Five Friday Facts #47
News
News
China is Twitter’s most active country despite being blocked?
Recent GlobalWebIndex data indicated that there were 35.5 million monthly active Twitter users in China in the second quarter of 2012, while India was next in line with 33 million and the US in third with 22.9 million monthly active Twitter users. This is an interesting statistic as Twitter, like Facebook and Google, has been blocked in China for more than 3 years now. The Next Web was mystified by the numbers and has sought clarification from the data provider but has yet to get a response. Defining active users as those who have “used or contributed to the platform at least once a month”, GlobalWebIndex estimates that 124 million out of 262 million active Twitter users worldwide tweeted during the second quarter of 2012. In comparison, 400 million out of 653 million monthly active Facebook users posted on the service during the same period. In the same report, Twitter ranked 6th amongst global social platforms with an estimated reach of about 16% of the world’s online population. Twitter user data has been notoriously difficult to acquire much less verify so watch this space for future updates on how Twitter fares in China.
Top 9 uses of microblogs & social networking services in China
In a recent report, microblogs seem to be gradually gaining popularity in China with increasingly frequent usage focused heavily on news, videos and photos. By contrast, growth seems to be slowing down for social networking services in China, as usage has evolved to focus on obtaining dining information and video sharing. The bar charts below tabulate the frequency of usage for Sina Weibo and Renren, the 2 most dominant networks for microblogs and social networks respectively, for ease of comparison.
Youku Tudou dominate China’s online video market
The merger between Youku and Tudou in China has created an online video behemoth that could reach as many as 310 million weekly unique viewers and generate 1.6 billion hours of video monthly. The site’s immense potential as an advertising platform is not to be trifled with as the combined entity now reaches about 80% of China’s online population. In the first quarter of 2012, Youku accounted for 20.9% of revenue for China’s online video market with Tudou trailing at 11.5%. Both companies led the online video market in terms of reach and revenue. Competitor Sohu.com Inc garnered a 10.9% share of online video market revenue, while Baidu’s Qiyi had 6.7% and Tencent came in last with 4.7% market share.
Discounts less important for alcohol consumers on social media
eMarketer recently reported on the impact of social media engagement on alcohol consumption. 73% of regular wine drinkers in the US were Facebook users with the numbers heavily skewed towards Millennials, who were found to be more than 3 times as likely as the overall sample group to be influenced by blogs and social networking sites.
It was interesting to note that discounts were not a significant influencing factor in encouraging alcohol consumers to “Like” or follow alcoholic brands on social networks. This seems to reflect a loyalty on the part of consumers to the same alcohol brand even in the absence of a discount. The study found that 15% of social network users made their alcoholic beverage purchases due to content found on social networks.
Why Google Plus should not be ignored
Since its launch 15 months ago, Google+ has registered 250 million users and over 1 million brands (which includes more than half of the top 100 US brands). In spite of criticism that Google+ is a ghost town, it was found that users are on the site an average of 12 minutes per day, just 2 minutes under Facebook’s average of 14 minutes per day. As if the statistics are not impressive enough, consider the fact that the G+ social share button is used 5 billion times daily as a way for users to endorse content. This is significant as 71% of consumers are more likely to be influenced by reviews from family members or friends whilst 84% use online sources when researching purchase options. The G+ button does more than just enable users to endorse content, it also influences the search results of people in your Circle and what you see when conducting a Google search. With more than 1 billion searches daily, this could be Google+’s silver bullet in its battle against Facebook.