1 Billion Users Are Now On Social Networks

Facebook is now public and the social networking giant now commands over 900 million active users. This is an extraordinary achievement by any stretch and the figure puts into perspective just what the social networking landscape looks like.

A recent study from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) puts the total number of social networks at just over 1 billion. Facebook has 900 million of them! Of course there are bound to be overlaps since most people use multiple platforms.

This means that Twitter’s 200 million or so active users could very well be ‘Facebookers’. The same is true for LinkedIn’s 150 million or so professional social networkers.

But there is a cautionary note to the study conducted by the ITU. Well, maybe cautionary is too strong a word but the long and short of it is that broadband (the thing that makes all this social networking possible) isn’t spreading fast enough. In developing countries, the ITU notes, broadband penetration is as low as 4.8% on average. In developed countries the figure is more than 6 times that at 26%.

Companies like Google have sought to spread the social networking joy in these developing countries and its localized social platform Orkut is fast becoming the standard in counties like Brazil. The ITU is optimistic though and believes that in the coming years more and more people will be able to enjoy the joys of social networking.

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