What Is The Speed Of Social Media?

Written by Jeff Bullas - View Comments
Categories: Social Media


I recently had the pleasure of  travelling on the Eurostar train between London and Paris via the tunnel under the English channel at 300 kilometres an hour which is a great way to travel and sure beats What is the speed of social mediatravelling by Donkey.

I certainly enjoyed the experience as I was mesmerized  for over an hour in the cafeteria carriage as  we weaved and tilted around gentle curves and inclinations towards the French capital at what seemed a frenetic pace.. my friends back in their seats wondered what had become of me and whether I had sucumbed to the wiles of a French maiden.. but sadly no, it was the intoxication of speed not pheromones that had enraptured me.

Train travel in the last century has moved from steam to Maglev (magnetically levitated),  with the worlds fastest train being recorded at 581 kmh in Japan recently. (Check out this video it makes my train look like it was out for a morning stroll).

The speed of social media in the last 12 months is astounding with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter still growing at astonishing rates and new uses, applications and channels emerging such as Foursquare, Google Buzz and real time search in Google being made available.

The hardware platforms continue to evolve to make it simpler and more intuitive to view information anytime, anywhere using devices such as the iPad from Apple and faster smart phones on wireless broadband. The speed of change is going to both destroy, invigorate and create industries before our eyes that we have never imagined. The average age of females that are casual gaming with games like Farmville on Facebook  is 48, with 46% of all the casual gamers in the US being over  50.

So what speeds are the the champions of social media travelling at?

  • Facebook is travelling at over 400 million users with over 100 million added in 9 months
  • MySpace has over 57 million unique members in the US alone
  • Twitter is growing at over 1000% in the last 12 months with a similiar growth in the previous year
  • Twitter has over 75 Million users making over 50 million tweets a day
  • Linkedin is now at over 60 million users
  • YouTube is now serving over 32.4 billion videos a month to Gen Y and any other generation that loves a good video in the USA alone
  • The number of blogs is estimated at over 200 million

The speed of change and growth in the social media and it’s transformation of the web is producing a revolution in marketing, shopping, socializing, publishing, video gaming and music (just to mention a few), that will change the world as we know it. The opportunity and ability to leverage your brands message and content is amplified by the speed and size of the global social media audience. The simplicity and low friction of the social media channels enables your images, videos and media to spread faster than you have ever imagined.

Are you up to speed, and what opportunities and threats do you see emerging ?



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  • http://twitter.com/golateef Lateef

    The opportunity seems to be to use these advances in communication technology to increase the speed of results for business. Traditional systems for finding new customers are slower than the technology allows, so it would be valuable to find ways to shorten the path to results using these technologies.

  • Jane

    Did you know they have Oyster Cartes on Eurostar?!

  • http://rvsocialmedia.com/2010/04/15/social-media-is-spreading-fast/ Social media is spreading, fast. « Social Media for Dealers

    [...] media is spreading, fast. I stumbled upon this quick list of stats today at Jeff Bullas’s blog.  It’s a quick and dirty rundown on exactly how fast social media is [...]

  • http://briancurrin.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/what-is-the-speed-of-social-media-%c2%ab-jeffbullass-blog/ What Is The Speed Of Social Media? « Jeffbullas’s Blog « Brian Currin

    [...] PDRTJS_settings_1020078_post_2765 = { "id" : "1020078", "unique_id" : "wp-post-2765", "title" : "What+Is+The+Speed+Of+Social+Media%3F+%C2%AB+Jeffbullas%27s+Blog", "item_id" : "_post_2765", "permalink" : "http%3A%2F%2Fbriancurrin.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F16%2Fwhat-is-the-speed-of-social-media-%25c2%25ab-jeffbullass-blog%2F" } What Is The Speed Of Social Media? « Jeffbullas’s Blog. [...]

  • http://www.currin.co.za Brian Currin

    Excellent article Jeff … thanks again for your inspiration …

    Brian

  • http://jeffbullas.com jeffbullas

    And great Tomato and Basil Soup .. but even better than that… fantastic company

  • http://www.bradymediagroup.com Richard Harmer

    Great Info! You give great content and info every business needs. The speed is nothing short of amazing! It truly is mind boggling!! I LOVE it!

    Thanks Jeff

    Richard
    Brady Media Group
    Dallas, Texas

  • http://twitter.com/inspirationguy/status/17850955036 Ash Mashhadi

    What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD /via @jeffbullas @jaycbee @2morrowknight

  • http://twitter.com/webkitten/status/17852029423 Resh Sidhu

    What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD /via @jeffbullas @jaycbee RT @2morrowknight

  • http://twitter.com/sarahgriffiths/status/17852375798 Sarah Griffiths

    Nice summary post RT @inspirationguy: What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD /via @jeffbullas @jaycbee @2morrowknight

  • http://twitter.com/rbakercnn/status/17972659080 R Baker

    What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD via @jeffbullas @jaycbee

  • http://twitter.com/hilzfuld/status/18023202179 Hillel Fuld

    RT @jeffbullas: What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD

  • http://twitter.com/oemoral/status/18023225014 Efe Moral

    RT @hilzfuld: RT @jeffbullas: What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD

  • http://www.mymarketinggenie.com/makemoney4ever ianmalone

    this would be a great help to those people who want to enter online business.. social media.. surely help them to market business well

  • http://twitter.com/reveali/status/18326451854 jwcorcoran

    RT @jeffbullas: What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD

  • http://twitter.com/jaramosp/status/18327250690 Jairo Ramos

    RT @jeffbullas: What Is The Speed Of Social Media? http://bit.ly/aNLqTD

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  • http://www.3daysinlondon.info Cindy

    WOW! WOW! AND WOW! Those stats are incredible. I loved the Eurostar, went to Paris in 2005, brilliant trip. Not sure I would want to travel on those trains in Japan tho, thats a wee bit too fast for my liking. Its ok when flying, doesnt feel quite so fast. I do love the net tho, amazing how in a split second you can find just about anything you want to know. thanks again for a really interesting post.
    Cindy
    @notjustagranny

  • http://nashandassociates.com Brian Nash

    Jeff

    Talk about speed! Since I started blogging and using SM channels to get our presence out there, our firm has gone from the bottom of page one (on our best day)or some meaningless place on page 2 or 3 of search engines to consistently ranking in the top three (this morning number 1) on page 1 – in less than a year. This result is by using our keyword searches in our geo-targeted areas of business. I am amazed how fast this has happened. Kudos to you for all the great posts. I religiously read what you write. It’s with the help of people like you and the other gurus of the blogging and SM worlds that such a success story can occur. BTW – it’s fun and I’ve met some fascinating, great people along the way! Keep up the great work, I’ll be reading along!

  • http://twitter.com/interieurman Henk de Haan

    Reminds me the song of the sixtees: Keepon Running

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