These days social networking sites are grown rapidly and most of the people are tend to use it every day. In my profile i have 350+ friends and these days i just check for updates, status messages, photos etc. But earlier i used to spend my full time on it. Checking for groups, taking part in group discussion, playing games ( Warbook specially), send gifts, send card etc etc.
But there is other interesting story, according to the Nielsen research now people are social networking than e-mail. The report stated that by end of 2008, social networking had ovetaken email in terms of the worldwide reach. Based on the study, 66.8% of internet users accessed “member comunities” last year, compared to 65.1% for email.
The study also explored some other trends as well such as users spent 63% more time on member communities than they did in the previous year. The greatest facebook community saw a growth rate of 566% in time spent on it by the users. It also been reported facebook’s fastest growing demographic is old users.
Some other key findings from the report:
– Globally, Facebook reaches 29.9% of global Internet users, versus 22.4% for MySpace.
– MySpace remains the most profitable social network, generating an estimated $1 billion in revenue versus $300 million for Facebook in 2008.
– Facebook is the top social network in all countries except Germany, Brazil, and Japan (Nielsen still has MySpace as tops in US in the report, but as of January ’09, that had changed).
– On Twitter, CNN, The New York Times, and BBC have the greatest reach among mainstream media companies as of late February.
Overall, most of these trends aren’t surprising if you’ve been following the space, but nonetheless, tie some numbers to them. Most impressive is the rise of Facebook, who is outpacing the growth of the social networking space on the whole by nearly tenfold.
Ragulan Tharmakulasingam 