Social media is now the #1 activity on the Web. (Hitwise reports that Facebook has overtaken Google as the most popular Web site in the USA.) eMarketer estimates that nearly 60% of Internet users will use a social network at least once a month this year.
And it’s more than just teens and young adults who use social networks: it’s 60% of Internet users aged 35-44 and 50% of those 45-54. Women—especially moms—are driving much of the growth. Within 5 years, more than half of the 55-64 year-old Internet users will visit social networks regularly and nearly 40% of the seniors 65+.
Facebook has 400 million active users, 50% of which log on to Facebook every day. You can help promote Church content on Facebook by clicking “Like” on posts on the Church page or the Mormon Messages page, then any new posts on those pages will appear in your news feed and be seen by all your friends. Also use the “Share” link to make that post appear to your friends.
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine and 3rd most popular site on the Internet. It gets over 100 million unique visitors/month and over 2 billion views/day—that’s more daily page views than the daily primetime audience of the 3 major television networks combined! The Mormon Messages videos have been viewed more than 11 million times.
Twitter has 75 million users. 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter—people update anywhere, anytime. Lots of usage is on mobile phones. You can help promote Church content on Twitter by using the keywords #lds and #mormon to flag tweets about the Church and #ldsconf when tweeting about LDS General Conference.
This growth is amazing. Online social networking didn’t even exist a few short years ago. To learn more about social media, watch the video Social Networking in Plain English or read about social media on Wikipedia.
You’re right. Social media is huge. From a scientific standpoint, it just goes to show how important being social is to the human race. People are driven to want friends and be social and the internet is a very helpful way to let people do this.
Even if you are “different”, the world is big enough that you can always find people just like you online.
And just this morning, HD Radio posted in their series about HD Radio stations across the United States, ’50 States in 50 Days’ on their Facebook page about Mormon Channel on Bonneville’s station in Ohio. Look up ‘HD Radio’ on Facebook, you’ll see the entry at or near the top of their posts.