digital malarkey

It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly social media is growing. It is no longer a revolution, that has passed, it is a fundamental reality of everyday life. Nielson have published their findings up to February of this year, and the findings have astonished me, and I’m in the business.

Time is money…

Mark Zuckerberg certainly won’t be complaining about these statistics. Not only are there more users on Facebook, but individually people are spending far more time on it each month.

Two years ago, average usage per month was only a little over 2 hours. By the end of last year, they had more than doubled to over 5 and a half hours. Based on Facebook’s advertising model, this can only be good for for revenue, and for the rest of us who like to get involved with this social media malarkey, it’s a great result. On the downside, Facebook does not generate anywhere near the revenues of China’s Tencent, which published profits of $500million last year from less users. Never the less, the UK seems to be a fan (excuse the pun) of Facebook, heading up the time we spend browsing through photos, groups and pages just a fraction behind the US and Australia.

Global domination…

Much like Google’s dominance in the online search market, people have become bored of Bebo and MySpace, which now only hold a 3.43% share of the social networking market between them, compared to an overwhelmingly dominant Facebook share of 51.05%.

Facebook have very simply got it right. While the flexibility of MySpace is certainly appealing, Facebook is far simpler to use, and the common features that every individual’s profile has make it easier to navigate. While many people have got bored of the random games and applications that seem to keep popping along, the level of interactions on company pages is on the up, and people seem more inclined to share pictures, create events and join groups than ever before. What’s more, world wide there are now over 400million Facebook members, 23million of whom are in the UK. That has more than doubled in a year! That even beats China’s very own QZone according to Wikipedia, but then I think the Mandarin would cause problems for most of us.

Age doesn’t matter…

Growth in social networking sites is not just down to young people. There is a growing number of middle aged users, and the ‘silver surfers’ in retirement seem equally as engaged. While the statistics seen here, thanks to Pingdom research, are based on US usage, it clearly shows the relevance of Facebook in the older generations, with the highest number of users apparently between the ages of 45 and 54. That almost seems hard to believe, and while I think that statistics would vary slightly in the UK, with 61% of US Facebook users being older than 35, it may be I underestimate the (dare I say it) middle-aged.

The impact on social media…

Ok, so I’ve used the term, but to some extent I don’t care. Social media, brand engagement, whatever you want to call it, is in a strong position to interact positively with ALL members of society, not just the young. With such an impressive audience available, brands really need to look at what is worth using. You don’t even need to understand it, you just need to realise that it is here to stay, and not making the most of such a cheap medium to engage with your clients is downright foolish.

I tell you, do it once and they’ll marvel, do it twice and they’ll get you doing theirs. Currently setting up a tumblr. for my brother’s better half. I’ll link to it once it’s finished, but it should be an interesting follow.

This is getting interesting, no idea what might happen next.

Hi one and all, new to tumblr. so still getting to grips with it, but managed to add disqus to my page.