The milestones of a social media addict

Now, I am happy to confession I am a facebook Junkie and I think that a lot of people would nod in agreement. The other day I nearly sent my friend Sam into a fit when I emailed her some  startling news that our mutual friend Jesse had just deleted Facebook as she “wasted to much time on it and need to finish her uni degree”. Sam was shocked. And couldn’t believe the social suicide Jesse had just committed. Sam replied “Some people surf, some read, some even whale watch, but I, I Facebook.” Has Facebook really become a listable hobby? Why are we all so obsessed? And where did it all begin? For me the beginning was MySpace.

Russia tops social media

The beautiful St Basil's Cathedral

Story by Matt Rhodes from Fresh Networks 

Earlier this year we reported on how Russia is the fourth largest social networking market in Europe. Data from TNS showed that use of social media and social networking in Russia is widespread, making it the fourth largest market in Europe for social networking behind the UK, Germany and France. In part this position is driven by strong local social networking sites, principally Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники), which reports some 30 million registered users, and VKontakte (В контакте) with some 28 million registered users.

These numbers are truly impressive and perhaps the rate of growth in membership of social networking sites in Russia is even more so. But recent research from comScore shows that Russians are the most engaged users of social media in the world.

The research showed that in May this year, 1.1 billion people went online worldwide, and 75% of these visited social networks and online communities. In fact, the typical user of the internet spent 3.7 hours on such sites in May. But users from Russia led the way with the typical internet user in that country spending a total of 6.6 hours ever month on these social media sites. Brazil was second with an average of 6.3 hours per user and Canada was third with 5.6 hours per typical user. These numbers compare with 4.6 hours spent by the typical UK internet user on social networks. And a typical 4.2 hours for people in the US.

By this simple measure, the Russian internet audience appears to be perhaps the most engaged in the world in social networking and online communities. This highlights the danger of focusing on English-language-centric developments in online communities, social media tools and social networks. In Russia, two local sites each reach more than 40% of the entire Internet population in the country. Facebook, by contrast, reaches only 2% of the Russian internet audience.

Some of the most interesting developments in the use of social networks and online communities are happening where the users are most engaged and where the user bases are growing most rapidly. This is more likely to be in the markets where the audience and access is developing quickly. Perhaps we should all look to Russia and Brazil more when we want to know what comes next.

The power of one

While journalists are finding it more and more difficult to get into countries in turmoil, such as Pakistan, Iran and China, to expose the political atrocities that are occurring, the world wide web is having no problem getting past border security. Twitter, Facebook and Flickr are defying government censorship, and becoming a new forum for freedom of speech. While an everyday chatting tool for many, Twitter has become a weapon of communication used as a way to combate censorship. You tube has replaced TV news reports and Flickr is giving photjournalism a wider and more accessable audience.

It seems the impact of the social networking sites has not been lost on governments themselves, with the Chinese Government shutting all social sites down in a bid to suppress information from the deadly riots in China’s western region of Xinjiang, in July this year.

Here are two tweets I’ve found:

Aslyssakuhns: Sorry I couldn’t update in China because of the riots … the government shut down all social sites but now I’m back!
1.14PM Aug 3^rd from web

GengHongwei: Fackbook and Twitter were blocked in China since the Urumqi Riots!
4 days ago from web

Here is a video from YouTube taken of the political unrest in Tehran on the 20^th of June and captures an Iranian student being shot to death by police.

Most of the ametuear videos on the unrest in Iran were shot while people are hiding in houses or alleyways and shows the determination of the public to demonstrate to the world what is really happening.

Here we can see people taking journalism in their own hands to inform the world of whats going on. Social media is helping breaking barriers and sends a message to governments that the people can’t be silenced.

Other links:
China blocks access to Twitter, Facebook after riots
Twitter, facebook hit by cyber attacks