As social media continues to evolve, one reality is coming into focus: the experience is becoming much more visual. This shift in focus can be seen in the exponential growth of image-driven networks such as Instagram and Pinterest where visual aspects are front and center of the sharing.
No doubt, a hunger for visual content exist online. Facebook’s enhancements for brand pages as well as the network’s explosive stats on photo sharing best reflect this observation.
- According to its updated SEC filing, Facebook’s photo activity grew faster than the rest of the site: on average more than 300 million photos were uploaded to Facebook every day in Q1 2012, up from 250 million photos in Q4 2011.
- Facebook photos receive 3.2 billion “likes” and comments per day.
And with the progression to Timeline complete, Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram on April 9 was the next step in the network’s visual evolution.
As the innovations outlined above remind us, the rise of visual social networks are forcing brand s to think and act more visually. So a picture is no longer worth a thousand words — perhaps it’s worth a billion “Likes”?
The excellent infographic below illustrates how visuals are exploding in social networks:
