Sarah Ryan

We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it” – Erik Qualman

Most people have now accepted that social media has become a part of daily life and integral to how we communicate both socially, and for business.

However it’s always good to get a quick reminder of the facts.

The below video might be a year old (and missing references to, most notably, Twitter – which has grown exponentially in the last 12 months) but it’s still relevant, and still full of compelling reasons as to why we need to be engaged online.

Facts From The Video

Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30.

Social Media

• 96% of millennials have joined a social network.
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US.
• Social media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web.
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US met via social media.
• Years to reach 50 million users:
• Radio – 38 years
• TV – 13 years
• Internet – 4 years
• iPod – 3 years
• Yet
• Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year.
• iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest (behind China and India) – yet QQ & Renren dominate China.
• A US department of education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
• 80% of companies use Social Media for recruitment;
• 95% of these are using Linkedin
• Fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
• Ashton Kutcher & Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of:
• Sweden;
• Israel;
• Switzerland;
• Ireland;
• Norway; and
• Panama.
• 50% of the mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook.
• Generation Y & Z consider email passé;
• Some universities have stopped distribution email accounts and are instead distributing eReaders / iPads / Tablets.

YouTube

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.
• While you watch the video 100+ hours of video will have been uploaded to YouTube.

Wikipedia

• Wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick.
• Wikipedia has over 15 million articles.
• Studies show it is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
• 78% of the articles are non-English.
• If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour.

Blogs

• There are over 200 million blogs.
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

Advertising

• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services, than how Google ranks them.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations;
• Only 14% trust advertisements.
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI;
• 90% of people skip TV ads using Tivo / DVR

Publishing

• Kindle ebooks outsold paper books Christmas 2009.
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily.