A mass of social media and web 2.0 stats

I like numbers and haven't posted any for a while.

So I was pleased to find a bunch of useful social stats while crawling the net the other day.  

These stats starkly put into context why social networking and social media is important.

It's important in all walks of life, especially finance which is so integral to commerce and to society.  

So here's a few numbers to keep you thinking today:

• Time on social networks represents 16% of all the time people spend on the internet, or one out of every six minutes, compared to one out of twelve minutes in 2007.

• Spending on social network advertising is around $6 billion this year, according to research firm eMarketer. 

• Mobile advertising is growing fast thanks to smartphones, and will reach $3.3 billion this year but grow to $20.6 billion by 2015, according to Gartner.

• There are 150 million blogs on the internet with 1.6 million posts generated daily.

• Tumblr, a blogging site, deals with over one billion page views a week and 10 million posts per day, an increase of 8 million daily posts compared to March 2010.   

• 60,000 websites are added to the Internet every day.

• YouTube users upload 35 hours of video every minute, or two million uploads a day.

• Facebook handles 1.5 billion updates daily from 600 million active users, with 73% of all American internet users on there.

• Zynga, the gaming firm on Facebook, garnered 100 million users on Cityville in just 6 weeks and generated $7 billion globally in commerce last year, according to InStat research. 

• Twitter handles 155 million tweets daily, compared with 50 million a day a year ago.

• Flickr has five million images uploaded daily, or 60 pictures a second.

• Consumer subscriptions for premium levels of online service, such as additional storage for personal photo collections and similar new “cloud” services, are likely to reach $6 billion by 2016 according to Forrester Research.

And if you didn't think this was Internet Bubble 2.0, here's a few other stats:

LinkedIn

Founder Reid Hoffman, the serial investor.

What is it? The site that takes the 'social' out of social networking – a place for professionals and businesses to interact. LinkedIn is the first pure social networking site to go public, hence the astronomical price-tag.

Value: $11bn; Turnover in 2010: $243m

Groupon

Founder Andrew Mason – bargain hunter with an interest in politics.

What is it? The source of money-off vouchers for every product and service you care to think of. It has grown quickly and already has a big international presence. IPO announcement is thought to be imminent.

Projected value: $15bn. Turned down $6bn bid from Google this year; Turnover in 2010: $760m

Zynga

Founder Mark Pincus the entrepreneur who turned us all into farmers.

What is it? The producer of games such as Farmville for social networking sites including Facebook. A float could be announced as soon as November.

Projected value: $10bn; Turnover in 2010: $850m (estimated)

Facebook

Founder Mark Zuckerberg – the college dropout who wants us to share.

What is it? Not the original social networking site or necessarily even the best, but Facebook has ruthlessly bulldozed its way to world domination. When Goldman Sachs sought investors for a $500m fund raising for the company earlier this year, it was inundated. During that exercise, Facebook said it would float next year.

Projected value: $50bn; Turnover in 2010: $2bn (estimated)

Twitter

Founder Jack Dorsey– the software architect and innovator.

What is it? A chance to share your thoughts with the world in 140 characters or less – as 200 million users already do. A fund-raising last year valued Twitter at $3.7bn, but since then both Google and Facebook have been linked with a bid for the company, sending its value soaring. If no offer materialises, an IPO is likely next year.

Projected value: up to $10bn; Turnover in 2010: $45m (estimated)

Yelp

Founder Jeremy Stoppelman, Russel Simmons – software engineers and friends turned business partners.

What is it? A social networking site that allows users to search for and review local businesses and services. Yelp's co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman announced in late April that the company would go public, but did not say when. Google and Yahoo are both said to have made offers of around $500m.

Projected value: $500m; Turnover in 2010: $50m (estimated)

Pandora

Founder Joe Kennedy.

What is it? Similar to Spotify, it's an online music service that allows you to create personalised internet radio service and find new music based on your old and current favorites.

Value: $4bn; Turnover in 2010: $119m

Yooku

Founder Victor Koo, former President of Chinese Internet portal Sohu.

What is it? A Chinese version of YouTube.  Youku's video library includes many full length, popular films and TV episodes from the West which other popular sites, such as Youtube, cannot display because of copyright restrictions.  These laws either do not exist in China or are poorly enforced, enabling Youku to broadcast copyrighted content without license.

Value: $7bn; Turnover in 2010: $60m

Renren

Started in December 2005 by University of Delaware graduate Wang Xing with Tsinghua University graduates Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang and Tang Yang.

What is it? A Chinese version of Facebook.  In Feb 2011, Renren made a pre-IPO announcement that it had 160 million registered users. Then in April 2011, it had to modify that statement to "a total of 31 million active monthly users." 

Value: $9bn; Turnover in 2010: $76m

Sources: “Why Women Rule The Internet”, Techcrunch, March 2011; “How Much Daily Content Is Published To Twitter, Facebook, Flickr?” Scribbal, April 2011; “Investors beware: is the new dotcom bubble going to burst?”, The Independent, May 2011; “Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr Grab Record Visitor Numbers”, Scribbal, June 2011; “Technology: the internet bubble”, Financial Times, June 2011