Some hard facts about online social media platforms

Here’s some facts aggregated from a number of sources (supplied on request) taken at the beginning of this year. They identify the type of people and the amount of real use people get from the most famous platforms in the business throughout the ‘western’ world (Europe, North America and Oceania/Australia). In many ways it makes for sober reading – perhaps the majority of people with access to the Internet (more than 63% - 747 million - of the ‘western’ world’s total population) are finding better things to be doing with their spare time …

Facebook 'facts'

• There are approximately 200 million Facebook accounts that are active.
• Nearly half of these accounts are accessed daily.
• Across the total number of accounts, the average number of friends is around 5 or 6.
• 16%+ of Facebook users are under 18.
• The largest group at 54% is between 18-24.
• The fastest growing group is between 35-54.

Conclusions are hard to draw from such figures – but here are a couple of observations. Most accounts that are active daily are between known friends. Such accounts have many more than 5 or 6 friends, which points to a significant number of dormant accounts. Secondly, the fastest growing age group looks suspiciously like it would map directly on to the parents of the predominant age group – a surer sign as any that teenagers will be looking out for a new platform that their parents wouldn’t want to use. If you're looking to get the best from Facebook try our four part course starting here.

Blog ‘facts’

• There are over 133 million blog records worldwide since 2002.
• 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs – in the UK it’s closer to 100%.
• 66% of bloggers are male 18-44 year-olds.
• 40% have graduate degrees.
• 33% have an income above £50k.

Blogs are apparently the thinking persons publishing tool. It’s important to recognise the likelihood that the profiles of readers will map closely to the authors. In other words considering using the blogging format for your CEO makes a lot of sense.

Twitter 'facts'

• There are 75 million Twitter accounts and a slowing growth rate.
• 5% of Twitter users generate 74% of all messages.
• Of this 5%, 32% are generated by machine bots.
• 80% of all Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers.
• 30% of Twitter accounts have no followers at all.
• More than 60% of Twitter users fail to return the following month.
• Only 4.4% of Twitter visitors are younger than 18.

Twitter, of all the social media platforms might be the most hyped and the least used – wonder if there’s a connection there? It is clearly least effective when it is used by companies to automatically feed content from their sites. It is clearly effective for the few seeking and justifying self-promotion. However, used in the right context and in the right way, Twitter can be a fantastic communication tool. If you're looking to get the best from Twitter try our four part course starting here.

LinkedIn 'facts'

• LinkedIn has over 60 million members in over 200 countries (half in the US).
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.
• Average age of a LinkedIn member is 41; 64% are male.
• 53.5% have a household income of around £50k.
• 80% are graduates; 49% describe themselves as business decision makers.
• 24% have a portfolio value of $250k+.

So the least popular of the big platforms is unsurprisingly host to some of the richest users of the Internet. If your market addresses professionals across all sectors you need good reason not to be engaged on LinkedIn.

We’ll come back to this ‘potted’ review this time next year!