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100 Things You Didn't Know About Your Favorite Social Media Platforms By Hiral Rana

 

As our regular readers would have noticed, we have set out to conquer the world discover the choicest marketing posts, best practices, expert opinions, and trivia from the four corners of the internet.

This post is our yet another attempt to build the big daddy of all listicles. If you have ever felt social media is funny or weird, and a lot of your social marketing results (or efforts) don’t make sense, this fact-filled post is a must-read for you.


Disclaimer: While a majority of these facts concern social media marketing, some of them have found their way into the list because they were too cool to be left out.

If you don’t want to know facts about all of these social networks, you can directly jump to your favorite one using the links below.
Facebook – The 10th point is quite interesting
Twitter – The 9th and 10th points will make you go from ‘duh’ to ‘aah’
Instagram – There seem to be a bunch of unknown things about Instagram ads floating around
Snapchat – These slyly double as reasons to join Snapchat
YouTube – A few gems for video marketing in here
Linkedin – Every content marketer must read these
Google+ – These are a bit sad
Pinterest – These facts suggest the way forward with Pinterest
Bonus – Exciting things to know about other networks and social media overall
Facebook

1. It takes longer for food to pass through your stomach and small intestine than it takes for your Facebook posts to disappear from your audience’ feed. This means you don’t have much time to work your magic!

Source: 75% of the engagement on a post happens in first 5 hours

2. Media companies like Huffington Post, Tastemade, TMZ, E!, and others have wasted no time streaming their features live on mobile with Facebook Live. Apparently this is the best way to reach Facebook’s 1.6 billion users, so you better start getting the hang of it.

Source: Facebook’s Live Video Effort Entices Media Companies

3. Facebook’s new Instant Articles ad policies are more publisher-friendly. With the latest move to allow ads (text and video) at the bottom of content and pre-roll ads (for video content), generating revenue will become easier for marketers.

Source: Facebook will allow more advertising in every Instant Article

4. Facebook changed its Friends icon. The new icon is symbolic towards gender equality and fairness. While this is not related to marketing, marketers can glean a lesson from this fact and ensure their posts are thoughtful, sensitive and morally justified.



Source: How We Changed the Facebook Friends Icon

5. Facebook Reactions like Sad and Angry don’t mean Facebook will infer that your audience doesn’t want to see your posts. So you are free to post all types of content without worrying about negative reactions. Case in point, the angry reaction here is for Trump, not The Huffington Post.



Source: What the Reactions Launch means for Newsfeed, Facebook Newsroom

6. Reserve your best posts for Friday because posts posted on Friday get most impressions and engagement. Also the rate of video plays is higher on this day. Businesses and social media publishers now have a whole new reason to say TGIF!

Source: Social Intelligence Report

7. This one is for businesses who believe quantity trumps quality; your followers will unlike your page if your posts are uninteresting.

Source: Most common reason to unlike a Facebook page is uninteresting posts

8. You don’t have to guess wildly any more on what the interaction rates should be for your Facebook page. Just note down the number of fans and refer the table below:



Source: Finding the Right Interactions for Your Facebook Page

9. The Fashion, Airlines and Electronics industries get the highest number of likes, whereas Finance and Alcohol get the most shares!

Source: Finding the Right Interactions for Your Facebook Page

10. 42 percent Facebook users applied filters to their profile pictures in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris while only 4% did so in response to LGBT rights. Such comparisons could be a great way to understand the issues that are close to your fans’ hearts.

Source: Changing a social media profile picture is one way to express support or solidarity

11. Facebook has 1.91 billion monthly users, making it larger than the population of China (1.38 billion) and India (1.33). Facebook has gone from zero to 1.91 billion users since 2004: signing up approximately 274 a minute during the last 13 years.

Source: How Facebook dominates the internet- in five numbers

12. Think logging out of Facebook means it can’t track your activities online? You might want to think again. Facebook tracks the sites you visit, even after you have logged out. This means, if you log out of Facebook, and then head to a website that contains a Facebook plugin, your browser will continue to send personally identifiable information back to Palo Alto.

