Social Media Statistics, via HuffPo’s Brian Honigman

• Facebook
  • 1 Billion Users

Facebook finally hit this landmark October 4 of last year. Even if you take fake and multiple users into account, this is obviously a landmark for social networks in general and for Facebook. More importantly, those 1 billion users have 140.3  billion friendships among them. With these numbers, it would be easy for Facebook to reach a high level of monetization. Wouldn’t it?

• IPO

Facebook went public May 18, and this event has become a mixed blessing for the company. Although it started at a relatively strong $ 42 dollars per share, value quickly sank, and the company soon got embroiled in several class action lawsuits over insider trading and trading glitch allegations. As of this writing, Facebook stock is valued around the $ 29-30 level.

• Timeline takes over

The year before, Facebook rolled out Timeline, to the delight of companies and chagrin of personal users. Timeline is optimized for branding, and as tweaks and features were layered to it, it became a boon for companies of all sizes. However, Facebook also forced the idea of users also doing personal branding on their pages, something not all users were ready for or wanted to do.

• Promoted Posts

Promoted Posts is irrevocably connected to the Timeline, but warrants a separate entry. Essentially, companies could pay to  have their posts appear in user’s home feeds. Facebook used EdgeRank so that you would only see Posts that had some interest or connection to you, but it still gave many users grief. The decision to roll this out to personal users aside from company owned Facebook Pages was also questionable in itself.

• A slew of features changes, and the consequences

More than the major changes listed above, a slew of minor changes gave Facebook users reason after reason to be frustrate at their once favorite social network. Among these was the rumored change to EdgeRank that hid people’s updates, changes to Instagram post purchase (to be discussed below) and confusing addition of Interest lists to Facebook friend lists and groups.
The sum total of these changes? People are actually using Facebook less. In spite of reaching the abovementioned landmarks, less people are joining Facebook compared to previous years, and less people are logging back in. As Facebook struggles to define and prove its worth in the financial world, it may be compromising its value to users as well.
Still, Facebook remains the top gun in the social media world, and even as new changes continue to frustrate and bewilder users and privacy advocates, it’s unlikely that this will change anytime soon.

• Twitter

Twitter did not have as tumultuous a year as Facebook, but kept its relevance as a news source and a way to follow people. Like Facebook, they started adding ads to feeds in 2011, which stayed at the top of the feed whenever they showed up, and were not always relevant to user interests.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter has been less aggressive at expanding their ad platform, as they seem satisfied that it earns them enough income. It’s also unlikely that they would go IPO like Facebook, seeing how that’s affected their biggest competitor.
These are the few relevant events for Twitter in 2012:

• Social results on Discover and Who To Follow

Twitter added a #Discover feed 2011, that allowed you to see all the relevant stories of the day in a single page. Although not as full featured as paper.li or Storify, it’s a nice and quick way to catch up to stories in a glance.
For 2012, Twitter tweaked Discover’s search results to source from the people you follow, and to more closely match your interests. Without much effort, Twitter has made you a personal newspaper, that’s only a click away.
Consequently, Twitter has made similar tweaks to its Recommendations. Now you’ll be told to follow people who your friends also follow.

• Header Image

Comparable to the Facebook Timeline’s Cover Photo, the addition of a Header Image made Twitter closer in line to Facebook, and was also not quite as welcome. To its credit, the change in layout makes Twitter user pages more attractive and adds options in making them more attractive. Before the year ended, Twitter gave users default black header images, which surprisingly is attractive by itself, in a modernist way.

• Twitter API locks out third party clients

After adding features offered by many third party clients, Twitter finally throws clients under the bus with changes to their API, announced August and enforced September 12. In one fell swoop, they drop support of RSS, XML and Atom, forcing clients to follow feeds via JSON and using OAuth authentication every step of the way. Other changes relating to resyndication and user limits are bluntly intended to drop many third parties who made use of Twitter information completely.
This change was adverse for companies that owned Twitter clients, but it may turn out better for users and companies in the long run. As more users use Twitter exclusively, they can focus on improving and expanding their service, and it will also help Twitter better define their value, in personal use and in their business.

• The Promise of  Tweet Archives

Following Google Plus and Facebook, last December 19 Twitter rolled out a new feature that allowed users to download an archive of their old tweets. The archive itself will allow you to search for tweets by date or keyword. A very powerful tool for power and casual users alike, although not everyone has access yet, and there’s still no baked in solution for adding newer tweets. We won’t be seeing the full effects of this addition until well deep into 2013.

• Other Social Networks

Of these other social networks, two were very quick successes, almost instant in social media years, but one is a sleeper agent, with considerable resources behind it and the ability to overtake everything else in the future, just not in the way everyone expected it to.

• Google Plus

Google Plus was once labeled the Facebook killer, and was the summarily dismissed as a ghost town when it became obvious that it was not going to live up to this name. Now, however, it’s recently come to light that Google Plus is continuing to grow, at a comparable rate that Facebook was in where it was.
For social media professionals, Google Plus is not a replacement for Facebook. This was always a misunderstanding of what Google Plus is and what it intends to do. Google Plus is being made out as the hub, the center, the starting point of Google Services. It is a prerequisite for the working blogger for good SEO, and subsequently people and companies reliant on Google Services like Google Docs, Gmail, etc., will benefit from integrating their accounts to Google Plus. Google’s long term plan is clearly to get everyone using unified Google accounts, centering on social.

• Instagram

Instagram is a success story based on a simple idea; share pictures on Twitter with the ability to use photo filters. Instagram continued to grow in 2012, culminating in being bought by Facebook.
However, this latest action brought with it consequences, as its once cozy relationship with Twitter turned sour. Instagram now no longer has picture previews integrated from the Twitter page, although this is still available if you use 3rd party clients. Twitter now offers their own photo sharing service, complete with its own set of photo filters. Twitter feels betrayed, and Facebook once again got itself some bad press. Still, the latest data indicates Instagram users haven’t yet jumped ship, as usage remains steady.

• Pinterest

Pinterest is the breakout hit social network of 2012. In a very short amount of time, Pinterest launched its site, grew a large number of followers, found its relevant marketing niche and proved its ROI. It’s worth noting that Twitter also has a userbase where women outnumber men, but Pinterest is known for being woman centric. Sharing and pinning pictures catered to the fashion conscious and cibophiliac. Much like Instagram, Pinterest’s success was helped by its connections to Twitter and Facebook. Pinterest has chosen to stay independent of both companies and so far, it’s paid off.

• To sum up…

Thanks to the breakaway success of Instagram and Pinterest, ROI has become more relevant to social networks now more and ever. However, it’s also no longer as necessary to be overwhelmingly successful, as Tumblr and LinkedIn have both proven successful making the most of the userbase that they already have. Relevance is the difference maker between a service like Nintendo’s Miiverse, which has been embraced by the Nintendo fan community as a civil and fun experience, and Diaspora, whose promise of liberating data was a great value  proposition, but did not define their target audience.
Social media in 2013 will be focused again on providing value. Between the big two, Facebook will be more aggressive in rolling out changes, while we may see more startups attempt to replicate the success of a Pinterest. As always, this field is volatile and always open to any of the current contenders or any new comers.
Here’s hoping you have a prosperous 2013!