Facebook in facts and figures infographic 2012

48 Significant Social Media Facts, Figures and Statistics Plus 7 Infographics

I came across some interesting statistics that has me quite concerned about the dental hygiene levels on this planet.

Apparently there are 600 million more people that own a mobile phone compared to those who own a toothbrush.

Some research reveals that there are 4.8 billion mobile users but only 4.2 billion people with a toothbrush.

Does that mean that every mobile should be sold with a free toothbrush or should you need to produce your toothbrush before you are given possession of your new mobile phone to ensure that future personal close encounters are engaging and pleasant?

Another interpretation of those statistic is that toothbrushes are too expensive.

The Importance of Statistics

Statistics are used to make important decisions and social media statistics, facts and figures are often used to justify new media marketing strategies and tactics to the CEO.

The social media landscape changes rapidly and keeping up with the latest numbers is an essential part of continuing to make your marketing relevant and focused.

Here are the latest facts, figures and statistics for seven major social networks that marketers need to take notice of.

I have also embedded an infographic for each social media network.

Facebook

Facebook continues to innovate and evolve and the the last 12 months have seen the new timeline introduced to personal profiles and brand pages as well as the purchase of Instagram, the  mobile photo app platform, which has never made any money and has only 13 employees for a generous price of $1 billion.

This underlines two key elements that  emerging as pivotal to the continuing evolution of the social web.

1. Mobile
2. Visual engagement

These two factors will continue to wield sizable impact and disruption to social networks and business marketing.

So what other numbers are important to take notice of when it comes to Facebook?

Some more Facebook Facts and Figures

• Monthly active users now total nearly 850 million
• 250 million photos are uploaded every day
• 20% of all page views on the web are on Facebook
• 425 million mobile users
• 100 billion connections
• Zygna’s games revenue is currently 12% of Facebook’s total income
• 2.7 billion “likes” per day
• 57% of users are female

Source: InfographicLabs.com

Twitter

Twitter is still the enigma of the social networking fraternity with its usefulness questioned by a lot of people. Its simplicity is still its main attraction along with its immediacy in breaking  news about the latest  ”events”.

Research shows that the main reason people retweet is due to interesting content.

As it approaches its sixth birthday its revenue is slowly climbing with projections that in 2012 its income will  hit $260 million.

Some facts and figures to note about Twitter are:

• There are over 465 million accounts
• 175 million tweets a day
• 1 million accounts are added to Twitter every day
• Top 3 countries on Twitter are USA at 107 million, Brazil 33 million and Japan at nearly 30 million
• Busiest event in Twitter’s history is now “Castle in the Sky” TV screening 25,088 tweets per second (previous record was the last minutes of the 2012 Superbowl with 10,245 tweets per second).

Source: Infographic labs

LinkedIn

LinkedIn started in 2003 as a professional business social network and as of  February 2012, has over 150 million members according to the official press release from LinkedIn.

More facts and figures:

• 2 new members join every second
• USA leads membership at more than 57 million, Europe has more than 34 million members
• 60% of its members live outside the USA
• In 2011 there were 4.2 billion professionally oriented searches on the LinkedIn platform
• LinkedIn now has over 2,116 employees (at the beginning of 2010 it had only 500)
• The fastest growing demographics are students and recent college graduates
• Revenues for 2011 reached $522 million
• LinkedIn is the 36th most visited website in the world

Source: Infographic Labs

YouTube

Communication and engagement is much more than talking or writing and the popularity of  YouTube is evidence of that. The availability of cost effective high speed internet access is making it easy for people to express themselves via video. Brands have seized on its power to be a viral media that augments traditional advertising media such as TV. YouTube’s advantage is it is always available and searchable. (it is the worlds second largest search engine after Google.

This capability has been displayed by the success of the Old Spice  marketing campaign amongst many others.

Some facts and figures:

• 3rd most visited website according to Alexa
• 2 billion views per day
• It handles 10% of the internet’s traffic
• Average YouTube user spends 900 seconds per day
• 44% of YouTube’s users are aged between 12 and 34
• Over 829,000 videos are uploaded every day
• Average video duration is 2 minutes 46 seconds

Source: Speakymagazine.com

Instagram

Instagram on the surface appears very simple. It is an app for your mobile phone that allows you to take a photo, apply a filter to make it look awesome and then you can share it on Twitter, Facebook or to your email straight from the phone.

