Some Social Media Statistics for 2011

So, 2011 is nearly at an end. This year has been a great one for Social Media. 2011 saw the launch of Google’s social network Google+. Billions of Tweets were sent and billions of pieces of content were shared on Facebook. According to the Social Media Revolution 2 video released earlier in 2011 Facebook is the 3rd largest country on earth, but it seems that this is not the only significant figure of the year.

Here are some Social Media statistics for 2011:

• In 2011 Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited website on the Internet.
• 11% of the planet’s population now has a Facebook account.
• There are more Facebook users (800 million plus) in the world than motor vehicles.
• The average Facebook user spends 700 minutes a month on Facebook.
• There are 510,000 posted comments, 293,000 status updates and 136,000 uploaded photos every minute on Facebook.
• In fact, 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every month.
• In 2011 Twitter reached more than 225 million users. There are more than a million Twitter users in South Africa (according to June 2011 statistics)
• In 2011 more than 150 million Tweets were sent per day (1736 per second).
• Twitter’s personal record reached almost 9,000 tweets per second in 2011 (when Beyonce announced that she’s carrying Jay-Z’s child during the MTV Video Music Awards).
• The average Twitter user now has 115 followers.
• In 2011 Linkedin reached 135 million+ users.
• Every second 2 users sign up for Linkedin.
• YouTube reached 490 million unique visitors (who generate 92 billion pageviews) per month in 2011.
• In 2011 YouTube’s users uploaded 35 hours of video per minute.
• To put things into perspective: More video gets uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than 3 Major US TV networks have manage to created in 60 years.
• 3500 photos per second are being uploaded on Flickr per second.
• Google+ (the world’s youngest social networking website) reached 50 million+ users in 2011.
• Foursquare received more than 2 million check-ins per week in 2011.
• Lady Gaga is the most followed person on Twitter with almost 16 million followers.
• Justin Bieber’s video for his song ‘Baby Baby’ reached more than 659 million view on YouTube.
• 18.8% of total time spent online in 2011 was spent on social networking websites / services.

I obtained most of these above facts from this video, check it out for more Social Media statistics for 2011:

Still think that Social Media is just a “flavor of the week” ? Comment on this post and provide us with your opinion about this. Feedback is appreciated and welcome.

Most of you know me from my social media activities. You are probably well aware that I’m an avid Facebook and Twitter user. I’m approaching 70,000 Tweets and have reached over 2200 followers on my Twitter account (@hennokruger) in 2011. My target for Twitter was a bit higher for this year but I do realize that I was a bit unrealistic (100,000 Tweets and 3,000+ followers).  I have decided to make this my target for 1 July 2012 instead.

Watch this space. Running Wolf’s Rant is regularly updated in the Technology category. Feel free to share anything you find interesting here with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.