The phenomenal rise of social media in the last few years certainly leads us to rename our current era as 2012SNE – Social Network Era, instead of 2012AD. The latest figures from eMarketer prove just this. The report says that in the current year, 1 in 5 people across the world will log on to a social network atleast once a month. This means that a staggering 1.43 billion users will log on to one or the other social networks atleast once every month.
According to the report this is a steep increase of 19.2% in the number of users as compared to the previous year. In fact, by 2014 this number is expected to be 1 in 4 with the current rate.
This massive growth is essentially fuelled by Facebook, the mother of all social networks. Apart from these amazing figures, the report throws up a few more surprises. The top five countries with highest Facebook users are as follows:
| Country | Number of Users (in millions) |
| United States of America | 141.2 |
| India | 68.1 |
| Indonesia | 49.1 |
| Brazil | 45.4 |
| Mexico | 25.6 |
If you thought the list of highest Facebook users would feature Europe, North America or Australia, you have certainly missed the mark. The United States is the only country (hardly surprising) from the developed world to feature in the list of top 5 Facebook users. The next four rankers are India, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico, all emerging economies with a burgeoning young population.
Although the US is way ahead of the rest, it has almost hit the saturation point already. Thus, it will not be impossible for countries like India to catch up, especially with its massive population, infrastructural growth and a booming economy.
However, the absence of countries like China, the UK and Russia is a major surprise and indicates that Facebook still has some ground to cover.
At this rate, it won’t be too long before social media spreads to all the countries. Is it really possible that every individual on the planet is present on a social network? Or do you think that social media has already hit the roof and will only slide from this point? Whatever it is, only time will tell!
Do you think social media will truly engulf the world or that it will slowly phase out? What do you say?
