Social networking stats from around the world…

Social Networking has certainly changed the face of the internet these past few years.

Who could have predicted that the Friends Reunited platform would explode into an array of networking sites where joining Texas Hold-em-up poker applications and posting your situation in the bathroom would be common place?

Monitoring the social networking trends is vital to understanding the current market and how you should utilise these free tools for your business.

500 Million Active Users

Only last week, Facebook has announced that it now has over 500m active users, whcih is an amazing feet considering it was only created 6 years ago in a university dorm room in the US.

Facebook has now become the poster child of social networking on the world-wide-web. Worldwide it is the dominant force but when you look into specific countries you will find that some others have seen growth.

MySpace, Flickr and Bebo appear to have declined in the past year, according to these figures from Nielsen, yet in the US MySpace still has 46.5 million active users (FB has 127 million), compare with the UK where it is a comparatively small 2.7 million users (FB has 24.2 million).

International Variations

Interesting international variations are seen, both in the amount of time Facebook users spend on the site each month and in the competing networks’ popularity in different countries.

This is the kind of research that SME’s need to do when targeting social networks. Why spend all your time and effort on Myspace in the UK when it is mainly used now for musical purposes, as oppose to Facebook which is used vastly more by social networking users.

Check out the image below which should give you a good starting point on social media optimisation….

Click the image to see it full screen - image courtesy of BBC © MMX

View the raw_data from nielsen on social networking