John Koetsier is a journalist, analyst, author, and speaker.
Source: www.forbes.com, February 2020


This year is likely the last one ever in which you can say that more than half the planet is not on social media.

Hootsuite just released a massive digital state of the union report. Some of the high-level findings:

  • 5.2 billion of us now have phones globally
  • 4.5 billion are connected to the internet
  • 3.8 billion are active social media users

That 3.8 billion is 49% of the planet’s population, and it grew 9% over the past year. That means it’s extremely likely that sometime this calendar year, more than half of all of us will be active social media users. Whether that’s scary or wonderful depends on how you perceive the social benefits of social platforms — and maybe whether your last name is Zuckerberg — but either way, it’s amazing.

I spent half an hour with the author of the report and a Hootsuite exec to learn what’s changing, what’s new, and how social is evolving.