The Social Media phenomenon is a topic that i really like studying. I am not really sure if the audience of this blog is interested in it more than getting products exposed, but you should know that Social Media is in the base of the internet marketing business – no matter the methods, no matter the techniques, no matter the people you target, no matter your niche. If you make any money from the Internet it is because of Social Media, if you do not make any money – it is because of Social Media again. As i have said it earlier – Social Media is what you should go into in order to be successful online.

I found an article posted on Techcrunch France in January 2009, about how social networks were used globally in 2008.

social_image_1

The development and growth of different networks is really interesting, especially noticing the dominance of Blogger (222 million unique visitors from around the world). These figures are followed closely by Facebook with 200 million unique visitors, Myspace (around 130 million visitors) and WordPress (144 million visitors). A bit further away in terms of figures (22% lower that its closest competitor, WordPress) is Windows Live Spaces (87 million visitors)

Bellow is a more complete list of figures:

Top Social Media Sites (unique visitors as of November 2008; comScore):

- Blogger (222 million)
- Facebook (200 million)
- MySpace (126 million)
- WordPress (114 million)
- Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
- Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
- Flickr (64 million)
- hi5 (58 million)
- Orkut (46 million)
- Six Apart (46 million)
- Baidu Space (40 million)
- Friendster (31 million)
- 56.com (29 million)
- Webs.com (24 million)
- Bebo (24 million)
- Scribd (23 million)
- Lycos Tripod (23 million)
- Tagged (22 million)
- imeem (22 million)
- Netlog (21 million)

We Are Social has written a very interesting article regarding social media figures in the UK, describing how swiftly we are starting to adapt to social networks. Even cell phone companies are expanding their users’ Internet options, which strengthens even more the ever more permanent connection that cell phone users have with the social web. This is surely going to make us more dependent upon such websites and to give them an even bigger place in our everyday lives.

Here is a Forrester presentation, created after the Future of the Social Web Roundtable:

Roundtable Event: The Future of the Social Web

Further reading on Social Media from previous posts:

16 March 2009 – How has the Internet influences us to be Influencers

21 December 2008 – Social Media and Success Online