The headline about this social network was its acquisition for $1 billion by Facebook. This was despite the fact that it hadn’t made a dollar of profit. Despite this sizable investment  it could be a very strategic and savvy move by Facebook that confirms its crown as the top photo site in the world. It also reminds me of Google’s purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 which proved to be a great decision in hindsight.

Instagram Facts and Figures

• Founded in March 2010 with the initial name of “Burbn” by Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger with the $500,000 in seed funding. It was launched in the Apple “app” store in November of 2010. In February of 2011 they raised an additional $7 million including an investor called Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame.
• Instagram reached the milestone of 1 million users in December 2010 (only 9 months after being founded and only 1 month after going live in the Apple “app” store)
• In August 2011 Instagram users had uploaded 150 million photos
• 10 million users were using the app by September 2011
• Version 2.0 released including high resolution photo capability
• The release of the Android app version saw 1 million downloads in 1 day!
• April 2012, Instagram reaches the new milestone of 30 million users

Source: Visual.ly

Pinterest

It appears that simple ideas are sometimes the best.

Twitter is a minimalist 14o character social network, Instagram is a simple social sharing photo sharing app and Pintrest is about pinning images and videos that you like to an online pin board.

Maybe it is evidence of a cry for simplicity and efficiency in a time poor society.

Pinterest was established in December 2009 and launched as a closed beta in March 2010. It is barely 2 years old.

It wasn’t until the beginning of 2011 that it reached 10,000 users. Its breakthrough moment appears to be the inclusion in Time magazine’s “50 Best Websites of 2011”

Some more Pinterest Facts and Figures

• December of 2011 Pinterest became one of the top 10 largest social networks with 11 million visits per week
• In January it was driving more referral traffic traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+
• Over 10.4 million registered users
• Nearly 12 million monthly unique vistors
• Most of the sites users are female
• 97% of the site’s Facebook “likes” are by females
• It is the fastest site in history to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark

Source: Sandbox

Google+

It is expected that Google’s new social network Google+ will hit 400 million users by the end of 2012. It needs to be kept in mind that Google+ is more about being “core” to Google’s social web strategy as it aims to embed social signals into its whole web and search strategy as it aims to continue to be relevant in an increasingly social and mobile web.

Google makes it mandatory to join Google+ when you register for a Gmail account which really amounts to it being a forced membership. This non organic strategy means that its engagement levels are extremely low at 3 minutes per month compared to Facebook at 405 minutes, in fact they are less than MySpace.

It must be also kept in mind that Google+ is the glue that connects Google’s other social and web properties such as YouTube, Android and of course search.

Some Google+ Facts and Figures

• It was launched on June 28, 2011
• Google+ reached 10 million users by July 14, 2011
• 67% of Google+ users are male
• Google “+1″ button is served more than 5 billion times daily
• It is gaining 625,000 users per day
• In less than one day the Google+ iPhone app became the most popular free application in the Apple App store

Source: Website Monitoring.com

Interesting Facts About Your Dream

Interesting Facts You Did NOT Know About Dream

Dreaming is one of the most mysterious experiences in our lives but what do we actually know about dreams? Here are some interesting facts that you probably didn't know.

You Forget 90% of Your Dreams

Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10 minutes, 90% is gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having had a fantastic dream, he put pen to paper and began to describe his “vision in a dream” in what has become one of English's most famous poems: Kubla Khan.

Blind People also Dream

People who become blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion. It is hard for a seeing person to imagine, but the body's need for sleep is so strong that it is able to handle virtually all physical situations to make it happen.

Men and Women Dream Differently

Every human being dreams but men and women have different dreams and different physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women tend to dream equally about men and women. In addition, both men and women experience sexually related physical reactions to their dreams regardless of whether the dream is sexual in nature; males experience erections and females experience increased vaginal blood flow.

