Fresh Social Media Statistics For 2013: The World Is Moving Fast.

The statistics surrounding social media use continue to get more interesting.  According to Gregory Ferenstein's "Fresh Stats on Social Networks" article that was published on TechCrunch's site back in February, there have been some shakeups in the landscape that may not be surprising to those of us who are addicted to nearly every platform that is included in the research.

Ferenstein cites that Pinterest has nearly caught up with Twitter in terms of usage, with 15% of the US population using Pinterest and 16% using Twitter.  Women are more than five times as likely to be hooked on the aspirational-image based site, although, let's be honest - there are far more men on Pinterest than will ever 'fess up to having an account.  And let's also be honest that even if the men in our lives do not have a Pinterest account themselves, they are benefitting from our addiction in the form of countless new recipes (some which belong on www.pinterestfail.com!), and from a slew of additions to the honey-do list when we stumble across endless home improvement ideas.

Facebook still has far and away the largest user base, with 67% of the US adult population actively stalking long lost high school acquaintances.  Instagram boasts 13% of the population signed up, and Tumblr wraps up the statistics at 6%.

The important thing to consider about these statistics is how we can capitalize on them as marketers.  The world of marketing has changed rapidly over the past decade, and the pace of change is only accelerating further.  Print and television media, which were once kings of the marketing world, are now only one of the many options among the newly developed landscape of marketing platforms.  As marketers, it is key to meet our customers "where they already are" - and they are clearly logged into social media. 

With the rapidly changing landscape, the addition of new players to the social scene is also picking up.  Each new platform seems to attract users more quickly than the last.  Pinterest and Instagram were hardly household words just two years ago, and now they have sucked in a statistically significant size of the population.  This shows that, as marketers, we need to be able to adopt new platforms more quickly than our consumers so that we are already there and ready to market to them before the onslaught of users gets on board.  Cycle times are increasing and innovation and speed are key to keeping pace.

Here's a link to the original article with the statistics:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/17/social-media-statistics-2012/