Future Trends in Information Systems

Social

Social media growth is another trend that continues at a firm growth rate. As of April 2018 there were about 2.18 billion Facebook users, a 14% increase from April 2017.


Facebook users world wide in June 2017 (Source: Internet World Stats)

In 2018, of the 2.2 billion users who regularly use Facebook, only half them spoke English and only 10% were from the US.

Besides Facebook, other social media sites are also seeing tremendous growth. Over 83% of YouTube’s users are outside the US, with the UK, India, Germany, Canada, France, South Korea, and Russia leading the way. Pinterest gets over 57% of its users from outside the US, with over 9% residing in India. Twitter now has over 330 million active users. Social media sites not based in the US are also growing. China’s WeChat multipurpose messaging and social media app is the fifth most-visited site in the world.