It’s around six months since I last threw out some truly mindboggling pieces of data surrounding social media. So, what’s happened between then and now?
I try to put as much information as I can into Econsultancy’s Social Media Statistics, which is part of our Stats Compendium (a truly awesome resource) but I find it’s always interesting to go back and review the old against the new.
So, I’ve collected as much as I can from my previous insane snippets of data and benchmarked it against the here and now, alongside rooting out some new stuff for you to mull over.
If six months ago, it wasn’t a compelling case to consider social media in the marketing mix, then this hopefully might change your mind...
- Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
- Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
- LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
- Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
- Flickr now hosts more than 4bn images. A massive jump from the previous 3.6bn I wrote about.
- More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. This is 5m more than towards the end of July, 2009.
- Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
- Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month – this was around a billion last time I covered this.
- There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. Last time around, this was only 50.
- Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
- Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase. (Previously 30m). As before, it’s no secret that users who access Facebook through mobile devices are almost 50% more active than those who don’t.
Okay, so now some new stuff that’s worth considering when looking at social media marketing that I’ve not included in previous posts:
- There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
- There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
- Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
- The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
- More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
- Purpose-built Facebook pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.
- 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati's new State of the Blogosphere.
- At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10bn tweets in a single year.
- About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
- India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
- More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
- 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
- 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
- More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.
Impressive stuff, but as always, take these stats with a pinch of salt. As before, no single piece of information can be used to base an online strategy upon, or be used as a forecast as to the direction a specific social media channel may take in the future - you need to fully understand your marketing and business objectives before launching off into this apparently vast space.
[Image source: thekeithhall, via Flickr. Various rights reserved]Learn more...
For more kick-ass statistics, check out Econsultancy's Social Media Statistics Compendium. If you want to build a business case for social media, we've got that too, along with RFP guidelines to help you deal with outsourcing. There's also some top-notch data in our recent Social Media and Online PR Report and we also run our renowned Online PR & Social Media and Online Reputation Management training courses on a regular basis to help you get to grips with this complex channel.
Posted 29 January 2010 10:07am by Jake Hird with 37 comments
Tags: Facebook, blogging, data, twitter, stats, Flickr, strategy, Wikipidia
Topics: Online PR & Social Media
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10:53AM on 29th January 2010
Those statistics (assuming they are reasonably accurate) highlight the importance and maturity level of the social media area. They also support the belief that the within a short few years any company that is not fully engaged in social media activities will lose a substantial section of its potential market to its competitors.
5:56PM on 29th January 2010
What does Facebook mean by "50% of Active users"? What constitutes an active user? Your 175m/day is 50% of all 350m user profiles on Facebook...are those all active users?
9:29PM on 29th January 2010
Thanks for this post. Accurate or not, these are very interesting stats and they still show very important patterns. Last year social media was a fairly new concept, but as the stats show the activity is increasing. Looking forward to more statistical updates!
7:06AM on 30th January 2010
Very well laid out statistics. I am sure social media enthusiasts like me willl be benfitied with this data. I have also accumulated data for internet usage in the year 2009 i am sure it will be of good help to you http://www.gigathoughts.com/technology/internet-usage-statistics-in-2009.html
1:16PM on 30th January 2010
Twitter was cited to have ~10 million users in a New York Times interview with CEO Evan Williams in December 2008. In summer 2009, they reportedly had 20-24 million accounts. It's still a big increase to 75 million users but not as large a jump as you claim.
2:21PM on 30th January 2010
i really wonder what will happen in the next few years
4:32PM on 30th January 2010
Sounds like we are inching ever closer to the precipice, can the trough of disillusionment be far off? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
8:16PM on 30th January 2010
"38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews." - really? I haven't come across any bloggers doing this recently, that is a surprise...
8:31PM on 30th January 2010
No mention of the ROi though, whether that be time or financial or both?
9:34AM on 31st January 2010
Any statistics for participation by business-to-business companies?
1:04PM on 31st January 2010
Impressive growth statistics. What evidence is there that social media activity makes money, especially in b2b markets?
5:11PM on 1st February 2010
I dread to think what the software architectural challenges involved in managing the scale of growth, and the user activity levels in some of those examples are.
12:54PM on 2nd February 2010
When clients ask me if social media works i have a few answers for them: if they were to go to a work function and brought business cards and stood in the corner not much would happen. if they made a point of saying hello to a lot of people and asking interesting questions and sharing interesting services and giving out their business card they'd have much more chances of getting a call for their business services. Same thing with social media. Follow topics, get involved, spend time and it works gr8! The other point I make is that if a client joined a gym and spent five minutes one time per month they would see no results. BUT! If they got involved, spent time and applied themself, results would be evident. That's my two cents about why I spend so much time on social media. Cheers, Dorri
6:14PM on 2nd February 2010
Numbers and stats are fine, except that is social media a numbers game? The blog counts, Twitter followers are less important than the fact that consumers are shifting attention elsewhere, so marketers are having to follow them. But of course, just as people have managed to skip ads on the TV, they now ignore them on Facebook.
Nick makes a good point about SM for businesses, esp. B2B; businesses are in the business of making money, so the returns are the most important numbers. These stats should be taken with more than just a pinch of salt, but they are very relevant in creating the plan. YES to the looking at the field and forming a real strategy based on marketing AND business goals. FWIW.
7:35PM on 2nd February 2010
"you need to fully understand your marketing and business objectives before launching off into this apparently vast space."
This is so true. This part should be highlighted with big red arrows pointing to it. It seems so many business are jumping on the bandwagon of Social Media without truly understanding their strategic objectives in doing so. Like a teenager with a new drivers permit aimlessly wandering the streets with the wind in their hair. It's fun, exciting...maybe even a little scary, but is it productive?
