Posted June 29th, 2009 by Mike Rynchek
Recently I was asked by a client to pull together some high-level social media statistics. I found some interesting facts from several different sources. I thought I would share. These stats are of course changing by the moment but this is a pretty good snapshot of the social media environment.
The next question is always… Why such growth and how should companies best to take advantage of these amazing statistics? Any thoughts? More to come soon.
Twitter:
- From March 08 – 09 Twitter grew at a rate of 2,565 percent – Nielsen. (Ning was number 2 at 283 percent.)
- Roughly 2.4 billion Tweets… on average about 11 million per day and growing – Giga Tweet
YouTube:
- 300 million users worldwide – YouTube.com
- 14.8 billion video “views” as of January 2009 – Comscore
- 147 million U.S. Internet Users watched on average 101 videos per person in January 2009 – Comscore
- Roughly 43 percent market share of video viewing as of January 2009 – Comscore
Facebook:
- As of February 2009 Facebook has the highest monthly active users of any social media site. – Compete.com
- 200 million active users. (Currently closer to 225 million)
- 100 million users log into Facebook daily
Tags: Facebook, Online Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
Posted June 26th, 2009 by Jason Douglas
Jason Douglas
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
That’s the slogan twitter could go with, considering everything that has happened within the last couple weeks. It all started on June 12, with the Iran Election debacle with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being declared the winner over Mir-Hossein Mousavi with Mousavi claiming vote fraud. Since then, with many news outlets unable to report from Iran to discuss the current chaos, people have been relying on Twitter to communicate with the rest of the world, and has been at the top of twitter’s ‘trending topics’ section for the last week and a half.
That is, until yesterday happened. Twitter was where I, along with hundreds of thousands of others, found out about Farrah Fawcett’s passing. Though her passing was not a surprise, it was still a newsworthy event that created a lot of discussion. Fans paid tribute to her in their own ways on Twitter the entire morning. This story dominated the conversation and the ‘trending topics’ section until 4:40pm central standard time.
At that time, when I refreshed my twitter page, I noticed that Michael Jackson was #9 on the ‘trending topics’ section. Upon clicking it, I find that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital with cardiac arrest. The source was TMZ. I read the brief article, even refreshed it to make sure I was seeing things correctly. Upon the refresh, they had a new update about his condition. At 4:50, people on twitter were posting links to TMZ reporting Jackson’s passing. I instantly checked @cnnbrk, cnn.com and cnn.com/live, abcnews.com, nytimes.com, latimes.com, bbc.co.uk; a few of the mentioned sites were just breaking that he was sent to a hospital, with no further information. It was around 5:15 locally when some sites were finally reporting his passing. That is a 25 minute gap from when I found the story verifying his passing on twitter to when very reputable news sources reported it. Twitter had an overflow of people talking about is passing, and effectively crashed twitter for a few minutes. Jackson’s passing was 1-4 on the ‘trending topics’ right after, and currently holds six of the top ten topics: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 9.
The above stories are only the most recent examples of how social media, in this case: twitter, kept myself and millions of others in the loop for current events of all types. I found out about former Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad’s passing on twitter an hour before any local news sources reported it. I found out about US Airways Flight 1549 and the crash into the Hudson River from twitter. This image was taken by a person on a ferry, who was able to post it to his twitpic account. Anyone with a cell phone and an internet connection has the ability to be a reporter, and the ability to share their story instantly.
I will use twitter and the people I follow as my number one news source. Since twitter does not censor regulate what people say (freedom of speech), I still check more reputable news sites to get verification. Recently, there were false reports of Patrick Swayze’s passing that spread fast through the social media community. As with any news report, you must consider the source.
My choice source: twitter, the number one news source.
Tags: Farrah Fawcett, Iran, Iran Election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Michael Jackson, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, news, Social Media, TMZ, Twitter
Posted June 10th, 2009 by Mike Rynchek
Minneapolis, MN, June 10, 2009 – Spyder Trap Online Marketing, a leading provider of online marketing and social media consulting services, today announced that it has signed a Master Service Agreement with UnitedHealthcare. The agreement allows the two firms to greatly expand their existing relationship.
“We have worked with Spyder Trap Online Marketing on some challenging projects recently,” said Bud Flagstad, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for UnitedHealthcare. “Their knowledge of the online space along with their work ethic and dedication really provide value to our staff and have elevated the online marketing initiatives on which we’ve collaborated.”
“Healthcare is at the forefront of the public conversation today,” said Mike Rynchek, President of Spyder Trap Online Marketing. “UnitedHealthcare leads the effort to deploy online technologies to reduce the cost of providing care while increasing the quality of that care. We are very excited that this new service agreement will allow us to help them implement that vision.”
For additional information or for sample copy, please contact Glenn Seaberg of Spyder Trap Online Marketing at 612-872-4847.
# # #
Spyder Trap Online Marketing provides online marketing services including strategy, website development, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and online public relations. For more information, contact:
Glenn Seaberg, Vice President
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
612-872-4847
612-872-4861
gseaberg@spydertrap.com
www.SpyderTrap.com
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