What happens in 60 seconds on the Social Web? A comparison and the value of "infographics"…

There are different ways to illustrate how fast the Social Web is growing these days. For two years my favorite “real-time” resource -based on studies and research data- was Gary Hayes Social Media Count. And I am sure, you have all seen this great little widget already…

However, we also have to keep up with the pace and realize that -although people already hate them- infographics are sometimes a nice way to grab facts quick and easy. The Shanghai Web Designers created an infographic which illustrates how fast conversations, comments and content are produced on social networking and online platforms in only 60 seconds.

60 Seconds - Things That Happen On Internet Every Sixty Seconds
Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

Now, although I honor the work of the Shanghai Web Designers, it lacks some information on where the data was generated from. Gary Hayes explains nicely how the app data was put together and how actual it is (having said that I think Gary needs to refresh his links as I found links ending in 404’s).

A comparison could be interesting, I thought. Why not compare the 60 seconds data from the Shanghai Web Designers (SWD) versus a “one-minute-momentum” of Gary Hayes (GH) counter…? I started the counter and waited 60 seconds, and there you go. Here are the results…

The comparison will just focus on the essentials Google, Email, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. You can still do your own comparison afterwards…

Google
Search queries: 694,445 (SWD) versus 1,393,519 (GH)

Emails
Emails sent: 168,000,000 (SWD) versus 204,255,455 (GH)

Facebook
Status Updates: 695,000 (SWD) versus 696,758 (GH)
Comments: 510,040 (SWD) versus 512,100 (GH)

Twitter
New accounts: 320 (SWD) versus 208 (GH)
Tweets published: 98,000 (SWD) versus 62,707 (GH)

YouTube
Hours of content uploaded: 25+ hours (SWD) verus 36 hours (GH)

LinkedIn
New members: 100 (SWD) versus 60 (GH)

Spot On!
The comparison makes clear that the Facebook figures are similar whereas for the rest of the figures there is a massive discrepancy in numbers. Facebook is sharing their latest actual figures, for the other technology platforms the data probably comes from third party sources (or at least as far as I can see). If all platform and technology owners would share their latest data, those discrepancies won’t happen. The lack of source information from Shanghai Web Designers makes it difficult to argue which data is the latest, where the differences in the comparison are coming from, and so on. Maybe this is the reason why some experts don’t like infographics any more. “Don’t like…” might be wrong when I see how many people have shared the infographic in the last days. They appear very nice and compelling in social networking accounts and “illustrate” thought-leadership in presentations. Right…?!

9 replies
  1. Gary Hayes
    Gary Hayes says:

    Thanks for including my counter in this. Two big differences here:

    1 My counter is not really defined as an info graphic (as in fixed) it is being constantly updated with updated research vs the static graphic you have also looked at – updated http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/

    2 I take the trouble to include all sources with links to them on the main host page – of the thousands of embeds most folk do copy paste those sources too…

    So unclear as to the nature of the comparison? I have seen many ‘fixed, non or single source graphics’ since I did my counter and most people know they will be outdated within a week or two so have little value…

    Best Gary

    Reply
  2. Martin Meyer-Gossner
    Martin Meyer-Gossner says:

    Gary, thanks for giving your input here. The reason why I did the comparison was three-fold. I wanted to show the value of having a “live count” which is not outdating numbers so fast and the best way to see the development of change on the social web. Great job you are doing there! Then, it is important to stress the fact that people need to make reference to sources which they often don’t do in infographics. And then I hope that platforms share more openly their latest stats/figures like Facebook does. Then, infographics might not be so prominent in the future…

    Reply

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