Source: Facebook tracks you online even after you log out

13. In 2007, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel bid $1 billion for the acquisition of Facebook. While Zuckerberg seemed enthusiastic about the idea, tides changed when, the bid was lowered to $850 million.

Source: Yahoo wanted to buy Facebook

14. There is a reason you will never see Facebook’s servers down, because every minute of downtime outage costs Facebook approximately $24,420.

Source: When It Goes Down, Facebook Loses $24,420 Per Minute

15. Adding /4 at the end of Facebook’s URL will automatically direct you to Mark Zuckerberg’s wall.

Source: 13 things you didn’t know about Facebook, on its 13th anniversary

16. Facebook’s main color is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is color blind. Zuckerberg is blind to colors like green and red, and “blue is the richest color” for him, he told the New Yorker in 2011.

Source: 10 surprising facts about Mark Zuckerberg

17. Facebook pays people to surf Facebook for News Feed research. In 2014, Facebook launched a program where they paid over 700 contract workers to scroll through their News Feeds. The information was later sent to their team of engineers and data scientists who used it to improve the News Feed algorithm.

Source: 20 Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Your Facebook News Feed

18. Facebook had to change the algorithm because people were using their News Feed like email. Users were interpreting the “hide” button beside each post like the “delete” or “archive” button in an email inbox. Once they were done reading a post, they would “hide” it.

Source: Facebook had to change its newsfeed because some people were using it like email

19. Each post in your Facebook News Feed was given a “relevancy score” to compare it with thousands of other posts. It means, that the post you see at the top of your News Feed was chosen over thousands of others as the one most likely to make you react and engage.

Source: Who controls your Facebook News Feed

20. Al Pacino was the first ‘face’ of Facebook. The first design logo of Facebook had the sketch of a man in the top-left corner of the website, next to where the name was printed. This was the face of a younger Al Pacino, designed by Co-founder Andrew McCollum.

Source: 13 things you didn’t know about Facebook, on its 13th anniversary
Twitter

21. Twitter is evolving as a customer support platform. 22% people between the ages of 26 and 36 prefer to use Twitter for customer service support more than any other platform. If you are not providing customer support on Twitter, you might soon alienate a major portion of your customers.

Source: The State of Social Support 2016

22. Etsy has 2682415 followers, 400k followers more than retail giant Amazon. So if you are wondering where to set up shop for your handmade goods, this might be the answer.

Source: Twitter Brand statistics – E-shop

23. 23 percent of Twitter advertisers plan to decrease spending, while 32 percent plan to increase spending. That are some mixed signals for a marketer right there.

Source: More advertisers plan to spend less on Twitter: Mahaney

24. Twitter’s Periscope app has over 10 million active users and 100 million broadcasts. A new feature allows Twitter users to watch Periscope streams directly within their feed, as opposed to clicking a link that redirects to the Periscope app. This can work wonders for your visibility if you get it right – your audience doesn’t even have Periscope accounts.

Source: Twitter

25. A Michigan woman traded her Twitter handle (@DietDrPepper) for $5,000 (41,000 bottles of its Dejà Blue water brand) to help assuage water crisis in Flint. Lesson for marketers here – your Twitter account handle is your identity and asset, treat it that way!

Source: Detroit Free Press

26. One of the most important aspects for succeeding on Twitter is average response time. Railways have the best average response time of 1 hour 26 minutes, airlines come in at 3 hours 12 minutes, whereas car rental companies fare the worst at 22 hours and 32 minutes. What’s your average response time?

Source: Twitter’s Winners and Losers

27. YouTube has the largest number of followers of all the social network official accounts, even more than Twitter itself.



Source: Essential statistics for Twitter

28. Twitter is more popular amongst young adults — 22.2 percent of U.S. Twitter users are between 25 and 34 years old. The second largest user group were 35 to 44 year olds at 20 percent. The time to tweak your audience profile is now.

