Prognozuojamas mažėsiantis Facebook augimas

Nors kyla vis daugiau diskusijų, kad jaunesni žmonės pradeda ieškotis naujų socialinių erdvių bendravimui, tačiau Facebook augimui tai didelės įtakos kol kas neturi.If you don’t like social networks, you better get used to it, because they are here to stay and they are part of millions of people life.

Pirmąjį 2013 metų ketvirtį Facebook gretose jau buvo 956 milijonai gerbėjų visame pasaulyje. Šiaurės Amerikoje šiuo tinklu naudojasi 52% visų interneto vartotojų. Tai išties neblogi rezultatai, lyginant su Azija ar Afrika, kur tik 6% interneto vartotojų naudojasi šiuo socialiniu tinklu. Lietuvoje Facebook naudojasi 32% interneto vartotojų.

Vakarų Europoje socialinių tinklų populiarumas auga apie 12% per metus ir jais naudojasi 38,5% esamų interneto vartotojų. Tačiau, remiantis „eMarketer“ atliktais tyrimais, nuo 2014 metų augimas ims mažėti, o 2017 metais sumažės iki 3,1%.

„eMarketer“ balandžio mėnesį atlikti tyrimai rodo, kad 55% vartotojų Facebook naudoja asmeniniams tikslams ir tik 2% jį naudoja versle. Tuo tarpu socialinis tinklas LinkedIn yra populiariausias versle, kur jį naudoja 33% ir tik 11% šį tinklą naudoja asmeniniam laisvalaikio bendravimui.

Remiantis Masačiusetso universiteto marketingo tyrimų centro atliktais tyrimais, 8 iš 10 „Inc. 500“ kompanijų (greičiausiai augančios Amerikos kompanijos) naudojasi LinkedIn, o, pavyzdžiui, Google+ nesinaudoja net 1% kompanijų. Viena iš pagrindinių to priežasčių –  būtinybė turėti elektroninį paštą Gmail sistemoje.

Dauguma LinkedIn vartotojų šį socialinį tinklapį pasirinko būtent dėl galimybės jame užmegzti ryšius su savo srities profesionalais. Net 61% šio tinklapio vartotojų jį naudoja bendravimui su kitais specialistais. Taip pat LinkedIn pasitarnauja įmonėms, kurios nori persivilioti specialistus pas save.

Šiuo metu LinkedIn turi apie 220 mln. vartotojų, tai 60 mln. daugiau nei praėjusiais metais. Jų apyvarta padidėjo 72%, tai reiškia papildomus 325 mln. JAV dolerių.

Socialiniai tinklų skaičius nuolat auga, todėl norint verslą perkelti į socialinių tinklų erdvę, būtinai teisingai pasirinkti: kas tinka vienai auditorijai, gali visiškai netikti kitai. Tačiau, teisingas socialinės platformos pasirinkimas yra tik pirmas žingsnis, vedantis į dar didesnius iššūkius.

Growth of social networks has been huge during the last years and everyday there are more and more people using them more and more often. Though there are many different social networks, (Facebook and Twitter are of course the leading ones) but there are many others like LinkedIn, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest or Google+ that are also growing at a fast pace and they are looking for a place at this competitive market.

During the first trimester of 2013 Facebook reached 965.000.000 users in the world. In North America, they have a penetration of 52% among Internet users, which is really impressive, but in continents like Asia or Africa, Facebook penetration is not more than 6% which means that there is still a lot of growth ahead of them. The country in the world with the highest penetration rate is Monaco, with almost 90% while in Lithuania Facebook penetration reaches 32%.

Nowadays social network users in Western European countries are growing  at a pace of 12% per year with a penetration of 38.5% among internet users although there are some researches that estimate this growing pace is going to decrease to 3.1% with a penetration of nearly 50% by 2017.

As we can see, there are a lot of people in social networks and researches show that they still will be growing for the next 5 years although at a lower pace, and companies and professionals are taking advantage of it.

A research made last April among professionals shows that 55% of them use Facebook with personal purposes, but only 2% of them said they use Facebook only for business. LinkedIn is not so widely used regarding personal matters (only 11% of them use LinkedIn for personal interaction), however these professionals said that 33% of them use LinkedIn exclusively for business purpose.

According to the research made by Marketing Research Center of Massachusetts University, 8 out of 10 companies in „Inc. 500“ use LinkedIn.

“Inc. 500” comprises the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America. There are other social networks that are not popular at all when it comes to business, ex. Google+. Not even 1% of professionals use Google+ for business purposes. Some of the reasons why they don’t use it is that you need to own a Google e-mail address (seriously, who needs another e-mail account to manage?) or some problems regarding page administration (it doesn’t allow multiple administrators).

With these figures we can state that LinkedIn is the most widely used network when it comes to business, but why do professionals trust in LinkedIn? They trust in LinkedIn due to its high potential for networking among their business field. We can also say that is a good tool for “head hunters”, mostly because this social network puts in contact companies with people who are not necessarily  looking for a job at a particular, but are professionals in their field; a feature that doesn’t have its biggest competitors. Overall, the top activities on LinkedIn are industry networking (61%), keeping in touch (61%), and co-worker networking (55%), that’s why LinkedIn is usually considered firstly as a tool to stay current on trends and conversations related to the industry, then to build brand reputation, for networking, developing relationships, and indirectly, for building the business.

LinkedIn has reached 220 million users (60 million more than last year).  Their turnover has increased 72% since last year, this means 325 million dollars.

This social network offers tools that professionals want and need, that’s the reason why 90% of LinkedIn users says the site is useful.

It is in our hands to take advantage of everything that social networks offer to us. We got a lot of different ones with different kind of users and different purposes. Some are growing fast and some are growing even faster, you have to choose the one you want to conquer.