Social media is turning out to be less about friends and more about business. Words such as "like" and "follow" translate into terms like "money" and "market" very easily. Thumbs up turn to dollar signs as citizens around the world are making their activities known and their dollars available.
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But in the end, what is it all worth? How much business is really done through social media? Is there any sort of divide between the social media reality and the ways that we spend money?
This infographic answers those questions and many more. It covers the numbers about the sheer volume of users on social media, but it also helps us see easily what that all means in terms of dollars. Use of social media has more than tripled in the last three years, so it is very interesting to see how the spike in use has amounted to a boom in the social media marketplace.
One interesting case study displayed on this infographic is the nation of Australia. People down under have turned social media into a virtual economy of its own. And in the US, people spend nearly $200,000 every minute online. The numbers will blow your mind, but the graphics help make sense of it all.
The big picture: the fastest growing marketplace on the planet is unfolding in the palms of our hands on smartphones exploding with the financial power of social media.