With Pinterest expanding its features for businesses, Instagram launching a Web version and Facebook continually expanding its advertising options, now is as good a time as ever to bolster your social media presence for the future.
Before doing so, it’s important to understand the data behind each social channel to gain insights into what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Here are 100 of the most fascinating social media statistics and figures from 2012 that can help you better understand Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus for the coming year.
Facebook Statistics
1. Barack Obama’s victory Facebook post was the most liked photo on Facebook with over 4 million likes. (source: The Huffington Post)
2. 25 percent of users on Facebook don’t bother with any kind of privacy control. (source: AllTwitter)
3. An average Facebook users has 130 friends. (source: AllTwitter)
4. Monthly active users now total nearly 850 million. (source: Jeff Bullas)
5. 21 percent of Facebook users are from Asia, which is only less than 4 percent of Asia’s population. (source: Uberly)
6. 488 million users regularly use Facebook mobile. (source: All Facebook)
7. Brazil publishes the most number of posts out of all Facebook countries. More than 800 Pages kept their Facebook walls busy with almost 86 thousand posts per month. (source: Socialbakers)
8. 23 percent of Facebook’s users check their account 5 or more times daily. (source: Socialnomics)
9. Facebook hosts 42 million “Pages” with 10 or more likes. (source: Jeff Bullas)
10. More than 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook in various ways. (source: Uberly)
11. 85 percent of women are annoyed by their friends on Facebook. (source: AllTwitter)
12. Facebook has seen a 41 percent growth in active users from Russia, South Korea, Japan, India and Brazil during 2012. (source: DreamGrow)
13. 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day. (source: Jeff Bullas)
14. As of 2012, 210,000 years of music have been played on Facebook. (source: Gizmodo)
15. Links about sex are shared 90 percent more than any other link. (source: AllTwitter)
16. As of 2012, 17 billion location-tagged posts and check-ins were logged. (source: Gizmodo)
17. 80 percent of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook. (source: Business2Community)
18. 43 percent of Facebook users are male, while 57 percent of Facebook users are female. (source: Uberly)
19. As of April, Zygna’s games revenue was 12 percent of Facebook’s total income. (source: Jeff Bullas)
20. A whopping 77 percent of B2C companies and 43 percent of B2B companies acquired customers from Facebook. (source: Business2Community)
Twitter Statistics
21. There are 175 million tweets sent from Twitter every day in 2012. (source: Infographics Labs)
22. The average Twitter user has tweeted 307 times. (source: Diego Basch’s Blog)
23. Since the dawn of Twitter, there’s been a total of 163 billion tweets. (source: Diego Basch’s Blog)
24. 56 percent of customer tweets to companies are being ignored. (sources: AllTwitter)
25. Barack Obama’s victory tweet was the most retweeted tweet ever with over 800K retweets. (source: The Guardian)
26. Top 3 countries on Twitter are the USA at 107 million, Brazil 33 million and Japan at nearly 30 million. (source: Jeff Bullas)
27. The average user follows (or is followed by) 51 people. (source: Diego Basch’s Blog)
28. The 2012 election broke records with 31.7 million political tweets. Election Day was by far the most tweeted about event in US political history. (source: Marketing Land)
29. 32 percent of all Internet users are using Twitter. (source: Marketing Land)
30. Twitter is projected to make a total of $540 million in advertising revenue by 2014. (source: Web Analytics World)
31. 69 percent of follows on Twitter are suggested by friends. (source: Web Analytics World)
32. In 2012, 1 million accounts are added to Twitter everyday. (source: Infographics Labs)
33. Lady Gaga has 31 million followers, which is the most followed account on Twitter. (source: Socialbakers)
34. The most followed brand on Twitter is YouTube with 19 million followers. (source: All Twitter)
35. The USA’s 141.8 million accounts represents 27.4 percent of all Twitter users. (source: All Twitter)
36. The “Castle in the Sky” TV screening was the busiest time on Twitter ever with 25,088 tweets per second. (source: Sys-Con)
37. 11 accounts are created every second on Twitter. (source: Infographics Labs)
38. 50 percent of Twitter users are using the social network via mobile. (source: Microsoft tag)
39. 34 percent of marketers have generated leads using Twitter. (source: Digital Buzz Blog)
40. 26 percent of retweets are incited by a request to retweet. (source: Web Analytics World)