Source: Statista

29. A study found that tweets sent by women were big on emotional words like sad, love, glad, sick, proud, happy, scared, annoyed and excited whereas tweets sent by men were mostly about sports, technology and – wait for it – numbers! So gender-specific norms are true even for Twitter.

Source: Gender Identity and Lexical Variation in Social Media

30. Twitter did not invent the #hashtag. Use of the hashtag (#) dates back to 1988 where users communicating on Internet Relay Chat clients (IRC) used them to categorize content or discussions.

Source: 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Twitter

31. Twitter Was Originally Called ‘Twttr’.

Source: 20 Facts You Didn’t Know About Twitter

32. Twitter’s Logo is named after the legendary Boston Celtics player, Larry Bird.

Source: Why Is Twitter’s Logo Named After Larry Bird?

33. The first billion tweets took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to be sent. Although today, a billion tweets are sent out in just 48 hours.

Source: 10 Facts About Twitter You Probably Didn’t Know

34. Geography experts believe Twitter could help medical professionals learn where and when severe flu outbreaks are occurring in real time.

Source: Twitter can predict Flu outbreaks and help doctors prepare for the busy times in advance.

35. Ending a tweet with an empty hashtag is called a “Hangtag”.

Source: 20 Interesting Facts About Twitter We Bet You Didn’t Know

36. The 140-character limit on Twitter is based on the mobile SMS limit, as Twitter primarily started as a SMS based service where the standard character limit is 160 characters.

Source: 10 Interesting Facts About Twitter on its 10th Birthday

37. Twitter co-founder Noah Glass who gave the company it’s name was famously booted out of the company. Even today his Twitter bio simply reads “I started this.”

Source: An Interview With Twitter’s Forgotten Founder, Noah Glass

38. Around 500 million people visit Twitter each month without logging in.

Source: 44 Twitter Statistics for 2016

39. Around 92% of companies Tweet for more than once a day, while 42% of them Tweet between 1-4 times a day, and 19% Tweet 7-10 times a day.

Source: Twitter marketing statistics

40. Twee-q, a Swedish tool that measures male vs female retweet ratio, found that women were retweeted 1,926,738 times whereas men were retweeted 3,469,196 times. Here are some interesting results featuring E2M digital marketers.



Source: Twee-Q.com
Instagram

41. Instagram posts get 308% more engagement than Facebook and 1,313% more than Twitter. That’s after engagement rates started their decline.

Source: Is Instagram Becoming Saturated?

42. Your Instagram feed was not always searchable on the web. The latest brand-friendly algorithm change ensures all Instagram posts have greater visibility.

Source: Instagram Brings Search to the Web

43. Another algorithmic change makes Instagram more like Facebook. The switch from the chronological timeline to quality-optimized content is (supposedly) beneficial for users, who miss 70% of their feeds anyway, but brands are not happy with the change as it stifles organic reach.

Source: See the Moments You Care About First

44. The overlay for the action-driving ads displays the Facebook Page name as well as the destination website URL when you tap on an image. The same goes for mobile app install ads. Advertisers pay on the basis of action (click on the link) and not the tap.

Source: Understanding the Ad Overlay

45. Instagram faced a lot of backlash for its Search Followers/Following test feature. But it might be a good idea for brands to understand their audience by seeing who their fans followed. The Following search is a handy tool to find popular Instagram influencers.

Source: New Instagram search bar takes stalking to the next level

46. Within a year, the number of companies that use Instagram for marketing will be more than those that use Twitter.

Source: Number of Companies Using Instagram to Nearly Double Next Year

47. Instagram will surpass Google and Twitter in net mobile display ad revenues in 2017.



Source: Instagram Mobile Ad Revenues to Reach $2.81 Billion Worldwide in 2017

48. The top three hashtags on Instagram include #fashion (284,157,962 photos), followed by #likeforlike and #friends. In addition, #TBT (throwback Thursday) and #WCW (woman crush Wednesday) are also quite popular. If you have a fashion brand, you know where you have to be.

