Well, that’s the only conclusion I can draw from this set of statistics collated and published on socialnomics.net by Erik Qualman, an evangelist.
I cannot argue with them or dispute them. They seem to come from a variety of reliable sources. The only conclusion I can draw is that the world and the bulk of people in it live for their social media. When social media becomes more popular than porn (which, as any fule kno, is what the interweb was invented for), then you know that momentum has grown into an unstoppable tsunami of Big Conversation.
And yet. I STILL don’t know of any company that’s making money through social media marketing. Mr Qualman includes this point – “the ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years” – which sounds like a bit of a bullying threat to me. Try telling that to Rolls-Royce, Marks & Spencer, Garrards and Cheney the Bootmaker. I’m in no way involved in the social media ‘phenomenon’, yet somehow I still seem to be able to function perfectly well in today’s society. Apparently products and services and news are now going to find me – well, if it’s OK with them, I’ll stick with the old way of doing things and choose which ones I want, in my own time, on my own terms.
Finally, apparently, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest, after China and India.
Better than that, I wouldn’t have to live there. Or even visit. And I would no longer have to put up with the endless wittering about social media being my future.
How good would that be?
thewordmonger 
Oh Jeremy – such a cynic!:)
I prefer to see it as well-informed questioning. Cynicism is so – well – negative, do you not think?
No doubt though, that we’re in danger of talking ourselves into an online future that no-one has really thought through properly and that people are flocking to out of a desire not to miss out, or to be seen to be somehow less than cutting edge. It’s shiny object syndrome.
Mind – what people do in their private lives is their own business. Endless hours of Facebookery – that’s up to you. It saddens me, however, that otherwise sensible companies are dedicating millions of dollars (and they are) to social media – with no hope of a measurable return. Would that sort of thinking fly in any other comms, marketing or sales discipline? Not so much.
The thinking should be – show me the ROI (in sales and revenue, or tangible value, terms) of social media activity, and I’ll show you some budget.
Just a thought.