Facts On Social Media

Social Media is a big part of everybody's now a days life. Keeping up to date with friends and families life and sharing you thoughts with the world and what you are thinking. We now live in a society were it is deemed not normal to be on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It is a revolution and new era for people of our age.  Twenty years ago people would use letters, telephones to keep up to date with people now we have the power to do this with our mobile phones alone. It benefits our lives everyday though as a lot of people will keep tabs on their facebook waiting for that next notification to come though or seeing something hilarious and tweeting about it.

As of January 2013 there was 32.8 million users of Facebook in the UK and this is just over half of the nation. If it was a country it would be the third biggest behind India and China which is about 1,000,000,000 users. Its amazing to think that such a small and simple idea would grow into one of the globes biggest businesses. Because as well as being able to use Facebook as a social tool it does a lot more then this. It has got social games such as Farmville, Cityville this is used to interact with your current friends online and help build up the community spirit online. It also helps businesses promote themselves online as they will gather information about what pages you like, and what sports, tv and music you watch and listen to and they take that to their advantage. For example companies like Lynx will use Tv adverts to lure customers in to check out their Facebook page and from their you can see any latest deal and offers and competitions you enter. Then when your friends have seen this they will check it out. It is a clever piece of marketing as one of the most powerful forms of marketing is word of mouth as it can spread quickly. I think social media like this is great as sometimes you find out about new products that are coming out and fits in well with the purpose of using social media as it helps build up a good spirit and the more people that are getting involved the bigger and quicker the company will grow.

Twitter came a little bit of Facebook it has a totally different style and layout to Facebook. Its not as commercial to start with as i feel the whole aim of Twitter is that you are in control of what you do and your opinions are there to be seen. With Facebook you have that freedom but at times it is used as a tool to promote and i think that is why the Twitter community is growing quickly. The hash tags you use go into a data base and if you type in a hash tag used you will see like minded people who are perhaps very similar to you and because you have less characters to play with sometimes you have to be a bit more creative with your tweets. As of 2013 there has been a total of 163 billion tweets and in 2012 around 175 million tweets were sent daily. Twitter also gives you the chance to be more engaged with companies and celebrities and you can send them your own thoughts unlike on facebook where it is more then likely they will have a a team who work on their pages. The risk with twitter though because anybody can see what you are doing all the time the chances are there will be people more willing to abuse you as a celebrity and it can be hard to have a private life as there will be everyone who will be watching your every move.

Also now the rise of picture social networking sites are now a powerful force. The main one is Instagram which allows its users to upload pictures daily aswell as this you get to use the variety of filters available on the app. The social side of this is your friends can look and comment on all your pictures and aswell as using # more people can enter your world. It was taken over two years ago by Facebook it has now gained 50 million users and generates 575 likes and 81 comments every second. Since it has started over 4 billion photos have been uploaded. I think this is a popular app because the user can take vintage photos and as a user they love taking pictures regularly as its a way of keeping your own album.


I think the main reason that social media sites are so popular is the fact it is free. This means that if people have a access to the internet people will start using it more because it gives you the chance to express yourself or as i like to call it an online presence. Sometimes our online presence is very much different to us as for some people they feel they can be themselves online. It gives you more chances to keep up with friends and family as well as national news and in general without it we would be very much lost.

Some links i used: http://blogsession.co.uk/2013/01/facebook-statistics-2013/

http://www.dazeinfo.com/2013/01/10/social-media-statistics-2013-facts-figures-facebook-twitter/