Social Media: It’s Bigger Than Both of Us

Are you old enough to remember Milton Berle’s TV comedy show in the early 50s? If you’re too young or don’t remember, the show featured a running gag. Max, Berle’s lovestruck secretary, tries to cajole Berle into marrying her. Don’t fight it, she urges him. “It’s bigger than both of us.”

That’s pretty much how I felt when I watched Erik Qualman‘s video featuring some mindboggling statistics on social media. Love or hate social media, there’s no fighting it. It’s bigger than all of us. Qualman, the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business, updates his book with periodic videos. The latest update Social Media Revolution 3 features these factoids:

• Social media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3^rd largest.
• 1 in 5 couples meet online; 1 in 5 divorces are blamed on Facebook.
• Online students perform better than students receiving face-to-face instruction.
• Generation Y and Z consider email passé.
• YouTube is the 2^nd largest search engine in the world.
• 90% of customers trust peer recommendations; only 14% trust advertisements.

I don’t know how Qualman gathers his statistics, but it is hard to argue with his conclusion. “We don’t have a choice whether we do social media. The question is how well we do it.”