Introduction

In the past few years, online social networking has become a popular way for people to interact with one another in an increasingly digital world. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace offer people a casual, quick and easy way to connect with friends. It comes as no surprise then, as people have become more comfortable with the idea of socialising, making friends and arranging dates online, that sites offering a venue for online business networking opportunities has come.

Breathe Brighton allows users to connect with people who share common interests. Individuals benefit from having a large network of contacts, a fact that is commonly known even in the non-digital world. Networking sites allow you to quickly grow and maintain a large professional and non professional database to draw from. This database makes it is easier to achieve goals ranging from finding and filling jobs, finding potential clients and service providers in addition to finding and exchanging ideas with people with similar interests.

Social networking sites fill an opening that existed for a community aspect of past online culture. For a person to not be utilizing online social networking in this day in age, especially those geared towards professionals, they would be missing out on making beneficial connections with professionals they may otherwise never know.

Some facts about social networking

  • Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
  • By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
  • Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
  • The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
  • 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for good/bad customer experiences?
  • The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
  • There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
  • 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily including many successful businesses 
  • Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
  • 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
  • 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
  • 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
  • Only 14% trust advertisements
  • Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  • 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
  • In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
  • More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
  • Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
  • Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

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