Mediaboss Marketing

January 15, 2013:

I have long been puzzled as well as fascinated by the explosive growth of the social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, MySpace, Linked-In, Pinterest, Twitter, Orkut and many others with fancy names on the Internet.

There are so many of them that research surveys have given up counting. The total number of netizens using them is incomprehensibly astronomical.

Just to drive home the near-ubiquitousness of the phenomenon SNS have become, I offer some salient facts and figures for all of which I have generally relied on the latest survey results published by the Pew Internet Project, Nielson and Nielson-McKinsey Incite and Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

As of 2012, fully 1.43 billion netizens or 25 per cent of the worlds population, are users of SNS, up by 19.2 per cent over 2011, and they constitute 69 per cent of Internet users.

Among mobile users, 40 per cent are SNS buffs. Of the total number of SNS users,, 63 per cent are men, 75 per cent women, with 92 per cent being those between 18 and 25 years of age.

To ladle out a few more facts: SNS are the greatest favourites of netizens who spend roughly 20 per cent of their total time online via personal computer, and 30 per cent of total time via mobile on SNS.

In particular, the time spent with social media on mobile apps and the mobile web has increased 63 per cent in 2012, compared to the same period last year.

Most users find the SNS convenient as a means of keeping in touch with existing and known friends and their relationships with them in constant repair (to borrow the words of the great literary giant of the 18th century, Samuel Johnson). More than17 per cent of users reached out to people they didnt know and 35 per cent to people who were friends of friends.

No person is an island unto himself or herself, and a human being craves for companionship, and opportunities to communicate and express him(her)self, besides being moved by an inner urge to forge new friendships as also networks with persons of similar interests.

Continued here:
Whither social networking sites?