Social media has transformed the whole fabrication of the world. The rapid and vast adoption of social media technologies is changing how people build relationships, how they reach out to required information about entertainment, celebrities, businesses, and favorite topics of discussion, and importantly how people organize to demand political change. Who uses social media? When did the rise of social media start and what are the largest sites today? Here we answer these and other key questions to understand the use of social media around the world and how significantly it has modified the communication styles during the Covid-19 pandemic. I begin with an outline of key trends and conclude with a perspective on the rate of adoption of social media relative to other modern communication technologies in marketing and commerce.
Majority of young people are not aware of the fact that the first social media site to reach a million monthly active users was My-Space. It achieved this land marking 2004. This is arguably the beginning of social media as we can explore it from the internet.
For example, TikTok which was launched in September 2016, and reached half a billion users by Mid 2018 already within two years of its launch and got extremely popular among people of all ages. To put this in perspective: TikTok gained on average about 20 million new users per month over this period. The data also shows rapid changes in the opposite direction. Once-dominant platforms have disappeared. In 2008, Hi5, My-Space, and Friendster were close competitors to Facebook, yet by 2012 they had virtually no share of the market. The case of My-Space is remarkable considering that in 2006 it temporarily surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US.
Most of the social media platforms that survived the last decade have shifted significantly in what they offer users. Twitter, for example, did not allow users to upload videos or images in the beginning. Since 2011 this is possible and today more than 50% of the content viewed on Twitter includes images and videos. With 2.3 billion users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform today. YouTube, Instagram, and WeChat follow, with more than a billion users. Tumblr and TikTok come next, with over half a billion users.
According to a report by OECD report 2019, in rich countries, majority of youth use social media sites. In a fair estimation, if Facebook has 2.3 billion users, then a minimum of 30% of the population on the globe uses social media
According to a report by OECD report 2019, in rich countries, majority of youth use social media sites. In a fair estimation, if Facebook has 2.3 billion users, then a minimum of 30% of the population on the globe uses social media. This can be just an average for a few world regions, and specifically for a few population groups, usage rates are much higher. children aged 16 to 24 tend to use social media more frequently. In fact, in rich countries, where access to the net is almost universal, most young adults use it.
Apart from this, there are interestingly some amazing perspectives on how briskly and profound these rapid changes are, occurring in the diffusion of social media networks. Consistent with PEW International, the share of people adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019. Even on a worldwide stage, the speed of diffusion is striking Facebook surged from covering around 1.5% of the planet’s population in 2008 to around 30% in 2018. Now the question is, how does this compare to the diffusion of other communication technologies that make a part of our standard of living today? For instance, social media’s growth within the US is comparable in speed and to some extent also in reach to it of latest communication-enabling technologies, including computers, smartphones, and therefore the internet. The phenomena are rising all told over the world particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic to the online is sort of universal, most young adults use it frequently now.
As we know Social media are widely used in marketing strategies. The active use of social networking sites has made themselves an indispensable source of information for firms on which they can conduct promotional activities. Precisely speaking, COVID-19 has generated countless opportunities not only for businesses but also for many other sectors of human life. For example, stay-at-home orders have changed just about everything, including our relationship with the internet, how often we use it, and how we use it. We are online more than ever, working from home, attending school from home, catching up with friends via video calls. And as stores and restaurants around the globe shuttered their doors for months on end, we all headed to the internet to order essential items online, causing unprecedented online order numbers. Hence, with social media use soaring, retailers must give followers and customers seamless ways to buy and create engaging, exciting social media content, and meeting customers where they are is critical to the sustainable success of the business.
Summing us I must say as indicated in a report “10 Tech-related trends that shaped the decade” published by PEW that the last decade began with the Arab Spring and ended with protesters in Hong Kong and elsewhere using social media to promote and organize their causes. In some cases, governments fought back by shutting down the internet, while opponents of some activists mounted social media campaigns of their own. Future is all virtual and organizations and governments, businesses and services must embrace the change and make proactive measures to deal with this revolution.
The Author is a PhD Scholar at IUIC, Chairman of PARAS Education Services, Co-founder of the University of Success Islamabad, Fellow of PGLS Russia & 35th Event Wise, Netherlands. He tweets at @AsifMalik30