So I was visiting a friend’s forum today, and I noticed he posted a link to an article that was related to social networking and the uncertain future it has with only so much room for this continuation of extraordinary growth.
Written By Natasha Lomas, Silicon.com
Published on ZDNet News: Oct 19, 2007 10:02:00 AM
The article does state that the increase from now to 2012 will be substantial but at this point (2012) will come to a plateau. As I continued reading the article I noticed they quoted some figures which I found very exciting. When you see figures in an article you know they have done the market research and taken the time to estimate or forecast the income generated from Google and other income generating companies in the social networking market. This is not the point, nor the reasoning for me writing this blog, but I will admit the numbers are impressive and I would recommend developing income generating websites for profit ASAP!
I’m writing this blog to discuss the prediction of this “plateau” they are forecasting and I’m simply not going to agree. I recently graduated from Business Administration Marketing and in my MKT206 Advertising class I had to develop a product or service, and prove from doing market research that there was in fact a market and a need for this product or service. I will get to the point in a moment but first I must tell you the project. I decided to develop a Web Browser for web surfing but I designed it to do way more the simply browse the web. I also made the product specific for foreign countries. That’s right I’m not talking America, Canada, or Europe, I’m talking Asia, Middle East, Africa. There was one main reason I choose these countries, and it was simply for the growth potential and lack of market competition. The web browser would be specifically designed for them and their language. As you can imagine I had to do research and find information pertaining to these countries and their current internet users. I had to find information regarding number of users, possible sales now and in the future. Most importantly I had to prove the market had growth potential and this is what I did. For all these reasons I had to find information pertaining to the internet access per user inside these countries. Well I did just that and this is why I know the Plateau will not happens in 2012 and we have a long time generate income from social networking communities and I strongly believe they will continue to grow many more years after 2012. Let’s have a look at some numbers shall we? I will also provide the links to this information and numbers I’m about to show.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
From this link you can obviously see that these countries have large growth potential, specifically Africa. Look at Africa’s stats right now they only have 4.7 % internet penetration at the moment. This means that 95.3% of the 1 billion people don’t have internet. Growth Potential! Now as an even better example let’s have a look at Asia. Only 12.4 % of the population only has internet. I also would like to make a quick comparison to ensure you understand the size of this potential and literally untapped market. Asia is 10 times larger than North America in population sitting at 3 billion and 300 million is currently the population of America. 70.2 %of North Americans currently have the internet and only makes up 5.1 % of the world internet users. Let’s do the math and see what potential market growth Asia would have if they reached the same % (%72) of internet users as North America did. The math is very simple, what’s 72% of 3 billion people? For easy math sakes let’s make it a simple 70%. The market potential at 70% for Asia would be 2.1 billion internet users! (Approximately)
What's your thoughts? Do you think It's okay to assume the growth will continue or do you think 2012 will be the plateau? You know where I stand but ti's interesting to see what you all think regarding the topic
Written By Natasha Lomas, Silicon.com
Published on ZDNet News: Oct 19, 2007 10:02:00 AM
The article does state that the increase from now to 2012 will be substantial but at this point (2012) will come to a plateau. As I continued reading the article I noticed they quoted some figures which I found very exciting. When you see figures in an article you know they have done the market research and taken the time to estimate or forecast the income generated from Google and other income generating companies in the social networking market. This is not the point, nor the reasoning for me writing this blog, but I will admit the numbers are impressive and I would recommend developing income generating websites for profit ASAP!
I’m writing this blog to discuss the prediction of this “plateau” they are forecasting and I’m simply not going to agree. I recently graduated from Business Administration Marketing and in my MKT206 Advertising class I had to develop a product or service, and prove from doing market research that there was in fact a market and a need for this product or service. I will get to the point in a moment but first I must tell you the project. I decided to develop a Web Browser for web surfing but I designed it to do way more the simply browse the web. I also made the product specific for foreign countries. That’s right I’m not talking America, Canada, or Europe, I’m talking Asia, Middle East, Africa. There was one main reason I choose these countries, and it was simply for the growth potential and lack of market competition. The web browser would be specifically designed for them and their language. As you can imagine I had to do research and find information pertaining to these countries and their current internet users. I had to find information regarding number of users, possible sales now and in the future. Most importantly I had to prove the market had growth potential and this is what I did. For all these reasons I had to find information pertaining to the internet access per user inside these countries. Well I did just that and this is why I know the Plateau will not happens in 2012 and we have a long time generate income from social networking communities and I strongly believe they will continue to grow many more years after 2012. Let’s have a look at some numbers shall we? I will also provide the links to this information and numbers I’m about to show.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
From this link you can obviously see that these countries have large growth potential, specifically Africa. Look at Africa’s stats right now they only have 4.7 % internet penetration at the moment. This means that 95.3% of the 1 billion people don’t have internet. Growth Potential! Now as an even better example let’s have a look at Asia. Only 12.4 % of the population only has internet. I also would like to make a quick comparison to ensure you understand the size of this potential and literally untapped market. Asia is 10 times larger than North America in population sitting at 3 billion and 300 million is currently the population of America. 70.2 %of North Americans currently have the internet and only makes up 5.1 % of the world internet users. Let’s do the math and see what potential market growth Asia would have if they reached the same % (%72) of internet users as North America did. The math is very simple, what’s 72% of 3 billion people? For easy math sakes let’s make it a simple 70%. The market potential at 70% for Asia would be 2.1 billion internet users! (Approximately)
What's your thoughts? Do you think It's okay to assume the growth will continue or do you think 2012 will be the plateau? You know where I stand but ti's interesting to see what you all think regarding the topic
