A lot can happen in a hot internet minute
A report from statistics portal Statista, titled 'Digital Economy Compass 2018,' has comprehensively outlined the current digital landscape, highlighting how much the internet has taken over our lives. Let's start with this: 2.5 billion people owned smartphones and 3.5 billion people had access to the internet in 2017, which is about half the world's population. This number has increased from 3.3 billion in 2016.
2,43,000 photos uploaded to Facebook every 60 seconds
Last year, Facebook had over two billion monthly active users (MAUs), the company had said. This means that more than a quarter of the Earth's population was logging in to their Facebook accounts at least once a month. Further, every 60 seconds, over 2,43,000 photos were being uploaded to the social network in 2017, the Statista report stated.
29 million messages were sent on WhatsApp every 60 seconds
Moving on to the most popular instant messaging app, WhatsApp saw an average of 29 million messages being sent through it every 60 seconds in 2017. They translate to over 1.7 billion messages being sent on WhatsApp per hour or over 40 billion messages per day. Notably, the chat app has around 1.3 billion MAUs globally.
Have we reached peak smartphone sales already?
Twitter recorded to having 330 million MAUs in 2017 with around 350,000 tweets/min, and Tinder recorded over 18,000 matches/min during the same time period. Further, smartphone sales, that were outdoing computer sales since 2011, have also reached a stage of stagnancy, signaling that their novelty might finally be wearing off. 1.46 billion smartphones were sold last year, down from 1.47 billion in 2016.
Internet access through wearables on an increase
On the other hand, wearables like activity trackers, Bluetooth headsets, and smartwatches are forecasted to grow by around 13% annually till 2021, the report said. According to a survey of 5,000 American consumers, over half (54%) of them used smartwatches to text and check notifications and 45% to track their activity. Other smartwatch uses included making phone calls, playing music, and checking the news.
