Social Media Revolution

It is not easy to ignore the social media revolution and the way it's shaping the way people, brands and causes interact with each other. 2011 began with a tight race between Google and Facebook in terms of the number of user visits. YouTube, a video sharing and social network site, is the second largest search engine worldwide. Such trends are rapidly increasing. 

Twitter experienced rapid growth between early 2010 and early 2011. Total user accounts more than doubled during this period from 75 million Twitter accounts to 175 million. LinkedIn saw a 100% increase in professional profiles, from 50 million to 100 million, during the same period. Now, almost 80% of companies use LinkedIn to find qualified job candidates for certain positions. Mobile Facebook users, those using mobile gadgets to access the site, skyrocketed from 65 million to 200 million. We're definitely experiencing a social media revolution here. Social media is now outperforming porn. 

A whopping 50% of the global population is below 30 years old. This is the prime demographic for social media sites, as many of these young whippersnappers view email as grandpa technology. This trend is rapidly changing the way companies do business. People tend to trust friends and family more than ads and hype, and consumption patterns follow this. The only sustainable way for many companies to stay in business is to get people talking about their products and services and interacting with brands on a social level. This is why you see many brands and companies on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. 

The social media revolution is not all about brands, however. People share just about anything the human mind can produce. Videos tend to be very popular items to share on social network sites. Political activists frequently share information that they feel will be enlightening to people who read/view it. Content producers post 1,700 articles per hour on Wikipedia, another social networking site. 

It is clear from the numbers that the social media revolution is what it says it is-a revolution. The modern world is one of massive media consumption, and much of human life revolves around this. Social media changes the way this whole web of relationships is configured. Therefore, we can expect the social media revolution to revolutionize just about every aspect of life whether we're plugged in or not.