The Social Media Revolution

Written by Mat Durham

I much prefer intelligent discussion over hype when it comes to - well, anything! - but this video caught my eye. If you're baffled by all the fuss over social media and want to know what it's all about, this video breaks it down in under five minutes.

{qtube vid:=sIFYPQjYhv8&hl}

Here's a breakdown of some of the stats and comments, with the really interesting ones highlighted:

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 100 million users in less than 9 months, iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook is banned in China)
2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
80% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube
Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
There are over 200,000,000 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 & brands
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
Only 14% trust advertisements
25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second