International social
media trends
Conversational PR
Clare Hamilton-Eddy
March 5th 2009

Introduction
PURPOSE?

Overview of some global social media trends

 Social networks
 Blogging
 Micro-blogging
 Mobile
Good starting reference point for latest trends, stats, sites

Help with pitches


From the outset
BROADBAND: availability, speeds, costs = crucial
More than 17 million households in the UK, or 67.2% of the total population, will

subscribe to various broadband technologies in 2009
Globally, average broadband take-up was 56 per cent of households in 2007,

compared with 12 per cent in 2002
 The UK is above average, with 60 per cent of households connected
 The Netherlands leads the way with 81 per cent
 Canada = 66 per cent / Sweden and US = 62 per cent and 61 per cent
 Limited broadband access/high prices have slowed high penetration in some markets (eg
Italy/Spain) but situations are rapidly changing
 BUT: there are also signs that growth rates in the broadband sector are slowing. Only the
USA and Germany have seen a higher growth rate in 2007 than in 2006
 eMarketer Oct 2008

Clocking up the hours
How much time are we spending online?
The US leads the way at just over 15 hours per week in 2007 - up from 11 hours in

2004
The UK is second at nearly 14 hours per week, an increase of nearly 6.5 hours a

week in 2004
Canadians are the biggest social networkers with 55 per cent of internet users visiting

a social networking site.
More women than men are using the internet

 Some 56 per cent of Italian women use the internet compared to 44 per cent of Italian men
 Japanese and Spanish women follow at 55 per cent, with the UK and France having an
equal gender split. Women in the US are bucking this trend, at 48 per cent compared with 52
per cent of men using the internet.

Global overview: internet users
Internet users:
 China: 253m
 United States: 228m
 Japan: 107m
 India: 63m
 Germany: 57.5m
 Brazil: 50.8m
 UK: 41.1m
 France: 36.1m
Full list can be viewed here:

http://www.clickz.com/stats/web_worldwide

Global overview: social networks
2007
 Myspace
 Facebook
 Classmates.com
 Myyearbook.com
 Bebo.com
 Livejournal.com
 Blackplanet.com
 Hi5.com
 LinkedIn
 Tagged.com
Twitter = 22


Social network map
http://www.oxyweb.co.uk/blog/socialnetworkmapoftheworld.php -
November 2008

A closer look
FACEBOOK
Currently available in 15 languages

Canada has more active users than anyone else, outside US

 with more than 7million
The UK is the third largest country

 just under 7million users
Remaining top 10 countries (in order): Australia, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, South

Africa, France, Hong Kong
 http://www.slideshare.net/onehalfamazing/social-networking-statistics-and-trends-
presentation
YOUTUBE
Currently in 19 regions across the globe in multiple languages

US, Japan, UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, France, Poland, Brazil, Canada,

Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand, Germany, Russia, Korea
LINKEDIN
More than 30 million people use LinkedIn, widely-regarded as one of the

more well-know social networking site for white-collar professionals
 November 08 Metrics in Action

A quick look at Germany…

Germany cont.
Germans are very loyal to their social networks. Over 70 % said they will

remain long-term active users on their current network
85 % of all Germans who use the internet are members of social networks

The majority said they intend to use social networks via mobile phones in the

near future
Youtube, Clipfish, MyVideo and MySpace = most popular German sites

StudiVZ and Xing are extremely popular as is Niimo.com (like Twitter)

 People using all these networks are between 23 and 47
 StudiVZ: now one of the leading social platforms in Germany with about 13
million members
 PWC study, April 2008
Facebook currently has 2 million members

Social media trend for 2009? Consolidation – large companies are going to

buy up the small ones
 Ehssan Dariani, owner and founder of StudiVZ

A quick look at France
2009: 7 million users –
http://www.skyrock.com/blog/
fast growth
2009: 4 million bloggers
Over 50% of French bloggers use
Sky Rock as their blog platform
www.copainsdavant.linternaute.com
2009: 10 million users – slower growth
2009: 20,000
users only

France cont.
The French distinguish themselves, both statistically and anecdotally, ahead of

Germans, Britons and even Americans in their obsession with blogs
60 per cent of French Internet users visited a blog in May, ahead of Britain with 40

percent and little more than a third in the United States
 Comscore
Likewise, French bloggers spent more than an hour in June visiting France's top-

rated blog site, far ahead of the 12 minutes spent by Americans doing the same and
less than 3 minutes for Germans
 Nielsen/NetRatings
More than three million Internet users, or more than 12 percent of those online in

France have created a blog
 Médiamétrie
French blogs stands out in other measurable ways

 Longer, more critical, more ego-centric, more negative and more provocative than US/UK
 CRM Metrix

The rest of Europe

It’s all about Twitter!
Twitter is dominated by newer users - 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008

 There are currently over 6m users signed up to Twitter
An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day

35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers

9% of Twitter users follow no one at all

There is a strong correlation between the number of followers you have and the

number of people you follow
 Hubspot: Q4 08 report

The global rise of Twitter
http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2009/02/twitter-facebook-up-myspace-technorati.html
Twitter visitors up over 750% from last year:


Global Twitter patterns

Going mobile
Nearly half of social networking users (46%) have visited a social network on a

mobile device
Out of those users, 70% have visited MySpace and 67% have visited Facebook

No other social network, including those specialized for mobile devices, even reached

15% adoption
Based on these numbers, ABI Research concludes that consumers do not want

new social networks for mobile phones - they just want to interact with the social
networks where they're already members
Out of those users, only 1% had visited a social network on their phone only.

