Few Facts about Social Networking Websites.

As our digital and physical lives blur further, the internet has become the information hub where people spend a majority of their time learning, playing and communicating with others globally. Emergence of WEB 2.0 came with the concept of Social Network. The purpose of social networking is to CONNECT WITH PEOPLE on a very personal level.

Facebook Statistics:

• More than 300 million active users
• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day
• More than 900 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
• More than 2.5 million events created each month
• More than 35 million active user groups exist on the site
• Big brand names, like Ford, WholeFoods, Comcast, IBM, Dell, Southwest Airlines, and many, many more are establishing a strong presence on social networking hubs like Twitter and Facebook.
• Facebook membership has just passed the 300 million mark (that’s nearly the population of USA!) and Twitter is marching towards 18 million users by year’s end! That’s a lot of potential customers!
• Although, started with college kids in mind, over 50% of Facebook’s members now are over 25 years old, over 55% are women (the new buying power), 51% have an annual income of $75K, with 33% claiming to bring home $100K or more.
• Finally, Facebook has become one of the most trusted companies in America, and people spend three times more time there than on Google!

Social Networking Websites Statistics:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
• Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia (note that Facebook is now creeping up – recently announced 300 million users)
• Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
• comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
• 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
• % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  population of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
• 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
• The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
• Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
• If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
• Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Only 14% trust advertisements
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
• Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
• According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
• In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
• Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
• Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

Microsoft ahead of Google & Yahoo in Total Time Spent Online

Despite all the benefits reaped by other companies, this will surely come as a surprise to some. Industry tracker comScore, Inc., last week released a study showing that, in terms of time spent on sites, the Redmond-based Microsoft sites ranked as the most engaging global property in September, followed by Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.

According to the study, Microsoft websites seized nearly 15 percent of time spent online worldwide in September, and almost 70 percent of the time spent on its sites was through Windows Live Messenger.

In September, Internet users spent on the Microsoft website in total 3.9 billion hours, or 14.5% of the time surfing. Such are the calculations of market analysts comScore. In second place were the statistics page of Google against Yahoo! and Facebook. According to comScore, Internet users spent 1.4 billion hours a community party, which gives about 193% higher than in September 2008.

Own research as a basis for the results of the comScore panel studies 2 million users in 170 countries, which shall then be converted into 1.2 billion Internet users aged 15 years or more who use it at home or at work. According to analysts in September, Internet users were on the net total of 27 billion hours. Of the time spent on Microsoft’s website, almost 70% to the Windows Live Messenger. Google Pages users have viewed some 2.5 billion hours, or 9.3% of total time, slightly less than half that time falls on video website YouTube.

Twitter flying high: Lufthansa offers on board facilities

Lufthansa offers plane location info for Twitter, Facebook. Lufthansa has designed an online tool to allow air travelers to share updates during their journeys via Twitter and Facebook.

Dubbed MySkyStatus, the application takes users’ flight information, including departure and arrival data, and matches it to Lufthansa’s feed of airline traffic. The result: automated tweets or Facebook status messages when flights take-off and land, as well as updates en route.

As quoted in media, “Lufthansa digital agency Profero in New York devised the tool, available for any flight, as a simple way to prove the brand’s differentiation, which is its “passion for precision,” says Profero North America CEO Wayne Arnold.

Lufthansa plans to support MySkyStatus with a marketing campaign, and it is considering integrating that effort with the booking engine on Lufthansa.com.

Google Services: Many of Them Depends Upon Your Country

By here, there are so many features which Google is currently offering is totally depends upon the region or the part of the world in which you are leaving. Described below are the Google’s services that will only work in one country, or a limited set of countries….

* At YouTube, sometimes videos will read “This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions.” Maybe you can click on the frontpage thumbnail, but then the video won’t show.
* At Google Books, even for stuff which is in the public domain in a country where you access the book, sometimes you’ll hit a block. For instance, when I want to read “The Comedies of William Shakespeare”, I’m seeing the text “No preview available” here from Germany. (Checking through a US proxy, I can see there’s a preview coming up.)
* Google China has a music service where you can listen to songs. It’s linked straight from the google.cn homepage. But what if you click on it from outside China? You’ll get the message “Music streaming/download services are not available in your region”.
* Google logo doodles are often country-specific. (This week’s comic doodle reportedly only shows in the US, for instance, unless you call up a special URL.)
* Google Video sometimes brings up country-blocks for specific videos. At one time, I saw the message “We’re sorry, but this video is not available in your country.” (While Google Video still had upload functionality linked from its homepage, you could also select target countries from a dropdown box for your content.)
* Users of Google China are in the position of having quite a bit of features and content blocked for them. For instance, Google recently removed the “sign in” link from their homepage, they stopped offering auto-completion on the search box, you can’t disable safe-search, and they censor certain web results, images, or news sources. (Search for e.g. human rights, and you’ll find a censorship notice by Google at the bottom of the page. On a side-note, an ad says you can “Find human rights on eBay”, though.)
* When you enter www.gmail.com in your browser and you happen to be in Germany, you’ll see the note “We can’t provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead.” You can access Gmail here by typing mail.google.com instead. You can’t get a @gmail.com account in all countries, but need to settle with @googlemail.com in some places.
* New Google features and functionality are often initially offered in US English language versions of the interface only (like most Gmail updates) or on the .com domain (such as the new iGoogle layout). Although that’s not country-specific, it hides new things from non-English speakers.
* The Google SMS service isn’t available in all countries. The UK homepage reads, “Google SMS is currently not available in the UK. The service is still in beta, and we’re working hard to make it better.”
* Google Apps only supports the purchasing of the following top level domains: .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info – all others need to be purchased elsewhere.
* Free giveaways often officially only apply to the US… although others say they received them anyway.
* Google says, “The Google Latitude web app currently supports iPhone/iPod Touch OS 3.0 or above. For now, it’s available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and we hope to bring it to more countries soon.”
* Phone service Google Voice is only available for the US.

Source :Blogoscoped

Yahoo ! GeoCities: Now Closing after 15 Years of Web presence

Geocities was created in 1994 as an easy way for people to create a Web presence. Fifteen years later, Yahoo has decided to close the doors on the iconic webpage service. Ars reminisces upon the good times of Geocities.

U.S. Internet search giant Yahoo! Inc., said it would close out GeoCities, a personal Web page service it purchased for $2.9 billion in 1999. The GeoCities Web page now sports a prominent note that says, “Sorry, new GeoCities accounts are no longer available.”

Yahoo bought GeoCities for more than $2.9 billion in dot-com-priced stock in 1999, when GeoCities had more than 1.1 million users. However, while the idea of having a personal presence on the Internet has caught on, GeoCities turned out to be a backwater, not the mainstream.

Still unclear is what exactly will become of GeoCities pages. New sign-ups are already no longer permitted, but what about existing sites?

Here’s how Yahoo put it: “You can continue to enjoy your Web site and GeoCities services until later this year. You don’t need to change a thing right now–we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.”

The purchase 10 years ago anticipated the popularity of personal Web pages, but GeoCities did not match up to the interactive capabilities of social networking services, like Facebook, Cnet said. Unsurprisingly, Geocities has declined in popularity in recent years thanks to the plethora of similar and easier-to-use services—not to mention the rise of social networks like MySpace that allow the same demographic to make equally horrific pages and try to pick each other up at the same time. Add to that the explosive popularity of various blog platforms and the suffering of the online advertising market, and it’s really not a shock to see Geocities going the way of the dodo.