Repost This ArticleTHERE’S A GOOD chance you don’t know anyone who’s not on Facebook. After all, it currently has 800 million users, and projections based on historical data of its growth (it’s been expanding in a linear fashion) suggest that it will hit 1 billion by July 2012. That’s roughly 1/7th of the world’s population.
The website generates 770 billion pageviews per month, nearly as much as Matador. (Kidding.)
And Facebook isn’t the only indication of where we’re headed during the information age. New Android devices are being activated at the rate of 550,000 per day. And with the help of 300,000 new Twitter users daily, 250 million tweets are created every 24 hours.
Have you heard of YouTube? Does it surprise you that 2 billion clips are watched each day? It surprised us. Try wrapping your head around this stat: 35 hours of video are uploaded to the website. Every minute. That’s 2100 days of video added for every day in real time.
A number that’s sure to make postal workers anxious, if they’re not already, is the fact that in 2010, 107 trillion emails were sent. Access to information is becoming exponentially more easy and more mobile: by 2014, more people will surf the Internet from their phones and tablets than from laptops and desktop computers combined.
What does this all mean? What does the future hold? 
****This post is brought to you in partnership between Matador and our friends at Intel, whose technology enables so much of the lifestyle in which we thrive. Join us in the conversation on Twitter with #IntelEMP.
Ian MacKenzie
Ian MacKenzie is the founder and former editor of Brave New Traveler. He is Head of Video at Matador Network. Ian is also an independent filmmaker, with his first feature (One Week Job) released in 2010. His more recent projects include Sacred Economics and Occupy Love.
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You know that it’s a lot, but when you actually try to comprehend the numbers, you just can’t. 107 trillion? What is that?
this is some mindblowing shizzle.
Great Video guys – Alway like seeing stuff like this.
Tristan
Agree with Carlo here–I really have no concept of what something like a trillion means.
Something about these numbers strikes me as scary somehow. 2,100 days of video added to youtube for every day in the ‘real world’. Makes me wonder about time.
And, what was it?, over 80% of smart phone users browsing the Internet whilst watching TV? Wow. Move over Alcoholics Anonymous, there’s a new addiction in town. (And a growing, socially acceptable, even necessary, one at that.)
Yeah Nick, that YouTube stat is a mind-twister for sure.
Great vid, Ian! Gets me pumped for Breaking Free too.
Breaking Free is coming all right… it’ll be worth the wait.
This reminds me of Koyaanisqatsi for the modern age. Very cool.
Madness. Gets me fired up for the next 10 years …to see where technology and Web will take us.
wild to think about the growth / adoption of technology and how it’s changing lives.
at the same time, i wonder about my own ‘terminal velocity’ in terms of using technology and the internet – the tipping point for when being constantly plugged in actually reduces my productivity as a writer and editor. definitely one of the questions i’m going to be exploring in the year ahead.
Insane. The mobile stats are really crazy, just because of how quickly it happened – how many people had the kind of phone that would allow them to get on the web just 5 years ago?
I know many people not using Facebook.
http://goo.gl/koO5B
One word: sick!
I love the video, but at the same time – echoing David’s comment – it all feels overwhelming.
Totally feeling this David. I definitely feel refreshed/invigorated/motivated when I go offline, especially when my time is spent in nature. I love what technology is allowing us to these days, and it’s going to be super interesting to see where we go from here…but it’s like everything else in life, balance needs to be maintained.