Blogging is more popular than a major world religion?
In a recent article, the Burlington Free Press implored Vermont Realtors to embrace social media. When a mainstream Gannett newspaper tells you to do something, you know it must be widely accepted. But just how popular is social media?
There was a day when calling yourself “more popular than Jesus” could get you into big trouble. There was also a day when the Fab Four could threaten our morals and corrupt the minds of young people.
But now that the Vatican forgives John his brashness (they said they liked the beautiful music after all) and the Pope asks Bloggers to give the Internet a Soul, I think it’s safe to speculate that social media may very well be more popular than the Word Made Flesh.
More popular than Social Media? So far, so good…
Let’s look at the numbers…
Twitter: 6.0 Million Users in 2008; 18 Million in 2009; ? in 2010 (what time is it?)
Facebook: 250 Million People
YouTube: 123 million veiws in a day (in 2009)
LinkedIn: 65 Million users
MySpace: This one is funny. A Google search for this particular query about MySpace shows Facebook’s Wikipedia page as a top result.
Basically, 1.67 billion people worldwide use the Internet (according to Wikipedia)
83% of the online population uses Social Media (according to http://www.knowledgenetworks.com)
Christians: 2.1 Billion (according to wiki.answers.com)
Social Media Users: 1.4 Billion and growing every day
So my post title is incorrect. Blogging is not more popular than Jesus. But the numbers of people blogging and participating in social media increase every single day. So when your internet marketing guru tells you to embrace social media, you probably should start thinking about it.
Jane Taylor presents an interesting illusion, remarkable statistics and clever knitting in a blog post that possibly is a genre benchmark. The art of blogging is a vastly unknown science in a world where blogging changes attitudes and sounds the trumpet of change. Jane Taylor, whoever she is, seems to have mastered the genre.
Perhaps the significance of the topic (and Jane’s artful stitching) is under-represented. Where would Christianity be without social interaction? And isn’t Christianity all about change?
If the Vatican, Popes and bible-thumpers in general recognized that blogging is merely the modern equivalent of marketplace preaching or soapbox pontification (sorry your Holiness), perhaps the trend that Taylor underlines would reverse.
Kudos – please blog more often Jane Taylor!
I leave you with a Lennon quotation that possibly proves he was not really an englishman at all:
“When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.” – John Lennon
RIP John – we miss you.