Social Networking has seen rapid
growth in the past couple of years with 1.2 billion social network users
worldwide in 2011 and the users are forecasted to reach, 1.43 billion (2012),
1.66 billion (2013) and 1.85 billion (2014) according to eMarketer. Consumer
Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc mostly
used by consumers as well as businesses have been seeing tremendous growth as
evident in the number of users like Facebook (850 million), Twitter
(465million), LinkedIn (150 million) in 2012. These social networking sites had
significantly influenced the lives of millions of users, how they communicate
with friends and family, voice their opinions, collaborate and share knowledge,
content and social networking sites too provided the tools and platforms that
are easy to use, provided an unique experience, games and applications and kept
users hooked to the sites as evident in the comScore report that online users
spend 1 minute in ever 5 minutes on social networking sites. According to
Radicati Group report, the total number of worldwide Social Networking
accounts, including both Consumer and Enterprise
accounts, expected to grow from about 2.4 billion in 2011, to about 3.9 billion
in 2015. The number of Social Networking users is expected to rise from 798
million users in 2011, to over 1.2 billion in 2015. (Note: users typically
have more than 1 account).
Source:
eMarketer
"Worldwide Social Network Usage: Market Size and Growth Forecast"
report.
Asia Pacific is the dominant
region due to the number of countries and online population is higher. China dominates the region with close to half of
the users of the total Asia Pacific social network users are from China . Other
countries from Asia Pacific that figure in the top ten social network users
list are India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Latin America is
the second dominant region with Brazil
dominating followed by Mexico
and Argentina .
North America is dominated by US and Canada . Eastern Europe is dominated
by Russia .
Western Europe is dominated by Germany ,
UK , France , Italy
and Spain . Worldwide social network users YoY
growth is expected to slow down from 2012 as the market reaches maturity where
in the YoY growth for 2012 will come down to 19% from 23% in 2011 and is
forecasted to grow by 16% in 2013 and by 11.6% in 2014. Social Networking sites
like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc will drive the growth along with localized
social networking sites in regions like Asia
will also contribute to growth. Mobile devices will drive more social network
users in the emerging markets as most of mobile handset makers are equipping
the mobile handsets with social networking for the customer use.