You Can Experience an 0rgasm in Your Dream

You can not only have s e x as pleasurable as in your real life while dreaming, but also experience an o r g a s m as strong as a real one without any wet results. The sensations felt while lucid dreaming can be as pleasurable and strong as the sensations experienced in the real world.

We Only Dream of What We Know

Our dreams are frequently full of strangers who play out certain parts – did you know that your mind is not inventing those faces – they are real faces of real people that you have seen during your life but may not know or remember? We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces through our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.

Not Everybody Dreams in Color

full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s maintained that the majority of dreams were in black and white, but these results began to change in the 1960s. Today only 4.4% of the dreams of under-25 year-olds are in black and white. Recent research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch from black-and-white film and TV to color media.

Dreams Prevent Psychosis

In a recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days. When finally allowed their REM sleep the student's brains made up for lost time by greatly increasing the percentage of sleep spent in the REM stage.

Animals Dream Too

Studies have been done on many different animals, and they all show the same brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Watch a dog sleeping sometime. The paws move like they are running and they make yipping sounds as if they are chasing something in a dream.

Body Paralysis

During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain in order to prevent the movements which occur in the dream from causing the physical body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens.

Dream Incorporation

Our mind interprets the external stimuli that our senses are bombarded with when we are asleep and make them a part of our dreams. This means that sometimes in our dreams we hear a sound from reality and incorporate it in a way. For example you may be dreaming that you are in a concert while your brother is playing a guitar during your sleep.

Precognitive Dreams

Results of several surveys across large population sets indicate that between 18% and 38% of people have experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have experienced déjà vu. The percentage of persons that believe precognitive dreaming is possible is even higher – ranging from 63% to 98%.

If You Are Snoring, Then You Can Not be Dreaming

This fact is repeated all over the Internet, but I'm a bit suspicious whether it's really true as I haven't found any scientific evidence to support it.

Note: Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, about 90-120 minutes of a night's sleep)

10 Amazing Facts about Dreams

Posted by Kashif Iqbal

Every year scientific groups and national organizations conduct studies and experiments examining human dreams. The study of dreams is known as oneirology. Progress is being made in this area of work, but as a population we know very little about the content and purpose of our dreams. One thing is for sure, the images, thoughts, and emotions that pass through our bodies during sleep can greatly influence our outlook on life. Keep in mind that the word dream stems from the Middle English word dreme, meaning joy and music. Following our first list about dreams, here are ten more amazing facts about dreams.

10

Your Brain is Active When You Dream

Studies have provided evidence suggesting tremendous variation in brain activity during sleep. This has been demonstrated using EEG technology. Scientists have identified five distinct stages of sleep, characterized by differences in brain activity. Stages 1-4 and a final stage labeled rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. When awakened during REM sleep, subjects report dreaming. With the development of new brain imaging technology in the early 1990’s we learned even more about brain activity during REM sleep. Researchers found that certain areas of the brain are extremely active during the REM sleep state, even more active than being awake. Studies have shown that certain visual areas of the human cortex, which decode complex visual scenes, are significantly more active during REM sleep. Intense activity is also observed in the limbic system, which is a set of structures heavily involved in human emotion.

9

Animals and Dreams

We can’t be 100% sure that animals dream in a similar way as humans, but they do enter into a state of REM sleep. REM sleep occurs in all mammals, although it excludes the egg-laying monotremes of Australia. The sentinel hypothesis of REM sleep, which was put forward by Frederic Snyder in 1966, proposes that many mammals wake-up immediately after entering into REM sleep, leading him to infer that the process was being used as a defense mechanism. Many birds also show signs of REM sleep, but reptiles and other cold-blooded animals do not. The echidna does enter into REM sleep, but only if its environment is around 25°C. Dogs and cats also experience this stage of sleep.

8

Marijuana and Dreams

Many people who smoke marijuana report having no dreams, yet after they quit, the same people report extremely vivid and intense dreams. Most vivid dreams take place during REM sleep, so the logical scientific question is “Does marijuana (THC) affect REM sleep?” A study conducted in 1975 compared the sleep patterns of experienced marijuana users with non-smokers. The results showed reduced eye movement activity and less REM sleep in the THC condition. They also reported a REM rebound effect, which is more REM activity upon withdrawal from THC. Scientific evidence exists that correlates marijuana use with a loss of REM sleep and dreams, so the next time you smoke marijuana and don’t remember your dreams you will know why.