Source: Top-Hashtags

49. The best time to get more engagement on your posts is between 6 a.m. and 12 p.m. because posting volume is low then. The early bird gets the engagement worm.

Source: Why Your Brand Should Consider Morning Posts

50. One of the best time-saving features introduced by Instagram is multiple accounts. You can add up to 5 Instagram accounts on your app and switch between them. A lot of marketers are still unaware of this feature.

Source: Instagram Help Center
Snapchat

51. Snapchat has around 100 million users who spend between 25 and 30 minutes on the service every day. It gets more than 8 billion video views a day, which is roughly in the same neighborhood as Facebook. Is your brand on Snapchat?

Source: Snapchat’s Spiegel to Investors: We Have 8 Billion Video Views a Day

52. Although Snapchat tries to keep it hush-hush, it is rumored to make a Google-glass like eyewear. This could mean even more Snapchat users in future. Is your brand on Snapchat yet?

Source: SnapGlass? HoloChat? Snapchat is secretly hiring wearable technology experts

53. Under UK copyright law, it would be unlawful for a Snapchat user to take a screenshot of an image and make it available to the public without the consent of the image owner. Does that mean brands can sue people too? At least we know they won’t suffer as much backlash as they do when they goof up on Twitter or Facebook. Another reason for brands to be on Snapchat.

Source: UK Parliament

54. Snapchat ‘Chat 2.0’ update allows video and audio chatting and typing with text or stickers. Now where have we heard of this feature before? Oh yes, Facebook’s WhatsApp! Do you see what Snapchat is trying to do here? From its selfie-sharing app days it is moving fast towards total social media dominion. Yet another reason for brands to be on Snapchat.

Source: Snapchat blog

55. Imitation is the best form of flattery. Snapchat must be doing something right if Facebook, the social media giant tries to copy its main feature i.e. self-destructing posts.

Source: Facebook takes on Snapchat

56. In the early days, a large portion of the Snapchat population comprised of male millennials but now the app is now attracting a lot of female millennials. Part of this reason is popular fashion bloggers and celebrities who are using Snapchat to capture their busy days, trendy clothes and fancy lifestyles.

Source: Female Millennials’ Use of Snapchat Surges Ahead of Men

57. Snapchat has deals with companies like Nielsen and Millward Brown for measuring advertising impact and reach. It is also rumored to integrate with comScore to woo advertisers and publishers. This integration will help publishers to measure audiences and give advertisers a better understanding of their audience.

Source: Snapchat Discover publishers could get comScore numbers

58. Snapchat creator Evan Spiegel has mentioned that they failed on 34 projects before they found Snapchat.

Source: 7 Awesome Snapchat Facts You Didn’t Know

59. Snapchat was initially called Picaboo.

Source: 13 Cool Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Snapchat

60. Snapchat’s icon was inspired by the Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah.

Source: Here’s One Thing You Didn’t Know About Snapchat

61. Inspiration for the disappearing messages came to Spiegel and Murphy after a friend regretted sending a photo to someone else.

Source: Snapchat Trivia: 21 interesting facts you didn’t know about it!

62. Snapchat has rejected Facebook not once but twice. Mark Zuckerberg had approached Snapchat to discuss about a potential acquisition of over $1 billion but was rebuffed by Spiegel. He later returned with an all cash offer of $3 billion, but was rejected again.

Source: Ten things you need to know about Snapchat
YouTube

63. After Periscope and Facebook, YouTube will be rolling out its livestreaming app, called YouTube Connect soon. Marketers will be spoilt for choices!

Source: VentureBurn

64. The most popular ecommerce brands on YouTube are Vat19, Rainbow Loom Bands and Amazon.

Source: Brands YouTube statistics

65. YouTube has over 1 billion users who watch over 6 billion hours of video every month. 80% of these are outside the US.

