The current issue of Time magazine has a cover article on Facebook, plus coverage of several other social media. Here are some facts about the size, scope and influence of these innovations:
- Began 6 years ago in dorm room of Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckenberg as a way for Ivy League students to keep tabs on one another
- Will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen in next few weeks.
- If the website were granted terra firma, it would be the world’s third largest country by population.
- The site had 117 million unique visitors in the U.S. in March, since some 70% of its users are in other countries (the Facebook site has been translated into 70 languages so far)
- More than 1 in 4 people who browse the Internet not only have a Facebook account but also have returned to the site within the past 30 days.
- It’s fastest growing demographic is users over 34, who now represent 28%.
- Users share more than 25 billion pieces of information with Facebook each month
- Through the photos people share, Facebook collects nearly 1 billion unique images a week.
- With 48 billion unique images, Facebook houses the world’s largest photo collection.
- Facebook is free to users, making money through its robust ad system flashing 176 billion banner ads at users in the first 3 months of this year, more than any other website
- In first month of its new Open Graph feature (enabling users to flag content on web pages), Facebook almost reached the point where it will process 100 million unique clicks of a Like button each day.
- Searches for “how to delete Facebook” on Google have nearly doubled in volume since the start of this year.
- “What people want isn’t complete privacy. It isn’t that they want secrecy. It’s that they want control over what they share and what they don’t.” – Mark Zuckenberg, Facebook CEO and billionaire, age 26 today.
Social Media Comparisons
- Facebook had 117 million visitors in March in the United States
- MySpace had 42 million
- Twitter had 20 million
- LinkedIn had 14 million
- Only five years old: the beta launch occurred May 2005 (featuring a 19-second shot of co-founder at San Diego zoo).
- The world’s third most visited website after Google and Facebook.
- Users now clock more than 2 billion views every single day.
- Today more video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all three U.S. television networks have created in 60 years.
So What?
Leadership Network has worked hard to help church leaders process the innovations and applications of today’s social media revolution. See for example the latest feature article in Leadership Network Advance. Seems to me that the important points are few in number:
1. Are we aware of how many of our people – and of the people they interact with regularly – are connecting with each other through social media?
2. Have we adequately explored the creative, culturally relevant ways of using today’s social media to make more and better disciples of Jesus Christ?
What do you think are the additional questions we should be asking?
Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 21 books on various aspects of church health and innovation. Recent blog posts include It DOES Matter How Pastors Spend Their Time, More Sociologists “Get” Religion, Meet Some Amazing Leaders Reaching Hispanics in America, More Large Churches Are Bridging the Racial Divide, Why Is “Everyone” Interested in Leadership Development, What’s New in Young Adult Ministries, Questions Raised by Executive Pastors, Downtown Churches: How Visible?, What Is Your Church Learning about Outreach? and Nigerian-Based Church Comes to North America.
Very interesting post, Warren!
Posted by: Mark Edwards | June 17, 2010 at 07:27 AM
You live and learn
Posted by: Lu | September 23, 2010 at 06:22 AM