Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

social media

Sunday Shorts – The Facebook Addiction Edition

It’s the largest social network in the world, with almost 1 billion users. It’s (arguably) the de facto standard when people think social media. It’s the network (again, arguably) that any other achieves to be when launching.

Simply put, Facebook has instilled itself in our culture like no other platform has, or probably will.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that for some Facebook has become an addiction. For example:

  • 32% of users feel guilty for rejecting friend requests.
  • Two boys broke into CNN headquarters to check their Facebook status.
  • Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other website.

When a network becomes second nature in the way Facebook does, it says a lot about us and our reliance on technology. And it’s not necessarily a good thing, especially as Facebook looks to increase its stickiness factor following its recent IPO.

Check out the infographic below for more stats and information – then be honest in the comments and let us know if you’d class yourself as a Facebook addict.

Facebook Addiction Infographic

Addressing the Pain Points of Social Media for Small to Medium Business Owners (Video)

While social media use is beginning to see a healthy increase in small business users, there are still many gaps that need to be plugged when it comes to how that use is being strategic.

For most small businesses, the main use of social media was for company awareness in the marketplace. Additionally, customer acquisition is another factor that business owners want to see, but perhaps don’t know how to actually build a strategy around this.

At Jugnoo, one of the ways we’re looking to help these business owners (as well as mid-market customers) is through education, and providing simple toolsets and “hand-holding” along the way (Ken Mueller described us perfectly as a “social media Swiss Army Knife” in a recent post).

This video below – with questions from leading PR practitioner and author Deirdre Breakenridge – shares some of our beliefs and goals for our users, as well as examples of small businesses that are succeeding in social media, and how they’re doing it.

Hopefully it’s useful to you (even with the scary still picture!), and if you’re interested in checking out the Jugnoo platform, you can sign up for the beta here.

Cheers!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAhNmN1BsHs[/youtube]

Related articles

52 Cool Facts About Social Media – 2012 Edition

Back in July 2010, I wrote a post called “52 Cool Facts About Social Media”. I wanted to have a look at some of the mind-boggling and truly impressive numbers from this space we play in.

I also wanted to offer a fun fact for every week of the year, for anyone playing social media trivia games.

At the time, the Big 5 were (arguably) Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Blogging. My, what a difference two years make!

So, to bring some of these figures up to date, as well as include some of the newer names on the scene, here are 52 cool facts about social media, the 2012 edition. Enjoy!

Facebook

1. 85% of women are annoyed by their friends (note – I don’t think this is just limited to Facebook!!).
2. Links about sex are shared 90% more than any other link.
3. More than 350 million users suffer from Facebook Addiction Syndrome.
4. 25% of users don’t bother with any kind of privacy control.
5. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Statistics from Economist, Social Times, CNN.

Twitter

6. 750 tweets per second are shared on Twitter.
7. The original Twitter beta was launched on the birthday of CEO Evan Williams.
8. If Twitter was a country, it’d be the 12th largest in the world.
9. 30% of Twitter users have an income of more than $100,000.
10. Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined (24 billion versus 4.1 billion and 9.4 billion respectively).

Statistics from Compete, Twitter Press Centre and BNN News.

LinkedIn

11. Two new members sign up to LinkedIn every second.
12. LinkedIn has 161 million members in more than 200 countries and communities.
13. Members are on track to make more than 5.3 billion searches on the platform in 2012.
14. LinkedIn’s revenue has doubled every quarter for the last two years.
15. There are more than one million LinkedIn groups.

Statistics from LinkedIn Press Centre.

YouTube

16. YouTube was founded to share dinner clips of a party due to the files being too large for email.
17. The most watched video is Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, with 470 million views.
18. The most watched non-commercial video is Charlie Bit My Finger Again, with over 458 million views.
19. The average visitor spends 15 minutes per day on YouTube.
20. It originally started life as a dating site and was influenced by the Hot Or Not website.

Statistics: Techzine and YouTube Archives.

Blogging

21. 3 million new blogs come online every month.
22. 60% of bloggers are aged between 25-44.
23. 20% of bloggers have been blogging for more than 6 years.
24. Professional bloggers upkeep an average of four blogs.
25. 35% of corporate bloggers worked in a journalism, media or professional writing role.

Statistics: Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2011.

Pinterest

26. Pinterest drives more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.
27. Users spend an average of just under 16 minutes on the site.
28. The most popular age group is 25-34 year olds, accounting for 27.4% of the user base.
29. Pinterest receives 1.3 million visitors per day.
30. 97% of the fans of Pinterest’s Facebook page are women.

Statistics: Modea

Instagram

31. 25% of Instagram users upload more than three pictures per day.
32. Over 5 million images are uploaded every day.
33. President Obama is on Instagram, having joined in January 2012.
34. Earlybird is the most popular filter, with 12.5% users preferring it (zero filters is the most popular way to use Instagram, with more than 47% of users going au naturel).
35. There are 575 Likes per second.

Statistics: Instagram Press Centre, ReadWriteWeb, Social Media Delivered.

Google+

36. “Student” is the number one occupation of Google+ users.
37. More than 2/3 of its users are male.
38. The Google +1 button is used more than 5 billion times per day.
39. Google+ is adding 625,000 new users every day.
40. More than 42% of Google+ users are single.

