What happens in a second … in social media?

The pace of change in digital media

“The world is moving fast,” is one of the more trite comments that one can hear these days (right up there with banal commentary on the weather). In fact, the average orbital speed of the earth is 29.78 km/second (according to wikipedia) which is a quite fast, yet constant, reality. Get used to it!

For us earthlings, one gets the feeling that the pace of change on earth may be catching up with the earth’s orbital speed! Indeed, here is a [flash] graphic, courtesy of Gary Hayes that shows what is going in the world of social media for every second the clock ticks (or for every 29.78 kilometers that the earth is moving):

Staring at the numbers for a few moments, here are a couple of my takeaways:

that’s a lot of commenting and content sharing going on inside Facebook — the advertising revenues remain a little anemic comparatively speaking
there are more apps downloaded to the iphone than dollars spent on virtual goods (clearly demonstrating that the vast majority of apps must be downloaded for free, because there are many other types of virtual goods being purchased at the same time)
for every SMS, there are approximately 17 emails
every second there are 10 new internet users coming on board
for every kilometer the earth orbits, there is a youtube video being watched
new members joining LinkedIn only outpace the sale of iPads by a ratio of 3:2 (says more about the iPad (RRP $400+) than Linkedin, which is free)

What strikes your eye? Love to hear your thoughts.