In 2015 almost everyone on the planet is either a user of social media themselves or has been affected by it in their daily lives. Whether it’s the mechanism for organizing revolutions against repressive regimes, a tool to gather news and information, or simply a way to interact with friends – Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have become an integral part of human communication.
Indeed, in the United States 70% of adults with internet access are said to be active on social media. In fact,
Some 14% of the people in the entire world were active on Facebook on Monday, August 24, 2015
…and that was just a single day! That number increases massively when you factor in casual users over longer periods of time.
While there are many theories and some preliminary evidence about how this might be impacting society, such as less face to face contact, the sheer statistics are still fascinating themselves. Coupofy created a new Infographic called the Social Media in Real Time counter with the aim to demonstrate the exponential growth of social media before our very eyes, and the results are quite interesting.
The counter takes the leading 9 social media platforms and shows the user how much activity has taken place as each second ticks by. This includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Google Plus, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn. If you ever wanted to know how many new mobile users log in to Facebook in 10 seconds, well now you can!
… 20 to be precise, with 40 using a desktop or other device. This might actually seem quite small, but then the number of users already active is going to be astronomical. In the same 10 seconds 25,000 private messages were sent, there were 48,830 status updates, 22,670 photos uploaded, 8,330 links shared, and 16,670 friend requests sent. Sadly we can’t see how many people reciprocated.
Interestingly in the same time frame Twitter users made 57,870 Tweets, which is more than the number of people on Facebook who made status updates. This even though Facebook has more users. There were also 243,060 searches made on Twitter. What are so many people hoping to find?
Where the numbers really get impressive is with celebrities. It’s no secret that out of anyone, it is society’s most famous that have garnered the most social buzz. Take music sensation Adele. The music video to her new single “Hello” received 97,020 views on YouTube in just 7 minutes! It’s the fastest watched video in YouTube history, with a current total view count of over 548 million.
Then there are fans and followers. Fellow pop icon Katy Perry is one of the most followed on Twitter, with over 78.2 million! In 7 minutes she had another 189, which isn’t far off the overall average per account.
Striding ahead on Facebook is world renowned soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, who has a total of 108 million fans. Interestingly his rate of new followers seems to be dropping compared to Perry’s Twitter followers, as in 7 minutes he garnered another 76.
Whether you believe social media is killing real human connection and promoting a vapid celebrity culture, or you enjoy it for what it is and can see the benefits of an interconnected world, its reach is only going to get wider.
In the meantime you can watch it grow with the Social Media In Real Time counter:
Presented by Coupofy
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.