Monthly Archives: May 2010

Facebook Statistics & History in Picture Form

By Erik Qualman

Paul Hughes of onlinemba.com sent this incredible Facebook infographic my way (below). I hope you enjoy Paul’s work as much as I do!

Facebook: Facts You Didn't Know
Via: Online MBA

Please feel free to share your comments and thoughts on the above infographic. Anything you love about it? Disagree with?

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Even Google Says Facebook is #1

By Erik Qualman

top websites

Top 20 Websites in the World {source: Google

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.

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Facebook Privacy Issues – The Irony

By Erik Qualman

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.”facebook privacy image

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?

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Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)

By Erik Qualman

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 #)

  1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
  2. 96% of them have joined a social network
  3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
  4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
  5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
  6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
  7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
  8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
  9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
  10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
  11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
  12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
  13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
  14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
  15. 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.
  16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
  17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
  18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
  19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
  20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
  21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
  22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
  23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
  24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
  25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
  26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
  27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
  28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
  29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
  30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
  31. Only 14% trust advertisements
  32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
  34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
  35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
  36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
  37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
  38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
  39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
  40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
  41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
  42. 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.

A huge thanks to all below:

  1. Source: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/broker http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.php  [roughly 52% based on table data] | 2010 U.S. 310,232,863 | 2010 World 6,814,609,654 | 30 and under: 3,548,760,268 / 6,814,609,654 = 52% http://sasweb.ssd.census.gov/idb/worldpopinfo.html
  2. Source: Grunwald Associates National Study – Trendsspotting Blog | Millenials Conference
  3. Source: Hitwise Intelligence Heather Dougherty http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2010/03/facebook_reaches_top_ranking_i.html
  4. Source: Huffington Post
  5. Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka
  6. Source: First Stats: United Nations Cyberschoolbus Document
  7. Source for Facebook Stat: Facebook Timeline http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline Feb 2009 175 million users – Feb 2010 400 users:
  8. iPhone Stat: Apple
  9. Personal Quote
  10. Source: Facebook and world population data
  11. Source: TechCrunch
  12. Source: U.S. Department of Education Study
  13. Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey
  14. Source: Inside Facebook Blog
  15. 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
  16. Source: The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/feb/08/facebook-rise-mobile-web-use
  17. Source: Metro Commuter Newspaper
  18. Source: USA Today: Should Colleges Start Giving iPads to Students? http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-04-05-IHE-colleges-give-iPads-to-students05_N.htm
  19. Opinion, not a statistic
  20. Source: TGDaily
  21. Source:  Mashable by Ben Parr
  22. Source: www.wikipedia.org - calculated based on # articles per language category; Colorado State University Wikipedia Accuracy Study; open debate and of course very biased information is also found on this Wikipedia Accuracy page.
  23. Source: China Internet Information Center, Technorati, Wikipedia
  24. Opinion, not a statistic
  25. 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
  26. Calculated based of Wikipedia article data found at www.wikipedia.org
  27. 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
  28. 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
  29. Opinion, not a statistic
  30. Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (actually 90% now – updated above but video still shows 78%)
  31. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing  2007
  32. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing  2007
  33. Source: Starcom USA-TiVo
  34. Source: Mashable
  35. Source: Solutions Research Group
  36. Source: Facebook Stats
  37. Opinion, not a statistic
  38. Opinion, not a statistic
  39. Opinion, not a statistic
  40. Opinion, not a statistic
  41. Opinion, not a statistic
  42. comScore
  43. 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!

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Blackberry dominates, but is the future iPhone & Android?

By Erik Qualman

Droid Incredible

Droid Incredible by HTC

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.

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