Curious about how many Twitter users are signing up per second? How about money spent on Facebook gifts? Or iPhone app downloads? Gary Hayes was curious, and he created the Social Media Counts application to track just how prolific social media is – in real time. Read past the break to see the “Web 2.0 Clock” in action, ticking away the hours of video uploaded on Youtube, the number of Tweets, and the amount spent on virtual goods around the globe second by second.
You can visit Gary’s site to see exactly where he is getting his stats for the application.
As the rapidly increasing numbers show, the social web is a phenomenon that is expanding with each second. The speed at which it is growing may make some of Gary’s stats out of date even as they are being fed into the application, but one thing is clear: there’s no stopping the social web.
From emails to Tweets, Facebook events to meet ups in Second Life, people are turning to the internet for their social exchanges. There are huge social implications for this, from the philosophically oriented questions of what really is social to the more practical concerns surrounding workplace distractions. And, as Gary’s Counts show, there are economic issues raised as well surrounding the exploding virtual goods marketplace.
There are predictions aplenty about where the social web will take us in the future, ranging from the plausible to the fanciful. But just by taking a look at the Counter, we can be fairly certain that it is here to stay – its increasing importance in the daily lives of internet users is not showing any signs of slowing down soon.