Instagram Statistics
41. There are 575 likes and 81 comments by Instagram users every second. (source: Digital Buzz Blog)
42. Users uploaded more than 800,000 photos of Hurricane Sandy using the hashtag #Sandy. (source: Information Week)
43. In August 2012, Instagram hit 80 million users and counting. (source: Visual.ly)
44. In August 2012, Instagram had an average of 7.3 million daily active users. (source: All Things D)
45. The average Instagram user spent 257 minutes accessing the photo-sharing site via mobile device in August, while the average Twitter user over the same period spent 170 minutes viewing. (source: All Things D)
46. More than 5 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day. (source: Business Insider)
47. Nearly 4 billion photos have been shared on Instagram since its beginning. (source: The Realtime Report)
48. 40 percent of brands have adopted Instagram for marketing. (source: Marketing Land)
49. Of the top brands, 20 percent surveyed had 10,000 or more followers. (source: Marketing Land)
50. In a six-month span, Instagram’s average daily mobile visitors jumped from 886,000 to 7.3 million, which is a 724 percent leap. (source: Marketing Land)
51. This year alone, Instagram users liked 78 million photos. (source: Digital Buzz Blog)
52. Instagram has 432,000 more daily users than Twitter in August 2012. (source: All Twitter)
53. Users on Instagram spend 257 minutes using the app, as opposed to the 169.9 minutes spent on Twitter in August 2012. (source: All Twitter)
54. The Android version received over 430,000 pre-registrations. (source: See My City)
55. Instagram had 1 million downloads in a day when the Android app launched. (source: Visual.ly)
56. Instagram was one of the largest acquisition of a venture capital-backed consumer Web company since Zappos was bought by Amazon for $1.22B in 2009. (source: Factbrowser)
57. It took just 10 months for Instagram to reach the milestone of 150m pictures uploaded. (source: Siliconrepublic)
58. According to Followgram’s research, 37 percent of Instagram users have never uploaded a single photo and only 5 percent of users have more than 50 pictures. (source: Siliconrepublic)
59. The top 5 of the top 100 hash tags on Instagram are #love, #instagood, #me, #tbt and #cute. (source: Statigram)
60. Facebook’s billion dollar valuation of Instagram makes the less-than-two-year-old startup more valuable than 161-year-old The New York Times Company. The New York Times Company was valued at 946 million dollars based on yesterday’s closing price at the NYSE. (source: NDTV Gadgets)
Pinterest Statistics
61. 97 percent of the fans of Pinterest’s Facebook page are women. (source: AllTwitter)
62. Over 80 percent of pins are repins. (source: AllTwitter)
63. 80 percent of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have children. (source: Search Engine Journal)
64. American users of Pinterest spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site. (source: Search Engine Journal)
65. Pinterest referrals spend 70 percent more money than visitors referred from non-social channels. (source: Search Engine Journal)
66. 28.1 percent of Pinterest users have an annual household income of $100,000. (source: Ultralinx)
67. Total unique visitors to Pinterest increased by 2,702.2 percent since May 2011. (source: Ultralinx)
68. Users spend an average of 16 minutes on Pinterest a visit. (source: AllTwitter)
69. The average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. (source: Arik Hanson)
70. Pinterest pins with prices get 36 percent more likes than those without. (source: Shopify)
71. Pinterest hit 10 million U.S. monthly unique visitors faster than any independent site in history. (source: Sirona Consulting)
72. 83.9 percent of a pinners time is spent Pinning, while 15.5 percent is spent liking and 0.6 percent is spent leaving comments. (source: Repinly)
73. Out of 17 million brand engagements, 15 percent occurred on the brand’s boards and 85 percent occurred elsewhere on Pinterest. (source: Curalate)
74. 69 percent of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they’ve bought or wanted to buy, compared with 40 percent of Facebook users. (source: All Facebook)
75. Over 1/5 of Facebook-connected users are on Pinterest daily, which represents more than 2 million members. (source: AppData)
76. The most popular age group on Pinterest is 25 – 34 year olds. (source: AllTwitter)
77. 43 percent of people prefer Pinterest to associate with retailers or brands; 24 percent chose Facebook. (source: All Facebook)
78. 9 percent of people have participated in contests or promotions via Pinterest, as opposed to the 30 percent that have on Facebook. (source: All Facebook)
79. 25 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies have Pinterest accounts. (source: Burson-Marsteller)
