I was pursuing through Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and came across a post he had that featured a recent bit of research regarding social media or as Universal Mcann calls it “Wave 3”. In this latest round of Universial Mcann research they call attention to several trends noted by the following statistics:
• Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development. If you are online you are using social media
• Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region
• All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves
– Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration
in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
• 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating
and sharing content
– 55% of users have uploaded photos
– 22% of users have uploaded videos
• The widget economy is real
– 23% of social network users have installed an application
– 18% of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates
• Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media– 73% have read a blog
• The blogsphere is becoming increasingly participatory, now 184m bloggers world-wide– The number one thing to blog about is personal life and family
• China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers, more than the US
and Western Europe combined
• Social media impacts your brands reputation
– 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog
– 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs
Universal Mcann makes a poignant note in their statement:
“Social media is an important shift, as it summarizes the importance of interaction, the consumer and the community. The term emphasizes the idea that as a collective it can have as much impact as any traditional media platform. In truth, to claim social media as “new” is slightly misleading. From the beginning, the internet was founded on message boards, chat rooms and peer to peer communication. What has changed is the mass involvement that modern social platforms inspire.”
To that point social media has been around as long as humanity has been around. The friction in the communication between and across large numbers of people has been removed and this is fueling the a requirement that we as marketers must accept, adapt to and embrace in our daily actions. Nuff Said.
With the rising rate in social media, where will this niche in society be five years from now?
Posted by: Paul | August 02, 2008 at 07:41 PM