How many global social network users are there?
Question by DL Thomas on LinkedIn:
How many global social network users are there?… and, how many videos, posts, images, podcasts and comments did they produce in one month?
Can you put a number to it? i.e. 400MM social media network personas contributed 3.2 billion rich media posts in May
Answer:
Probably the marketing industry is best positioned to answer this one. Some recent studies could be used as a basis for a generalization in other markets. I.e. the statement “Roughly 11 million UK Internet users visited online social network sites regularly in 2007. And the market is booming—60% of respondents to an early-2008 survey said they had created a social network profile, up from 27% in 2007” could be used to extrapolate out a figure for users in similarly developed first-world markets. However, this type of focused study will not show the whole picture; at best you will be able to get glimpses into specific segments of disconnected markets that are unlikely to give you a definitive figure. In any case it’s moving target and will only yield useful data in the form of changes over time if the effort is repeated at regular intervals.
Having said all that the task will need to be approached with a full knowledge of what is happening within the multitude of social networks globally, not just focusing on the western world. For instance, Universal McCann recently released a survey of over 17,000 users in roughly 30 countries with some surprising results. To quote from a recent blog post on the topic… “The study estimates that 83 percent of Internet users in the Philippines have created social network profiles, having the highest percentage ahead of Hungary (80 percent), Poland (77 percent) and Mexico (76 percent).” Below is a link to the McCann report (in pdf format about 26 meg in size)…
Mike Smith – dominoconsultant
Links:
http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/2413%20-%20Wave%203%20complete%20docu…