10:06AM on 3rd February 2010
great blog! keep it up :)
the figures are outstanding. i am now more convinced than ever that i made the right decision to be present in the digital world. my website which was set-up by Prova is doing wonders for me. i know my business will grow even more with the help of social media tools.
7:42PM on 3rd February 2010
These numbers are staggering but I didn't see a single stat on increase in revenues, profitability, ROI...etc. I believe in social media fully and I know the power. It's time we got busy and began measuring the effects.
8:31PM on 4th February 2010
If Twitter only has 15 million active users--why can't my TweetDeck load my few panels every try. Me thinks the usage of actives is much more.
5:44AM on 9th February 2010
Amazing post.Very informative
9:56PM on 11th February 2010
Another stat: number of mentions so far of Myspace - for which Murdoch paid 580 million dollars - on this page? 1 (this one).
4:17PM on 21st February 2010
Social networking sites are rapidly replacing traditional media and real person to person contact. It will be interesting to see to effects of this in the future.
12:22PM on 25th February 2010
Very informative post. Just shows how much time we now spend on the internet.
3:17PM on 26th February 2010
I agree with Dennis Hollingworth and Tom Williams. The stats are useful only if we can measure ROI. We have to start somewhere and there are certainly some success stories from businesses who have used the platforms successfully to increase brand awareness, which has in turn led to an increase in sales.
It's got to be a little bit of good old fashioned 'speculate to accumulate', as businesses embrace social media as part of their marketing strategies. There's no avoiding the fact that social media is here to stay, and it gives businesses the opportunity of being able to listen to and then react to their customers in a much more interactive way than ever before.
Businesses need to be in control of 'it', and not the other way around!
4:26AM on 3rd March 2010
Amazing! This gives us a push why/how Social Media will contribute towards the success of ecommerce development. Thanks.
8:55PM on 5th April 2010
Good interview. Interesting details on the things journalists can do to engage with readers. But I agree with mskoler's point that the culture of journalism will be the biggest barrier to doing this well. It Business Logo
7:16AM on 11th May 2010
I agree that Social media is one of the premier change factors in the marketing and communication industry.
The way we communicate has changed a lot during the last few years because of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.
Facebook has become the largest social media site with its popularity growing tremendously in the last few years.
Recently Twitter has made headlines in every news site and blog with its phenomenal growth.
Your statistics confirms that these social media sites are changing the way we communicate and are making it more interesting for all of us.
10:57AM on 13th May 2010
These numbers are unbelievable! I'm using them in a proposal, hope they are accurate ;) Since it was written six months ago, maybe you can do a follow-up post on what has changed since then. For example, I just read a tweet that said Twitter now has over 105m users.
8:32PM on 16th May 2010
His guide explains why the government wants to keep this powerful technology out of the hands of consumers, even though it could have a substantial impact on the depletion of the Earth's natural resources.
1:08PM on 23rd May 2010
The average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million. Social media marketing will be always difficults.
12:04AM on 18th June 2010
I am agree with billtownbill that,Sounds like we are inching ever closer to the precipice, can the trough of disillusionment be far off?
8:26PM on 23rd June 2010
Thanks for gathering this data. Whether its precise or not, the statistics are very interesting showing important patterns about social media. Being a pretty new concept its amazing to see Social Media being such a big part of browsing.
Best, John Maiden - Magnetic Sponsoring
4:43PM on 29th June 2010
I have two thoughts on these stats and a lot of social media stats. I think that social media stats under reflect true activity. We seem to forget about the now seemingly old fashioned "forums" there were billed a few years ago as the places to be for advertisers. Well forums have quietly gone about their business and although they are not what they used to be - they hardly ever get mentioned in the same breath as social media but in every sense of the word "social" forums are the original social platforms and they still account for tons of users. Secondly - I would love to see some stats on user cross-over. If we saw a venn diagram of modern social sites I suspect the cross over would be huge - the old paradigm of search has much less cross-over as users tend to stick with the short term user session of a "search query" whereas many users will have multiple social sites open in one session.
9:07AM on 18th July 2010
Thanks for this post. These are very interesting stats.
2:24PM on 26th July 2010
wow an abundance of factoids thanks
7:14AM on 2nd August 2010
I wonder 10 years from now what level the social networking is going to take itself. I heard that there is a new networking site call "CramSocial" that is going to evolutionize the culture of social networking. It is suppose to be amazing and from what I heard in the way you interact with friends is AMAZING!!!!!
Online Marketing Assistant at The Zen Agency
12:37PM on 12th August 2010
Great stats, and social media is immensely useful...for the right business. I'm fed up hearing about so called guru's (Twitter seems to be a guru-hive) professing that your business will sink without fully engaging in social media activities. I've seen an abundance of businesses (recently an 150 property management company) leaping onto this band wagen due to either poor advice (from 'guru') or of their own accord due to the hype surrounding social media. In the case of the propety management company they have a Facebook page which isn't particularly popular at all. The reason for this? Their target market don't use and have no interest in Facebook. Infact having a Facebook page probably cheapens their brand and the effect could even be detrimental to a degree.
Social media is big, it is powerful, and can be immensely useful but I wish businesses would take some care to decide which, if any, of these channels are actually useful and beneficial to their offering. And finally, all the social media in the world wont help make you money if the product you are offering is...well a bit shit. Social media should no longer be used for sales, social media should be used to engage.
Online Marketing Assistant at The Zen Agency
2:48PM on 12th August 2010
@dennis You wouldn't happen to be plugging this "evolutionary" website would you? You've illustrated the problem with social media these days, consumers got very savvy very quickly and are now able to see through transparant marketing attempts via the various mediums.