I love to wake up before the crack of dawn, mostly to read, meditate, or see what links the early risers are sharing. I consider this moment sacred, because the early risers tend to be a repository of very valuable information, that gets lost in the cacophony when all and sundry awake.
This morning, I saw a link shared by Jeff Bullas. It was laden with amazing statistics that I felt I should share with you. All this information is courtesy of him and a 2013 GlobalWebIndex Study, whose findings he extensively quoted. According to the article, Facebook is still king of the social media jungle with Facebook with 701 million active users. Google+ is at 359 million, Twitter with 296 million.
Facebook’s dominance, as well as social media growth in general he explains is driven by increased mobile usage and increased ‘uptake’ by the older generation. Twitter however, is the fastest growing network with more than a 40% increase in active users over the last 9 months. Facebook follows closely with 37% increase, Google+ at 35%, LinkedIn with a little over 30%. Pinterest surprisingly has seen a 20% increase in active users over the same period.
Jeff Bullas shares more interesting facts; when it comes to the internet, Facebook has over 60% penetration globally. YouTube comes in at 44%, Google+ (43%) and Twitter at 35%. LinkedIn sits at 15%, MySpace still in the mix at 11% and Pinterest at 7%. Tumbler is at 5%. Facebook and LinkedIn appeal to an older audience, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube attract a younger group.
Social media however, is still mostly a boys club. A very peculiar and insightful, would that explain cyber bullying? Facebook is 55% male, but the platform that takes the lion’s share when it comes to males is LinkedIn at a whopping 66%.
Something else that I found gob-smacking, is that 80% of the growth being experienced by Twitter is from the 55-64 age group. Facebook’s active usage level is staggering, with an incredible 82% engagement rate in terms of the proportion of active users to account holders. Twitter (62%), Google+(60%), Pinterest (53%) and Linkedin at 51%.
He ends this very insightful article, by reiterating that mobile phones are responsible for this exponential growth being experienced in social media platforms.
