Yeah, that is 1 BILLION ( say in your best Dr. Evil voice ). By 2012, Social Media sites and applications such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, will garner over one billion users. This reported by Strategy Analytics in a report entitled “The People’s Revolution: Implications of Web 2.0 and Social Applications.” The report notes that media companies must view social media as both an enormous opportunity and a competitive threat. The report concludes that “the ability to develop successful targeted advertising techniques will be the key to long term financial viability for social media sites.”
User generated media will continue to compete with professional media when it comes to the attention and free time of users commented Martin Olausson of Digital Media Research at Strategy Analytics. “If professional media companies choose to embrace social media applications it will enable a more direct and positive relationship with consumers, which will in turn drive increased engagement and loyalty.”
Clipped: As a direct consequence of continued consumer take-up of broadband Internet access all over the world, the Internet and the World Wide Web are rapidly transforming into the key platform for mass communication and social interactions. For some pioneering segments, social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook have already replaced email as the primary way to communicate with peers. People all over the world are also continuing to upload pictures and video clips and are expressing themselves via blogs and in chat rooms. It is becoming increasingly clear that the established media companies will have to compete for eyeballs not only with traditional competitors but also with an ever-increasing amount of user generated content (UGC). But in spite of an estimated 373 million users worldwide in 2007, the long-term financial viability of even the largest social network sites depends heavily on the ability to develop targeted advertising techniques that as yet are largely unproven, or may ultimately be thwarted by privacy regulations. This report examines the current state of play in Social Media and assesses its future impact.