Social network Users by Geographical regions.

1. Analysis & Outlook
Worldwide Social Network Users by Geographical Region – 2014 Forecast
Social Networking has seen rapid growth in the past couple of years with 1.2 billion
social network users worldwide in 2011 and the users are forecasted to reach, 1.43
billion (2012), 1.66 billion (2013) and 1.85 billion (2014) according to eMarketer.
Consumer Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc
mostly used by consumers as well as businesses have been seeing tremendous growth
as evident in the number of users like Facebook (850 million), Twitter (465million),
LinkedIn (150 million) in 2012. These social networking sites had significantly
influenced the lives of millions of users, how they communicate with friends and
family, voice their opinions, collaborate and share knowledge, content and social
networking sites too provided the tools and platforms that are easy to use, provided an
unique experience, games and applications and kept users hooked to the sites as evident
in the comScore report that online users spend 1 minute in ever 5 minutes on social
networking sites. According to Radicati Group report, the total number of worldwide
Social Networking accounts, including both Consumer and Enterprise accounts,
expected to grow from about 2.4 billion in 2011, to about 3.9 billion in 2015. The
number of Social Networking users is expected to rise from 798 million users in 2011,
to over 1.2 billion in 2015. (Note: users typically have more than 1 account).
854
Social Network Users b y Region (Million)
494
237 212
189 193 171
165 164
139 111 130
Asia-Pacific Latin America North America Eastern Europe Middle East & Africa Western Europe
2011 2014
Source: eMarketer "Worldwide Social Network Usage: Market Size and Growth Forecast" report.
Asia Pacific is the dominant region due to the number of countries and online
population is higher. China dominates the region with close to half of the users of the
total Asia Pacific social network users are from China. Other countries from Asia
Pacific that figure in the top ten social network users list are India, Indonesia, Japan,
South Korea and Australia. Latin America is the second dominant region with Brazil
dominating followed by Mexico and Argentina. North America is dominated by US and
Canada. Eastern Europe is dominated by Russia. Western Europe is dominated by
Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain. Worldwide social network users YoY growth is
expected to slow down from 2012 as the market reaches maturity where in the YoY
growth for 2012 will come down to 19% from 23% in 2011 and is forecasted to grow
by 16% in 2013 and by 11.6% in 2014. Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter,
Google+, etc will drive the growth along with localized social networking sites in
regions like Asia will also contribute to growth. Mobile devices will drive more social
network users in the emerging markets as most of mobile handset makers are equipping
the mobile handsets with social networking for the customer use.
Rajesh Prabhakar Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/