A recent survey by the research agency, InSites Consulting, has revealed some interesting facts and stats about the social media status today around the world. In general, social networks have tremendous penetration and awareness all over the global community.

The study was very comprehensive: It sampled 9,027 people from 35 countries in 4 different continents. These numbers makes this study really compelling and representative and it can tell us a lot how the social media infiltrated the lives of so many people worldwide. Here are the study’s main findings:

Social Awareness and Penetration

The awareness of the social media is very high and almost any person acquaintance with it: 98% in Europe, 98% in India, 97% in Brazil, 96% in Australia, 95% in the US, 86% in Japan and 75% in China.

There are close to 1 billion social network users in the world, representing huge penetration to any part of the globe: 88% in India, 86% in Brazil, 76% in the US, 73% in Europe, 67% in Australia, 44% in China and 34% in Japan.

 

Another remarkable conclusion from the survey is that social network users don’t satisfied with just one social network: Every social network user in India use 3.9 social networks, In China 3.4, in Brazil 3.1, in the US 2.1, in Europe 1.9, in Japan 1.8 and in Australia 1.5.

Top Social Networks in Different Countries

While Facebook is a consensus among social network users all over the world and it is always at the top 2 social networks, we can see that in different countries there are different social networks preferences.

For example, in Brazil and India Google’s old social network Orkut is very popular, while it almost doesn’t has any stand at all anywhere else in the world. Another example is MySpace that has some increased popularity in China, Japan and Australia.

The second most popular social network (although in different volumes) is Twitter. It appears as one of the three most popular social networks at almost all countries.

Here are the top 3 social networks in different countries (the first bar is membership, the second bar is awareness):

 
 
 

Brands Interaction

Here’s a fact most people who work at home would love to hear. Most social network users follow brands: 70% in India, 62% in China, 60% in Japan, 57% in the US, 55% in Brazil, 55% in Australia and (only?) 51% in Europe.

Also, Social network users are mostly like to follow two digits number of brands: 20.2 in the US, 19.6 in Brazil, 15.6 in India, 12.2 in Europe, 9.3 in Japan, 8.3 in Australia and 7.9 in China.

 

Last Thought

We can see that social networking is taking a big part of the internet activity, and actually in the everyday activity of people from any part of world. Therefore, combining social networks marketing in our work from home efforts is fundamental.

Here are the full study’s findings: