Back in 2005 social media was the new buzzword, MySpace was doing the rounds and so was Bebo, each taking on the world and sharing things with friends. There was whispers about this new network called !

Fast forward a few years and MySpace and Bebo suffered a huge downfall following the rise of Facebook, with all its wonderful apps and ability to seemlessly connect you without too much effort. Basically they won because the concentration was not on your wall or your profile but on the aggregation of feeds which you wanted to see – allowing you to engage and see the world. Well that’s the simplified version, that plus Facebook knows how to use the data it collects and does it amazingly well… Google say they know what you want before you do, if thats the case Facebook knows what you want, need and puts it in front of you before you’ve even thought about wanting it. 

If you are interested in the new rise of MySpace as a music based service, check out my article on .

So with the meteoric growth of social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ the question is why do people share so much about themselves? Why do businesses sink so much time and effort into social media? plus many other questions.

To answer this I was about to write a nice long article about Why Social Media is NOT a Waste of Time, but instead I stumbled across this lovely infographic which tells the story. This infographic is based on Nielsen research results in america only, but it applies across the world especially in the UK where the statistics shown are broadly similar.