Are you looking for a current understanding of the scale of social media across the globe? Well look no further than the extensive study undertaken in March 2008 by Universal McCann - Power To The People - Wave3.
The research covers input from 17,000 internet users across 29 countries and was undertaken to understand the rise in consumer generated content and how people are using social media.
It is certainly the most extensive global report I have seen on the subject of social media adoption.
Key notes from the Power To The People - Wave 3 report include the following statistics:
- 83% of people are watching online video, an increase from 62% at the time of the last study in June 2007
- 78% of people are reading blogs, an increase from 66% in the previous study
- 57% of internet users are members of social networks
- RSS consumption has increased to 39% from 15%
- 48% of the people surveyed listen to podcasts.
There are also some interesting differences about social media adoption across geographies:
- Blogging - China leads the way with 70% of internet users writing a blog (that's 42 million bloggers versus 26 million people in the US), followed closely by the Philippines at 66% and Mexico at 60%
- Social networking - the Philippines leads the way with 83% of the people surveyed being a member of a social network, followed by 76% in Hungary and Poland alike.
Unfortunately there is no specific data for Ireland - I guess we are such a tiny dot on the social media landscape and as we have discussed here previously we are still behind the curve in the adoption of social media of business blogging an podcasting, though increasingly more people are a member of social networks from Linkedin to Facebook, from Bebo to MySpace.
You can access the Universal McCann Power To The People - Wave3 social media report online.
A word of warning - the file is over 25MB.
Thanks to Theresa Houlihan of Universal McCann for sharing the report with me.
I do recommend that you check out the Universal McCann where you can access other reports including their Anytime Anyplace report that covers mobile phones and portable technology.
Link to original post