Social Networking Statistics

                         Professional Technology Writer

Whether you are in the process of planning your online business strategy or if you just have a personal interest in the subject, reviewing social networking statistics can be very informative. Learning about recent developments in social networking can help you make a choice about which networks to join and how to present yourself in the best light. If you are using social networks to market a specific product or service, knowledge of the network's growth, popularity, demographics and applications can help you decide which ones are most suitable. If you're trying to find old friends, the demographics of a specific network can assist you in your search.

Social Networking Statistics for Facebook

When it was first established by Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room, Facebook was the exclusive domain of college students. In fact, it was initially restricted to specific colleges and universities before expanding out to the general public. Today, Facebook has broad-reaching appeal for just about every demographic group.

• As of September 14, 2012, Facebook has over one billion monthly active members (Wall Street Journal).
• According to the same Wall Street Journal article, as of August 2012, fake accounts make up 8.7% of the total user count on Facebook.
• Of the one billion active members, approximately 168 million are from the United States, followed by 61 million from Brazil and 60 million from India. (Social Bakers)
• Approximately 81% of Facebook users are outside of Canada and the United States (Facebook Newsroom).

MySpace Statistics

Several key social networking statistics related to MySpace were described in an article by The Guardian in February 2012.

• There are 25 million total registered users on MySpace.
• MySpace offers the largest free music collection online with a catalog of over 42 million songs.
• The MySpace Facebook app had 1.6 million monthly active users between January 15 and February 14, 2012.

Twitter Stats

Twitter has grown to become one of the most influential social media websites on the Internet today.

• Twitter reached a user base of 500 million users as of July 2012 (Semiocast).
• According to the same Semiocast article, over 140 million Twitter users are based in the United States, followed by over 40 million from Brazil, approximately 35 million from Japan, and over 30 million from the United Kingdom.
• As of July 2012, approximately 170 million monthly active users are on Twitter (TechCrunch).
• The average number of tweets sent per day is 140 million as of March 2011 (Twitter Blog).

LinkedIn Statistics

The official "LinkedIn Press Center About page" reveals many key facts and figures related to the professional social network.

• LinkedIn has over 187 million members as of September 2012, making it the largest professional network on the Internet.
• There are members from over 200 countries and territories around the world.
• As of September 2012, 63% of members are located outside of the United States.
• 4.2 billion professionally-oriented searches were performed in 2011.
• Over 6 million members are from Canada, as of August 2012.
• More than 2.6 million companies have a LinkedIn company page.
• As of the second quarter of 2012, more than 75,000 developers are working with the LinkedIn API.
• An average of 25% of unique visits can from mobile apps during third quarter of 2012.

Pinterest Statistics

The very visually-oriented Pinterest pinboard network launched in March 2010. It has grown substantially in popularity since then. In February 2012, TechCrunch acquired exclusive Pinterest data from a comScore report.

• Pinterest receives over 11.7 million unique monthly US visitors.
• The average user spends 98 minutes per month on Pinterest.
• Pinterest is the fastest independent site to reach 10 million monthly unique users in the United States.

Google+ User Count

A story posted on Yahoo! News reported that Google+ broke 400 million total users as of September 2012. Of this figure, approximately 100 million are active monthly users.

YouTube Statistics

Formerly an independently-owned web property, the Google-owned YouTube is now the world's most popular video sharing website. YouTube has a statistics page in its online press room, which contains the following facts and figures as of November of 2012.

• YouTube has over 800 million monthly unique users.
• Every month, over 4 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube.
• On average, 72 hours of video content are uploaded to the site every minute.
• 30% of the site's traffic comes from the United States.
• There were over 1 trillion video views in 2011.
• More than 20% of global views are coming from a mobile device of some kind.
• Over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter every minute.
• Over 500 years of YouTube videos are watched each day on Facebook.

The Growing Social Network on Mobile

When looking at social networking statistics, it is important not only to look at the number of users and their demographic information, but also how these users are accessing the networks. Social networking is no longer restricted to laptops and desktop PCs. More and more people are accessing social media from their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Indeed, according to Jeff Bullas, more than 250 million people access their Facebook accounts through a mobile device as of September 2011. It is highly likely that with the proliferation of the iPhone, iPad, Android devices and other mobile devices that this figure continues to grow. Mobile-centric social networks like Foursquare further accentuate this emerging trend.

Chuck Reynolds
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