The online community  talks about social media, A LOT. This is probably because we’ve got Facebook and Twitter coming out of our ears. It’s such an intriguing and simultaneously immeasurable field, that I thought it might be useful to gather all the statistics I can find and put them all in one post (all directly quoted). Just to make it all feel slightly more manageable (even if that’s a bit of denial).

So here you are, stats stats and more stats:

From Web Strategy by Jeremiah, Social Network Stats: Facebook, MySpace, Reunion Jan, 2008

Facebook

• General Growth
• More than 60 million active users
• An average of 250,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007
• An average of 3% weekly growth since Jan. 2007
• Active users doubling every 6 months

User Demographics

• Over 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• Maintain 85 percent market share of 4-year U.S. universities

MySpace Metrics

• MySpace has more than 110 million monthly active users around the globe
• We are the country’s trafficked site on the Internet
• 85% of MySpace users are of voting age (18 or older)
• 1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace, in the UK it’s as common to have a MySpace as it is to own a dog

From TechCrunch, End of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers April 2008

March 2008

• Total Users: 1+ million
• Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
• Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

From socialmediatoday, Facebook Demographic & User Statistics Fun November 2007

Facebook Users:

• United States 20,897,580
• Canada 7,759,540
• Australia 1,819,020
• Turkey 1,035,960
• Sweden 1,005,300
• Norway 953,240
• South Africa 649,540
• France 562,840
• China 113,700

credit: b_d_solis

From The Editors Weblog, Study shows that U.S. and Western Europe have lower participation rates in social media April 2008

• The Interpublic Group media agency had found in its first survey, which was conducted in 2006, a little over half of respondents said they read blogs. Their latest survey found that over 70% did.
• 17,000 Internet users to "track the global rise of consumer-generated content and online communities"
• Their first survey found that 30% watched video online, while this year over 80% had. Video watching platforms such as YouTube has caused watching video clips to become mainstream.
• In 2006, less than 30% said they set up a social network profile, while this year over 60% had. The survey shows big increases in listening to podcasts, subscribing to RSS feeds, commenting on news items, and most other online sharing activities.
• A little over 60% of Internet users in the U.S. said they read blogs, whereas 26% had created one. Over 70% of Internet users blog in South Korea and China, and about 90% of South Koreans read blogs and 88% read blogs in China
  

From Clickz, Study: Majority Use Social Media to 'Vent' About Customer Care April 2008 

• The online study found that 72 percent of respondents used social media to research a company's reputation for customer care before making a purchase
• 74 percent choose to do business with companies based on the customer care experiences shared by others online
• 59 percent said they regularly use social media to "vent" about their customer care frustrations
• 33 percent of respondents said they believe companies take such online complaints seriously

From Nokia, Nokia predicts 25% of entertainment by 2012 will be created and consumed within peer communities  December 2007

• 23% buy movies in digital format
• 35% buy music on MP3 files
• 25% buy music on mobile devices
• 39% watch TV on the internet
• 23% watch TV on mobile devices
• 46% regularly use IM, 37% on a mobile device
• 29% regularly blog
• 28% regularly access social networking sites
• 22% connect using technologies such as Skype
• 17% take part in Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
• 17% upload to the internet from a mobile device 

From Blog Herald, How many blogs are there? Ist someone still counting? Feb 2008

• Technorati currently states it is tracking over 112.8 million blogs
• 72.82 million Chinese blogs as counted by The China Internet Network Information Center.

From ReadWriteWeb, Do regular people really read blogs? June 2008

• 56% of Americans never read political blogs
• Those over age 63 are most likely to read political blogs
• 69% of political blog readers don’t comment on blogs

As an aside, during my research I came across this awesome collection of general media use statistics, to be found here, collected by the Media Literacy Clearing House.

Update: For more recent statistics (from February 2009) check out Social Media Statistics (the sequel)