LEGO has just communicated the results of the traditional "AFOL Survey" from the third quarter of 2012.
In summary and to keep it simple:
2500 responses (only) from AFOLs aged over 13 years were recorded in this survey.
The participants are mostly in the 25-44 age bracket . 8% of those who answered the questions (in English, which is important for understanding these statistics) were women.
58% of the people who took the time to answer the questions are members of a LUG and report spending more than $100 per month on LEGO.
Two thirds of participants say they are active in online communities (forums, facebook) at least once a week.
59 % go to forums spent on LEGO at least once a day.
33 % visit one or more blogs on a daily basis.
31 % are active on social networks on a daily basis.
85% of participants say they regularly visit Eurobricks and Brickset , 65% say they are active there by participating in exchanges.
90% of participants stated that they regularly visit YouTube to watch LEGO content.
FBTB, 1000Steine and MOCpages are also frequently visited by AFOLs according to their regional affinities. Brickshelf is lagging behind.
8 out of 10 participants say they regularly visit LEGO Cuusoo , only 4 out of 10 say they frequent Rebrick.
The number of survey participants is relatively low compared to the community concerned.
However, each announcement of a new survey is generally widely relayed on all blogs or forums in the LEGO galaxy, which attract tens of thousands of visitors. This low response rate therefore shows the lack of interest on the part of the fans for these austere, repetitive and laborious questionnaires.
Not surprisingly, Eurobricks and Brickset are to date the two largest communities in the world.
Rebrick is not celebrating with lower attendance, no doubt because of the redundancy of this site with flickr, MOCpages or Brickshelf.
Brickshelf which undoubtedly suffers from its obsolete interface, its validation processes for galleries from another time and its many technical problems.
