It’s The Age of Social Networking

I happened to peruse a video that mentioned some staggering statistics. Social networking and user generated content has finally arrived, and here are some of those amazing facts. Read on…

Almost 96 percent of Gen Y is now on some social network or the other. Social media has now taken over porn as the Numero Uno activity on the Web – probably giving Hugh Hefner some really serious nightmares about the future of Playboy 

What social networking sites have accomplished in a few months when compared to traditional media:

• Radio will take 38 years to reach 50 million users
• TV will take 13 years to reach 50 million users
• IPOD will take 3 years to reach 50 million users

In context and comparison, Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months – at the rate it is growing, if it were a country, it would be the World’s fourth largest! Even more amazing is the fact that Facebook’s fastest growing segment is 55-65 year-old females.

It is time the Indian Government realized the potential of online instruction when you read that a Department of Education survey done in the United States revealed that students receiving online instruction out performed those in a traditional classroom mode of instruction!

As a potential employee, if you’re not present on LinkedIn, well, do it soon, since 80% of the companies are using this Web site to find potential employees!

And for those who know of or use Twitter, chew on this. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama, and almost 80 percent of Twitter users use mobile as their primary tool for uploading their tweets!

E-mail is slowing losing its relevance at a social level. Gen Y now connects with each other using Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Flickr, Digg, MySpace and YouTube. Speaking of YouTube – it is now apparently the second largest search engine and Wiki’s 13 million plus articles are considered better and more accurate than even the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Unimaginably, the power of social networking can potentially make or break a product or a service. And what better way to promote a product or service that word of mouth. Internet users care more about what or how their social circle ranks or reacts to a product as compared with Google rankings. Understandable when in context that more than 75 percent people trust what their peers say about a product and a dismal 14 percent trust advertisements. Sooner rather than later, the concept or television, radio and print advertising will be akin to flushing money down the toilet.

Social networking is no longer a fad, it is the future.