salem is one of the top 25 towns in the state for Facebook usage.

The report was drafted by Epiphanies, Inc., a Gilford-based company that specializes in social media strategy.

The paper indicates that a total of 13,340 Facebook users reside in Merrimack compared to the total town population of 25,494. That's about 52 percent of the community.

Breaking that figure down by gender, the report says that 5,840 Merrimack men and 7,500 women have Facebook accounts.

Comparable towns in the report for Facebook usership include Salem (13,500), Hudson (11,400) and Londonderry (11,440).

Based on its dense population of social-savvy college students, the report indicates that Durham has 12,400 of its 14,638 people on Facebook.

Exeter and Concord are also very Facebook-friendly locations, with Exeter seeing 12,100 of the 14,306 residents using the social network while Concord has 36,300 of the 42,695 in the population.

According to the report, a total of 700,000 New Hampshire residents older than 13 have an account on Facebook, which is about two-thirds of the age-eligible population.

The 14-page study also details the specific activities that state residents are sharing and talking about on Facebook.

Dancing, outdoor fitness, gaming (social/online), literature/reading and cooking are listed in the top five, with dancing seeing an overwhelming amount of additional posts from New Hampshire users above the rest.

User interests in the state are also broken down, with movies/film (all), music (all), entertainment (TV), sports (all) and pop culture rounding out the top five.

A total of 66,320 male users and 150,100 female users are parents of children under the age of 19. The report says that not all parents provide the ages of their children as part of the data they share on Facebook, and the network is not yet breaking down statistics for parents with children 20 and older.

Of the total male users in the state, those ages 18-24 use Facebook the most, while women ages 55 and up are the heaviest users.

The report details Facebook audience and post totals as they stood at the beginning of 2013.

One topic not covered in the report is the overall usage of Facebook for business purposes through the brand pages utility.

While we've yet to find a Merrimack page that has hundreds of thousands of likes, or even tens of thousands, some of the most widely followed pages in town include Nuthin but Good Times (1,878 likes), Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (1,770), Welcome to Merrimack Police Department (1,763), YMCA of Greater Nashua (1,566), Cupcake Conspiracy (1,526), Tortilla Flat (1,314), Granite State Tattoo (1,125), Merrimack Budweiser Tours (1,0630, The Homestead Restaurant and Tavern (1,048) and Swan Chocolates (920)

For further details from the report, you can find the study here.