By Peter Nowak, CBCNews.ca

Research In Motion Ltd. today announced it was adding Facebook to BlackBerry, prompting an initial reaction of "huh?!?" from some observers (myself included). After all, despite RIM designing more consumer-friendly BlackBerry devices in an effort to tap the general public market, its gizmos are still primarily the domain of business users. Facebook, on the other hand, is often thought of as the domain of kids and teens. It seems like an incongruent fit.

Not so, if you look at the numbers. ComScore, which tracks web trends, breaks Facebook members into four age categories and reported in July that the site's primary users were 35 and over. The site attracted more than 10 million unique visits from people 35 and up in the month of May, versus 7.8 million between the ages of 18 and 24, which one would assume to be Facebook's target demographic. Now, kids, teens and young adults still make up the majority of users on the site - with about 15 million visitors under 35 in May - but the adult demographic is growing quickly. Adults also have also only been allowed onto the site for just over a year, which makes the growth that much more impressive. In the end, it looks like Facebook and BlackBerry aren't such an odd pair after all.

So far, Facebook on the BlackBerry is only available to T-Mobile customers in the United States, but it has to be only a matter of time before a Canadian carrier snaps it up.

UPDATE: The RIM press release seems to be somewhat confusing, indicating that only T-Mobile BlackBerry customers have access to it. In fact, customers all over the world - including Rogers subscribers - are downloading and using it.

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