The social media phenomenon did not emerge 10 years ago. However, it can be said that the social media mania started about a decade ago.
While today many people broadly use the phrase “social media,” not many are those who actually know what it truly means. By definition, social media websites are sites where people communicate and interact freely. This is usually happening by discussing and sharing information relying on multimedia content like images, videos, text or audio. Therefore, social media platforms include forums, blogs, microblogs, social networks, writing communities, podcast portals and many more.
The year 1997 is considered important in the history of social media, because this is when blogging first started. Also, SixDegrees becomes one of the first websites to allow users to create profiles and to add friends.
However, it is in 2004 when social media frenzy started. Around that time, social websites like Friendster and MySpace were enjoying huge popularity. During the same year, various new social media websites are launched, like Facebook, Flickr, Digg and others. In addition, podcasting kicked off. That is namely why 2004 is believed to have marked the beginning of the rise of social media platforms.
Now, 10 years later, social media has turned into a game changer. Nearly everyone who has access to Internet has at least one social media profile. That is why we decided to explore this trend in numbers. Here are some of the most interesting social media statistics we have found.
As you probably know, Facebook is the most popular social network. However, did you know that it currently has over 1.23 billion active users every month. In comparison, Twitter has 241 million monthly active users, while Instagram has around 150 million.
However, social media websites have turned into a daily activity and even into a routine for most Internet users. As a result, people exchange around 210 billion emails every single day. Nevertheless, only 20% of them are not spam. Also, every day, 4.7 billion searches are made on Google every day and 1.8 billion blog posts are written.
In addition to that, social media is not only viewed as a place to chat with friends and people with common interests. Over the last couple of year, it has turned into one of the most efficient and popular business marketing tools. In fact, social media reach is nearly two times bigger compared to telemarketing, trade shows, PPC and daily mail. As a result, over 23% of marketers invest in social media or blogging.
Celebrities are also relying heavily on social media to promote themselves. Katy Perry can be easily dubbed the Queen of social media. She is the most followed person on Twitter (nearly 52 million). Similar is the case on other social websites. Perry’s Facebook page is liked by over 65 million users, while her MySpace activity is followed by more than 2.6 million people.
However, it is Ellen DeGeneres who should take the title Queen of content. The TV host and comedian is the most retweeted person in history and this does not include only her Oscar selfie.
It is clear that social media will continue to play a huge role in our daily lives in the future. However, it is almost certain that it will not remain the same as we know it today. The status quo is already starting to disrupt by a number of newly-founded social networks, like Diasphora and App.net, for instance. If we have to make predictions about the future of social media websites, we would say that they would not be created for users, but they would be created by users. In other words, we might soon start to see more and more community-run social platforms. Therefore, this could make social website even more open.
