Kepios / Simon Kemp / CEO/Founder / Global Digital Overview
“People who publish to Twitter are disproportionately influential”
We all have a sense of what is going on in the internet. But it’s an illusion. Our perception of your own use of the web blinds us to what is actually happening.
But it doesn’t have to be like this.
This week on the Shiny New Object podcast I interview Simon Kemp about his recently released Global Digital Overview report which looks at 15060 data points across 246 countries all combined in 5000 charts all for you, for free.
This is one of the most well-read marketing publications of the year with 8m reads in 2018 including coverage on CNBC/BBC and in the World Economic Forum - and I was lucky to get the audio exclusive.
The big news in this year’s report is that there’s been between 9/10% YOY growth of the internet. That gives the internet a 57% penetration globally. If there was ever an excuse not to be online as a business - there’s really none now.
Despite big news stories about social and privacy, Social media has shown solid growth. However, the Facebook picture is interesting. Despite rumours to the contrary, younger Facebook users are not deserting the platform, it’s just that Facebook is not acquiring younger users at the same rate it used to - there are now more over 55 yr olds than there are users under 18.
Simon goes into detail about how “Pinterest is growing but marketers don’t understand it” and that Twitter is no longer a social network but a News platform. The thing to note is that most people who visit Twitter don’t log in (and consequently aren’t monetisable) but the people who do publish to twitter are disproportionately influential.
Simon concedes that whilst the data-led among us might drool over the stats - the numbers can’t be taken in isolation and need to be seen in context. So Simon is on a gruelling 63 day world tour to spread the gospel.
You can see one of his recent talks in Vancouver here.
https://hootsuite.com/events/social-breakfast-vancouver-2019