So you think Social Media is a fad?

This content is 14 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

One of the videos I saw presented at last Tuesday’s Dell B2B Social Media Huddle was Erik Qualman’s (@equalman) Social Media Revolution (refresh).  Set to the tune of Fat Boy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now, this video gives a whole load of statistics (the sources for which may be found on Erik’s Socialnomics Social Media Blog):

For those who can’t see the video, here are the stats:

  • Is Social Media a Fad?
    Or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?
  • Welcome to the revolution
  • Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old
  • 96% of Millennials have joined a social network
  • Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
  • Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Web
  • 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. met via social media
  • Years to reach 50 million users:
    • Radio 38 years
    • TV 13 years
    • Internet 4 years
    • iPod 3 years
  • Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
  • iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months
  • “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” – Erik Qualman
  • If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest
    [behind China and India, ahead of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh…]
    Yet QQ and Renren dominate China
  • US Department of Education study revealed that online students out performed those reciving face-to-face instruction…
  • 80% of companies use social media for recruitment
  • % of those using LinkedIn…95%
  • The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
  • Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, [or] Panama.
  • 50% of mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook
    Imagine what this means for bad customer experiences
  • Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé
  • Some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
    Instead they are distributing eReaders, iPads, Tablets
  • What happens in Vegas stays on
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Renren
    Kohtakte
    Flickr
    YouTube
  • YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
  • While you watch this [4′ 26″ video] 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
  • Wiki is an Hawaiian term = Quick
  • Wikipedia has over 15 million articles
    Studies show it’s as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica
    78% of those articles are non-English
    If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1712.32 per hour
  • There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
  • Word of mouth [leads to] World of mouth
  • 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
  • 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands
  • Do you like what they are saying
    about your brand?
    You better…
  • People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
  • 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
  • Only 14% trust advertisements
  • Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  • 90% of people skip ads via TiVo/DVR
  • Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas [2009]
  • 24 of the 25 Largest Newspapers are Experiencing Record Declines in Circulation
  • 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily
  • We no longer search for the news, the news finds us…
  • We will no longer search for products and services
    they will find us via social media
  • Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
  • Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men
    Listening first, selling second
  • The ROI of Social Media is [that] Your Business Will Still Exist in 5 years
  • Still think social media is a fad?
  • Welcome to the World of Socialnomics
  • Are You Ready?

The video is really an ad for Erik’s book (Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business) but those statistics are pretty compelling… so, do you still think Social Media is a fad?

Me neither.

3 thoughts on “So you think Social Media is a fad?

  1. Mark:

    Thanks for the kind words and I’m glad you enjoyed the video! Thanks for buying the book as well. I hope you enjoy it!!

    Keep up the great work and thanks again for the support. It’s nice to see others so passionate about social media.

    Best,

    @equalman

  2. No it isn’t. But I find it pretty scary. For all the positive aspects social media can represent, I’m still not convinced. However the post gives some very interesting and valuable figures as well as info. Thanks

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