Social Media Statistics

The following statistics on social media come from the "socialnomics" blog by Eric Qualman.  It also has a corresponding video.

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social
   media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13
   Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the
   question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest
    ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average,
    online students out performed those receiving face-to-face
    instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these
    using LinkedIn 95%
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old
    females
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter
    followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama. 
    Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out
    the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it
    was combined.
16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for
    Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means
    for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities
    have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter,
    Facebook…
20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to
    YouTube
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more
    accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are
    non-English
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables
    communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on
    Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are
    links to user-generated content
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products
    and services  than how Google ranks them
30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
31. Only 14% trust advertisements
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record
    declines in circulation
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will
    find us via social media
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way
    we communicate
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale
    Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist
    in 5 years
42. Bonus: comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage
    social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing
    1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social
    network