80. 57 percent of Pinterest users interact with food-related content, the #1 category of content. (source: Compete)
Google+ Statistics
81. The Google +1 button is used 5 billion times per day. (source: AllTwitter)
82. 48 percent of fortune global 100 companies are now on Google+. (source: Burson-Marsteller)
83. Google+ pages appear in search results for 30 percent of brand term searches for brands with G+ pages, up from 5 percent in February 2012. (source: Bright Edge)
84. Only 8 percent of Americans 12+ have a Google+ profile page. (source: Edison Research)
85. The automotive industry has 2.7MM circlers on Google+, compared to 1.9MM for electronics, and 1.3MM for luxury goods. (source: Simply Measured)
86. Total circlers of brand pages on Google+ increased by 138 percent between February and May 2012. (source: Simply Measured)
87. H&M has the most Google+ posts of any brand, with 740, compared to 571 for Google, 515 for Ferrari, and 460 for MTV. (source: Simply Measured)
88. 47 percent of Hispanic consumers use Google+, compared to the U.S. average of 18 percent. (source: USAMP)
89. 625,000 new users on Google+ every day. (source: AllTwitter)
90. 40 percent of marketers use Google+, 70 percent want to learn more about it and 67 percent plan on increasing Google+ activities. (source: Social Media Examiner)
91. 42 percent of worldwide Google+ users are single; 27 percent are married. (source: Website-Monitoring)
92. 68 percent of Google+ users are Male, while 32 percent of Google+ users are female. (source: Mashable)
93. Google+ active users spend over 60 minutes a day across Google products (source: Jeff Bullas)
94. Google+ users spend on average 12 minutes per day in the Google+. (source: Jeff Bullas)
95. Websites using the +1 button generate 3.5x the Google+ visits than sites without the button. (source: HubSpot)
96. At least 60 percent of Google+ users log in daily. (source: tecmark)
97. At least 80 percent of Google+ users engage on a weekly basis. (source: Chris Brogan)
98. Google+ cost $585 million and took 500 employees to build. (source: Social Media Delivered)
99. 30 percent of users who make a public post never make a second one. (source: Jeff Bullas)
100. Google+ is expected to attract 400 million users by the end of 2012. (source: Remcolandia)
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I have a friend on facebook that doesn’t have very much friends on facebook,and she asked me to help her out.Can someone tell me step-by-step how to become facebook famous without adding people?
There are many Facebook applications for the Mac on the Mac App Store, many paid apps and some free ones.
Wondering which one is the best to use:
Facetab Pro?
Facebox?
Desktop Facebook?
Facemenu?
Hi, I made a big mistake. I imported my outlook contacts into facebook. Facebook then sent invitations to all these people! I don’t want them to go to all these people. Also, some people have complained to me that facebook keeps sending them the invite over and over. How can I stop facebook from sending all these super annoying invites?
Every company has a Facebook, every food product has a Facebook
everyone has a Facebook, except me. So tell me,
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I dont have a Facebook, however I still want to see the pages of my friends and family, however whenever i search for them on the internet, I always just get other people with the same names, and I cant seem to find a search thingy on the Facebook login page. Any tips?
I only have 100 fans on my facebook fanpage and the likes grow slowly.How to get more facebook likes and fans fast?Thanks.
My facebook chat doesnt work and i still want to use it, are there any sites?
I want to get a facebook account to connect with my friends, but now I hear all these facebook stories about lawsuits and stuff. So, everybody is hating facebook and leaving it. Is it a weird time to get an account?
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Facebook is nice to keep in contact with others, but I notice that some people spend many hours updating their statuses and checking in on the lives of others and trying to keep up with the Jones’s so to speak via facebook. In your opinion would you say that facebook takes your focus off of God? Should good christians have facebook accounts? And what purpose does facebook serve to the serious christian.
My email inbox is full of facebook notification. Everyday i’ve to delete those and its to irritating. How to stop that?
My facebook isn’t in my twitter connections, I already tried that.
For some reason my facebook does not transfer my chat messages to my inbox as most peoples facebooks do. How do i get my facebook to update and make this switch?
