DreamGrow Social Media

700 Million Facebook Users

In our 2010 trend post we predicted that Facebook will have 700 million users. Well, let’s look at some numbers.

According to checkfacebook.com 43.03% of US on-line users are on Facebook. In UK this percentage is 51.5, Canada 47,24%, Australia 42.88% and this data is three months old. Then there are countries like Chile where 66.54% of on-line users are on Facebook and Venezuela with 68.97%. Seems that Facebook penetration, in countries where it is the leading social network, moves towards 50 percent of internet users or even beyond that.

Currently there are about 1.733 billion internet user in the world. When Facebook gets half of that then their user base would balloon to 850 million. Amazingly there are still some countries that have some other social networking site dominating. As we wrote in our post World Map Of Social Networks. The keys to Facebook’s world domination lay in Brazil (Orkut), Russia (V Kontakte) and China (QQ).

I would say that using a single social networking site would be beneficial to all internet users. In smaller countries there is constant pressure from across the borders to leave the local socnet and join the global one? However in large countries you may now feel that the language restricts your social sphere. Still, if you subtract the users of Brazil, Russia and China from 1.7 billion, you are left with about 1.3 billion I internet users.

There are several factors that drive Facebook domination. The network effect will make the value of the environment to go up as more people use it. More people are inviting even more friends, using Facebook will be the norm. Business use will legalize social networking during working hours. Older people join to keep in touch with their young relatives but also form their own sub communities. Businesses promoting their Facebook presence bring in more users. Initial success of the early adopters will move Facebook to marketing mainstream, but at the same time this will decrease the effectiveness of the channel as breaking through the clutter will become harder.

But the basic drive is universal, people want to belong and talk to each other, to connect. Most of the social networks’ content is social chatter, nothing terribly important or of timeless value. But social chatter is what we do and the site that can best mediate it will take everything.

700 million users is 54.6 percent of internet users excluding China, Brazil, and Russia. Maybe note by the end of this year, but it’s entirely possible. Next, 1 Billion.

Social Media Replaces Email and IM

In our social media trends post we suggested that people will use more social networks’ messaging instead of regular email and IM tools.

We haven’t seen any real research on this yet. In my opinion the convenience of using messaging tools without leaving the friendly social network will move a lot of email communication away from mail clients. I believe that this will happen mainly to personal email. When people talk to each other it’s only natural to use the tools that are right in front of you.

But not to fear, the email will stay with us some time yet. Businesses will continue to use email until some authentic way of private B2C communication channel becomes available for them on social networks. The second factor that keeps email alive is the rudimentary user experience of messaging tools in social networks. These tools are convenient but have only very basic functionality.

Now, a smart move for social media sites would be to include email in their environment. If a social network like Facebook would build a full-blown email client into its interface then Live, Yahoo and GMail would really have something to worry about.

In the instant messaging field the desktop apps have a lot more to worry about. The IM does not have 40 years of history behind it and the most used IM clients have only about 400 million users (Usage share of instant messaging clients). Well, in China they do.

The problems with social networks’ IM clients are similar to email. Rudimentary interface, lack of voice and video. But looking at my own IM habits it is not a problem as most of the communication is text-based and I don’t much care for the bells and whistles of the desktop apps.

Facebook can have a huge advantage by implementing these tools. So, what do you think when will we see the fully-featured email and IM clients in Facebook colors?

Study: Students would have technology before people

A study released by Twix, showed students would rather give up their significant other than technology when taking a study break.

This may seem shocking to some. I would argue that this is a very reasonable choice. This is not really people versus technology. Technology helps me to connect and interact with hundreds of people.

I would say that the question is really would you give up connecting to all of your friends or one of your friends. In this case isolating yourself from everybody in favor of one significant other would not seem as a good alternative.

Study shows that two thirds of students would choose a network over one node.

Melinda Messineo, associate professor of sociology at Ball State, said that social networking plays a part in results from this study.

Students can most likely stand not talking to one person, as long as they can maintain a connection with others through social networks.

Other findings from the study:

• Two in five named the Internet/social media as the number one thing they couldn’t live without at college
• Little more than half of their daily interactions (55 percent) are in-person.
• Today 74 percent of students arrive at college more focused on getting a job after graduation than students 10 (58 percent), 20 (56 percent) and 30 (55 percent) years ago.
• Current students are seven times more likely to reach for their computers (63 percent) than the remote (8 percent); 10 years ago they were twice as likely (54 percent; 28 percent).

On the other hand, when looking at picture I chose to illustrate this post, it also depends on the significant other. Image credit Alek von Felkerzam

Social Media Research Driving Automotive Marketing

Some time ago we wrote about Social media helping to spike up Mercury sales in New England. Here is a slideshow that looks into ways car marketers could use social media to engage potential customers.

Portrait of a Twitter user

Status update demographics accross major services. 19% of internet users say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This is almost twice as much as in the previous surveys from December 2008 and April 2009, where this nomber was only 11%.

Gadget people are using status-update services. The more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status. Use of status-update services by device count:

• 39% of users with more than three internet-conncted devices
• 28% of users with three devices
• 19% of users with two devices
• 10% of users with one device

The median age of the user is:

• Twitter 31
• MySpace 26
• LinkedIn 39
• Facebook 33

Read more in Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009.

Three-Fourths of Women Do Not Know What Influences Them on SocNets

I read that:

Though women are “exceptionally active” in online social networking activities, they are overwhelmingly uninfluenced – and often “turned off,” by brands hawking products and services in the social-media space, according to a study released by Q Interactive’s Women’s Channel in partnership with adTech: Chicago.

[...]

Moreover, an overwhelming 75% say they are not influenced by social networking channels to purchase products and services, the study found.

I think that the picture is not really that bad for the social marketeer. The thing is that most people tend to think that they are less influenced by marketing than they really are. I have see a survey where people were asked if they are influenced by advertising and an overwhelming majority of 95% answered NO. I belong to the 5% that is influenced by marketing and I believe there are a bit more than 5% of us.

Some interesting numbers in the survey are:

• 17% feel positive about brands on social media
• 4% of social network users say they have ever clicked on an ad
• 10% of women engage in product / brand-related activities
• 52 percent of women surveyed have “befriended” or “become a fan of” at least one brand

New Study of 1,000 Women Finds While Facebook a Fave, 75 Percent Uninfluenced by Social Networking Channels to Purchase

via q-interactive-women-adtech-social-networking-sites-influence-purchases-august-2009.jpg.