Versatile Amphibian

For narcissistic reasons I recently looked back on the most popular posts from 5 years of blogging and discovered that amongst the top 3 was this one on the relative sizes and evolution of social networks. Back in 2012 I was trying to make a point about the decline and slight return of MySpace. Looking around has made me realise that consolidated views of active users in this market are actually quite thin on the ground. So here's my read on the performance of key social networks from 2006 to 2015. Although no one has matched the breakout performance of Facebook in 2007, there are murmurs of hockey sticks from Snapchat and Instagram. Poor old Twitter failed to kick on from 2012, despite looking a bit sticky. Too slow to become a photo stream and too transient to be a publisher, Twitter has struggled a bit for direction in the intervening three years, scoring successes only through Vine. I hope this brief recap is useful. Rest assured that I remain vigilant for hints of canine...

"1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace, in the UK it’s as common to have a MySpace as it is to own a dog" was the wonderfully obscure quote that accompanied the social network's 2008 annual report. Myspace's subsequent decline is well known, but curiously when I was asked for a summary of social network membership I struggled to find a single source. To that end, here's my assessment of the current and historic state of three social networks: Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. This clearly shows how Twitter has accelerated customer acquisition in the last year. Arguably I've been conservative with my 2013 forecast too - growth could well inflect again considering the amount of positive press the service gets and its extreme compatibility with mobile usage. Part of that popularity is driven by celebrity stalking. The next chart shows the most popular Twitter celebs. Note that Stephen Fry - often cited as the archetypal celebrity tweeter - is in fact a shrinking vi...