With 2009 just beginning, let’s take a look at the usage of social networks to find out which networks have shaped the Internet world in the past few months. Looking at some interesting and important statistics will help you find the appropriate ways to get in touch with the particular community you’re trying to reach.

Targeted use of social networks not only affects marketing professionals worldwide but also filmmakers, who can easily use these platforms for promotional purposes. According to a study by eMarketer about 76% of US retail executives believe that user-generated content will play a key role in the near future, closely followed by 72% who believe in the rising importance of social media tools. Another 69% think online videos will have a significant impact on their marketing goals. According to a study by IDC more than 75% of social network users log in to their perferred network at least once a week, with 57% logging in daily. 61% of social network users are logged in for more than 30 minutes and 38% stay longer than an hour. These figures make it clear how important the use of social media will be for the film industry.

Facebook, for example, is amongst the world’s most popular social networks and, according to Facebook’s own statistics has about 150 million active users (Inside Facebook states there are about 140 million users). An average user shares their profile with about 100 friends, is about 25 years old (or older) and 70% probably live outside the United States. Of the 150 million Facebook users, around 13 million users change their status at least once each day and more than 15 million users share pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) each month.

These figures may seem impressive, but what do they mean for moviemakers? The increasing use of online video will play an essential role for filmmakers, since it is the most informative advertising media for the industry. According to Nielsen, the streaming of movies nearly doubled in the United States between 2006 and 2007. A 2007 Nielsen study further indicates that 40% of the respondents have streamed some kind of video. On Facebook, according to the platform’s own statistics, more than 4 million videos are uploaded each month, which is a quite considerable number.

Myspace.com is of course another huge social network, with web strategist Jeremiah Owyang claiming it has around 110 million users. One of the useful tools Myspace provides filmmakers is the possibility of creating a filmmaker channel, for uploading videos within the community and to do some networking.

According to Nielsen, Twitter.com leads the social networks in terms of growth, increasing its number of users by 343% since September 2007. This ’micro-blogging’ service enables users to enter short messages, called tweets, and share ideas, content or links with other Twitter users who follow their profile. HubSpot states that Twitter has about 4-5 million users who are each followed by an avergage rate of 69 people each.

Aside from these huge social networks, there is a growig number of niche networks that we see becoming more and more important in the  year ahead. If you are a filmmaker with a film appealing to a niche audience, it will be crucial to not only utilise the big networks, but also these little ones to reach a more engaged audience that is more likely to be interested in your film than the broad mass.

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