Wikinomics: The Exploding Growth In Social Networking Media

We are witnessing a growth juggernaut in social networking.

In the US social networking among broadband users have soared by 93% according to a new report from Netpop Research, LLC that delves into social networking trends and habits (Marketing Charts).

And talking, sharing, and providing opinions and perspectives have been taking up the "new" form of entertainment displacing the traditional forms as shown below. (All charts from Marketingcharts.com)

Of the 105 million US users, a big majority or 76% are counted as active participants to social media.

This implies of the sundry roles of contribution: upload audio/video, post to wiki, publish a blog, upload photos or podcasts, publish websites, tag articles or vidoes, post to microblog, send/forward email, live in a virtual world, post to blog or forum, rate or review products, P2P file sharing, publish personal pages...see below

Meanwhile, WEB 2.0 is being shaped at the margins.

Web 2.0 is defined by wikipedia.org as the ``perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.”

This means less than 10% of US broadband users are “heavy” social media contributors, concentrating their activities to at least 6 applications- such as blogging, microblogging, social networking and photo/video sharing - and connect with 248 people on a one-to-many basis in a typical week (marketing charts.com).

And which is the most used social networking media?

According to Marketingcharts.com which quotes Hitwise it is still MySpace, ``MySpace accounted for 52.21% of those visits, the highest in the category, despite a decrease in visits of 28% compared with February 2008.” Albeit MySpace appears to be losing out to competitors.

Nonetheless, while MySpace is where Americans spent more time among the most visited media: “with 29 minutes and 38 seconds - though this represents a decrease of 2% compared with February 2008”, the fastest growth was seen in Facebook and Tagged.

Again from Marketing Charts, `` In contrast to MySpace’s negative growth, US visits to Facebook increased 149% in February 2009 compared with February 2008. The site received the second-highest market share of US. visits for the month, with 36.03%. Tagged received 2.47% of visits in February 2009, the third-largest number, and had the largest percentage gain in market share of visits among the top five visited websites increasing 280% compared with February 2008.”

Yet based on demographics, Facebook appeals more to older users…

``Looking at the demographic breakdown of visitors to MySpace and Facebook, users between the ages 18-34 still dominate, as 58.81% and 53.91% of US visits, respectively, came from those combined age groups in February 2009. This represents a 2% growth for MySpace and a 14% decline for Facebook in terms of year-over-year percentages. Visitors to the sites who are age 35+ have increased 23% to Facebook in February 2009 compared with February 2008, while visitors from that age group to MySpace have declined 2%.” reports the Marketingcharts.com

All of these underscores of the exploding social networking business model of Wikinomics (openness, peering, sharing and acting globally). This means that from an investment point of view companies actively exploiting these opportunities could be tomorrow’s bonanza.

Importantly we can take note of additional social networking data from Marketingcharts.com:

Additional findings about Chinese users:

-China has a sizable proportion of social media contributors who participate in many Web 2.0 activities, including blogs, micro-blogs, social media, video and photo sharing

-43% of Chinese broadband users (105 million) contribute to forums and discussion boards.

-Young professionals ages 25-29 are the most active users of social media in China. They use more online modes of communication more often than any other age group.

-37 percent of bloggers, or 29 million bloggers, post to blogs on a daily basis.

-41 million Chinese are heavy social media contributors (6+ activities) who connect with 84 people on a ‘one-to-many’ basis in a typical week.

For Chinese Netizens, Netpop said, social media add exponentially to the sources and perspectives available online and represent a new experience for a country accustomed to a single source for media and information.

A global growth juggernaut indeed.