7

Epic Dreams

Epic dreams are extremely vivid and can be life changing. These dreams are so compelling that they will often generate a greater awareness of your natural surroundings. Epic dreams will give you a fresh and new perspective on an aspect of life. When you wake up from an epic dream you will feel as if you have discovered something profound or amazing. The epic dream will remain with you for years. People who experience these types of dreams often report a continuous storyline that constitutes an entirely different and ongoing life. Many people sleep during their epic dreams, having a dream within itself.

6

Gender Differences in Dreams

Many studies have been conducted to examine differences in the dreams of men and women. It has been shown that women dream of both genders equally, yet 67% of the time the characters in men’s dreams are predominantly male. Women’s dreams tend to last longer and include more emotional content whereas men’s dreams are reported to include more violence, cars, and roads. On average, 8% of people’s dreams include sexual activity. The primary gender difference in sexual dreams is that men tend to dream about unknown or public places and their dreams often feature strangers, while the opposite is true for the majority of women. Women more often dream of enclosed bodies of water, such as pools, lakes, ponds. Of course this data is based on general percentages and is not true for everyone.

Just paying the bills...

5

Sleep Paralysis

Sleep Paralysis is a condition that affects many people in the world. It is directly related to the REM sleep stage and dreaming. Sleep paralysis corresponds with REM atonia, which is the state of paralysis that occurs during REM sleep. A person experiences sleep paralysis when the brain awakes from the REM sleep cycle, but the paralysis state remains. The person is conscious, but unable to move. They continue to dream and in many cases can visually experience their dreams in their room. A person experiencing sleep paralysis is not fully conscious, but well aware of what is happening. The experience has been described as distorted tunnel vision. The paralysis state may be accompanied by extreme hallucinations and a sense of danger. Many historical claims of alien abduction have been explained by extreme cases of sleep paralysis.

4

Nightmares vs. Night Terrors

Ernest Hartmann has published many books and papers on the topic of nightmares. His work has indicated that the most common theme of a nightmare is being chased. Adults are commonly chased by a male figure, while children face animals or fantasy creatures. Nightmares are less common in adults and children experience them most often between the ages of three or four and seven or eight. About 5-lO% of people have nightmares once a month or more frequently. Hartmann’s work suggests that nightmares directly correlate with daily activities and are an indicator of fear or anxiety that needs to be confronted. Some common triggers can be drug abuse, traumatic events, or the loss of a loved one. Night terrors are quite different from nightmares. They occur during the first hour or two of sleep and during the non-rapid eye cycle. Loud screaming and thrashing is common. The sleeper is hard to awake and usually remembers no more than an overwhelming feeling or a single scene. Night terrors are much less common than nightmares. Children from the ages of two to six are most prone to night terrors, and they affect about 15% of all children.

3

Famous Dreams

Dreams have often been credited with influencing world changing events. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after having a dream about the monster. “I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.” Elias Howe was a sewing machine pioneer who greatly influenced the product in the middle of the 19th century. He is recorded as saying that he had a vivid dream about a group of cannibals that were preparing to cook him. They were dancing around a fire waving their spears up and down. Howe noticed that in the head of each spear there was a small hole, which ultimately gave him the idea of passing the thread through the needle close to the point, not at the other end. It was a major innovation in making mechanical sewing possible. The scientist Friedrich August Kekulé discovered the seemingly impossible chemical structure of benzene (C6H6) after having a dream about a group of snakes swallowing their tails. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. Watson later reported that the idea came to him after dreaming of a series of spiral staircases. A few days prior to his death Abraham Lincoln discussed a dream with his wife in which he previewed a dead body wrapped in funeral vestments surrounded by hundreds of mourners. He claims to have been told by a soldier that the president had been assassinated.

