Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? Welcome to the World of Socialnomics.

• Is social media a fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?
• By 2010, Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers and 96% of them will have joined a social network.
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web.
• 1 out of 8 married couples met in the U.S. last year via social media.
• Years to reach 50 million users: Radio 38, TV 13, Web 4, iPod 3. Facebook100 million in 9 month. iPod applications: 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s four largest, with China being 1st, India being 2nd and the U.S. being 3rd.
• China’s ‘QZone’ has over 300 million using their services.
• US Depart of Education: On average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama.
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé. Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshman.
• YouTube is world’s 2nd largest search engine with over 100 videos.
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles. Studies show it’s more accurate than Britannica. 78% of these articles are non-English
• If you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.
• There are over 200,000 blogs. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands. Do you like what they’re saying about your brand?
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14% trust advertisements.
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do.
• Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009.
• 70% of 18 to 34-year-olds have watched TV on the Web. Only 33% have ever viewed a show on DVR or TiVo.
• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone.
• 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle.
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
• In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services. They will find us via social media.
• Social media isn’t a fad; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content such as web links, news stories, blogs, notes, & photos, are shared on Facebook daily.
• Successful companies in social media listen first, and sell second.
• Successful companies in social media act like party planners, aggregators, & content providers than traditional advertisers.