I stumbled upon another piece of information and interesting blog by Mr. John Egan on www.technorati.com, which is again replete with very useful numbers.

According to research published by eMarketer, a research and analysis company, the double digit growth in U.S social networking are over and sites like Facebook and Twitter are approaching saturation.

According to the report, social networking use in the United States will climb to 63.7 percent of the online population in 2011 (or nearly 148 million people), 66 percent in 2012 and 67 percent in 2013. According to eMarketer, 60.1 percent of Internet users participated in social networking in 2010, up from 52.3 percent in 2009.

Report goes ahead stating that more than half of Internet users ages 45 to 64 and more than four of every five 12- to- 34-year-old Internet users will be regular social networkers in 2011, according to eMarketer. The highest penetration level of all age groups will remain in the 18-to-24 age group, where 90 percent of Internet users will be engaged in social networking in 2011.

Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer and author of the report, said,  “With fewer new users signing up, social network users will be more sophisticated and discerning about the people and brands they want to engage with,”.

Wlliamson further says, “Marketers and media companies can contribute to this effort by creating compelling user experiences that make people want to stay connected to social networks so they can gain access to experiences, deals or content they may not be able to find anywhere else.”

Other findings in the report include:

• The battle between email and social networking for users’ time and attention is gaining momentum.

• With the rise in the use of smartphones, consumers increasingly will rely on mobile devices as a jumping-off point for social networking.

Above mentioned are very interesting and useful numbers, without any doubt. But, my point “ isn’t it common across all the new product launch?”. 

All products go through the similar life cycle. Marketers starts planning about product market expansion when it start reaching the maturity stage, or even in the growth phase itself, which is presented in the grid below:

So, social networking may be reaching saturation in USA, but other countries are lapping it up. Some of the countries are showing around 200% growth on year to year basis. India’s present user base of Facebook of 22.1 million is 196.20% more than last year, and it is not alone registering similar growth.    

I am not concerned with the product life cycle of social networking in United States of America. What I am happy about  is that it is as a part of integrated marketing communication tool, has made engaging customers easy, affordable and more humane (some may not agree with me over use of this word), of course with the use of technology. I am sure that form of networking may change, I don’t know how, but social networking will remain in practice forever, as it was earlier and it is in the present. Person like me, with headphone over his ears listening music, laptop in his lap writing this blog, Blackberry by his side constantly checking Facebook and Twitter updates, read reviews and ratings over various online shopping website and calls up his mother and friends and before making any purchase decision. I am sure there will many like me doing the same, the person giving recommendation may be different.

Moreover, country like India is still untapped. Broadband connection in India has reached just 33 million till now. Confederation of Indian Industries estimate broadband user base to touch 694 million by 2014. Apart from that, base of 750 million mobile users, which is expected to touch 1.19 billion in another couple of year, will provide the opportunity galore. I haven't talked about China, because I don't have the statistics. So, this is the time to say “cheers” only.