Source: YouTube

66. If you thought Snapchat and Periscope will replace the old video Goliath, consider this: T-Mobile users can watch YouTube videos for hours without adding up their data charges. T-Mobile allows users and services to stream at native resolution, all the way up to 4K.

Source: YouTube agrees to participate in T-Mobile’s free video program

67. YouTube is testing a Related Cards feature which shows related videos for vague or obscure search terms.



Source: YouTube Is Experimenting with Related Cards at the Top of Searches

68. YouTube Accelerator allows users in Philippines at various Wi-Fi hotspots to stream 100,000 cached videos without buffering. These videos will be the most viewed YouTube videos in that particular country. Marketers can start praying to get this feature in their countries soon.

Source: YouTube Accelerator

69. In a survey of 350 B2B companies, 96% of respondents said that they were actively engaged in video marketing whereas 73% of respondents believed that video marketing is good for their ROI.

Source: 73% of B2B Marketers Say Video Positively Impacts Marketing ROI

70. If you think you can get away without having YouTube influencers disclose that they are getting paid for the reviews, think again. You might get in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission.

Source: FTC press release

71. YouTube’s brand page is the third most liked page on Facebook with over 81.32 million Facebook fans.

Source: Product brands with the most Facebook fans as of January 2016
Pinterest

72. An overwhelming majority of users say Pinterest is the best source to find inspiration, plan, and try something new. Time to listen to that new intern for your Pinterest campaign.

Source: Ipsos

73. Pinterest announced the launch of a new type of Rich Pin called How-To Pins. This pin is indeed a rich edition to the Rich Pin family which consists of App, Movie, Recipe, Article, Product and Place pins.

Source: Pinterest blog

74. Pinterest monitors price drops and alerts users who have pinned buyable pins in the form of form of in-app notifications and emails. This feature not only keeps users happy but also fuels conversions.

Source: Pinterest Launches A New Way To Track Price Drops On Buyable Pins

75. L’Oréal found that Cinematic Pins (scroll-activated ads on Pinterest) increased purchase intent by 37.2 percent and boosted brand awareness by 30.7 percent. Au contraire, static promoted pins increased purchase intent by 30.9 percent and boosted product awareness by 21.3 percent.

Source: Adweek

76. Pinterest developed a tool with ElasticSearch to understand what topics Pinners are interested in, when that interest usually happens and how they are engaging with these topics. This tool is used to find Pinner insights and popular content over time over time to more easily identify seasonality or trends of topics. This is the reason why you see so many Valentine themed pins in February and Spring Cleaning tips in March.

Source: Pinterest Engineering
LinkedIn

77. B2B accounts on LinkedIn have 109,000 followers on an average. Facebook and Twitter don’t even come close with 34,000 and 18,000 followers respectively.

Source: B2B Social Media Strategy: How Best-in-Class Brands Do It

78. There are 414m users of which a fourth are from the US. 41% of these US users have an income of more than $75,000.

Source: Statistics and facts about LinkedIn

79. LinkedIn still remains a good source for word-of-mouth publicity. A study showed that employees CTR on content shared by employees was double compared to company shares of the same content.

Source: LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog

80. Every week over 130,000 posts are published on LinkedIn. Almost half of the readers belong to the corporate upper echelon including CEOs, VPs and managers. On an average, posts reach people working in 21 different industries and living in 9 countries.

Source: Daniel Roth, LinkedIn

81. The top 5 influencers on LinkedIn are Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Deepak Chopra, and Arianna Huffington. Follow them to understand what kind of content strategy works on LinkedIn.



Source: LinkedIn Pulse

82. Titles with the words “You,” “Who,” “What,” “When,” Where,” “Why” or “How” work the best on LinkedIn.

Source: What We Found When We Analyzed the Top 1,000 Posts on LinkedIn

83. The failure of LinkedIn’s ad network and its decision to focus only on sponsored posts mean small business marketers face even more competition from industry biggies.

