Social Networking Is On Fire!
March 4, 2008 by Geoff Jennings · Comments Off
Social networking is king. I’ve discussed this before and the latest Hitwise Australia data, Asia Pacific Social Networking Report 2008, adds credence to my rants.
“The 40 leading social networking websites experienced strong growth in the past 12 months in Australia, New Zealand,Singapore and Hong Kong; Australia and New Zealand experienced the highest growth, increasing 62% and 88.6% respectively comparing market share of visits to the Social Networks custom category in February 2007 and January 2008.”
I’m not going to bore the heck out of you with a bunch of figures. But check out the graph below for the figure freaks:
I will draw your attention to a few salient points. Prime among these is that of the traffic moving downstream from the major palyers Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, 89% is sent to second tier players. This means that many folks are maintaining several profiles on different sites. Perhaps, for instance, they display a professional profile on one site, whereas on another they might choose to communicate with close friends and family. This makes me wonder at the feasibility of a site that morphs a professional site like LinkedIn with a Social Networking site such as Facebook. Users could maintain several different profiles in the one space.
It also seems that the major players are attracting different audiences. Well-educated and more affluent types are veering toward Facebook, while Bebo attracts multi-cultural and family groups. Important data, especially if you’re doing WHAT I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU TO DO and integrating your online presence with a social networking facility.
Finally, and this is the boon for me (Watch for that word in my future blog. It’s old; retro, if you like, but I’m big on it at the moment), users are increasingly choosing to communicate with one another via social networks. Imagine the world without email. Imagine the world where people’s social and professional and familial alliances are built around their online profiles. Now dump yourselves right in the heart of that space.
