• November 21, 2008

More than 75% of the members of MerchantCircle, an online network of 650,000 local business owners, have no other Web presence outside of that provided by MerchantCircle.

A study by research firm Rapleaf, which provides information about people on social networks, also found 62% of business owners using MerchantCircle had no other social networking profiles.

Among members that had a social networking account, 15.1% used MySpace, 14.3% Facebook, and 12% LinkedIn. "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," said Dan Scudder of Rapleaf.

MerchantCircle said the findings showed that the organization had introduced most of its members to the concept of social networking.--Mark Walsh