Social Media (SoMe) – What Comes Next Is Even More Disruptive

By Brent King

Last year Facebook hit 1 Billion users. It is reported that the average Facebook user spends 75 minutes per day using Facebook. Mobile use has also increased significantly over the last two years. Globally smartphone growth year-on-year was at 42% in 2012, with 17% global penetration, but more significantly with most developed economies expecting 70-80% smartphone penetration within a couple of years. iPhone growth towered over the previous iPod, and iPad over the iPhone, but today Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy III are being adopted at 600% the rate of the iPhone (Source: Gartner/Morgan Stanley).

This has led to massive increases in social media use over mobile. WeiXin, a new Social Mobile Network powered by TenCent in China, took 14 months to reach 100 million users, and just 6 more months to reach 200 million. Snapchat, based in the US is sending 60 million mobile-initiated photos per day, or 5 billion snaps in little over a year. Facebook’s own mobile efforts have borne real fruit with a 40% increase in revenue largely attributed to mobile advertising improvements.

Google Plus is enjoying significant growth, overtaking Twitter for the coveted title of the #2 social network on the plant. Don’t count Twitter out just yet though. This year Twitter has broken some of it’s own records as well including the highest number of retweets (3.5m in 24 hours, across 200 countries) for @BarackObama’s “Four More Years” tweet

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