Stats Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think

via Adam Ostrow


A new video put together by Erik Qualman takes our obsession with stats to another level. The online marketer and author of the upcoming book Socialnomics has put together a fantastic video comprised of more than 30 different stats about the growth of social media.

Stats from Video (sources listed on author's blog)

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network

2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia

6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)

7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network

8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction

9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females

12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama

13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?

14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…

16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube

17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English

18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs

19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily

20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth

21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour

22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0

23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content

24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands

25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them

26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

27. Only 14% trust advertisements

28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do

30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009

31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone

32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available

33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.

34. In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media

35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second

37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

Social Networking in plain english

As I continue down my road of social media enlightenment, I am amazed, almost daily, at how truly "old school" this method of communication is. Where technology in the age of computers and digital everything has been said to isolate us on our own little "islands"; (the very opposite of being social as it were), the blossoming of web 2.o with Facebook, Linkedin, Blogs, and Twitter etc. has in fact, ameliorated our ability to connect with others on both a one to one and a one to many basis.

This capability of social media to create a virtual "village" where we get to choose our neighbours based on what we have in common, has taken us back to those "party line" days where everyone knew what everyone else was up to and trusted their friend's and neighbour's opinions.

Where we couldn't control what others said or learned about us before without keeping our shades drawn or our phone off the hook; today we have control over what we want others to know about us. Used with discretion and maturity, social media provides us with a tool that disseminates only the messages that we what communicated to friends and followers. It also provides us with the capability to research any topic imaginable. AND it's a great way to make friends!

As I continue my journey, I have and will continue to meet, no doubt, many, many people who generously share their insights, expertise and wisdom. This is one of the rewards of being on the "network".

Enjoy these videos and many more very helpful ones at Commoncraft.





And for those who just don't get TWITTER...