2

Chronic Snoring Can Lead to Sleep Disorder

Snoring is a major problem for millions of people. Many individuals who experience chronic snoring are suffering from a REM sleep disorder. During REM sleep individuals will experience irregular breathing, a rise in blood pressure, vivid dreams, and paralysis. People who snore regularly do dream, but will not remember them as often as normal sleeping individuals. They often will develop a REM sleep disorder. This disorder is a condition in which the individual does not experience any kind of paralysis when they sleep. The absence of this paralysis causes many people to physically act out their dreams. Such physical behaviors often include talking, yelling, punching, kicking, jumping out of bed, arm flailing, and even grabbing. The person will remain sleeping while acting out their dreams and will not remember the activity or dream the following day.

1

Vivid Dreams Help You Learn

REM sleep begins when signals are broadcasted from the base of the brain, an area called the pons. The pons distributes signals to the thalamus, which directs them towards the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is the area of the brain responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The pons also sends signals that shut off the neurons in the spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis during REM sleep. REM sleep activates the area of the brain that we use for learning. This may be an extremely important factor in normal brain development during infancy. It may explain why small children spend much more time in REM sleep then adults. In addition, REM sleep is associated with increased protein in the brain. Studies have been conducted that correlate REM sleep and learning mental skills. Separate groups of people were taught the same skill and a larger percentage of individuals who fell into REM sleep during the night were able to recall the skill the next day. This theory is called the Ontogenetic Hypothesis of REM sleep.

Interesting Facts About Countries

 Interesting Facts About Countries

Alaska



More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.

Amazon



The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20%
of the world's oxygen supply.

The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that, more than one hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.

Antarctica



Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.
Ninety percent of the world's ice covers Antarctica.
This ice also represents seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world.
As strange as it sounds, however, Antarctica is essentially a desert;
the average yearly total precipitation is about two inches.
Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of it, ice.),
Antarctica is the driest place on the planet,
with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.

Brazil



Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.

Canada



Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Canada is an Indian word meaning 'Big Village'.

Chicago



Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population
in the world.

Detroit



Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1,
so named because it was the first paved road anywhere.

Damascus, Syria



Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years
before Rome was founded in 753 BC,
making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.

Istanbul, Turkey



Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world
located on two continents.

Los Angeles



Los Angeles' full name is:
El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula
-- and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: L.A.

New York City



The term 'The Big Apple' was coined
by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s
who used the slang expression 'apple' for any town or city.
Therefore, to play New York City
is to play the big time - The Big Apple.

There are more Irish in New York City
than in Dublin, Ireland;
more Italians in New York City
than in Rome, Italy;
and more Jews in New York City
than in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Ohio



There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio, every one is manmade.

Pitcairn Island



The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn
in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq. miles/4,53 sq. km.

Rome



The first city to reach a population of 1 million people
was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C.
There is a city called Rome on every continent.

Siberia



Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.

S.M.O.M.



The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world
is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M).
It is located in the city of Rome, Italy,
has an area of two tennis courts
and, as of 2001, has a population of 80
-- 20 less people than the Vatican.
It is a sovereign entity under international law,
just as the Vatican is.

Sahara Desert



In the Sahara Desert, there is a town named Tidikelt, Algeria,
which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years.
Technically though, the driest place on Earth
is in the valleys of the Antarctic near Ross Island.
There has been no rainfall there for two million years.

Spain



Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits'.

St. Paul, Minnesota



St. Paul, Minnesota, was originally called Pig's Eye
after a man named Pierre 'Pig's Eye' Parrant
who set up the first business there.

Roads



Chances that a road is unpaved:
in the U.S.A. = 1%;
in Canada = 75%

Russia



The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the
Kola Superdeep Borehole, in Russia.
It reached a depth of 12,261 meters
(about 40,226 feet or 7.62 miles).
It was drilled for scientific research
and gave up some unexpected discoveries,
one of which was a huge deposit of hydrogen
- so massive that the mud coming from the hole
was boiling with it.

United States



The Eisenhower interstate system requires
that one mile in every five must be straight.
These straight sections are usable as airstrips
in times of war or other emergencies.

Waterfalls



The water of Angel Falls (the world's highest) in Venezuela
drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).
They are 15 times higher than Niagara Falls.