(courtesy of Matt Hartig)

There are 1.6 billion people online worldwide, representing nearly 24% of the world’s population.

-Internetworldstats.com, April 2009

Time spent on social networks is growing at 3X the overall internet rate, accounting for ca.10% of worldwide online time. This is a category that didn’t exist 3 years ago.

-Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, March 2009

5% of all time online is spent on Facebook.

-Comscore, April 2009

Social networks have a penetration of nearly 75% among European Internet users.

-Comscore, February 2009

2/3 of the global internet population visit social networks.

-Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009

Over 30% of our leisure time is now spent online, according to a TNS survey across 16 countries.

-TNS, December 2008

20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

-YouTube, May 2009

Number of articles available on Wikipedia: 13 000 000 (78% of these articles are non-English)
Number of photos archived on Flickr as of October 2009: 4 000 000 000
Average number of tweets per day on Twitter: 3 000 000
Users are 1.5 times more attentive when browsing YouTube than when watching TV.
There are 1.5 million business searches daily on YouTube, making it the second-most-visited destination for business searches, behind Google.

-Google, Forbes, BtoB, June 2009, June 2009

In the UK, Internet advertising expenditure is the only medium expected to grow in 2009 (by +2.3%).

-ZenithOptimedia, March 2009

Search made up 47% of online advertising in Western Europe in 2008.

-PricewaterhouseCoopers, June 2008

Over 90% of online merchants are planning to add rich media and social networking functions in 2009.

-Internet Retailing, February 2009

93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media.

-Cone, Business in Social Media Study, sept. 2008

85% of social media users believe that a company should go further than just having a presence on social sites and should also interact with its customers.

-Cone, Business in Social Media Study, sept. 2008

Shoppers have become suspicious of many TV ads: in a shoppers survey by Wall Street Journal, 78% of them said that TV ads no longer have enough information they need.

-Wall Street Journal, January 2009

76% of UK adult Internet users find out about local services online.

-Ofcom, August 2008

People aged 12 – 24 are notching up 23 cumulative hours a day, engaged in up to five activities simultaneously.

-NMA, April 2009

By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network

-Grunwald Associates National Study – Info highlighted on Trendsspotting Blog

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé. In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

-Metro Newspaper

41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online.

-Mediascope Europe, November 2008

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

-July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey

Only 14% trust advertisements

-“Marketing to the Social Web” – Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing, 2007

Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

-“Marketing to the Social Web” – Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing, 2007