Wow! What a year it has been for the Thinktank Media team and the social media world. We have made some huge connections in 2009, from small business owners, personal brands to big brands and organisations, and it’s mostly down to ultilising social media as a way to connect and build our relationships. We want to thank EVERYONE who has part taken this year, you really have been the difference that makes the difference. Whether it be commenting on our blog posts, hitting us up on Facebook and Twitter, sending us thoughtful feedback emails or simply soaking up what we have to say on here!

THANK YOU.

Before we see the new year in with fresher than fresh content, I wanted to refresh your memories and fire up your motor neurons to what have been the hottest posts of 2009. We simply can’t wait to share and engage with you even more in 2010! It’s a year that will truly be hotter than the sun!

So here they are – the hottest posts or 2009! Would you agree?

Social media – ROI ! – some controversial comments and thoughts here from our readers. Definitely worth hearing what they have to say!

Our top 11 wordpress plugins – always a popular one, and we will be covering “our top wordpress plugins for 2010″ early Jan by Thinktank Media’s brainbox coder Matt Bannon.

How to use twitter lists in your business – this was a HOT post by Jade Craven and one that ranked highly due to it’s timely release and informative content. Things are moving on from this, however it’s a great refresher.

Never take short cuts within social media – ow boy! A lesson learnt. This is definitely something we all need to remember when playing in this social media world..well, life actually!

A great new tool from Google for small business – google business centre – have you heard about it?

Interesting Web 2.0 stats 2009 – ow how the figures have changed since I wrote this post, and watch them sky rocket next year!

Get super connected with twitter and facebook widgets – a handy post if you want to add widgets to your wordpress blog.

How to use Web 2.0 to shamelessly promote your business – Oww what a year – last year I had a space to promo the business whilst being in hospital and looks like this year I will do too.. pregnant belly space!

Well, there was just a sprinkling guys. Have a ripper new year and we can’t wait to thrive with you in 2010!

This Web2.0 space is bursting with growth and it’s only ever increasing. The numbers below highlight to all businesses how much opportunity is out there on the web right now! Stop crying and start working harder in this space! 2009 for small business owners has never been so great! 

Hold onto your hats and fasten your seat belts!

Internet

1,596,270,108 people are actively using the internet (Internet Usage and World Population Statistics are for March 31, 2009)

Google

 1 trillion URL’s are indexed on Google –  Source 

Here is how Google grew in terms of number of indexed URLs :

1998 : 26,000,000 (26 million web pages)
2000 : 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion web pages)
2008 : 1,000,000,000,000 (1 Trillion web pages)

Google has done 2 billion searches a day, or about 700 billion a year Source

Top 100 google hot trends - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Blogs

133,000,000 - is the number of blogs Technorati has indexed since 2002

A new blog is created every second, totalling 80,000 new blogs every day. 

900,000 blog posts are created daily

Blogging grew 68% in 2008

346 million people worldwide read blogs

77% of active web users read blogs

The average blogger in the US:

• 51% male 
• Aged 35+ (58%)
• Aged 18-34 (42%)
• College educated, 74%   Source

Twitter

Number of tweets as of right now! - 1,691,543, 819 - ( click here for an up to the minute count)

At the start of 2008 Twitter had only around 500,000 monthly visitors

Growth rate for Twitter was 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December 2008  Source

Twitter.com is a top 500 site that reaches over 4.1 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a more educated, slightly more female than male, young adult audience. Quantcast, March

Twitter is receiving 8million unique visitors in the month of March 2009.Compete (via Nick) March 10

 Melbourne’s top 100 twitter users

Facebook

• More than 200 million active users

• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college

• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

• More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day

• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week

• There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

• Inside Facebook says: “the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.” Inside Facebook, March

• “Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” Wired Magazine, March.

YouTube

You tube nears 5 billion views Source

 Average internet users watch 2 YouTube videos a day

The average video length, according to comScore.com, was 2.7 minutes.

YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. 

One of the most watched videos on youtube in 2009 – set to break youtube records! 

This illustrates how web clips are mixing with TV shows and bringing in a bigger audience. 

Mobile usage

63 million on mobile internet daily

Significant growth in the numbers of people accessing the internet from their mobile phones vs. a year ago. The company says that today there are just over 63 million mobile web users in the US and 35 percent of them are online via their handset daily. Source.

I trust your mind had been sparking off like a new years eve fireworks show! Here are the numbers, now where are you seeing the opportunities within your own business?