The Numbers of Social Media

Everywhere you look, people are on their computer, playing an app on their smartphone or reading an article on their tablets. Technology is everywhere and with technology comes social media. Nowadays there are about a million and one sites telling you how to make this better or that better using social media. In fact, I bet most middle school students these days know more about using Twitter than they do about the Civil War. So why all the hoopla? What makes social media seem so important these days? A glance at some of these numbers might just answer those questions.

Facebook Users

It’s pretty common knowledge that there are about 7 billion people in the world today, but did you know that over 1 billion of those people use Facebook? In just one year in Europe alone the number of Facebook users jumped from just over 200,000,000 to almost 233,000,000. For those who don’t like big numbers, that’s 33 million new users in one year from one continent. Worldwide, the increase that year was almost 200 million.

Facebook is by far the largest social media site right now and rightfully so. It was founded in 2004, long before any of the other current big wigs made their debut. It is also a widely available site, as about 750 million of those 1 billion users access Facebook from one of any 7,000 different mobile devices.

Twitter Users

Second on the list of social media popularity is Twitter with more than 500 million users. Founded in March 2006, Twitter has approximately 288 million active users a month who work together to post just over 400 million tweets on the average day. Surprisingly, Twitter’s recent expansion comes from a 79% increase in users between 55 and 64 years old. However, I have my doubts that they are the ones averaging 208 tweets per account.

Google+

Following right behind Twitter with about 500 million users is Google+, which was actually founded before Facebook, but if you were like me, you hadn’t ever heard of it until the newer version came out about 5 years ago. While Google+ users are actively logged in, with about 80% of users checking their profile once a week and 60% of users logging in every day, Google+ is nowhere near as popular as the other sites. However, it is extremely valuables if you’re an seo company , as it can help you gain credibility and come up higher in search results.

The Professional Network: LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is a platform dedicated towards professionalism, and not as much meant for socialites. However, they do boast respectable numbers coming in with over 238 million users. What is really impressive about LinkedIn are the 3 million company pages and the 1 billion endorsements. If you are looking to branch out in the professional world, this is the site for you.

Bringing in the Rear

Finally, we have our two bottom feeders, Instagram and Pinterest. Combined the two still have less users than LinkedIn, having 130 million and 70 million users respectively. With both sites being relatively young and have specific demographics, these numbers shouldn’t be too shocking. If you don’t capture your life through photos, you have no reason to establish an Instagram presence and if you aren’t the 69% of the female Suzie-homemakers on Pinterest, you probably have no need for decorating or organization tips.

So there you have it. When sites are trying to encourage you to make your life more social media friendly, they really are trying to help you out. Whether you’re looking to make friends, find a new job or market the hell out of a new product, these numbers say social media is the way to go. If we pretend that there are no crossovers in users (and let’s not kid ourselves, most like 450 million of those Twitter users have a Facebook account as well), you are looking at almost 2.5 billion people in the world relying on social media sites for everyday interactions.