What A Difference A Year Makes

Click on the chart to see the larger version

A year on year analysis of social media from January 2010 clearly demonstrates the rapid growth of the major networks.

While Wikipedia is chugging along with 5,000 new contributors Facebook continues to blitz the opposition, signing up 290 million new accounts over the same period.

Note also that users accessing Facebook on their mobile device has grown by over 200 percent to 200 million.  This growth trend will continue

Another significant mover has been the professional network, LinkedIn with a 100% growth and Flickr has now features 5 billion images, which represents a 25% increase in their activity.

Related articles

• 2011 social media statistics show huge growth (browsermedia.co.uk)

Given The Fflick

Another Google acquisition in the bag, this time through its subsidiary, YouTube.  The company has reportedly paid $US10 million for fflick so are they investing in talent or an add-on tool/service?  Most reports suggest both.

YouTube's blog has announced:

" We were impressed by the technical talent, design instincts and entrepreneurial spirit of the Fflick team. As part of YouTube, the Fflick team will help us build features to connect you with the great videos talked about all over the web, and surface the best of those conversations for you to participate in."

It is interesting to note how the social media talent pool ebbs and flows between products. fflick for instance was founded by four former Digg employees.

fflick uses Twitter to analyse and organises comments about movies.  Sentiment analysis is potentially big business and fflick technology could be equally deployed across domains and verticals, anywhere where there is data.

Products, news, restaurants, TV shows, are but a few of the categories where a sentiment analysis can play a role so expect to see Google capitalise fully on its potential. They are aiming to add  a social layer to their products and fflick fits the bill.

Related articles

• Google to Buy fflick for $10 Million [REPORT] (mashable.com)
• Google Prepares To Buy Twitter Based 'Sentiment Analyst' fflick (paidcontent.org)
• Google snags Twitter movie recommender Fflick for $10M (venturebeat.com)