Source: LinkedIn Shuts Down Its Ad Network 12 Months After It Opened

84. LinkedIn is the social media network of choice for hardcore news seekers. 67 percent of LinkedIn users – more than on any other social media network – consider themselves “news junkies.”

Source: U.S. News Consumption in the Age of Convenience

85. The answer to the age old SEO question – Will re-posting articles on LinkedIn Pulse affect your rankings? – is a firm and resounding “No.”

Source: Is Duplicate Content on Medium and LinkedIn Bad for SEO? SEJ

86. Around 41% of millionaires used LinkedIn. Most of them are tech-savy and use their resources to grow their list of connections and subsequently grow their business.

Source: 24 amazing things you didn’t know about LinkedIn

87. Every November, LinkedIn holds a “Bring Your Parents To Work” day so that parents can learn more about what their children do because, there are chances that most of the job titles can be a bit too techy for the parents to understand.

Source: Would you bring your PARENTS to work? LinkedIn invites employees to take relatives to the office to ‘demystify the workplace’

88. Youtube was established in the same building as LinkedIn. Reid Hoffman let some old colleagues to use the extra space in one of the many offices of LinkedIn to get their start-ups going and YouTube was one of them.

Source: 24 amazing things you didn’t know about LinkedIn

89. LinkedIn has once had to settle for a class-action lawsuit because, it had used their imported email contact list to send out invitations to join the site by using the original user’s name.

Source: 10 Things You Might Not Know About LinkedIn

90. Despite being a free service, almost 40% of the LinkedIn users pay for special features the social network provides.

Source: 10 Linkedin Stats & Fun Facts You Never Knew You Wanted to Know

91. LinkedIn is not only one of the largest social network in the world, but it also owns a number of different companies like Slideshare, Rapportive, Mumbo, Esaya and Pulse.

Source: 24 Amazing things you didn’t know about LinkedIn

92. The most overused words on LinkedIn are ‘motivated’, ‘creative’ and ‘enthusiastic’. Some of the other terms are ‘track record’, ‘passionate’, ‘successful’ ‘strategic’ and ‘extensive experience’.

Source: LinkedIn Says These Are the 10 Most Overused Words

93. The average social media user is worth around $100, but for LinkedIn, with a market capitalization of around $24 billion and a user base of 300 million people, the per-user valuation stands at around $93.

Source: 24 Amazing things you didn’t know about LinkedIn


Google+

94. There are about 2.2 billion G+ profiles. However, most of the activity on G+ comprises of comments on YouTube videos and profile photo changes.

Source: Estimating G+ User Activity: 4-6 million active posters in January 2015 to date

95. Over 90% Google+ users have posted no public content.

Source: Hard Numbers for Public Posting Activity on Google Plus

96. 64% of B2B content marketers in North America said they will use Google+ for distributing content. The corresponding numbers for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are 84%, 88% and 94%. Nevertheless, diehard Google+ users can take heart as the figure has increased 9% from last year, which the biggest jump compared to other social networks. As they say, slow and steady wins the race.

Source: 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends for North America
Bonus Facts

97. Kik, a mobile chat app, has more than 275 million registered users, 70 percent of whom are between 13 and 24 years old. 40 percent of these are teens. This app might just disrupt social media industry and overtake Snapchat.

Source: Chat App Kik Claims Higher Engagement Than Snapchat

98. Within a week of launching, Periscope hit 1 million users. By month 4, they’d gone past 10 million. People spend considerable time watching live broadcasts; 40 years of video is watched per day.

Source: Periscope, by the Numbers, Medium

99. 71% of Vine users are millennials. Other popular apps amongst millennials are YikYak, Venmo, Instasize, Buzzfeed, Tinder and Snapchat.

Source: The 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report, comScore

100. Buzzfeed Tasty and Justin Bieber are the most watched video creators in the world across all social media platforms. This fact very plainly sums up the current (sorry?) state of social media.

Source: Most Watched Overall Creators in January 2016
Coda

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