Statistics: Google Blog, Techcrunch, Google Investor Reports.

Social Media Influence Platforms

41. Klout has 50 times more traffic than PeerIndex, its closest competitor.
42. Kred tries to measure offline influence by allowing you to add achievements away from your online activities.
43. Klout changed its privacy model to allow opt-out from its service after a negative backlash in 2011.
44. Empire Avenue has users in more than 150 countries.
45. Justin Bieber is the only person with a perfect Klout score of 100 (says it all, then).

Statistics: Social Media Today, The Next Web.

The Mobile Web

46. 42% of phones in the U.S. are smartphones, with 44% of European users on a smartphone.
47. More than 110 million smartphone users in the U.S and Europe access social networks and blogs on their phones.
48. Tablets took just two? years to reach 40 million users in the U.S. – it took smartphones 7 years to reach this figure.
49. China is the number one country in the world for smartphone use, with approximately 1 billion users.
50. In the U.K., there are twice as many smartphone users than cigarette smokers.

Statistics: ComScore and SoMobile.

Bonus Facts

51. Social gamers are expected to buy $6 billion in virtual goods in 2012.
52. One in 5 couples meet online; 3 in 5 gay couples meet online.

Statistics: eMarketer and Stanford University.

So there you have it ? the updated 2012 edition of 52 cool facts about social media, offering a nugget for every week of the year.? Just in case you need it for your next presentation or tweet-up, and want to let folks know why social media isn?t so dorky after all.

Cheers!

Related articles

Be Where YOU Need to Be, Not Where “They” Say You Should

Social media needs

A friend of mine went to a Social Media for Small Business conference recently. He?s a small business owner, and has been thinking about using social media for a while.

He enjoyed the conference and made some great connections while there.?Yet something he said worries me, and that?s the need to be everywhere.

According to the social media expert that was speaking at the conference, businesses need to be on as many social media channels as they can. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ning, blogging, Facebook Places, Tumblr, etc ? the list goes on.

The reasoning? You never know where your customer is going to be, so you need to be in all the places they could be.

Bullcrap.

You can (and do) know where your customer is going to be by doing the research – a social media audit, for example.

Because of this map, you can tell?demographics, spend decisions, social network use, optimum time of day for social network use and promotions,?and much, much more.

You can then use this information to understand where you need to be, when you need to be there, and what you need to be saying/doing while there. This targeted approach makes sure no-one?s wasting their time, and goals can be set and results measured.

It?s not rocket science ??it?s a marketing strategy.

Saying you need to be on every site because your customers might be is like saying you need to advertise in every single newspaper because some of your customers might read it.

Sure, they might. But if your customers are vegetarians, would you advertise in Slaughterhouse Weekly?

No ? so why take that approach with your social media strategy? Instead, be where you need to be.

Make sense?

Social Media, Self-Proclamation and the Wanky Word

Wanky social media

We all want to be famous, whether we admit it or not.

We all want the glory of recognition for our work; our media; our creations; our results. To say otherwise is to lie. Of course, the thing is, there are different levels of what we want and how we want it.

Thankfully for those that want it, whether it?s deserved or not, social media allows us to live out our narcissistic fantasies and be as famous as we believe we should be.

Fame, though, can come in many forms. There?s?the type of fame that Mike talks about; but that?s where we seek fame but don?t really say as much. Then there?s the well-deserved fame of?a job well done, despite not really being famous at all.

And then there?s the self-proclaimed fame. But is this fame, or infamy? Can it even be called fame, when it?s a self-imposed title? Perhaps the fame is there because of the irony around the self-proclamation?

Them?s Mighty Big Words You?re Using

Say, for example, you call yourselves ?the standard for influence?, like?our friends at Klout. That?s a pretty mighty title to give yourself. Can they live up to it?

After all, Klout does have at least 100 million users being profiled, so that?s a hefty number, and one that should stand for the standard of influence, right?

Eh, maybe not.

Considering there are approximately 900 million users just on Facebook, so 800 million short there. Or 200 million on Twitter, so only half the number there. Even LinkedIn, everyone?s favourite-but-not-really network,?has 131 million users, so Klout?s missing 31 million people there.

Even if Klout were to say they were just ?the standard for?ONLINE?influence?,?there are 2 billion people using the web.?TWO BILLION.

So, in the grand scheme of things, 100 million is like a wet kiss on the cheek compared to the back-seat virginity loss and post-coital cigarette it desperately wants to be.

Self-Proclamation and The Wanky Word

There?s nothing wrong with being confident in your abilities. There?s nothing wrong in being proud of your achievements, and sharing them with the world.

That should, actually, be a given, since the world is hard enough to succeed in at the best of times ? so?true success deserves to be highlighted.

But saying you?re something you?re clearly not isn?t a statement of success. Nor is it a statement of intent or a goal ? if it were that, the line would go something like ?aiming to be the standard for influence?.

At least that approach is being honest, and people will cut you slack.

But calling yourself the best or standard when there?s a clear difference between the claim and the actuality?

That?s just kinda wanky.

image:?natebeaty