Theme : the speed of data on social networks

Theme : THE SPEED OF DATA ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, has 2.4 billion users. Other social media platforms including Youtube and Whatsapp also have more than one billion users each. 

These numbers are huge – there are 7.7 billion people in the world, with at least 3.5 billion of us online. This means social media platforms are used by one-in-three people in the world, and more than two-thirds of all internet users. 

Social media has changed the world. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners, how we access information from the news, and how we organize to demand political change. 

Who uses social media? When did the rise of social media start and what are the largest sites today? Here we answer these and other key questions to understand social media use around the world. 

We begin with an outline of key trends and conclude with a perspective on the rate of adoption of social media relative to other modern communication technologies.