Socialnomics is a blog designed to cover how social media is changing the way we live and do business. We interpert the latest social media news and summarize what it means to users and companies.
Google released a list of the top 1,000 sites in the world. This list is a result of new
features that Google has enabled for its AdWords clients, specifically allowing advertisers to only show their ads on these top 1,000 sites.
Facebook secures the top ranking globally with 570,000,000,000 page views and 540,000,000 unique visitors. This is interesting as Facebook self reports just over 400 million profiles, so at a “dirty math” level Facebook influences 35% more people that don’t even have a profile on Facebook [note: very dirty math].
It particularly piqued my interest, because when we were researching data for the Social Media Revolution 2 video (below) we only indicated Facebook topped Google in the U.S. for unique visitors (Hitwise). This now appears possibly a bit conservative – perhaps Facebook has achieved the top spot globally.
This list from Google will be updated monthly and does not include adult sites, ad networks, or Google. The fact that Google doesn’t include themselves is interesting to say the least and leads one to ask the question…do they not list themselves because they are no longer #1?
Google says the data is aggregated from Google Toolbar data, Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research.
Google can see first hand that their fiercest competition is coming from the likes of Facebook, QQ, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc. As consumers it’s fun to see this intense battle of the big boys as it only makes our Internet offerings better.
Perception is reality. Social Media has taken us from Word of Mouth to World of Mouth. The biggest benefactor to date has been Facebook. Ironically, this new found speed of information dissemination may cause Facebook’s eventual downfall. It helps items go from perception to reality faster than you can say “status update.”
Much of Facebook’s success has been its simplicity. MySpace allows you to customize your page and they have oodles of banners to put money into their coffers, but as we’ve seen play out this muddies the waters a bit too much for the general user. Facebook on the other hand, kept items so easy to use that their user numbers skyrocketed as a result of dads and grandmothers joining in the fun:
More than 400 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
Average user has 130 friends
People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Yet, when it comes to privacy, Facebook seems to continue to struggle. Going back a few years to their launch of Facebook Beacon. This tool allowed other Facebook friends to see which purchases you made online. For example if I purchased David Meerman Scott’s latest book it would alert my Facebook friends of this purchase. This is a very helpful thing, the point where Facebook stumbled is they opted every user into this tool. One famous story was the young man that purchased a diamond ring for his soon to be fiancée. Since they were connected on Facebook she was alerted of this purchase; probably not the romantic setting they had in mind.
Today, as reported by Nick Bilton of the New York Times, Facebook’s privacy policy is longer than the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. constitution has a paltry 4,543 words to Facebook’s 5,830. While Facebook is trying to give their users the freedom of choice on how they “want” their specific privacy, most users just want something that is easy and safe to use. When downloading a piece of software, how many of us click on the “advanced” settings? Not many, just give me the default and give me comfort in knowing that is the right choice.
I believe Facebook is smart enough to restore this comfort and restore it soon. If they don’t, it could be their eventual demise. After all, perception is reality, and their own tool can definitely hyper-accelerate perception into reality. Ironic, isn’t it?
It’s amazing how fast the world of social media moves! As many of the statistics from the original Social Media video have changed, I took a moment to refresh the video with a few new statistics and graphics. Thanks to all of you for your support in making the first Social Media Revolution and Social Media ROI videos such a huge success and I hope that you enjoy this refresh!
Stats from Video(sources listed below by corresponding #)
Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
96% of them have joined a social network
Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama. Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
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 & brands
Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
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 that can TiVo ads do
Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
Bonus: 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
Social Media Statistics:
Below are the sources I used to compile this video. Keep your feedback/questions/challenges coming as it will collectively make the next video better – be social.
Source: Twitter & World Population Data [Pulled 4/11: Kutcher & Spears 4,743,902 and 4,689,808 = 9,433,710] – note it’s not the combined populations of the countries listed
Source: ClickZ Stats SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
Calculated based of Wikipedia article data found at www.wikipedia.org
Source: TechCrunchThis says 4 weeks so I may have been a little off here as my source at Facebook had said 2 weeks adjusted above
Source: Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
Music in video provided by Fatboy Slim “Right Here, Right Now” (1999) – if you like it buy the single
To watch videos with millions of YouTube views and deservedly so, please check out Karl Fisch and Scott McCleod’s Did You Know? And Shift Happens videos on YouTube. If you are like me you will love them!
Also, if you haven’t seen Marta Kagan’s “What The F**K is Social Media” presentation, it’s amazing! Many of the same eye-popping facts are contained in it – as well as many more. Plus, it does a much better job of providing insight than my video which is designed to grab attention. Kagan’s presentation informs, check it out!
The Blackberry still dominates the smartphone market, but the iPhone and Android may be our mobile devices of tomorrow. Only time will tell, but here is where we stand currently (comScore data).
BlackBerry 42.1%
Apple 25.4%
MSFT Mobile 15.1%
Android 9%
For us social media addicts, competition is a great thing as mobile drives social and social drives mobile. It’s imperative that our consumption devices keep up with our consumption habits and, in this case, competition is a great thing.
There is a great article that goes in depth on this subject at Yahoo.