In the next 60 seconds, you will have read about 1 paragraph of this text. In the same time, 72 hours of video will have been uploaded to YouTube, 216 thousand photos will have been posted on Instagram, 204 million emails will have been sent, and Amazon will have made online sales of $83 thousand.
In Greece, the numbers speak for themselves: Facebook: 5,871,015 accounts, Twitter: 456,740, YouTube: 371,983, Blogs: 54,430, Websites: 548, Forum: 91 (Data from: Niris, Sidebar Monitor, Social Media Zest, fooq Digital)And all this within just one "online" minute, proving that social media is not a fad, but a world-historical change for the economy and society.
Are we heading towards a society where we pay with likes instead of money? Social media is the “new oil”, it is the industrial revolution of our century, the new language of the 21st century, these are just some of the comments heard at the social media conference, recently organized by the civic non-profit company i-Dialogue in collaboration with Europe Direct City of Athens. The conference on the theme “Social Media: Life is Social, Business Too!” took place at Europe Direct City of Athens with the support of the European Information Center E.B.E.A.
Companies and politicians, news agencies, celebrities and Internet “personalities”, all use social media to promote their products, which are often… themselves. What happens on Twitter (with over 270 million active users in October alone) determines the news coverage in all the leading media. The 343 million and 300 million active users of Google+ and Linkedin respectively, further illustrate the dynamics of social networks. Arab Spring, protests in Hong Kong, kidnappings of students in Mexico, revolutions and revelations, all “pass” through social media, while at the same time, control and monitoring of citizens becomes easier for the authorities.
Facebook, the leader
The "king" of social media is none other than Facebook, whose influence is evident from its global momentum: in the third quarter of 2014, the number of active users reached 1.35 billion per month, while over 860 million people connect daily. As for our country, there are over 4.5 million Greek users who log in at least once a month. In fact, 75-80% of them are on Facebook every day. 73% of Greeks are Internet users, with 52% of them using social networks.
The fastest growing social network in Greece in the last 2 years is Linkedin, which has exceeded 900 thousand subscribers, i.e. 24% of Greek Internet users. The main reason for the growth is of course unemployment, as more and more companies looking for employees use Linkedin for a first contact.
What interests companies, politicians and celebrities, however, is that 7 out of 10 Greeks have liked or are about to like a product page, and are therefore potential “customers”. Thus, social media marketing is flourishing with the analysis of big data, huge in quantity and complex in quality, with the aim of developing a communication plan for a product.
Source: enet.gr