ABI Research (November 2008)

With the rise of smartphone-based computing, applications like Brightkite, Loopt, and

others are slowly growing their user base
Bebo - \"Bebo Open Mobile\" whose goal is to provide the mobile industry with tools

designed to help integrate the site and its services into manufacturers' handsets – O2
as first UK carrier last month (Beta in December saw 60% growth in traffic in just four
weeks)
 Nokia currently in talks with Facebook
Google recently announced a new mobile location-aware application called Latitude,

which lets you track your friends' whereabouts using your mobile phone

Mobile cont.
Mobile social networking is helping drive mobile web usage into the mainstream in

Western Europe, where the number of users accessing social nets with their phones
jumped 152 percent from November 2007 to November 2008
 ComScore
That translates into some 12.1 million users across the UK, France, Germany, Italy

and Spain all using their phones to access social nets
Leading the way are the British with the highest penetration of mobile social

networking at 9 percent in the three months ending November 2008
 Average penetration across all countries is 5 percent
In the three-month average period ending November 2008, 34 percent of phone

owners in Western Europe who visited social networking sites accessed social media
exclusive of all other mobile Web content
 Comscore
Women make up nearly half of the audience (48 percent) exclusively visiting social

nets, but only 32 percent who access other forms of mobile web content

*Includes top five countries listed.
Mobile
Mobile search via mobile device
June 2007 – June 2008
US and Western Europe
Source: ComScore
Country June 2007 June 2008 Percent change

France 1,483 2,196 48%

Germany 1,316 1,837 40%

Italy 2,010 2,810 40%

Spain 923 1,293 40%

UK 3,454 4,497 30%

Europe 9,186 12,633 38%

US 12,353 20,793 68%


Further afield: US
105 million Americans participate in social media

In 2008, 79.5 million people—41% of the US Internet user population—visited social

network sites at least once a month, an 11% increase over the previous year
Seven million are considered \"heavy\" social media contributors

 This is defined as people who participate in six or more activities and connect with at least
248 people on a one-to-many basis on a typical week. The most popular platforms include
Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, and Yelp
Time spent communicating online went from 27 percent of time online in 2006 to 32

percent in 2008
 This includes activities such as e-mail, instant messaging, posting to blogs, and photo
sharing
Time devoted to entertaining activities online went from 49 percent of the time spent

online in 2006 to 20 percent two years later
 Entertainment was defined as participating in online games, accessing videos, and
accessing Web sites for fun
54 percent of micro-bloggers post content or \"tweet\" daily

NetPop Research, March 2009


US cont.
Across the Web, social networking sites experienced a 13 percent gain in U.S.

audience from December 2007 to December 2008
Top Social Networking Sites by Unique Visitors, December 2008
Property December 2007 December 2008 Change (%)
(000) (000)
Total 183,619 190,650 4
Internet
audience
Social 120,201 135,715 13
networking
audience
MySpace.co 68,905 75,919 10
m
Facebook 34,658 54,552 57
Flickr 13,540 20,698 53
Classmates 10,002 16,553 66
For full list, visit:
Online
http://www.clickz.com/3632665
MyLife.com* N/A 15,018 N/A
*
Buzznet 4,973 9,781 97
AOL 40 9,208 22,701
Community

US podcasts
Podcast growth will continue at least through 2013, when there will be 37.6 million

people downloading podcasts on a monthly basis – more than double the 2008 figure
of 17.4 million
As a percentage of internet users, podcast downloaders will grow from 9% in 2008 to

17% in 2013
Males between 18 and 29 are the most common downloaders

 Emarketers
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006937

Asia: China

Asia: China

Asia: China
Chinese govt roles in Social media
The focus has primarily been on internet content, and bloggers are affected. But, social media is

beyond blogging and can be contained in micro venues of social network pages, comments, and
Twitter. As social media continues to pervade in China, it goes to reason that the government is
looking at these outlets as well. It may only be a matter of time before it focuses attention here.
http://brain-vibe.com/2009/02/09/china-governments-role-in-social-media/

Asia: India
India had 45.3 million active internet users and 62.5 million claimed internet users in

September 2008
 IAMAI & IMRB International
India’s mobile subscriber base topped 350 million users by end of 2008

 Its network is the second largest in the world after China
ITU Telecom Asia


The global future?
Filters: are rapidly becoming a pertinent issue for developers of social media

services. As a result, social aggregation platforms are in the perfect position to
lead the pack
 Challenge: not becoming too noisy
New real-time web app launches that integrates Twitter, FriendFeed & more

iTunes adds social networking features; but it's still a closed development system

Facebook signs up to OpenSocial

Facebook Connect authentication will become dominant method for authentication on

the web
Twitter will start to make more and more money

Twitter is going to continue to grow and eventually get acquired, while Facebook is

going to see further decline
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_trends_2009.php


The global future
•Uber blogs
•blogs that combines different content streams into one large blog with one primary top level
URL, will explode in 2009
•In 2009 big will be better. Not big networks of many sites, but big blogs that break out of the
narrow niche focus that has been typical of commercial blogging until now, and instead go
wide in content but focused on one brand and one URL.
•Duncan Riley, December 2008
•Blog Posts to Become More Interactive
RSS is fantastic but it's a pull in technology. It's not real time
get to a point where Twitter and FriendFeed are mechanisms for this, where blog posts
become a lot more interactive
Matt Mullenweg

Summary
Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider

economic, social and cultural development
 If you are online you are using social media
US / UK very much leading social media revolution, Europe playing catch up

However, emerging markets must not be ignored!

Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any

other region
 China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers, more than the US
and Western Europe combined
 India will soon be a force to be reckoned with – watch this space
Facebook, Twitter, blogging here to stay

Mobile is the next big thing for 2009 as is social aggregation and filtering

That said, globally, (over 17 markets of the world) well over half the population (58%)

do not know what social networking is
 Synovate 2009
Constant education, evolution…WATCH THIS SPACE


Questions