Author(s) : ComScore
With the widespread adoption of the Internet around the world came the rise of social networking as a global phenomenon.In March 2007, Social Networking as a category had a global audience of less than 500 million users, representing just 56 percent of the world’s online population.
Hypothesis:
1. Social Media is the World’s Most Popular Online Activity
2. Social networking behavior both transcends and reflects regional differences around the world
3. The importance of Facebook cannot be overstated
4. Microblogging is a disruptive force
5. Local social networks are making inroads globally
6. It’s not just young people using social networking anymore-it’s everyone
7. Communications are going Social
8. Social networking leads in online display advertising in the US, but lags in share of dollars
9. The next disrupters have yet to be decided
10. Mobile devices are fueling the social addiction
Results:
1. Social networking sites now reach 82 percent of the world’s online population, representing 1.2 billion users around the world. Social networking’s emergence is the amount of time people currently engage with it. In October 2011, Social Networking ranked as the most popular content category in worldwide engagement,accounting for 19 percent of all time spent online.
2. The total time spent by users on social networking grew by at least 35% over the past year, for each region. (North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific). United States is the region where the percentage of online population using social networking is the biggest: 98%, contrary to China who reach a 53% rate. Moreover, women spend more hours on social networking than men: 6,5h for her and 5h for him.
3.There are another social network around the world like Orkut in Brazil.This social network has more visitors than Facebook ( 35 againts 30 for Facebook).
4.The three most mircoblogging as Tumblr,twitter and Sina Weibo (Chinese leader ). Twitter reaches 1 in 10 Internet users worldwide to rank among the top social networks, and posted an impressive growth rate of 59 percent over the past year. Sina Weibo and Tumblr have posted the highest growth rates of the Top 20 global social networks.
5. As global social networking usage continues to expand, there is another trend worth noting, which is a shift in geographic footprint of some of the major sites Linkedin exceeds myspace and becomes the fourth global networks.
6. Even more striking, in regions such as North America and Latin America, Social Networking reached at least 93 percent of online users age 55 and older. Another group showing significant gains are males. Although males still lag in terms of reach and engagement with social networking,
they exhibited a nearly 10-percentage point increase in reach from July 2010.
7. Teenagers and young adults age 15-24 use more social networking (34%) than instant messengers (-42%) and Email (-22%) between July 2010 and October 2011. It’s possible that social networking could become the most important communication channel across all age groups
8. Social Networking has maintained a significant lead over other categories in the past year, even outpacing Portals – which spans multiple content categories including News, Sports and Email – with its 19 percent share of display ad impressions.
9. Google+ was the more faster than other social networking like facebook or twitter. Indeed, 25millions global unique visitors were on Google+ less than a month. Facebook and twitter took more than one year. Sina Weibo exhibited the highest growth rate for audience size over 2010 at 181% and Tumblr with a 172% increase. Microblogging could emerge as a pivotal force shaping the future of social networking behavior.
10. From a technology standpoint, mobile devices represent the future of social networking as they provide the means for users to connect on-the-go, facilitating real-time interaction.
European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom), nearly a quarter (24 percent) of the total mobile population reported engaging with their social networks on their mobile devices.
Conclusion:
This report shows that two key factors drive the web with positive impact on marketing, people lives and business.
During the rise of mobile networks has a positive impact on social networks, pushing the world to used it. These social networks show then explicit and implicit information that we don’t know about us.