Networking like a Boss

Everybody knows what social media is these days. Young kids may not know what social media is, but they would know the examples; such as the almighty Facebook and the most common species of bird Twitter. Social networking is an act that is carried out on social media platforms. It is the activity of adding people, be it existing friends and family or strangers, to be a part of your social media platform. At first, networking was a term used by professionals to meet other professionals to expand their contact list in hope of doing business with each other. Although now on social media you can still network for professionals, but it is mainly used for recreational purposes. Social networking is also able to introduce you to meet people of the second, third or of even more degrees. This is particularly good because it shows the trail of people to which you are connected to.

But these are things that the general public would know. So here are 6 interesting facts about social networking which I found on http://blog.bufferapp.com/new-social-media-facts:

1.) Females Are Most Active Social Networkers

I found this to be one of the most interesting finds from the survey. Even more striking is that females account for 62% of all Facebook pageviews according to Nielson. If sorted by age group people between 18-34 years old were the most active people on Social Networks.

Interestingly, there are 2 networks for which male users dominate. On LinkdedIn and Wikia, men are more likely to log on than females each day.

2.) 23% Of All Time Spent Online Happens on Social Networks and Blogs

Close to a quarter of all our time we end up visiting Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networking sites, together with blogs and news sites. Second in line here is online gaming, that however only accounts for 9% of time spent.

The most important part here is that time spent is a lot more valuable than users. Twitter’s latest usage stats have also started to move away from overall users, to daily people signing in. Which Social Network is the stickiest one for you?

3.) Internet Users Spend More Time On Facebook, Than On Any Other Web Brand Combined

When Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that Facebook doesn’t care about how many users, but how much time each of them spend on the site, it seems that there work is paying off.Over 53.5 billion minutes have been spent by US Facebook users in May 2011.

What strikes me the most that this is more than on any other online brand combined, beating the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr with ease.

4.) More Women Watch Video On Social Networks, But Men Watch Longer

Have you tapped into video marketing yet? If not, these figures might help to get you started. The survey found that women start streaming a lot more videos on Social Network but lose interest a lot faster.

Whereas men, only commit to watching a video if it makes sense to them. This of course leads to men watching longer and spending more time with few videos.

5.) Active Social Media Users Are Influential Offline

This is one of the most surprising stats for me. The argument Nielson develops with their data is quite compelling though. Active Social Media users have developed a strong sense of networking and know how to speak up for themselves.

They are more likely to write reviews for restaurants and other offline experiences and become more proficient in the offline world through this. If you are looking for a way to make the best use of this, then you can take a look at Klout’s latest experiment: You are only allowed to attend an offline event if your Klout score is 40 or higher.

6.) Social Networking Sites Reach 60% Of Global Internet Users

The last figure might appear quite obvious, but real data for these claims, that many have in their heads is still very powerful. In over 10 Global Markets the analysis has shown that Social Networking sites are reaching 60% of active Internet users.

This holds true for example for countries like Brazil, where Orkut dominates, or Japan, where the site FC2 blog is visited by over half of Japanese users.