My ex Best Friend hacks facebooks by clicking “forgot password” & She hacked into my facebook and unfriended people. How do I talk to people that work for facebooK?
Facebook is not what I thought it would be. I can’t seem to make the account go away. Can a facebook account be eliminated totally?
I know at one point Facebook stored all of your phone contacts, but I can’t figure out how to access them since they changed Facebook (again!). I have some people stored in my phone who I want to look up by their phone number to see if they’re on Facebook. Thanks in advance!
I troll Facebook political pages and I am constantly getting reported to death. I need more alts.
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Many users have the facebook logo in their avatars. Is that avatar coming from facebook and is Yahoo allowing people to display the copyrighted facebook logo?
I am doing the 30 day challenge on facebook and I am having trouble adding more pictures to the album. I am trying to add a picture that is already on facebook under my tagged pictures. Help!
I have friends who use MySpace/Facebook status updates constantly but they refuse to use Twitter. Isn’t it the same thing? Which is better MySpace, Facebook or Twitter and why?
I deactivated my Facebook and it showed me a list of 5 friends who “miss me”. How does Facebook generate that list? Is it based on who you interact with, or who looks at your account? Some of the people are people I barley talk to on Facebook.
I made it on my msn account so I don’t recieve facebook notifications at all. I recently got a blackberry enabled my email and facebook. My email works fine but I get ALL my facebook notifications and it’s annoying. Is there anyway to disable this?
I want to delete my facebook, but I log onto my stumbleupon account using facebook. So should I make an account on stumbleupon and then delete my facebook ? And if I do this, will all my favorites, interest and the things that I’ve liked still be in my account ? pleasse help !
Also, with Facebook, one can choose the demographics and target the marketing
I know that Facebook got a new layout for the profile pages. How do you change it so I have the new layout?
I want to send my Facebook statuses to twitter but not the other way around. That is, I do not want my tweets going to my Facebook account but I want my Facebook statuses going to my twitter. Any help? Thanks.
I knew how to do it on the old Facebook privacy editing but Facebook keeps changing things around and I don’t know how to do it anymore?! Help anyone?
On Facebook I clicked on desktop site, how do I change it back to mobile?
Facebook is a bad thing in different ways for students. What are examples why Facebook is bad?
My facebook is deactivated but I seem to still get emails about people adding me and things why?
There are many facebook users who do not like the new profile and are not able to get rid of it. This seems to be a good way for facebook to lose a lot of users. I mean if there are those who like this profile, good for them. I just think its retarded there’s no choice to get rid of it after activating it. This just extremely pisses me off.
How do you remove the Facebook Timeline view from you’re Facebook to change back into the original version?
I heard that facebook is going to charge $3.99 a month to use facebook. Is this true?
i want to run adds on facebook, but don’t know the process completely. plz help me gathering full information about it. do i have to pay for running adds on facebook. plz let me this?
Facebook: How do you set friends to be able to see only mutual friends?
Those instructions do not work. Under Privacy settings, I have 3 options: Public, Friends and Custom.
I created a page on Facebook but I want to delete it. How do you delete it.
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My inbox has 4000+ emails from facebook. Its killing my inbox. I want to know if there is a way that i can make a folder called facebook and all the emails from facebook would automatically be there. BTW i am using windows live hotmail so yeah.
Ok, I’ve seen several new groups and/or pages talking about Facebook charging money to use it next month.
Is this true?
Why are they doing this?
Why haven’t I gotten anything official from the Facebook people saying this?
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How can I do that? What settings do I change?
How to treat your Facebook account after you die in a couple of years? What will happen to your Facebook account after you die in a couple of years?
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Facebook but i want to take it off.
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What does Facebook use to let the users upload things like games, and applications to their website?
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I need to be able to set my entire facebook to private so that only those on my friends list can view it and any of my pictures. I have been trying for hours to figure this out, I thought it was already on friends only and yet someone NOT on my friends list stole pictures of my daughter. Please help!
Also, I have time line not the original layout. I can’t find the “Edit Profile” option anywhere.
Facebook sends me an email notice whenever any of my Facebook friends has a birthday. I would rather not receive notices sent through my personal email from Facebook when any of my Facebook friends has a birthday. Where exactly do I go on my Facebook account to change something so that Facebook will stop sending me email notices on my friends’ birthdays?