In a nutshell social media is a fancy way to describe the humongous number of continual online conversations people are having. Surprisingly (or maybe not) nearly 75% of Americans use some form of social technology.

Another astounding fact is that over 60% of the global internet population visit social network sites. Overall, visits to the various social network sites have become the fourth most popular online activity. That puts it ahead of personal email.

One more stat and we’ll take a break from them for a few paragraphs. Time spent on social networks accounts for 10% of all online activity. It’s growing three times faster than the overall internet rate.

If you’re one who doesn’t currently utilize social networking or perhaps doesn’t understand it, there is a very good chance you will be soon.

Think back to email. Many of us were slow to jump on board but can’t imagine life without it now. Or consider that cell phones weren’t that prevalent just 15 years ago. Now it seems that every 10 year old has one.

Here’s what you really need to know. Social media is quickly becoming a major form of communication of the people. What used to be controlled by the establishment (publishers and newspapers for example) has taken a major shift.

It’s been said that it’s like “word of mouth” on steroids”.

Now for a few more statistics to help you realize that if you or your business isn’t taking advantage of social media for networking purposes you are missing the boat big time.

On You Tube every MINUTE 13 hours of video is uploaded. 100 million videos are viewed on YT every day. Have you seen the advertising now accompanying the most popular videos?

13 million articles are available on Wikipedia and 13.6 billion photos are archived on Flikr.com by mid 2009.

There is an average of 3 million tweets on Twitter each day and Twitter grew 1382% from January to February 2009. If you currently don’t “get” Twitter you probably will very soon.

It only gets better. If Facebook were a country it would be the eighth largest in the word, just ahead of Japan. 5 million minutes are spent on Facebook every day and it now has over 1 billion pieces of content including news stories, blogs, notes and photos, etc.

Blogging has become very common. So much that if you are a person of intelligence you will probably be expected to share with the world your views via some media platform in the near future.

Finally, 93% of social media users believe that companies should use social media as a way to improve their business, especially its communication. But the question is: Will they?

Or will they just use it like they tend to use other forms of communication and keep it mostly one way?

The beauty of social media is that it allows for wonderful interaction between parties. That’s why it has spread so quickly. And it is changing the world. http://stevelauri.com/

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